FORKS.
WHEN THEY WERE FIRST USED.
Great social movements often originate in small things. The adoption of any new domestic habit may be of little or no consequence at the time, yet one knows not how mankind will be affected thereby in the course of a century or so. The history of forks, perhaps, affords a good illustration of this. Here practically everyone above the status of a tramp .vho cuts his chunk of bread and cheese—when he gets it —with a clasp knife, if he is lucky enough to possess one, and eats it by the roadside, has habituated himself to the use of a fork at meals. But no longer ago than the reign of Queen Elizabeth the great mass of the population was unacquainted with the instrument, and it was only a novelty rarely used and appreciated at Court and among the aristocracy. As a matter of fact, the sixteenth century was going out as forks came in. That "glass of manners and the mould o. form," the good Sir Philip the sage Burleigh, the great of Leicester, and even the Quc.„--
herself, raised their meat to their mouths with their fingers, or dipped them in the dish, and afterwards wiped them with a napkin. The feasts of those days, if we could but see them now, in the matter of del'icacy and cleanliness would give cause for much astonishment. Then the tablecloth was refinement totally unrecognised by the middleclasses, and even at the tables of the more fortunate, where it was common enough, it was looked upon as the legitimate receptacle for all refuse, such as bones, cheese-parings, and other odds and ends. One of the chief duties of the serving man was to go the round of the table every few minutes and, with the aid of a long wooden "voiding knife," sweep off the fragments into a square basket, known as a "voider." The Italians, with their delicate good taste, were responsible for the substitution of forks for finders; but it is dimcult to trace their use there farther back than the time corresponding to the re/ign of our Queen Elizabeth, and then they were not widely known.—Lom'on "Globe."
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King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 652, 18 March 1914, Page 2
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365FORKS. King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 652, 18 March 1914, Page 2
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