rite. I know what ought to
be said, and I could _say_ it to any one; but my ideas freeze in the
pen, cramp in my fingers, and make my brain seem like heavy bread. I was
born for extemporary speaking. Besides, I think the best things on all
subjects in this world of ours are said not by the practical workers,
but by the careful observers."

"Mrs. Crowfield, that remark is as good as if I had made it myself,"
said I.

"It is true that I have been all my life a speculator and observer in
all domestic matters, having them so confidentially under my eye in our
own household; and so, if I write on a pure woman's matter, it must be
understood that I am only your pen and mouth-piece,--only giving
tangible form to wisdom which I have derived from you."

So down I sat and scribbled, while my sovereign lady quietly stitched by
my side. And here I tell my reader that I write on such a subject under
protest,--declaring again my conviction, that, if my wife only believed
in herself as firmly as I do, she would write so that nobody would ever
want to listen to me again.

COOKERY.

We in America have the raw material of provision in greater abundance
than any other nation. There is no country where an ample,
well-furnished table is more easily spread, and for that reason,
perhaps, none where the bounties of Providence are more generally
neglected. I do not mean to say that the traveller through the length
and breadth of our land could not, on the whole, find an average of
comfortable subsistence; yet, considering that our resources are greater
than those of any other civilized people, our results are comparatively
poorer.

It is said, that, a list of the summer vegetables which are exhibited on
New-York hotel-tables being shown to a French _artiste_, he declared
that to serve such a dinner properly would take till midnight. I
recollect how I was once struck with our national plenteousness, on
returning from a Continental tour, and going directly from the ship to a
New-York hotel, in the bounteous season of autumn. For months I had been
habituated to my neat little bits of chop or poultry garnished with the
inevitable cauliflower or potato, which seemed to be the sole
possibility after the reign of green-peas was over; now I sat down all
at once to a carnival of vegetables: ripe, juicy tomatoes, raw or
cooked; cucumbers in brittle slices; rich, yellow sweet-potatoes; broad
Lima-beans, and beans of other and various names; temp