ings at home and be a real help. Most children are fond of
trying to cook, and I am glad that they are. Everyone, boys and girls
both, should know how to cook simple things. Perhaps some day you will
be stranded, like Robinson Crusoe, on a desert island! Perhaps the
rest of the family may be sick. How nice it would be for you to be
able to prepare breakfast for them. I know a family where the youngest
boy often rises early and gets breakfast for five. He can fry the
bacon and boil the eggs and make the coffee and mush and biscuit just
as nicely as his mother can; and he takes pride in it and enjoys it.

Cooking is what we call an art. Everyone, of course, can learn to do
it; but some people can do it much better than others, just as some
boys and girls can draw better than others. I hope some of you will be
what we might call "artist cooks." Take pride in the art and learn all
that you can about it. There are so many things a cook should know.

A great deal of good food is spoiled by bad cookery, particularly by
frying slowly in tepid grease, or fat, so that it becomes soaked with
grease. You should have the frying pan just as hot as possible before
you begin to fry; and then the meat or potatoes or cakes will be
seared, or coated over, on the outside, so that the fat cannot soak
into them, and they will not only taste better, but will be much more
digestible.

In baking you will have to be careful not to let the oven become too
hot, or else the meat or bread will be burned or scorched. Even if the
heat does not do this, it may harden and toughen the outside of the
meat so that it is almost impossible either to chew or digest.

Sugar is really a very good food if you do not eat too much at once,
and so pure candy is good for you if you do not eat too much. The very
best time to eat it is at the end of a meal. If you learn to make it
at school or at home, you can always have some to eat after your
luncheon without having to buy it. If you do buy candy, don't get the
bright colored kind; it looks pretty, but it may hurt you. And be sure
to see that it has been kept under a cover, where the dust and flies
could not get at it. Dust is dirty, and flies don't wipe their feet.
You want clean, pure candy.

Of course, after cooking, you will always be very careful to wash up
all the pots and pans and dishes that you have used. Food and scraps
that are left sticking to dishes and cooking utensils very quickly
turn sour and d