eat; and there is a class of
housekeepers who certainly return the compliment upon men. These
ethereal beings are forever sighing for life with appetite left out.
Like Lord Dundreary's lady-love, they are "_so_ delicate," unless caught
in the pantry hastily devouring onions and beefsteak. To be hungry is so
vulgar! One should live by nothing grosser than inhalation, and should
never have an appetite greater than that of a healthy bumble-bee. But,
thanks to the robust, latter-day theory, that the best saints have the
best bodies, this puerile class is diminishing. For who can doubt that
the senses are entitled to their full blossom? Gustation was meant to be
delightful; and cooking is certainly half as good as tasting. At times
one may have longed for the old Roman custom of two meals a day, and
going to bed at chicken-time, bringing the hour of roast near the hour
of roost; but this was probably in families where there were three
repasts, with lunch all the way between, and an incessant buying of
cookies from the baker, lest the children should go hungry. After this
surfeit one pardons a recoil. Or, in an enervating day of July, one may
have longed to dine upon humming-bird, with rose-leaves for dessert. But
these are exceptional times; the abiding hope is, that we shall continue
to eat, drink, and be merry. For the practical is in the imperative. It
is cumulative, and reinforces itself,--a real John Brown power that is
always marching on, and we must march beside it with patient, cheery
hearts. Is it strange that even the moss-covered Carlisle town, of which
the Last Minstrel sang, and where the Scottish Mary tarried in her
flight from the cousin queen, is now chiefly remarkable for its
cotton-factory and biscuit-bakery?

Indeed, the enthusiasm over biscuits has its place, as well as that over
books; and it is not always that there is as much genuine joy in a novel
as one may get out of bread-making. This is quite too scientific and
interesting to be left to a domestic. It is really among the most
exciting experiments. Try it every week for two years, and it seems just
as new an enterprise as at the beginning,--but a thousand times more
successful, we observe. Working up the light drifts of flour, leaving
them at night a heavy pat and nothing more,--waking to find a dish
flowing-full of snowy foam. The first thing on rising one's self is, to
see if the dough be risen, too; and that is always sure to be early, for
ever