The most worthless unit in a family is an ill-managing wife, or an indolent woman of any sort.  The fair sex are sometimes very acute in what concerns themselves.  They keep a tight hand over their dressmakers and milliners.  They can tell to a thread when a flounce is too narrow or a tuck too deep.  But if their knowledge only extends to their own dress, they are not help-meets, but incumbrances.  If they know nothing of their kitchen, and are at the mercy of the cook, their table will soon become intolerable.  Bad soup, soft and flabby fish, meat burnt outside and raw within.  The husband will soon fly from the Barmecide feast, and take refuge in his club, where he will not only find food that he can digest, but at the same time fly from the domestic discord that usually accompanies ill-cooked victuals at home.

Mr. Smee says that “diseases of the digestive organs greatly exceed in England the relative number found in other countries.”  The reason is, that in no other country do men eat so much ill-cooked food.  The least observant of travellers must have been struck with admiration at the readiness with which a dinner of eight or ten dishes of various eatables makes its appearance in foreign inns; particularly when he remembers the perpetual mutton chop and mashed potatoes of the English road.  The author remembers arriving at a roadside inn, in a remote part of Dauphiny, immediately under the foot of the Pic du Midi.  On looking at the clay floor, and the worn state of the furniture, he remarked to his friend, “Surely we can get no dinner here.”  “Wait till you see,” was his answer.  In about half-an-hour, the table (though propped up) was spread with a clean table-cloth; and successive dishes of soup, fowl, “ros-bif,” pomme-de-terre frite, French beans, with wholesome bread and butter, made their appearance.  In the principal inns of most provincial towns in England, it would not have been possible to obtain such a dinner.

Great would be the gain to the community if cookery were made an ordinary branch of female education.  To the poor, the gain would be incalculable.  “Among the prizes which the Bountifuls of both sexes are fond of bestowing in the country, we should like to see some offered for the best boiled potato, the best grilled mutton chop, and the best seasoned hotch-potch, soup, or broth.  In writing of a well-boiled potato, we are aware that we shall incur the contempt of many for attaching importance to a thing they suppose to be so common.  But the fact is, that their contempt arises, as is often the origin of contempt, from their ignorance—­there being not one person in a hundred who has ever seen and tasted that great rarity—­a well-boiled potato."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Examiner.]