250 WILD SPOKTS IN THE SOUTH. 



As to that other half of a dmner, the people that are to 

 sit around it, they being chosen only on festive occasions, 

 to them I do not allude. Equally unportant to a man's 

 physical being, as to his moral health, is the character of 

 his food. It may be insufficiently cooked, crude, and indi- 

 gestible ; it may be overdone, sodden and heavy ; it may 

 be dried to a chip, until the nutritive juices are evapo- 

 rated, or it may be fried to an oily mass that requires 

 the strongest stomach to analyze. Then, again, the food 

 that was originally am]Dle and rich may be so wasted by 

 the culinary process, that what was once abundant is 

 prodigally reduced. One or the other of these faults 

 universally affects nearly every dish that is placed on the 

 American tables. To avoid such evils, and cook suffi- 

 ciently without wasting, and in the most economical 

 quantities, is a high art of life, and one of the simplest 

 and most overlooked. It is slighted by the intelligent, 

 and left in the hands of the ignorant, and those whose 

 duty it was to govern are punished in health and pro- 

 perty for their own neglect. Almost every one can 

 remember having eaten of simj)le meals that were as 

 good as any king's ; sometimes they were found at a pri- 

 vate table, where white hands, that were dear to him, 

 have spread the cloth ; sometimes they have been served 

 in some out of-the-way Gallic auberge, when the hungry 

 traveller was even doubting if in a place so destitute he 

 could find anything to eat ; and again it may be, they 

 have been spread in that chief of all hostelries, that reck- 

 less home of self-reliance, the camp beneath the green- 



