my ideas freeze in
the pen, cramp in my fingers, and make my brain seem like heavy bread.
I was born for extemporary speaking. Besides, I think the best things
on all subjects in this world of ours are said, not by the practical
workers, but by the careful observers."

"Mrs. Crowfield, that remark is as good as if I had made it myself,"
said I. "It is true that I have been all my life a speculator and
observer in all domestic matters, having them so confidentially
under my eye in our own household; and so, if I write on a pure
woman's matter, it must be understood that I am only your pen and
mouthpiece,--only giving tangible form to wisdom which I have
derived from you."

So down I sat and scribbled, while my sovereign lady quietly stitched
by my side. And here I tell my reader that I write on such a subject
under protest,--declaring again my conviction that, if my wife only
believed in herself as firmly as I do, she would write so that nobody
would ever want to listen to me again.

COOKERY

We in America have the raw material of provision in greater
abundance than any other nation. There is no country where an ample,
well-furnished table is more easily spread, and for that reason,
perhaps, none where the bounties of Providence are more generally
neglected. I do not mean to say that the traveler through the length
and breadth of our land could not, on the whole, find an average of
comfortable subsistence; yet, considering that our resources are
greater than those of any other civilized people, our results are
comparatively poorer.

It is said that, a list of the summer vegetables which are exhibited
on New York hotel tables being shown to a French _artiste_, he
declared that to serve such a dinner properly would take till
midnight. I recollect how I was once struck with our national
plenteousness on returning from a Continental tour, and going directly
from the ship to a New York hotel, in the bounteous season of autumn.
For months I had been habituated to my neat little bits of chop or
poultry garnished with the inevitable cauliflower or potato, which
seemed to be the sole possibility after the reign of green peas was
over. Now I sat down all at once to a carnival of vegetables,--ripe,
juicy tomatoes, raw or cooked; cucumbers in brittle slices; rich,
yellow sweet potatoes; broad Lima-beans, and beans of other and
various names; tempting ears of Indian corn steaming in enormous
piles, and great smoking tureens