ce, takes a poet's view of our daily wants, when he says,
"that an ideal cook must have a great deal of the poet's nature,
combining something of the voluptuary with the man of science learned in
the chemical principles of matter;" although he goes further than we
care to follow when he says, that the question of sauces and seasoning
requires "a chapter as grave as a _feuilleton de science_."

It has been said by foreigners that Americans care nothing for the
refinements of the table, but I think they do care. I have known many a
woman in comfortable circumstances long to have a good table, many a man
aspire to better things, and if he could only get them at home would pay
any money. But the getting them at home is the difficulty; on a table
covered with exquisite linen, glass, and silver, whose presiding queen
is more likely than not a type of the American lady--graceful, refined,
and witty--on such a table, with such surroundings, will come the
plentiful, coarse, commonplace dinner.

The chief reason for this is lack of knowledge on the part of our
ladies: know how to do a thing yourself, and you will get it well done
by others. But how are many of them to know? The daughters of the
wealthy in this country often marry struggling men, and they know less
about domestic economy than ladies of the higher ranks abroad; not
because English or French ladies take more part in housekeeping, but
because they are at home all their lives. Ladies of the highest rank
never go to a boarding or any other school, and these are the women who,
with some few exceptions, know best how things should be done. They are
at home listening to criticisms from papa, who is an epicure perhaps, on
the shortcomings of his own table, or his neighbors'; from mamma, as to
what the soup lacks, why cook is not a "_cordon bleu_," etc., while our
girls are at school, far away from domestic comments, deep in the
agonies of algebra perhaps; and directly they leave school, in many
cases they marry. As a preparation for the state of matrimony most of
them learn how to make cake and preserves, and the very excellence of
their attainments in that way proves how easy it would be for them, with
their dainty fingers and good taste, to far excel their European cousins
in that art which a French writer says is based on "reason, health,
common sense, and sound taste."

Here let me say, I do not by any means advocate a woman, who can afford
to pay a first-rate cook,