Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 December 1901 — A Nice Distinction. [ARTICLE]

A Nice Distinction.

The other patrons of the fashionable restaurant felt sure the two at the corner table were father and son and were from the rural districts. Their table manners were such that any polite jury would have brought in a verdict of justifiable homicide had the head waiter fallen upon the two as they sat side by side at the little table, whose snowy cloth they were sadly disfiguring. Vigorously they wielded knife and fork—very little fork, but much knife. At last the way in which the son spread his elbows interfered with the free play of the father and brought about a loud rebuke from the old man. “Look a-here, Jefferson,” said the father, sternly, “draw in them elbows and eat in a narrer circle. Ain’t your mar ever told you it warn’t polite to shove others with your elbows when you dine out. It is powerful bad manners to make your old father cut his mouth at the table.”