Practical home cookery

were placed in one — being hastily moved. Directions were given accordingly. Imagine the elderly lady’s face on discovering, about a quarter of an hour before dinner, that Mary Ann had put the jug in the copper by simply emptying it in ! But I fear I have got rather away from my subject, which is that of economy. Now, economy is the very soul of cookery, and can be alike practised in the palace and the cottage, and, unfortunately, is less regarded in the latter than in the former. It is wonderful how many really nice dishes may be made out of odds and ends. In a well-managed house there ought not to be enough left to keep even a dog ; whereas, if the truth were known, the contents of the dust-bins alone in England contain sufficient food almost to banish poverty from the land. This may seem a strong statement, but it is no more strong than true. Recollect waste is a crime ; and were it in our power — which it is not — to be able to multiply food even to a miraculous extent, it would not the less be our duty to “ gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.” CHAPTER III. LITTLE EXTRAVAGANCES OF THE TABLE. The importance of such a subject as the one I have now taken in hand is apt to be much underrated. Many a starving family could be fed from the wasted superabundance which falls, in too many cases, not only from the rich man’s, but the comparatively poor man’s table. There is no extravagance so disastrous as the extravagance of ignorance. It is perhaps as difficult to define precisely where hospitahty and comfort end, and extravagance begins, as it is to define where economy ends and meanness begins. Strange to say, however, we not unfrequently find extravagance and meanness go hand in hand. How often do we find households conducted upon inconsistent principles I For instance, a fine large house, dogs, horses, and carriages, and yet one cannot get a good glass of sherry at dinner, or any wine at all after. Rows of fine greenhouses as well as hot-houses, full of rare plants, and no fire in the bedroom. I sometimes think that quite the poor are a great deal better off than the rich for real luxuries. I know I have stopped at some houses, and thought with a sigh of the poor man’s, with the feather bed, especially when the blankets are out of pawn. After all, happiness is much more equally distributed in the world than some people think for, and hving in one room has its advantages as well as its drawbacks. The pennyworth of fried fish warmed up in the oven, with appetite sauce, will hold its own with the best of vols- au-vent without. But all this has very little to do with the subject, which is not household management in general, but table extravagance in particular.