ageous manner. The private kitchen
disappears, as it has now disappeared in the instance of those families
who, although they generally provide themselves through their own
kitchen, always resort to hotel kitchens or to those of caterers, the
moment the question is to provide for banquets or to procure dishes a
knowledge of which both they and their domestics lack.[222]

The Chicago Exposition of 1893 brought out a mass of interesting facts
on the revolution that has taken place in the kitchen also, and in the
preparation of food;--among other things a kitchen in which the heating
and cooking was done wholly through electricity. Electricity not only
furnished the light, but was also active in the washing of dishes, which
thereupon required the aid of the human hand only in finishing up. In
this kitchen of the future there was no hot air, no smoke, no vapors.
Numberless apparatuses and subsidiary machinery performed a number of
operations that until then had to be performed by human hands. This
kitchen of the future resembled more a parlor than a kitchen that
everyone who has nothing to do in, likes to stay away from. Work therein
at the Chicago Exposition was pleasurable and free from all the
unpleasantness that are features of the modern kitchen. Can a private
kitchen be imagined even approximately equipped like that? And then,
what a saving in all directions through such a central kitchen! Our
women would seize the opportunity with both hands to exchange the
present for the kitchen of the future.

The nutritive value of food is heightened by its facility of
assimilation. This is a determining factor.[223] A natural system of
nourishment for all can be reached only by future society. Cato praises
the Rome of before his days for having had experts in the art of
healing, but, down to the sixth century of the city, no occupation for
exclusive physicians. People lived so frugally and simply, that disease
was rare, and death from old age was the usual form of decease. Not
until gourmandizing and idleness--in short, license with some, want and
excessive work with others--had permeated society, did matters change,
and radically so. In future, gluttony and license will be impossible,
and likewise want, misery and privation. There is enough, and an
abundance, for all. More than fifty years ago Henrich Heine sang:

Why, there grows down here abundance
And a plentitude for all;
Roses, myrtles, beauty and joy;