a year and no family. T. and W. are firm
friends.  T. may dine with W., but looks in
vain for the great satisfaction of seeing his
friend W.'s toes on his own fender.  For if T.
of the seven or eight hundred should ask W. to
dinner, W.'s reflection is:  "I like T., but I do
not like bad melted butter.  He will give me
the conventional thing as a mess; I shall be
delivered into the hands of a second-rate pastry-
cook, and dosed by the greengrocer with Moët
at forty shillings a dozen.  I have a heart, but
I have also a stomach."  Let him be sure that
the difference of means will appear only in the
honest shape of a simpler dinner, involving
no costly strain after the unattainable, but
nevertheless perfect after its kind, and Wilkins,
glad to dine with his friend Tomkins, may find
that he dines better with him than even at the
costly banquets of his Grace the Bishop of
Rypophagon.

One difficulty only stands in the way of a
triumphant success for this Home Dinner
system. The master and the mistress of a house
may have gathered flowers to adorn their feast,
have been at pains to select the choicest of its
kind for the material of every dish, but how are
they to secure all against the mishap of a dirty
saucepan, the stupidity or inattention of a cook
who has no soul for the delicacies of her art?
It is true that the Home Dinner system, even
when it breaks down, is an abated evil, for
where the cook is not faithful over a few things,
how shall she be faithful over many?  Where
the principle of action is to work within limits
proportioned to the resources of the house and
its master for the utmost attainable perfection
of result, the cook whose energies are not
unreasonably taxed is put upon her mettle, and if
she be made of ordinary flesh and blood, the
very best work of which she is capable will be
got out of her.  Bad is usually the best if she
be let alone; for the cook, even when she has
been taught by practice to reproduce a certain
number of preparations of food without spoiling
them very much, and writes herself "thorough
good" in the advertisements, has not been
trained to think, and is ignorant of the first
principles of what is, in fact, a strictly intellectual
employment.  Before we can reform our
cooks, we must reform a million or two of our
mistresses, and restore among them the old
genius for household government in all its
branches.  It is because the natural queen of
the household has either dropped the reins of
its government, or become lax of rule, that
servants now-a-days claim absence of oversight as
if it were their right, and resent any gentle
attempt that may be made to "teach them their
business."  It concerns a great many higher
things than the production of good dinners that
this should not be so.  No degree whatever of
rank or wealth should be held to release the
mistress of a household from fulfilment of the
duties of her government.  The nobler the lady,
the more elevating should be the contact with
her mind, which is the just right of all who form
part of her household.

Something of this is at the root of the
argument of an enthusiastic gentleman who has a
strong way of speaking wholesome truths, and
who has written a couple of warm-blooded little
books, entitled  "The Gentlewoman,"  and
"Dinners and Dinner Parties" (published by
Messrs. Chapman and Hall). The Registrar-
General, he says, tells us that only one woman in
twelve, and only one man in five, dies leaving
property, and what is left, except the great
wealth of a few, is of small average amount.
Nevertheless, upwards of twenty millions of
money are annually wasted in this country,
through want of a proper knowledge of the way
to deal with food.  Our royal princesses have
received lessons in model kitchens, have been taught
to weigh out stores, and even to make bread
and churn butter.  Many ladies of the English
nobility, and more on the Continent, have
maintained the old custom of attending personally
to the superintendence of their household, and
such ladies inspire with their intelligence the
action of their cooks.  In Canada the ladies
play, and sing, dance, ride, skate, often are well
read and good linguists, while they know at the
same time how to make good bread, and cakes,
and jellies, and how to rear poultry.
Consequently, they give to home more of the cheer
of order and nicety, with the help of a single
servant girl, than one is accustomed to find in
the household of an English couple with three
servants.  At Xeres de la Frontera, the author
of this plea for a graceful homeliness among
the English gentlewomen of all classes, dined
with a Spanish grandee, whose wife showed
him with pride the light luxurious kitchen in
which she herself had attended not only to the
direction but also to the manipulation of the dinner,
and, he adds, "it was a dinner."  The gentlewoman
who adds to her accomplishment a first-
rate knowledge and tact in the direction of the
duties of the kitchen is mistress, he says, not
quite untruly, of an art equal to that of the
physician;  "a noble art it is; it is a sweetener
of temper, it is the sweetener of life, it
prolongs life.  It is a far nobler art to be able to
prepare that which shall agree with the delicate
organisation of the human frame, than the art
which is employed to get rid of the injurious
effects of bad cooking."  If you mix dirt with
your coal you dull the fire in your grate, and if
you mix dirt with your food you dull, says this
apostle of clean ladylike cookery, the fire of life
within your bodies, or those of your friends.  Of
course, then, we have here a writer who agrees
with us thoroughly in deprecation of dinners
that, by help of a pastrycook, affect magnificence
beyond the giver's means.  "No, no," he
cries,  "there is no dinner like an honest dinner
for a party of eight or twelve out of a model
kitchen—it is enjoyment instead of burlesque, it
is friendship instead of deceit."

And the model kitchen is an economy, not an
extravagance, for in the long run cleanliness is
always cheaper than dirt. The poor gentleman
whose wife is skilled in household duty will
make every scrap of food pleasant and