CULTURE OF RYE. 103 



confidence an admixture of twenty-five per cent, of wheat 

 meal or bran. For that vulgar despite of the natural color 

 of rye which we find, sometimes, in kitchen help and some- 

 times in kitchen mistresses, I know of no remedy but a radi- 

 cal change of heart, being brought, by greater access of 

 knowledge, to estimate values, not according to appearances, 

 but according to intrinsic worth. No chemical analysis that I 

 have seen accounts fully for that peculiar relish, craving, hun- 

 ger, requiring for its satisfaction a change of bread, so often 

 experienced by hard-working adults. People who have been 

 sufficiently well-bred — or well-breaded — have a store of the 

 different breadstuffs in the house, and with two or three kinds 

 constantly upon the table, or baking now from their stock of 

 wheat or rye — coarse and fine — or corn, barley or oats, have 

 no necessity for philosophizing in the matter, being so vari- 

 ously supplied as never to feel the hankerings from which 

 tlieir less provident and thoughtful neighbors ignorantly suf- 

 fer. The people most likely to injure themselves unwittingly 

 by abstaining from rye are those who owe their solid muscles, 

 firm nerves and strength of stomach to having used it, or the 

 other kindred cooling grains — oats and barley — in their 

 youth ; or through being descended from parents fed upon 

 them. Such people are apt to turn to the finest wheat bread 

 as nicer and more delicate and palatable — as by the fruit of 

 their exertions and the abundance of the land, they come 

 into easy circumstances — looking back upon coarse or brown 

 bread as not a whit more necessary or useful than coarse 

 clothing. The young Russian who has recently been visiting 

 us, might travel across these States again and again without 

 seeing any but the merest starchy wher.t bread — divested of 

 the vital parts of the grain — the brain, bone and muscle-sup- 

 porting pliosphates. Perhaps he did that, and so suffered 

 from constipation and indigestion — unless in bread, as in bed- 

 steads, he had sensible notions of his own that led him to 

 reject the "fuss and featliers " that were prepared for him, 

 and order brown biscuits from his own ship as he ordered up 

 his simple hammock. If the home diet of this vigorous 

 young man were made public, I'll warrant it would be found 



