A practical cook and text book for general use

conservation of these unfortunates, the humane portion of the world have erected and supported monuments all over the land, and are still constructing them on a broader and more magnificent scale than ever before. These monuments are known as Hospitals, Homes, Jails, Asylums, Reformatories, and Prisons. To build and sustain these monuments filled with living victims, requires not only millions of dollars and heavy taxation, but the still costlier sacrifice of talented men and women, to officer them. In addition there are thousands of other true and useful men and women immured within those walls, who earn a competency by administering to the daily necessities of these unfortunates. Whence comes this vast army to be fed, clothed and cared for like so many infants ? What is to be the final result to the world of peopling it with abnormally suffering humanity ? If we examine the question from its mental, financial and political aspect, we find that mentally we constantly expect these unfortunate guests, that financially we are making constant preparations to care for them, while these two being satisfactorily adjusted the political significance of the whole would adjust itself. Time indeed it is to pause, consider, and turn the balance the other way. Time indeed to seek for the causes that produce such fruit, and turn our practical talents toward their removal. We shall not find these unfortunates in the ranks of dietetic and health reformers. Neither from vegetarian homes are they launched into the world of helplessness that taxes our energies to the utmost. Vice begins in half-starved bodies. Crimes owe their parentage to starvation of brain and stimulation of mind PREFACE.. 13 and body in the wrong direction : these with unbalanced morals manifested in a multitude of ways, result in crime, war and intemperance. From a vegetarian standpoint, these unhealthful conditions of mind and body are largely propagated, nourished and developed from the never ending supply of slaughtered flesh and its stimulating — not nourishing— accompaniments. The moral and physical health of millions is thus undermined, and from such material is created generation after generation of imperfect human beings ; irresponsible for their individual composition, and for which they suffer and transgress in various ways. The disease of wide-spread ignorance should receive a thorough diagnosis, and the healing process begin at the foundation. This generation is preparing the soil from which will be developed the seed that produces human blossoms with immortal souls ; and it is for us to say what the fruit shall be and so determine the future harvest. We shall then no longer speak of "Paradise Lost," for we shall live in Paradise regained. The land that already flows ** with milk and honey," with " oil and wine " shall feed and sustain us, and true to nature's plan, living on the " fat of the land " will bring physical and moral health that will banish from earth the various phases of inharmony and unrest. To add my mite, and lend a helping hand in educating out of error into the truth, this book became a necessity. INTRODUCTION. Mother nature has gone almost out of fashion. Artificial and truly appalling fancies in the domestic world have superceded ease, freedom and naturalness. The manufactured attractions of the modern cuisine have been the ruin of millions. To-day they are becoming more burdensome than ever.