To dine meant to get your elbows next to your dearest friend--half a dozen or more of your dearest friends, if possible--to look into their faces, hear them talk, regale them with the best your purse afforded, and last and best of all to open for them your rarest wines--wines bred in the open, amid tender, clustering leaves; wines mellowed by a thousand sunbeams; nurtured, cared for, and put tenderly to sleep, only to awake years thereafter to warm the hearts and cheer the souls of those who honored them with their respect and never degraded them with their debauchery.
As for the dishes themselves--here St.George with Jemima's help was pastmaster: dishes sizzling hot; dishes warm, and dishes stone cold.
And their several arrivals and departures, accompanied by their several staffs: the soup as an advance guard--of gumbo or clams--or both if you chose; then a sheepshead caught off Cobb's Island the day before, just arrived by the day boat, with potatoes that would melt in your mouth--in gray jackets these; then soft-shell crabs--big, crisp fellows, with fixed bayonets of legs, and orderlies of cucumber--the first served on a huge silver platter with the coat-of-arms of the Temples cut in the centre of the rim and the last on an old English cut-glass dish.

Then the woodcock and green peas--and green corn--their teeth in a broad grin; then an olio of pineapple, and a wonderful Cheshire cheese, just arrived in a late invoice--and marvellous crackers--and coffee--and fruit (cantaloupes and peaches that would make your mouth water), then nuts, and last a few crusts of dry bread! And here everything came to a halt and all the troops were sent back to the barracks--( Aunt Jemima will do for the barracks).
With this there was to follow a change of base--a most important change.
Everything eatable and drinkable and all the glasses and dishes were to be lifted from the table--one half at a time--the cloth rolled back and whisked away and the polished mahogany laid bare; the silver coasters posted in advantageous positions, and in was to rattle the light artillery:--Black Warrior of 1810--Port of 1815--a Royal Brown Sherry that nobody knew anything about, and had no desire to, so fragrant was it.

Last of all the notched finger-bowls in which to cool the delicate, pipe-stem glasses; and then, and only then, did the real dinner begin.
All this Todd had done dozens and dozens of times before, and all this (with Malachi's assistance--Richard Horn consenting--for there was nothing too good for the great poet) would Todd do again on this eventful night.
As to the guests, this particular feast being given to the most distinguished literary genius the country had yet produced,--certainly the most talked of--those who were bidden were, of course, selected with more than usual care: Mr.John P.Kennedy, the widely known author and statesman, and Mr.John H.B.Latrobe, equally noteworthy as counsellor, mathematician, and patron of the fine arts, both of whom had been Poe's friends for years, and who had first recognized his genius; Richard Horn, who never lost an opportunity to praise him, together with Judge Pancoast, Major Clayton, the richest aristocrat about Kennedy Square and whose cellar was famous the county over--and last, the Honorable Prim.
Not because old Seymour possessed any especial fitness one way or the other for a dinner of this kind, but because his presence would afford an underground communication by which Kate could learn how fine and splendid Harry was--( sly old diplomat St.George!)--and how well he had appeared at a table about which were seated the best Kennedy Square could produce.
"I'll put you right opposite Mr.Poe, Harry--so you can study him at your leisure," St.George had said when discussing the placing of the guests, "and be sure you look at his hands, they are just like a girl's, they are so soft and white.

And his eyes--you will never forget them.
And there is an air about him too--an air of--well, a sort of haughty distraction--something I can't quite explain--as if he had a contempt for small things--things that you and I, and your father and all of us about here, believe in.

Blood or no blood, he's a gentleman, even if he does come of very plain people;--and they were players I hear.