The Bovine Club

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

A Society conducted on Gladstonian Principles

Fired with a zeal for achieving sound health, certain ladies have started a club called the “Organized Ruminators,” or “Bovine Club.” William E. Gladstone is naturally their patron saint, for did he not chew every mouthful thirty-two times, and retain his faculties in full vigor until he was more than eighty years of age?

We resolved to do likewise, and in the enthusiasm of the hour it seemed as if we were attempting an easy task. We had observed the success attained by the unscientific in the discussion of tutti-frutti gum, in the trains and trolleys, and we rashly inferred that the true Gladstonian doctrine could be carried out at the hospitable board with the same ease.

Alas! We were reckoning without our host, or rather without our host’s butler, a much more important person. It may seem a simple thing, to those who have not tried, to paraphrase Mark Twain, and to

But it is not. That solemn functionary regulates the length, I am tempted to say the shortage, of a course, on mystic principles known only to the cook and himself, but possibly having some connection with meals in the servants’ hall. His calculations are by no means based on a unit of thirty-two to one. Unless you hold firmly on to your plate with both hands, — and this proceeding society does not look upon favorably, —he will whisk it dextrously away, when you have reached point seven, let us say.

All of us do not, it is true, possess butlers in solemn black. But even the humble maid-servant of the suburbs has her rights, to say nothing of her young man waiting in the kitchen. It is found that a dinner absorbed on Gladstonian principles produces a cloud on the brow of the waitress, an admonitory rattling of dishes in the pantry, followed, perhaps, by a week’s warning given next day.

Difficult as the members of the new society find it to face the frozen butler and his ilk, they find it even harder to pursue correct principles of mastication, and at the same time maintain conversation as a fine art. How and when did Mr. Gladstone deliver himself of his thoughts during the progress of a meal ? How did he answer questions ? or did he maintain a silence as of pastoral glades, broken only by faint bovine echoes ? Doubtless in the bosom of his own family the great man would have replied to a question inopportunely asked by his better half, “My dear — seventeen,” or whatever number he had reached in his progress to the correct thirty-two. Should his noble example ever be followed by the world in general, we might dare say this to a neighbor, or make the necessary signs in the finger language. But the brave pioneers of the Bovine Club hesitate to do this, lest they be thought deaf and dumb or crazy.

It is said that English dinner-tables are surrounded by a rather sad and silent company, which we can well believe, if all are bent on performing faithfully the Gladstonian act. For if you speak before you reach thirty-two there is a manifest danger of losing count. It does not add liveliness to the conversation, if your nextdoor neighbor asks you a question, say at the eighth point, and you maintain a stony silence until you have dispatched that mouthful.

Conscientious persons must also take into consideration the case of their companions. The gentleman next me, with one eye on the flitting butler and vanishing plates, has doubtless begun on his next campaign of food-trituration. Shall I interrupt him with a frivolous answer and perhaps cause him to lose his reckoning ? Perish the thought!

Possibly Sir Thomas More and the great men of earlier days, who listened to reading aloud at their meals, were prehistoric Gladstonians. In Henry James’s new book, William Wetmore Story and his Friends, we find that Lady Stowell thus rebuked Walter Savage Landor for trying to engage her in talk. “For the love of God let me alone and don’t bother me so, Mr. Landor ; I don’t know what I’m eating.” Thackeray has a similar anecdote, it will be remembered, of an alderman eating turtle. In a society regarding its food with such earnest concentration of thought, it was evidently an easier task for Mr. Gladstone to introduce his principles than it is for his humble followers in America.

The Bovine Club find, moreover, a lack of detail in his statements. Thirty-two grindings of the dental mill to every mouthful. This historic utterance is in the grand style certainly. But how about soup ? And what is the proper size of a bite ? After careful experiment, our society has voted unanimously to make a difference between the small bite and the large bite, just as between the long haul and the short haul.

Another point on which the English Oracle fails to enlighten us is as to the rate of speed, — the quickness of the stroke, as the oarsmen have it. Should we imitate Harvard’s thirty-five to the minute, or should we adopt the longer, slower, more successful stroke of Yale? Doubtless something must depend on the age and agility of the butler, as well as on the appetite of the diner-out. A stout, elderly functionary of rheumatic tendencies might permit the slow sweep of Eli’s oars — or here we should say jaws — provided it were not his “hevening hout.” But a young, brisk butler-waitress would wear the crimson of Johnny Harvard.

The stroke of the oarsmen is set by the coxswain, as all the world knows, — a young, small, slim, and hungry person, who sits at the training-table with the crew, in order that they may prevent him from eating. He must, perforce, be a “lean and hungry Cassius,” for otherwise he would weigh too much in the boat.

When Gladstonian principles begin to prevail it would be highly convenient to borrow one of these captains of athletics, from the nearest university. Being accustomed to speak, or, more exactly, to roar, and not to eat, what could be more congenial to his taste than to attend elegant dinner-parties, and, seated in the place of honor, to give the word of command ?

Thus when the fish course was brought in he could arise in his place, and say, “ Now, then, fellows — I mean ladies and gentlemen — Now — Now — Now!” A judicious coxswain could of course “hit up the stroke” if he noted impatience in the eye of the butler, or if the kitchen-maid made signals of distress from the butler’s pantry, denoting the falling of the omelette soufflé. He would also keep his eagle eye on old gentlemen pulling an irregular stroke, and admonish such offenders in the gentle language universally used by athletes.

“In union there is strength,” and the Bovine Club, undismayed by the difficulties of their present task, look fondly forward to the day when, led by youth of genius, all sensible people shall chew in unison, at the rate of thirty-two to one, corrected time, and shall live to be a hundred as a necessary consequence.