“ Feed me with food convenient for me. “ And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mavest eat and be fuU. “ Rest yourselves under the tree, and I will fetch bread to com- fort your hearts. ‘ ‘ Blessed be Thou, O God, who bringest bread out of the earth.” — Anglo-Saxon Prayer. “ Fools who sow farthings and hope to reap guineas.” “The greatest good of the greatest number is a measure of Right and Wrong.” It is very important that every family in every condition of life should possess the means of comfort and of health ; a sufficiency of plain wholesome food and neatness of dress ; and the man who has these blessings is not a poor man. There can be no such a thing as contented or happy hunger. A clean com- fortable home, a few wild flowers on the table, and wholesome well-cooked food, are great helps to happi- ness and moral progress. But among a badly fed and badly housed people there will always be a crav- ing for gin and beer and tobacco, and a low condition of morality. A family living in a dismal house, in a wretched alley, upon which the sun never shines — open, perhaps, to the rain and snow — breathing the stinking air of a crowded court or back-yard ; and striving two or three times a-day to satisfy their hunger on unsavoury and badly cooked food. Alas ! the father of such a family, and perhaps the mother, Houses for the Working Classes. I 7 too often find their way to the nearest public-house, and there obtain a temporary forgetfulness of their misery. Beer and tobacco are substituted for whole- some food. I know how difficult it is to cook or do anything with the grates and appliances usually found in the houses of the poor. Their only resources are often a dirty frying-pan and an old saucepan during the week, with sage and onions and the nearest baker’s oven on Sunday. Houses for the working-classes have generally been built by speculating builders, who take land at heavy ground-rents, and crowd together on the smallest area the largest number of houses without much regard either for ventilation or any of the conditions necessary for a healthy home. Houses are generally mortgaged before they are finished, and to meet the interest of borrowed money the builders exact high rents, and if these fail, the speculators pass through the chrysalis condition of bankruptcy, and come out with larger ideas on bricks and mortar. We live in an age of lath and plaster and stucco. Make your houses look grand outside; crowd into every room a family at three shillings a week ; try and escape all rates or compound for them at 50 per cent, below persons who pay their own rates ; cover the scamping brick-work with piaster and whitewasn; and sell as quickly as possible to somebody who wants property either for occupation or investment : and this is called an enterprising policy. I cannot find language strong enough to express my contempt for men who try to make 20 per cent, out of dwellings for the labouring classes ; men who have made the outskirts of this 1 8 Buck-master's Cookery.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

“ Feed me with food convenient for me. “ And I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle, that thou mayest eat and be full. “ Rest yourselves under the tree, and I will fetch bread to comfort your hearts. ‘ ‘ Blessed be Thou, O God, who bringest bread out of the earth.” — Anglo-Saxon Prayer. “ Fools who sow farthings and hope to reap guineas.” “The greatest good of the greatest number is a measure of Right and Wrong.” It is very important that every family in every condition of life should possess the means of comfort and of health ; a sufficiency of plain wholesome food and neatness of dress ; and the man who has these blessings is not a poor man. There can be no such a thing as contented or happy hunger. A clean comfortable home, a few wild flowers on the table, and wholesome well-cooked food, are great helps to happiness and moral progress. But among a badly fed and badly housed people there will always be a craving for gin and beer and tobacco, and a low condition of morality. A family living in a dismal house, in a wretched alley, upon which the sun never shines — open, perhaps, to the rain and snow — breathing the stinking air of a crowded court or back-yard ; and striving two or three times a-day to satisfy their hunger on unsavoury and badly cooked food. Alas ! the father of such a family, and perhaps the mother, Houses for the Working Classes. I 7 too often find their way to the nearest public-house, and there obtain a temporary forgetfulness of their misery. Beer and tobacco are substituted for wholesome food. I know how difficult it is to cook or do anything with the grates and appliances usually found in the houses of the poor. Their only resources are often a dirty frying-pan and an old saucepan during the week, with sage and onions and the nearest baker’s oven on Sunday. Houses for the working-classes have generally been built by speculating builders, who take land at heavy ground-rents, and crowd together on the smallest area the largest number of houses without much regard either for ventilation or any of the conditions necessary for a healthy home. Houses are generally mortgaged before they are finished, and to meet the interest of borrowed money the builders exact high rents, and if these fail, the speculators pass through the chrysalis condition of bankruptcy, and come out with larger ideas on bricks and mortar. We live in an age of lath and plaster and stucco. Make your houses look grand outside; crowd into every room a family at three shillings a week ; try and escape all rates or compound for them at 50 per cent, below persons who pay their own rates ; cover the scamping brick-work with piaster and whitewasn; and sell as quickly as possible to somebody who wants property either for occupation or investment : and this is called an enterprising policy. I cannot find language strong enough to express my contempt for men who try to make 20 per cent, out of dwellings for the labouring classes ; men who have made the outskirts of this 1 8 Buck-master's Cookery.

Buckmaster's cookery