In proportion as man rises in the intellectual scale, does he give prominence to mental and moral enjoyments in conjunction with his daily meals. He who looks upon the table merely as a place for feeding the body, is so far upon the level of the lower order of animals. He who would improve his time there for the advantage of his mind and character, as well as for the supply of his physical wants, recognizes a standard of utility in the humbler offices of daily life that is perceptible only to one whose higher nature is always striving for supremacy above the lower.

With all the tendency to excesses in the line of appetite among the Greeks and Romans in classic times, there were even then gleams of a higher enjoyment at the table through social intercourse[Pg 188] than that which mere eating and drinking supplied. When the Perfect Man was here among men, he showed the possibility of making the household meal a means of mental and spiritual improving; and there are no profounder or more precious truths in the record of our Lord’s earthly teachings, than those which are found in his words spoken to those who sat with him eating and drinking at their common meal. The “table talk” of great men has, for centuries, been recognized as having a freeness, a simplicity, and a forcefulness, not to be found in their words spoken elsewhere.

There are obvious reasons why the social talk at daily meals should possess a value not attainable under other circumstances, in the ordinary Christian household. Just there is the place where all the members of the family must be together. However closely and however diversely they may be occupied at other times, when the hour for the household meal has arrived, everything else must be dropped by them all for the one duty of eating and drinking; and they must all come together[Pg 189] for that common purpose. In the very nature of things, too, those who have gathered at the family table must, for the time being, have left all their work behind them, and be in a state of relaxation and of kindlier feeling accordingly. Now it is, therefore, that they are freest to speak with one another of matters having a common interest to all, rather than to dwell in absorbed thought on the special duties from which they have, severally, turned away, or toward which they must turn at the meal’s close.

It is a matter of fact that those who sit together at a family table, whether as members of the household or as guests there for a season, learn to understand one another, and to give and receive help and inspiration in their social converse, as they could not without the advantage of this distinctive opportunity. It is also a fact that only now and then is there a family circle the members of which recognize at the fullest, and make available at the best, the value of table-talk as a training agency for all who have a share in it, or who are under its immediate influence. Yet he who would train his[Pg 190] children as they should be trained, cannot ignore this important training agency without serious and permanent loss to them.

With family customs as they are in the United States, there is more of an opportunity here than abroad, for the training of children by means of table-talk. In England, and in Europe generally, young children are likely to be by themselves with nurses or governesses, at meal-time, rather than at the table with their parents. But in this country children are, as a rule, brought to the family table at a very early age, and are permitted to be there not merely while the members of the family are there gathered, but on occasions when a guest is, for the time being, made a member of the household circle. Therefore it is that an important feature of child-training in American families is the table-talk in those families. This feature varies much in different homes; but at its best it is one of the most potent factors in the intellectual and moral training of the young.

Fifty years ago a gentleman of New England[Pg 191] had, as a philanthropist, an educator, and an author, an exceptional acquaintance with men of prominence in similar fields of endeavor in this country and abroad. His home was a place of resort for them. He had a large family of children, all of whom were permitted to be at the family table while those guests were present, as well as at other times. The table-talk in that home, between the parents and the guests, or between the parents and their children when no guests were present, was in itself “a liberal education.” It gave to those children a general knowledge such as they could hardly have obtained otherwise. It was a source of promptings and of inspiration to them in a multitude of directions. Now that they are themselves parents and grandparents, they perceive how greatly they were the gainers by their training through the table-talk of their early home; and they are doing what they can to have the value of table-talk as a training agency for the young recognized and made effective in the homes which they direct or influence.

[Pg 192]

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