The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-12-28
Men and Breakfasts From Harper's Razar

tA AoA4A AAot POA D oahuisJ
 Breakfast-a most trying duty, and one which many man shirks, saying T never care for breakfast. I take only roll and coffee" And even that pis-aller he would rather take alone. judging frorl the grumpy silence with which he surrounds himself, or the ab- sorption with which he devours the morning newspaper. :. -.
 The coffee-and-roll habit comes to us from Europe, and, more than that, from its upper classes, therefore it has won its way here through the emula- tion of fashion rather than its fitness for our modes of living. The Ameri- can breakfast Is looked upon with hor- TOT, as barbarous and inelegant. Just what the American breakfast is would be hard to define, except by those Ed ropean theorists who have never par taken of it. But that it is in some fam, flies execrable through it's length, and in others through its quality, we all un- fortunately know. g
 Within forty miles of New York are innumerable towns which send all their male population, save the indigent, to the city every day in pursuit of bread .-sweetbread mayhap, for the men of larger gains. To reach the office at the proper hour in the morning (and every one knows that the fundamental prin- ciple underlying all wealth is a prompt and early appearance at the office) ne- cessitates a breakfast at seven o'clock, or half after.
 Luncheon does not follow until one, and is even then a hastily snatched meal, making an interval of five or six hours without food, during which time both body and brain are submitted to- every sort of fatigue-the nervous anx- iety of catching a train, the bad air of the journey itself, and the hurry and worry of ofhce-work.
 What sort of preparation has the man had for this strain on his system? A nights rest, which of course exceeds in value any other restorative-but af- ter that? Sometimes merely his make shift of coffee and roll. Before 1t, his longest fast; after it, his hardest work. The habit of eating 8 slight breakfast is all wrong. s& 7"
 Perhaps the man is willing to eat, but the housewife. never having stud. jed the relative values of foods, places before him those dishes which do little to feed the vital flame of life. An au- tumn breakfast served in a house where three young men of the nervous American temperament went daily to. town serves as a sample. To begin with, there were Concord grapes, then oatmeal, then clipped beef creamed, with fried potatoes. and coffee to drink. It sounds we'll and tastes we'll, but for nutrition pure and simple is not worth a picayune. %E
 There are thousand and one ways of serving fresh beef, mutton, poultry, and eggs to make them acceptable to the peevish breakfast palate, and as a 'tspace-f11ler" there are better things than fried potatoes. If indigestion has laid it's tenacious hold on the family, coffee must give way to weak cocoa or hot (not boiled) milk. All these things the housekeeper should know, or, not knowing. should study, that she may preserve the precious health for which she is largely though unwittingly re- sponsible. Of course if improper dishes please the taste and are set before a man., he will eat them, but don't let him have the chance. These things apply as well to school-children as to business men.
 Eating breakfast is more of a habit than one would think. There is no more common declaration than: "Oh, I can't eat breakfast. I never had any appetite for 1t" That. too. ,is matter of habit, and practice which should be coaxed away into dfsuse. It takes but moments reflection to know that it is a false theory, for with the long fast before 1t, and the, hard labor after it, breakfast should De a meal equal in nutrition to the others. 3s
 By gradual training even lt1e most fastidious can increase the first meal In a day to Include fruit au naturel or stewed. and a chop or bit of broiled steak or chicken. which, with some sort of bread and q hot drink, Is sufIicient variety to sstisfy the physical needs