The San Francisco call., 1895-12-01
RANDOM NOTES.
BY JOHN M'NAUGHT.

Last Sunday the Chicago Times Herald
entertained its readers with discussion
on How to Cook Thanksgiving Turkey" :"
the discussion taking the form of SYM
postum tc which the six highest salaried
chefs in the city contributed. These dig
nitaries of the art agreed that the feathers
should be removed from the turkey before
the roasting began and that the bird
should be surrounded in the pan by a cir
Gle OF onions. Beyond these points, how
ever, the only approach to an agreement
was that five of the chefs favored a small
tom turkey" cooked for an hour in a hot
oven, while one with an inspiration of
genius declared for large turkey left to
the evolution of five hours of slow fire.
1t is worth noting, moreover, since we live
in days when questions OF sex arise in every
issue, that most of the chefs noted the ex-
istence of a marked difference between the
favors OF the male and the female bird,
and while some preferred the male, some
declared for the hen. Finally there were
those who asserted the Eastern turkey to
be better than the Western turkey, but
this was decidedly carrying the debate too
far and all statements of the kind should
have been stricken from the symposium.
We cannot permit the introduction of Sec
tional pfejudiCes in an issue so near to the
National heart as the turkey which glad
dens the popular stomach
This symposium is worth noting, because
the differences of opinion revealed in it are
not likely to cause anything more than a
pleasant warmth in the memory. II will
not lead to more talk. Those who favor
the flavor of the hen bird will not de-
nounce as fools those who like better the
SAVIOR of the "tom turkey" and while the
man who chooses small bird rather than
big one may by those who delight in
having enough OF a good thing be regarded
as an easily contented idiot, yet no one
will say so. II then we can discuss so i'm
portant subject as a turkey without laps
ing from dignity of manner or moderation
of language, why can we not discuss things
| less near to our inner lives with the same
decorum? May it not be due to the fact
that as the turkey is something we have
thoroughly digested we are able therefore
to debate 1T from true fullness, whereas
! on other subjects we are often without
assurance OF our own comprehension, and
are compelled to fill up with bluster the
empty gaps in the line of our arguments?
! A contrast to the pleasant symposium
J for the discussion of turkey is the contro-
versy between the romancers and the
realists, newly excited by the death of the
younger Dumas. The romancers declare
the author of Camille to have been
wholly reprobate in the realm of art, a
chronicler of the half world and the shady
side of life; one unfit to- rank among the
! lmmortals or even among mortals who
take right views of things; while the
author of Monte Cristo they praise as
one of the joyous spirits whose works are
the gladness and delight of the world, a
true immortal destined to be rene m bered
forever by all whose mortal WEAKNESS has
been cheered by the thrill and the glow of
his rousing romances. TO all of which the
realists answer that if Camille was OF
| the half world, she was at least that much
in the world, was human flesh and blood
sympathetic with love and passion even as
We are, while the heroes of the elder
Dumas were never in the world at all.
The prisoner sewn up in a sack, weighted
with cannon balls and thrown into the
sea, who ripped the sack open, swan sew
eral leagues and climbed lone rock amid
the waste of waters to wave dagger at
the stars and declaim, "The world is
mine, Is beyond human sympathy. say
the realists. This is real world, they
maintain, and Monte Cristo Is not in it
with Camille.
While this worriment between ro-
| mancers and realists goes on over the COM
parative artistic merits of the elder and the
younger Dumas, it is worth remem bering
that the father and son themselves got
along very well together after the son had
attained sufficient success to be able to
lend his father money, and sufficient
discretion not to do it. 1t is narrated that
when Camille" achieved its triumph on
the Partisan stage, the elder Dumas wrote
10 the younger letter of warm congratu-
latlons and signed it 1.-The Author of
Monte Cristo.'" To this the son replied
that no congratulations could be more
pleasing to him than those OF the author