Eating in Two or Three Languages

“I suppose they call contentment a jewel because it is so rare.”

“Irvin S. Cobb has paused between meals, one might say, long enough to write a book telling us how a patriot can ‘do his bit and eat it, too.’ Eating, taken by and large, is not such terribly serious business. We have never consider it a subject wrapped in somber gloom and Mr. Cobb confirms our opinion….An avowedly humorous volume that contains a surprising number of truths.” -Forecast, Volume 17, January, 1919

“Bubbles with the inextinguishable humor that even the battle front fails to impair in this famous American humorist and war correspondent. The gastronomical confidences, as to the food conditions in England and France, are told with the real feeling of a man whose deprivation has made him the more susceptible to a well cooked meal and he pays high tribute to the French, who can make a savory meal out of nothing. He holds many confabs with his ‘indignant stomach’ and many a promise he whispered to his ‘gastric juices’. With him you meet the type of man who has ‘devoted his life to producing a perfect salad dressing.’ One of the most amusing episodes is where he gave ‘personal interment’ to a lobster.” -The Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer, Volume 50, January 1, 1919

“Then finally, one night in a remote interior village, I went to an entertainment in a Y.M.C.A. hut. A local magician came out on the platform; and after he had done some tricks with cards and handkerchiefs which were so old that they were new all over again, he reached up under the tails of his dress coat and hauled out a big glass globe that was slopping full of its crystal-pure fluid contents, with a family of goldfish swimming round and round in it, as happy as you please. "'So then, all in a flash, the answer came and I knew the secret of what the provincials in that section of Europe do with water. They loan it to magicians to keep goldfish in. But I prefer to drink a little of it while I am eating and to eat a good deal while I am drinking it; both of which, I may state, I am now doing to the best of my ability, and without let or hindrance, Herb.'"