Mr. Chesterton on Too Much of A Good Thing It is not greedy to enjoy a good dinner (gays Mr. Chesterton in the {Illustrated London News''), any more than it is greedy to enjoy a good concent. But 1 do think there is some thing greedy about expecting to enjoy the dinner and the concert at the same time. I say trying to enjoy them, for it is the mark of this sort of complex enjoyment that it is not enjoyed. fashion of having very loud music during meals in restaurants and hotels seems to me a perfect example of. this. chaotic attempt to have everything at once and do everything at once. ating and drinking and talking have gone together by ai tradition as old als the world; but the entrance of this fourth factor only spoils the other three. It is an ingenious scheme for combining music to which nobody will listen with conversation that nobody can fhear. Recall some of the great conversations of history and literature; imagine some of the great and graceful impromptus, some of the spontaneous epigrams of the wits of the past; and then imagine each of them shouted through the deafening uproar of a brass band.
It seems to me an intolerable insult to a musical jertist that people should treat his art as an adjunct to a refined gluttony. It seems a yet more subtle insult to the musician that people should New Bri require to be fortified with food and. drink at intervals, to strengthen them to endure his music. I* say nothing of the deeper and darker insult to that other artist, the cook, in the suggestion that men require to be inspired and rallied with drums and trumpets to attack the dangers of his dinner, as if it were a fortress bristling with engines of death. But in any case it is the combination of the two flea-sures that is unpleasant. When people are listening to a good concert they do not ostentatiously produce large pork-pies and bottles of beer to enable them to get through it somehow. And if they do not bring their meals to their music, why should they bring music to their meals?
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