Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book: A Practical and Exhaustive Manual of Cookery and Housekeeping

heart. If there be a better way than hers of doing anything—from making pickles to giving a wedding supper—she should be on the alert to possess herself of it. It is not true that it is easier for young people to keep themselves and their houses abreast of the times than it is for their elders. The first step that counts in the downward road is the tendency not to take any step at all. To stand still is to be left. Many who believe that they cultivate the seeing eye, the hearing ear, and the willing, receptive mind, live and die without learning the great truth that the mighty thing we call Life is made up of minute matters. They see and admire the coral reef that heaves a back a mile long out of the surf, and give never a thought to the coral builders. A man who thinks much and observes much, once told me that one essential difference between a man’s work and a woman’s is that he grasps general principles while she gives her attention to details. A man, according to this authority, is an impressionist painter, handling his brush boldly, dashing in broad effects of light and shadow, while a woman finishes each object carefully, sometimes, after the manner of the Dutch school of painting, showing the very hairs upon the brawny peasant’s arm. (I may be excused for saying, in passing, that, being a woman, I founded upon his general principle the particular moral that one sex supplements the other, and that the Creator meant the work of the world to be done by them in concert.) He had turned from his desk to talk with me and, while talking, looked ruefully at an inky forefinger. “I should keep some pumice stone, or acetic acid, or acetate of soda, or ammonia, here to remove ink-stains,” he said. “I always spill ink in filling my fountain pen.” A box of matches was in a pigeonhole; a wet sponge, used for stamping and sealing letters, was close to the disfigured hand. I bade him wet