SIGNIFICANT FACT.—­Lady—­“Have you had much experience as a cook?”
    Applicant—­“Oh, indeed I have.  I was the cook of Mr. and Mrs.
    Peterby for three years.”

    L.—­“Why did you leave them?”

    A.—­“I didn’t leave them.  They left me.  They both died.”

    L.—­“What of?”

    A.—­“Dyspepsia.”

    Cooking is generally bad because people falling to routine; habit
    dulls their appreciation, and they do not think about what they are
    eating.—­Didsbury.

    Lilly (Secretary of the cooking class)—­“Now girls, we’ve learned
    nine cakes, two kinds of angel food, and seven pies.  What next?”

    Susie (engaged)—­“Dick’s father says I must learn to bake bread.”

    Indignant chorus—­“Bread?  How absurd!  What are bakers for?”

It is told of Philip Hecgnet, a French, physician who lived in the 17th, century, that when calling upon his wealthy patients, he used often to go to the kitchen and pantry, embrace the cooks and butlers, and exhort them to do their duty well.  “I owe you so much gratitude, my dear friends,” he would say; “you are so useful to us doctors; for if you did not keep on poisoning the people, we should all have to go to the poorhouse.”

There are innumerable books of recipes for cooking, but unless the cook is master of the principles of his art, and unless he knows the why and the wherefore of its processes, he cannot choose a recipe intelligently and execute it successfully.—­Richard Estcourt.

They who provide the food for the world, decide the health of the world.  You have only to go on some errands amid the taverns and hotels of the United States and Great Britain, to appreciate the fact that a vast multitude of the human race are slaughtered by incompetent cookery.  Though a young woman may have taken lessons in music, and may have taken lessons in painting, and lessons in astronomy, she is not well educated unless she has taken lessons in dough!—­Talmage.

HOUSEHOLD WORKSHOP

It is a mistake to suppose that any room, however small and unpleasantly situated, is “good enough” for a kitchen.  This is the room where housekeepers pass a great portion of their time, and it should be one of the brightest and most convenient rooms in the house; for upon the results of no other department of woman’s domain depend so greatly the health and comfort of the family as upon those involved in this “household workshop.”  The character of a person’s work is more or less dependent upon his surroundings, hence is it to be greatly wondered at that a woman immured in a small, close, dimly-lighted room, whose only outlook may be the back alley or the woodshed, supplies her household with products far below the standard of health and housewifely skill?