ets and spices, devised not
for health and nourishment, and strongly suspected of interfering with
both,--mere tolerated gratifications of the palate, which we eat, not
with the expectation of being benefited, but only with the hope of not
being injured by them. In this large department rank all sorts of
cakes, pies, preserves, ices, etc. I shall have a word or two to say
under this head before I have done. I only remark now that, in my
tours about the country, I have often had a virulent ill-will excited
towards these works of culinary supererogation, because I thought
their excellence was attained by treading under foot and disregarding
the five grand essentials. I have sat at many a table garnished with
three or four kinds of well-made cake, compounded with citron and
spices and all imaginable good things, where the meat was tough and
greasy, the bread some hot preparation of flour, lard, saleratus, and
acid, and the butter unutterably detestable. At such tables I have
thought that, if the mistress of the feast had given the care, time,
and labor to preparing the simple items of bread, butter, and meat
that she evidently had given to the preparation of these extras, the
lot of a traveler might be much more comfortable. Evidently she never
had thought of these common articles as constituting a good table. So
long as she had puff pastry, rich black cake, clear jelly, and
preserves, she seemed to consider that such unimportant matters as
bread, butter, and meat could take care of themselves. It is the same
inattention to common things as that which leads people to build
houses with stone fronts and window-caps and expensive front-door
trimmings, without bathing-rooms or fireplaces or ventilators.

Those who go into the country looking for summer board in farmhouses
know perfectly well that a table where the butter is always fresh, the
tea and coffee of the best kinds and well made, and the meats properly
kept, dressed, and served, is the one table of a hundred, the fabulous
enchanted island. It seems impossible to get the idea into the minds
of people that what is called common food, carefully prepared,
becomes, in virtue of that very care and attention, a delicacy,
superseding the necessity of artificially compounded dainties.

To begin, then, with the very foundation of a good table,--_Bread_:
What ought it to be? It should be light, sweet, and tender.

This matter of lightness is the distinctive line between savage