396 UNSOCIABLE DINNER-TABLES. 



hotels, travellers whom the stranger meets for the most 

 part at the public dinner-tables, but persons in full occu 

 pation, to whom time is really valuable, who, being 

 absent from their families, have no inducement to linger 

 over their food; and, usually abstaining from wine, have 

 none to linger at table after the substantials of the meal 

 are over. 



At the same time, it is certain that there is a gloomy 

 unsociableness at these dinner - tables, which would 

 gradually thaw and melt down in the atmosphere of an 

 .English, and would scarcely ever be observed in a Scot 

 tish dining-room, among men sitting side by side at the 

 same table. At first, I used to think the ungracious 

 silence was in some way a fault of mine, and it was not 

 until I had experienced several repulses that I became 

 satisfied of the general unwillingness to converse at 

 table, and made up my mind to speak to no one who did 

 not first address himself to me. 



Whether this silence at table and rapidity at meals 

 be a cause of indigestion, or a consequence of disease 

 arising from other causes, it is certain that diseases of 

 the digestive organs, and deaths from such diseases, are 

 much more frequent in the United States than they are 

 in Great Britain. This is very strikingly shown by the 

 following numbers, which represent the average cases of 

 disease and death from disease of the digestive organs in 

 every thousand inhabitants in the two countries : 



Diseases in Deaths in 



1000. 1000. 



United States, . . 526 14 



Great Britain, 95 ^ 



More than one - half the population appear to be 

 affected by such diseases in the United States, and less 

 than one-tenth in Great Britain ; and while fourteen out 

 of every thousand die of such disease in North America, 

 only one in two thousand actually dies of it in our island. 



