The utterer of the confident grace quoted in this image is Macbeth (act 3, scene 4), fresh from the murder of Banquo. Macbeth will grow troubled after he sees Banquo’s ghost, but the words of his grace still fill the atmosphere inside the Black Diamond with assurance. They teach that all there is within that enclosed system has a meaning expressible by an imagery of the hungering body, including the image of the chef with a czar’s bearded face who rushes through northern Pennsylvania in a carload of the killed meats on which he has worked his art. Further down the line during this era of taking in, other diners are hungrily filling the great teaching museums of New York and Chicago with images transported from settings in which they were formerly alive. Rushing across land and sea, they are on the way from landscape to couvert.

New York Public Library, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47db-5505-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99. Color and detail restored. This menu is hand-dated on page 3, “October 2nd., 1900.”