Cobb's Bill-of-Fare   By: Irvin S. Cobb (1876-1944)

[Illustration: Frontispiece]

Cobb's Bill of Fare

By

Irvin S. Cobb

Author of " The Escape of Mr. Trimm ," " Back Home ," " Cobb's Anatomy ," etc.

Illustrated by Peter Newell and James Preston

[Illustration]

New York George H. Doran Company

COPYRIGHT, 1911 1912, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

TO R. H. DAVIS

(NOT RICHARD HARDING THE OTHER ONE)

AS FOLLOWS

PAGE

I. VITTLES 13

II. MUSIC 47

III. ART 81

IV. SPORT 113

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

"I now greatly desire to eat some regular food." 15

"Those who in the goodness of their hearts may undertake a search for the sucking pig." 35

"Where do you find the percentage of dyspeptics running highest?" 41

"She tries to tear all its front teeth out with her bare hands." 51

"Ro hocked in the cra hadle of the da heep, I la hay me down in pe heace to sa leep!" 57

"Shem undoubtedly sang it when the animals were hungry." 61

"And I enjoy it more than words can tell!" 67

"We looked in vain for the kind of pictures that mother used to make and father used to buy." 83

"The inscrutable smile of a saleslady would make Mona Lisa seem a mere amateur." 93

"A person who for reasons best known to the police has not been locked up." 97

"Collision between two heavenly bodies or premature explosion of a custard pie." 103

"Everything you catch is second hand." 119

"He could beat me climbing, but at panting I had him licked to a whisper." 125

"She was not much larger than a soapdish." 137

"Think of being laid face downward firmly across a sinewy knee and beaten forty love with one of those hard catgut rackets!" 143

VITTLES

[Illustration]

Upon a certain gladsome occasion a certain man went into a certain restaurant in a certain large city, being imbued with the idea that he desired a certain kind of food. Expense was with him no object. The coming of the holidays had turned his thoughts backward to the care free days of boyhood and he longed for the holidaying provender of his youth with a longing that was as wide as a river and as deep as a well.

"Me, I have tried it all," he said to himself. "I have been down the line on this eating proposition from alphabet soup to animal crackers. I know the whole thing, from the nine dollar, nine course banquet, with every course bathed freely in the same kind of sauce and tasting exactly like all the other courses, to the quick lunch, where the only difference between clear soup and beef broth is that if you want the beef broth the waiter sticks his thumb into the clear soup and brings it along.

"I have feasted copiously at grand hotels where they charge you corkage on your own hot water bottle, and I have dallied frugally with the forty cent table d'hote with wine, when the victuals were the product of the well known Sam Brothers Flot and Jet and the wine tasted like the stuff that was left over from graining the woodwork for a mahogany finish.

[Illustration: "I NOW GREATLY DESIRE TO EAT SOME REGULAR FOOD."]