204 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
I have to smile, and swallow her pies: 
Oh! would that I were dead! 
Her puddings boiled are a sad surprise, 
And I can’t describe her bread, 
Her bread, 
And I can’t describe her bread ! 
Poor little woman! She does her best 
To make me a happy man: 
But I wish she’d love me, and leave the rest 
To our good old Mary Ann, 
*ry Ann, 
To our good old Mary Ann.” 
In the St. James’ Gazette (June, 1902) Marie Louise, the 
Belgian wife of an Englishman, asks: ‘‘ Will England ever 
get its daughters to understand that Cooking is an Art (with 
a capital A), and a most interesting and pleasurable Art if 
properly taught and practised? Alas! I doubt if things 
will ever alter in such respect, for English girls are not built 
that way ; no matter of which class—upper, middle, or lower— 
they are not eager to learn, and therefore it is not only the 
Americans who are the sufferers here, but England’s own children 
become weaker and weaker every generation through that dire 
malady, indigestion.” Dickens lets us know that in his day 
things were different: “Mr. Pickwick’s landlady in Goswell 
Street was a comely woman, of bustling manners, and agreeable 
appearance, with a natural genius for cooking, improved by 
study, and long practice, into an exquisite talent.”” Nowadays, 
as quoth the Art of Cookery (1708) :— 
“The gentry take their cooks, tho’ never tryed ; 
It seems no more to these than ‘up, and ride.’” 
Henry the Eighth of England rewarded his cook by the gift of 
_a manor for having composed a pudding of special merit. 
What a contrast do the following lines, pathetically true, present 
to-day :— 
** A woman there was, and she wrote for the press, 
(As you, or I might do), 
She told how to cut, and fit a dress, 
And how to stew many a savoury mess ; 
But she never had done it herself, I guess ! 
(Which none of her readers knew ! ) 
Oh! the hours we spent, and the flour we spent, 
And the sugar we wasted like sand, 
At the *hest of a woman who never had cooked, 
(And now we know she never could cook, 
._ , And never did understand!) | 
