COOKERY FOR SPORTSMEN. 327 



committing a disagreeable and prolonged suicide, 

 accompanied with painful indigestions and untold 

 sufferings, by attempting to despise the rules that 

 the imperative stomach has laid down. Under cer- 

 tain well-known chemical laws, food is rendered 

 both digestible and palatable by special modes of 

 preparation, and indigestible and unpalatable by 

 other modes. The same piece of meat that, fried, 

 will resemble shoe-leather, and afford neither plea- 

 sure nor sustenance, if nicely broiled would prove 

 agreeable to the palate and wholesome to the body. 



Our. country is overflowing with abundance of the 

 raw material from which good dinners are made; 

 but we are absolutely without cooks, and the average 

 American life is shortened one-tenth by the misera- 

 ble ignorance of the rules of cookery that pervades all 

 classes. The farmer bolts his heavy griddle cakes 

 and tasteless fried meats ; while the wealthy citizen 

 devours rich gravies and ill-prepared compounds. 

 The former loses his teeth, the latter incurs the 

 thousand horrors of dyspepsia, and both shorten 

 their lives. 



But to rise above the unimportant consideration 

 of mere life, which is held in our land at its true 

 value, and regarding cookery from a loftier point 

 of view, is there not something noble in the art that 

 moulds together the various subjects of taste, and 

 builds up an exquisite, soul-thrilling composition ? Is 

 not that man worthy of our deepest admiration, who, 

 not only from the wealth of materials prepares the 

 perfection of luxury, but when reduced to the sim- 



