f the crust pressing down on the
doughy air-cells below destroys them, producing that horror of good
cooks, a heavy streak. The problem in baking, then, is the quick
application of heat rather below than above the loaf, and its steady
continuance till all the air-cells are thoroughly dried into
permanent consistency. Every housewife must watch her own oven to
know how this can be best accomplished.

Bread-making can be cultivated to any extent as a fine art; and the
various kinds of biscuit, tea-rusks, twists, rolls, into which bread
may be made, are much better worth a housekeeper's ambition than the
getting up of rich and expensive cake or confections. There are also
varieties of material which are rich in good effects. Unbolted flour,
altogether more wholesome than the fine wheat, and when properly
prepared more palatable, rye-flour and corn-meal, each affording a
thousand attractive possibilities,--each and all of these come under
the general laws of breadstuffs, and are worth a careful attention.

A peculiarity of our American table, particularly in the Southern and
Western States, is the constant exhibition of various preparations of
hot bread. In many families of the South and West, bread in loaves to
be eaten cold is an article quite unknown. The effect of this kind of
diet upon the health has formed a frequent subject of remark among
travelers; but only those know the full mischiefs of it who have been
compelled to sojourn for a length of time in families where it is
maintained. The unknown horrors of dyspepsia from bad bread are a
topic over which we willingly draw a veil.

* * * * *

Next to bread comes _butter_,--on which we have to say that, when we
remember what butter is in civilized Europe, and compare it with what
it is in America, we wonder at the forbearance and lenity of travelers
in their strictures on our national commissariat.

Butter in England, France, and Italy is simply solidified cream, with
all the sweetness of the cream in its taste, freshly churned each day,
and unadulterated by salt. At the present moment, when salt is five
cents a pound and butter fifty, we Americans are paying, I should
judge from the taste, for about one pound of salt to every ten of
butter, and those of us who have eaten the butter of France and
England do this with rueful recollections.

There is, it is true, an article of butter made in the American style
with salt, which, in it