ON THE COOKING OF FISH. 275 



it is now so much the fashion to make such very 

 iine ladies of the daughters of the middle and upper 

 classes, that the slightest knowledge of domestic 

 matters — ^particularly of anything so very low as 

 cooking — is scouted indignantly. How can a young 

 lady who murders Mendelssohn or Beethoven five 

 or six hours per diem — ^who flirts the night and her 

 health too away in heated ball-rooms and theatres, 

 who destroys crayons by the fasces, or the nose upon 

 Aunt Sally, or even longsuffering Time in The Park, 

 for sundry other hours, and who lives but to indulge 

 a Tantalus ^craving after the pettiest novelties and 

 the strongest excitements — ^be expected to bestow 

 a thought upon anything so utterly useless, degrad- 

 ing, and out of her sphere? And thus this most 

 vital matter, which has so much to do with the 

 health and peace of families in detail, and the well- 

 beiag even of nations in the aggregate, is left to the 

 ignorant stupidity of the modem English servant, 

 whose habits in respect to cookery are, for the most 

 part, of so wasteful a nature as to be criminal. It is 

 not too much to say that, of all the food cooked in 

 England, one-third, at the lowest estimate, is wasted, 

 utterly wasted — ^thrown to the dust-hole and the dogs. 

 Well might we quote the adage, so familiar to our 

 fathers, but so little thought of in the present day, 



