2-791-577 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Diner-Out. If thou wantest any thing, and wilt not call, beshrew thy heart - Shakespeare, 1844. 'The Diner-Out - we mean the knife-and-fork professor with a good and wide connexion - is a man without a care....Steeped in the gravies of his neighbour, fortified with the venison of his hundred friends, ennobled, yea, sublimated above the petty accidents of this dim spot "which men call earth," by the port, champagne, and burgundy of his best and dearest acquaintance, the meaner ills of this life fall upon him hurtless as hail upon an elephant...He is a living and increasing evidence of the goodness of our common nature, a prize biped, fed upon the oil and honey-cakes of his liberal fellow-man'. From "Pictorial Times", April 1844.