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

crackers and soft crackers; plain wafers, fruit wafers and cream wafers; lady-fingers and ginger-snaps—make a goodly show to the eye and stay the mistress’s surprised soul when the impromptu luncheon or supper must be more sudden and abundant than usual. “My strong tower!” she once called this pantry, laughingly. In winter she finds room for nuts, raisins, apples and oranges; in autumn, for baskets of grapes. These last named may be called “transients,” the supply being renewed frequently. Mrs. Notable is not a rich woman. She is obliged to make each dollar do the full work of one hundred cents. To this end she keeps an “expense book,” setting down every article purchased and the cost thereof. In the account of necessary outlays that for replenishing the stores in the strong tower is registered under the head of “HOSPITALITY.” FAMILIAR TALK BREAKFAST Common sense would decide that we should begin the day with the glad alertness with which the sun smiles at us over horizon, or housetops. He rejoices as a strong man ready—that is, rubbed down, supple and light—to run a race. There are still writers of “goody” books and works on hygiene who extol the morning mood. According to them, the whole human machine is then at its best. The head is clear, the stomach is vigorous, the spirits are buoyant, life is a joy. In reality—the reality of the every-day life of respectable people who have not tarried long at the wine, or eaten Welsh rarebits over night—the hard pull of the day is at the beginning. The head of the average man or woman _ought_ to be clear, the digestive organs active, limbs and joints in excellent working order. There should not be what one comedian describes as a “dark-brown, fuzzy taste” in the mouth, or the feeling that the cranium is stuffed with cotton wool, and the diaphragm should not loathe all manner of food. But such things are. Where one man tells you that breakfast is the best meal of the day, fifty account the ceremony of the earliest meal of each new day