Cooking for profit

Evidently the stand itself is of silver, one of those pieces of "massive family plate" so often mentioned in relation to old and titled families. The cook's work is the four boned partridges finely decorated, the elaborate decorations, the two raised baskets at the sides, the waxen bird and basket at top, the waxen figure of the cook himself and his benign angel at the bottom, very likely with a white vax floor and decorations to stand upon. APPENDIX. CAMOVITO'S DINNERS. Because all large dinners in New York are given at Delmonico's, the Brunswick, the Fifth Avenue or the Hoffman House, it is an error to suppose that a really artistic tablespread is never produced outside of those establishments. Steward Camovito, of the Union League club, has arranged some dinners that have never been excelled in this town. The members of the club consider him a genius in his way. President Grant's dinner to Diaz, before referred to, was a case in point. Photographs of the big, round table made especially for the purpose, taken just before the guests sat down, give but a faint idea of their magnificence. At the dinner Senator Evarts gave to the French naval visitors and the Bartholdi committee, not long ago, Camovito's model of the statue of Liberty was a triumph of the confectioner's skill. He surrounded Bedloe's Island with natural water clear as crystal, had the Isere and French war ships riding at anchor, and illuminated Liberty's torch with a little incandescent lamp that sparkled like a diamond in a lady's ring. At the Wiman dinner he bridged the Arthur Kill with a towering structure of gelatine and sugar with a train of Baltimore and Ohio cars crossing it, and he set afloat a ferryboat of white sugar to carry the passengers that Mr. Wiman hopes to capture from the Pennsylvania road if his air castle don't break down. Camovito spends as much time and care over planning a big dinner as some architects do over designing a new house. He told me once that he often laid awake nights thinking over some little surprise peculiarly applicable to the occasion of the dinner or the guest of the evening. To be sure he gets well paid for it, and he ought to. He is one of the dozen or more chefs in New York who can command as high a salary as a successful preacher. The tables were appropriately decorated when the Boston Commercial Club gave a dinner to some railroad men. The central piece represented a complete train, with engine and tender two feet high, made entirely of roses, pinks, violets, and other flowers. It extended nearly half across the President's table. At a private dinner recently on Brooklyn Heights, where many epicures reside and are not wanting in hospitality, the ice cream, served on a silver platter in front of the hostess. was in the form of a watermelon, and when cut, the deception was excellently preserved. At a luncheon given by the Viscountess Combermere the table decorations consisted of a carpet of moss dotted with real primroses. In the centre rose a bank of moss, upon which was a gold épergne filled with oranges, relieved by little bunches of primroses. The edge of the table was trailed and framed with ivy.