Assorted Prose Read Online Free Page A

the cup is drawn in toward the body by a firm, but not angry, forearm.
    Meanwhile, the left hand is not just “taking Sunday off.” Fingers and thumb united in one scooplike unit (an imaginary line drawn through the knuckles should intersect your foot), the left hand hovers, convex without being “balled” into a fist, an inch or two (whichever feels most natural) to the left of the inner left edge of the saucer. What is it doing there? Many beginners, having asked this question and failing to receive an adequate answer, keep their left hands in their pockets and fancy that they are achieving insouciance. They are not. They are just being foolish. The left hand, in its “escort” role, performs many functions. For one thing, its close proximity to the right hand gives that hand confidence and eases its fear. For another, the index and middle fingers are now in a position to swoop over and hush the distressing but frequent phenomenon of “cup chatter,” should it develop. Thirdly, if the spoon, with its eccentric center of gravity, begins to slither from the saucer, the left hand is there to act as a trap. Fourthly, if worse comes to worst and the cup tips, the left hand can rush right in and make the best of a bad situation, whose further ramifications take us into the psychological realm discussed in the chapter “To Err Is Human.”
    Throughout, keep your eyes travelling rapidly around the rim of the cup.
    (3) The saucer is held by your right hand, the “executor.” Your left hand, the “guardian angel,” cruises in the air inches away. A napkin—the “landing field”—has been previously spread on your right knee.
Now
softly
constrict
. By this I mean, with one impulse, bring your forearms in toward your sides, bend your spine forward, bow your head, and touch your knees. Without any thought on your part, this syndrome of actions will lead the cup and saucer to descend along a parabolic line whose equation on Cartesian coördinates is 2x = y 2 . At x = 0, the tea will be on your knee. Your left hand will have automatically joined the right
under the saucer
and as automatically glided away. You will find that your thighs have become firm flat surfaces. For the first time since your index fingertip touched the icy edge of china, you may smile.
II. The Cooling Pause
    (1) The key to this phase—in point of time the longest of the three—is
immobility
. Only the fingers, eyelids, and tongue move at all. Resolutely maintain your bent position over the cup. Think of yourself as “mothering” the beverage. Let your stillness be placid, vegetal, and Olympian, rather than rigid, electric, and Byzantine. Be diffident and amiable in conversation. Some of my fellow pros advise beginners not to speak at all, but such total exclusion is apt to be in itself unsettling. However,
do
avoid anecdotes requiring much facial or other animation, and arguments whose logical structure must be indicated by any action of the hands, whether in drawing diagrams in the air or ticking off points on the fingers.
    (2) Resist the temptation, once the saucer appears secure, of straightening up in the chair (or, worse, sofa), thereby placing a long diagonal hypotenuse between your nose and the cup. Any hauteur is felt
throughout the body
. Dignity of bearing is
no substitute
for muscular control. An obsequious, attentive hunch will not be thought rude as long as you are able to raise your eyes to your hostess fitfully. Indeed, the distention of the eyebrows needed to glimpse her lends to many people an arch charm of mien they otherwise would lack.
    (3) Rotate the broad part of the spoon—
not
the handle—in the liquid. Do not splash. Do not toy with the fascinating ripples individual droplets make. Do not attempt to return liquid from the saucer to the cup.
Be still
.
III. Consummation
    “My goodness,” I can hear many readers asking, “will we never get a taste of the brew?”
    “Yes, you will” is my answer—“especially if you