the climax of a civilized breakfast

?What a breakfast that was! A snow-white tablecloth, sure enough queens ware dishes?not a speck of dirt on one of them; biscuits and broad slices of light bread; coffee and cream and milk, beefsteak and milk gravy, and potatoes and butter?butter, for a fact. It was the climax of a civilized breakfast, beyond the brightest dream of a starveling, but the way that oufit ate was a shame to civilization.?

?W.A. Chalfant, A Boy in California, from Gold, Guns & Ghost Towns, 1947.