laugh at the chemist.

Of vegetables we have not only all that Europe can boast, excepting perhaps the artichoke, but we have some in constant use and of great excellence which they have not. For instance, sweet corn boiled or roasted and eaten from the cob with butter and salt is unknown in Europe. They have not the sweet potato, so delicious when baked. They have not the pumpkin-pie although they have the pumpkin. They have egg-plant and cauliflower and beans and peas, but so have we. They have bananas, but never fried, which is a negro dish, and excellent. They have not the plantain, good baked, nor the avocado or alligator pear, which fried in butter or oil is so admirable. They have not the ochra, of which the negro cooks make such excellent gumbo soup. They have all the salads, and use sorrel much more than we do. They do not cook summer squash as we do, nor have they anything to equal it. They use vegetables always as an entrée, not served with the meat, unless the vegetable is cooked with the meat, like beef stewed in carrots, turnips, and onions, veal and green peas, veal with spinach, and so on. The peas are passed as an entrée, so is the cauliflower, the beet-root, and the turnips. They treat all vegetables as we do corn and asparagus, as a separate course. For asparagus we must give the French the palm, particularly when they serve it with Hollandaise sauce; and the Italians cook cauliflower with cheese, à ravir.

THE HOSTESS.

The "house-mother,"—the mistress of servants, the wife, the mother, the hostess,—is the first person in the art of entertaining; and considering how busy, how hard worked, how occupied, are American men, she is generally the first person singular. In nine cases out of ten, American men neither know nor care much about the conduct of the house if the wife will assume it; they only like to be made comfortable, and to find a warm, clean home, with a good dinner awaiting them. It is the wife who must struggle with the problems of domestic defeat or victory.

When Washington Irving was presented at the Court of Dresden his Saxon Majesty remarked, "Mr. Irving, with a republic so liberal, you can have no servants in America."

"Yes, Sire, we have servants, such as they are," said the amiable author of the "Sketchbook;" "but we do not call them servants, we call them help."

"I cannot understand that," said the king.

The king's mental position was not illogical; for, with his experience of the servile position of the domestic in Europe, he could not reconcile to his mind the declaration of social equality in America.

The American hostess must, it would seem, for many centuries if not forever, have to struggle against this difficulty. As some writer said twenty years ago, of this question: "Rich as we are in money, profuse in spending it to heighten the enjoyment of life, the good servant, that essential of comfort and luxury, seems beyond our reach. Superfine houses we have, and superfine furniture, and superfine ladies, and all the other superfineties to excess, but the skilful cook, the handy maid, and the trusty nurse we rarely possess."

Thus, afar from the great cities and even in them, we must forge the instruments with which we work, instead of finding them ready to hand, as in other countries. That is to say, the mistress of a household must teach her cook to cook, her waiter to wait, her laundress to get up fine linen. She is happy if she can get honest people and willing hands, but trained servants she durst not expect away from the great centres of life.

Considering what has been expected of the American woman, has she not done rather well? That she must be first servant-trainer, then housekeeper, wife, mother, and conversationist, that she must keep up with the always advancing spirit of the times, read, write, and cipher, be beautifully dressed, play the piano, make the wilderness to blossom as the rose, be charitable, thoughtful, and good, put the mind at its ease, strive to learn how to do all things in the best way, be a student of good taste and good manners, make a house luxurious, ornamental, cheerful, and restful, have an inspired sense of the fitness of things, dress and entertain in perfect accord with her station, her means, and her husband's ambition, master, unassisted, all the ins and outs of the noble art of entertaining,—has not this been something of the nature of a large contract?

She must go to the cooking-lecture, come home and visit the kitchen, go to the intelligence office, keeping her hand on all three. She must be the mind, while the Maggies and Bridgets furnish the hands. She must never be fussy, never grotesque; she must steer her ship through stormy seas, and she must also learn to enjoy Wagner's music. There is proverbially no sea so dangerous to swim in as that tumultuous one of a new and illy regulated prosperity; and in the changeful, uncertain nature of American fortunes an American woman must be ready to meet any fate.

Judging from many specimens which we have seen, may we not claim that the American woman must be stamped with an especial distinction? Has she not conquered her fate?

Curiously enough, fashion and good taste seem to lackey to the American woman, no matter where she was born or where educated. In spite of all drawbacks, and the counter-currents of destiny, she is a well bred and tasteful woman. No matter what the American woman has to fight against, poverty or lack of opportunities, she is likely, if she is called upon to do so, to administer gracefully the hospitalities of the White House or to fill the difficult rôle of an ambassadress.

Some of them have bad taste perhaps. "What is good taste but an instantaneous, ready appreciation of the fitness of things?" To most of us who observe it in others, it seems to be an instinct. We envy those few who are always well dressed, who never buy unbecoming stuffs, who have the gift to make their clothes look as if they had simply blossomed out of their inner consciousness, as a rose blossoms out of its calyx. Some women always dress their hair becomingly; others, even if handsome, look like beautiful frights. Some wear their clothes as if they had been hurled at them by a tornado, and remind one of the poor husband's remark, "I feel as if I had married a hurricane." The same exceptions, which only prove the rule, because you notice them, may extend to the housewives who aim at more than they can accomplish, who make their house an anguish to look at, pretentious without beauty, overloaded or incorrect, who have not tact, who say the awkward thing. Such people exist sometimes, sinning from ignorance, but they are decidedly in the minority. The American woman is generally a success. She has fought a hard battle, but she has won. She has had her defeats, however.

Who does not remember the failure of that first dinner-party?—when the baby began to cry so loud; when the hostess was not dressed when the bell rang; when the cook spilled the soup all over the range and filled the house with a bad odour; when the waitress, usually so cool, lost all her presence of mind and fell on the basement stairs, breaking all the plates; when one failure succeeded another until the husband looked reproachfully at his wife, who, poor creature, had been working day and night to get up this dinner, who was responsible for none of the failures, and who had an attack of neuralgia afterward which lasted all winter.