The Press., 1891-06-18

AA He was lover of good
 living and willing to work
 ~ hard for it over cook
 stove He would for a single Sundays dinner plan more dishes than his mind could eventually grasp or his hands handle. And when he had ex- hausted the whole of the limited gastro- nomical repertoire within our reach he would be suddenly inspired with a troublesome propensity to add hash to the programme. In cooking, as I have said, he lost his balance. His imagina- ton pictured more possibilities than his body had strength to carry out. So, busted in getting up varied meal, he would in few minutes leisure attempt to shave himself or sew on shirt or pan taloon buttons This put too many irons in the fire.
 A man who attempts to shave while a pot is boiling over or a roast requiring careful watching is in the oven will nei, ther shave nor cook we'll. He will be apt to leave lather where it is not desir- able, as he sometimes did. Trousers buttons are not good in soup. do not like to see a wet shaving brush near a roast ready to go into the oven. The combination. Then sometimes in the very crisis of meal he became Hurried. He rushed about in haste overmuch, with a big spoon in one hand and giant fork in the other, looking for missing stove covers and pot lids seldom found until the next day, and then in strange places. Nothing is well done which is done in a hurry, especially cooking. Some argue that men and women put their magnetic and sympathetic infu- ences in the food they prepare. If man kneading bread be in a bad temper he puts bad temper in the bread, and that bad temper goes into the person who eats it, or if he be dyspeptic he kneads dyspepsia in his dough. It is awful to think what we may be eating. l think the unbalanced cook puts flurries in his stews, for I felt sometimes as if trying to digest whirlwind after eating this mans dinners. He ruled the house. was his assistant. was his victim. was the slave of the spit and the peon of the frying pan.
 
 settled on hash, when already the stove top was full of dishes in preparation, ] was selected as the proper person to chop the necessary ingredients. We had neither chopping knife nor tray. The mining stores then did not contain such luxuries. This to him made no differ ence. He was a man who rose superior to obstacles, circumstances and chopping trays. He said that hash could be chopped with hatchet on a flat board. He planned; executed. He theorized and invented; put his invention in practice. But never successfully could I chop a mass of beef and boiled potatoes with a hatchet on flat board. The ingredients during the operation would expand and fall over the edge of the board. Or the finer particles would violently fly off at each cut of the hatchet and lodge on the beds or other unseenly places.
 do not favor dinner of many courses, especially if it falls to my lot tc prepare these courses. Few cooks enjoy their own dinners, for two reasons first, they eat them in anticipation; this nullifies the flavor of the reality; sec ond, the labor of preparation fatigues the body and takes the keen edge from the appetite. Having kept my own house for years know whereof speak. Two hours work about hot stove exhausts more than four hours york out of doors Americans in Europe are shocked, ol pretend to be, at sight of women doing mems work in the fields. They are muct better off than the American woman fve-sixths of whose life is spent in the kitchen. The outdoor woman shows some blood through the tan on hel cheeks. The American kitchen house wife is sallow and bleached out. &s
 once lived near literary cook. Ii was to him by a sort of natural heritage that fell the keeping of the Hawkins Bal library, purchased by the ''boys" way back in the A. D. eighteen hundred and fifties. The library occupied two sides of very small cabin, and the man who kept it lived on or near the other two sides. Then, during nights and rainy days, he read and ate. His table, g mere flap or shelf projecting from the wall, was two-thirds covered with books and papers, and the other third with 6 never-cleared-off array of table furni. ture, to wit: A tin plate, knife, fork tin cup, yeast powder can, pepper box, ditto full of sugar, ditto full of salt, q butter plate, bottle of vinegar and an. other of molasses, and may be, on occa- sions, one of whisky. On every book and paper were more or less of the i'm. print of greasy fingers or streaks oi molasses. The plate, owing to the al. most entire absence of the cleansing process, was even imbedded in 8 brown ish, unctuous deposit, the congealed oleaginous overflow of months of meals.
 There he devoured beef and lard, bacon and beans and encyclopedias, Hum. boldt's Cosmos" and dried apples, novels and physical nourishment at one and the same time. He went long since where the weary cease from troubling and the wicked, let us hope, are at rest. Years ago, passing through the deserted Bar, peeped in at Morgan's cabin. A young oak almost barred the door; part of the roof was gone, the books and shelves had vanished; naught remained but the old miners stove and a few battered cook ing utensils. I had some thought at the time of camping for the night on the Bar, but this desolate cabin and its asso- citations of former days, contrasted with the loneliness and solitude of the present. proved too much for me. I feared the possible ghost of the dead librarian, and left for populated camp. Poor fellow! While living dyspepsia and he were in close embrace. A long course of com bined reading and eating ruined his di- gestion. One thing at a time; what 3 man does he wants to do with all his might