ch as to satisfy even one of those
epicurean cheese-eaters who think that no cheese is fit to eat until you
can't.

Another thing worthy of mention in connection with this California
school of cookery is that you can pay as little as you please for your
dinner or as much as you please. There are three standbys of the
exchange editor that may be counted upon to appear in the newspapers
about once in so often. One is the hoary-headed and toothless tale
regarding the artist who was hired to renovate religious paintings in a
church in Brussels, and turned in an itemized account including such
entries as--"Correcting the Ten Commandments"; "Restoring the Lost
Souls"; "Renewing Heaven"; and winding up with "Doing Several Odd Jobs
for the Damned."

The second of the set comes out of retirement at frequent
intervals--whenever some trusting soul runs across a time-stained number
of the Ulster Gazette giving details of the death of George
Washington--I wonder how many million copies of that venerable
counterfeit were printed--and writes in to his home editor about it.

And the third, the most popular clipping of the three, concerns the
prices that used to govern at the mining camps in the days of the early
gold rush. The story that is most commonly quoted has to do with the
menu of the El Dorado Hotel, at Placerville, where bean soup was a
dollar a plate; hash, lowgrade, seventy-five cents; hash,
eighteen-carat, a dollar--and so on down the list to seventy-five cents
for two Irish potatoes, peeled.

The cost of living may have gone down subsequently in those parts, but
it has gone back up again--at certain favored spots. If the Argonauts,
those hardy adventurers who flung their gold round so regardlessly and
were not satisfied unless they paid outrageously big prices for
everything, could come back today they would have no cause to complain
at the contemptible paucity of the bill after they had dined at any one
of half a dozen ultra-expensive hotels that are to be found dotted along
the Coast.

I append herewith a few items selected at random from the price card of
a fashionable establishment in one of the larger Coast cities: caviar
imperial d'Astracan, two dollars for a double portion; buffet
Russe--whatever that is--ninety cents; German asparagus, a single
helping, one dollar and forty cents; blue-point oysters, fifty cents;
fifty cents for clams; Gorgonzola cheese, fifty cents a portion; and,
in a land where peaches an