READING AT MEALS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19472, 6 May 1925, Page 11

READING AT MEALS.

(By Cecilia Hill, in the Daily Chronicle.) After a recent discussion in the newspapers doctors and deans. have decided that we may safely read in bed without getting*' blind, or hunch-backed, or depraved. I ask for more. May we, hardworked, rushing creatures who try to finish two days’ work in every one, who must do two things at a time in order to get one thing done, who literally have no quiet horn’s—may we read at meals? The habit is increasing. In restaurants and tea-shops and in boarding-house whore people eat at little separate table®, each solitary guest as he sits down takes out a book. This is accepted. But will the Court Chamberlain decree that even for people sharing meals it need not be bad manners —that without being rude to the others at the table we may prop book or newspaper against the jug at breakfast and read it happily as we eat our bacon ? May it be accepted that our silent joy, the turning of a page or a chuckle of amusement are more inspiring to our friends than our grumbles at the weather or descriptions of our headaches ? I was brought up, like the Court Chamberlain, to think it shocking bad manners. But let the code be changed, say I. I was told it was unwholesome. It is surely healthier to eat .Jowly, with long pauses between mouthfuls, than to bolt our food and go? Death to the art of conversation? That may bo. We must choose the proper time and company. But, in general, is our conversation so beneficial, so stimulating ? liven at the family table it is a strain sometimes to keep up cheerful talk. We try to make it more intelligent. We drift languidly towards clothes, the men to food. Wo eat so many meals together. We read 1 so little. I would go further and suggest that someone reads aloud. Just as nurse reads to the children at their tea —Red Riding Hood or the Three Bears, over and over again—£b keep them good. And not for nothing have old monks, century after century, read aloud in their refectories, during meals. In one winter, families could listen to all that Dickens ever wrote. * * Imagine how delightful even a grand dinner party might become, listening to a fine reading of the Jungle Book. .What a rest to the hostess ! What a relief for her guests! Unsociable ? By no means. All would bo enchanted together. A common emotion would have brought them nearer to each other than ten Jong dinners of small talk. Think of it, doctors and deans, and Lord Chamberlain: three times a day, half-hours each time, make. 40 golden hours a month. And twelve ‘times 40 The dinner bell! At tea I was obliged to leave my heroine and hero besieged by brigands in Syria, in a Templar’s fort; f have been longing for that bell, I must