The Royal Diet.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 479, 11 June 1890, Page 5

The Royal Diet.

If the Queen is absent from the country in peison, she is still present in custom and controversy. Most people, for instance, like to know what good things the Queen likes, but especially those who are loyally imitative, or who may happen to be the vendors of the articles in question. In a certain ancient kingdom the daily custom at Court was for the king to go into his chamber to count all his money, while the queen retired to the parlour to eat bread and honey. The kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland has failed upon different if not humbler times. The king, when there is one, does not require to count his money, when he has any to count. He is saved the trouble by a State officer, who makes His Majesty an al.owance ; and when there is a queen, as at present, she does not feed on bread and honey, but on semolina puddings, one of which, according to a paragraph, no doubt inspired from the Royal kitchen, her present Majesty consumes every day for her lunch. This precious paragraph will have a strong effect throughout the country. For one thing, there will be a great run on the thing known as semolina ; and we would almost be justified for the suspicion that a semolina flour syndicate is at the bottom of the pudding story. Retail grocers should keep their finger upon the pulse of the market. Dietetic reformers, like the vegetarians, will rejoice to hear that however much the Royal kitchen may send forth odours, as from Araby the Blest, the Queen herself ‘lias an extremely plain diet.’ The temperance party, always devoted to the Throne, will become more loyal than ever when they know that Her" Majesty takes no wine. Wicked publicans may sneer, and say that though the doctors won’t allow the Queen to take wine which, after all, is little better than wash—they order her to take whisky, the purest of all the liquors. But that would be a mo3t disingenuous statement, for, as a matter of fact—and the temperance party would not fail to point it out—the only alcoholic beverage permitted Her Majesty is not whisky, but ‘ weak whisky-and-water,’ a very different thing from the real Simon Pure, drawn from the still, tawny depths of ten-year-old casks. May we not gather from these circumstances that the Queen, if not an absolute teetotaller, is a genuine temperance reformer ? It is a slight concession to say so ; and the intelligent reader, who is now million-mouthed, may bake it as almost a divine oracle, that subjection to weak whisky and water, especially if voluntary, is one of the most conspicuous signs of civilisation, which means deep thinking and shallow drinking. Before leaving the grand theme, it is' only fair to the food reformers to add that the Queen has made for her ‘ a special kind of French bread,' which has ‘ a soft crust and saves the teeth.’