not so pleasant, or so satisfying, as when it is nicely prepared with some vegetables and gravy. Half a pound of meat is not more than one man can well eat for a meal; but, if that half-pound of meat be gently stewed in a clean saucepan with a few nicely chosen vegetables, salt and pepper, it will make a good dinner for two, at very little more expense. All girls ought to learn how to cook; if they knew the best way to serve food, it would make the wages of the labourer go much further than they do, and leave something extra for the purchase of warm clothing and for sickness. It is certainly best to try and have one hot meal a day, if not more. When everything that is put into the stomach is cold, both food and drink, it takes some of the power out of the stomach to warm it all up, before it can begin to digest and use the materials of the food; hence it is always well to give delicate or sickly people their food and drink warm, so that all the strength of the stomach may be saved for the process of digestion. Wheaten flour is very good food, for it contains the flesh-forming stuff, proteine, as well as the heat-giving carbon, so flour dumplings, especially with a little fat or suet in them, are excellent food, and when eaten, as in Suffolk, with some nice savoury gravy, they are very appetizing as well as wholesome. It is a very extravagant and bad thing to get into the habit of paying for what can be better done at home. Some working people in London and other large towns do not try to make nice tasty dinners at home, but run out to

*

a cook-shop and buy ready cooked meat. This is both wasteful and lazy, and no woman ought to be excused who allows herself to be so forgetful of her first duty to those who depend on her for the comforts of life. In providing food for a family, it should be recollected that every day should present something which contains flesh-formers, heat-givers, and mineral salts, and that in cooking and preparing that food care must be taken to try and preserve as much as possible of all these substances in the dishes set on the table.

So much of an Englishman's time is obliged to be spent in his home that it is essential that it should be the place of all others in the world most attractive to him; and "comfort," the very first element in a true home, depends chiefly on the women of that home, as household management usually devolves on them. Wealth is not necessary for comfort. Luxury requires wealth, but not Comfort. Comfort, it must be admitted, is a relative term. What is comfort to one man, would be misery to another. Even the lowest mechanic of this day would consider it miserable to live after the style of the nobles a few centuries ago; to sleep on strawbeds and live in rooms littered with rushes.

William the Conqueror had neither a shirt to his back nor a pane of glass to his windows. *Queen Elizabeth was one of the first to wear silk stockings. Queens before her were either stockingless, or wore stockings made coarsely of cloth, like buskins. Comfort consists in the use of common-sense, dis

cretion, prudence, and economy. It naturally deals in honesty, goodness, justice, and truth. It is not comfortable to run into debt; it is comfortable to live within the means, and lay by something for a rainy day; to provide things for those who are of one's own household, but at the same time to exercise hospitality and benevolence on fitting occasions.

Comfortable people do things in order,—they are systematic, steady, sober, and industrious. There must be method in order to manage a large or small household comfortably. Without this, work cannot be got through satisfactorily, and much material is lost or spoilt for want of time to make use of it properly.

Punctuality is the backbone, not only of business, but of domestic thrift. To a business man, time is money; to a business woman it is more-it is peace, comfort, and domestic prosperity.

A modern writer says:-"If we could see what is going on at the dinner hour of the humbler of the middle-class-what a spectacle of waste, ill-temper, and consequent discomfort and ill-conduct would it be! The man quarrels with his wife because there is nothing he can eat, and he generally makes up in drink for the deficiencies in the article of food. There is thus not only the direct waste of food and detriment to health, but the further consequent waste of the use of spirits, with its injury to the habits and the health."

"On the other hand," says Dr. Smiles, "people who eat well, drink moderately; the satisfaction of

the appetite dispensing with the necessity for resorting to stimulants. Good humour, too, and good health, follow a good meal; and by a good meal we mean anything, however simple, well-dressed in its way. A rich man may live very expensively and very ill, and a poor man may live frugally and very well, if it be his good fortune to have a good cook in his wife or in his servant."

*Mr. Alfred Smee, the surgeon, used to say, "Diseases of the digestive organs greatly exceed in England the relative number found in other countries. The reason is that in no other country do men eat so much ill-cooked food." Great will be the gain to the community when cookery is made an ordinary branch of female education. We want common sense in cookery as much or more than in any affair of life. Food should be used and not abused--cooked, not wasted. In England much of it is thrown away that in *France is converted into something savoury and digestible. Health, morals, and family comfort are connected with the question of cookery-it is in fact the handmaid of Thrift. It wastes nothing, but turns everything to account. Every English woman, whether gentle or simple, ought to be accomplished in an art which confers so much comfort, health, and wealth upon the members of her household.

Oxygen. The most necessary part of the air we breathe. A gas which is found throughout nature.

Carbon. The substance which

when pure forms the diamond. Coal consists greatly of carbon the heat and light making property of bodies. Suffolk. An English county

FINE dressing is very distinct from good clothing, and perhaps there is as great a rage for extravagance in dress at this time as ever there was, even in the corrupt and debauched age of *Louis XV. of France. It must be owned that this folly belongs chiefly to the female sex, though there are men who spend far more than they can afford to keep up what they call a respectable appearance. Sometimes this appearance is not truly a respectable one, for to be so it should be consistent with the calling and situation in life of the wearer. To see rings on begrimed and horny hands, fitted only for honest labour, is as