Woman's worth and worthlessness. The complement to "A new atmosphere."

Preface

I HAVE called my book " The Complement to a New At« mosphere," to remove, if possible, the misapprehension of those who have given it the honor of their attention as it has appeared from week to week, and who have been disturbed by what has seemed to them a change of views.

Strictly speaking, it is impossible to obtain, and insolent to undertake to present an adequate idea of any subject or object without changing one's views. We are directed by very high authority to walk about Zion, and go round about her, not stand still and stare at her from one point. I sup-

"^ pose Zion looked very different seen from the Mount of

s^ Olives and the Fount of Gihon, but it was Zion all the while.

1^ Change of views involves more or less change of opin- . ions — is, indeed, made for the purpose of forming opinion.

^ Looking but casually at Woman Suffrage, I regarded it with

indifference. From a careful survey, I can not regard it

but with apprehension. The more closely I scrutinize it,

the more formidable seems to me the revolution which it

implies, the more onerous seem the duties which it imposes.

I feel, also, ever more and more vividly, that

" It is not ours to separate •f he tangled skein of will and fate ;"

and many things which once I would have attributed to cold-blooded malice I would now attribute to partial growth, to imperfect adjustment, and so find it easier to hate, upvi Preface.

root, and cast away the sin, and yet love the sinner — if he is not too hateful ! But of any change important enough to be spoken of — supposing any change worth speaking of — I am unconscious. I know that I have never swerved a hair's breadth from my belief that the only way out of our estate of sin and misery is the slow growth of individual excellence, and that it is in the home, in the family — more sacred than any church, the only divine institution — that this excellence must be chiefly nurtured.

Whether such a belief assigns to woman a commanding or a subordinate position in the world's economy I must leave to the judgment of my readers.

Gail Hamilton.

Contents

CHAPTBB TAG%

I. THE STATE OF NATURE 9

II. THE STATE OF [FRENCH] GRACE 24

II. The State Of [french] Grace

It was at this epoch that Professor Blot came over the horizon. I caught at him with the gasp and grasp of the drowning. Hassan, as I have said, at first violently opposed any recourse to him ; but, supported by a firm faith in my inherent and inalienable incapacity, he presently withdrew his opposition. In fact, after a while, he rather encouraged the Blot scheme, seeming to think the addition of a French element to native inaptitude would lend it a piquancy which it had hitherto lacked.

So all in the pleasant summer weather I went to town to hear Professor Blot. The neighborhood took kindly to the adventure, though evidently mistrustful of this armed intervention from a foreigner. Every face that saw me go by wreathed itself in smiles ; yet in the calm still hour, by the moon's pale beams, I sometimes question whether they were not in part smiles of incredulity. " Want to learn how to make one more puddin' !" said my friend the forester, meeting me on my winding way.

"Can this Blot fellow tell us how to get somethin' to cook .? that's the point," asked my friend the captain ; but that was not my affair. I assisted at the lectures with note-book and spoon, according to directions. I looked, and listened, and tasted. It was marvelous. Every thing happened. Nothing failed. Nothing went uncooked. Nothing collapsed. Nobody was anxious. It was that -plump, j'olie French cook. She gave a caressing pat, a dextrous dab, a spirited stir, and every atom melted into its place and became a viand. Some of us loftily sheathed ourselves and Worthless7tess. 25

in nonchalance, and tasted with a nil-admirari air. Should a haughty world suppose that we had not as good things every day at home ? Others of us were crushed to the dust, and admired indiscriminately. A woman at my elbow went into raptures over the joint which there had not been time completely to roast.

" Ugh !" said the professor, shrugging his shoulders in disgust \ " that ees not half done !" I was vexed that she should have made such a display of American ignorance to a foreigner, though I should not myself have known it was underdone if he had not said so ; and I, on the principle that a fault confessed is half atoned for, remarked, deprecatingly, "Alas ! we are such barbarians in this country that we don't know when our food is cooked and when it isn't."

"Alas, mees," responded the unhappy professor, " that ees too true."

I did not expect so ready and unqualified an assent.

One could but pity the man who had not only to teach, but create a public opinion to receive his teachings ; who had not only to concoct his viands, but to train our palates to appreciate them. I concealed my ignorance as carefully as possible j but it is useless to deny that to backwoods eyes and ears, not to say nose and mouth, some of his modes and results were at least uncommon. I copied with exemplary docility directions to pour white wine on chicken, but I saw in my mind's eye the demure gravity with which my neighbors would receive such an announcement. Unresistingly I chopped up mushrooms with every other dish ; but I thought of my friend the forester swinging his axe on the strength of the toad-stools he had eaten, and I fancied that even Hassan would suspend, naso adunco, that little bunch of see-sawn^jng which seemed to pepper every dish. But I yielded to no misgivings, and carried home my note-book in triumph at the close of the lectures. My friend dis-

B played a languid curiosity as to my opinion. I told him I thought Professor Blot was a good cook, but that he did not understand French. At least his pronunciation was different from that to which I had been accustomed. He asked me if I had possessed myself of the general principles of cooking. I said I thought I had. He begged me to repaat them. I replied that the fundamental requisite to good cooking was a French cook. He said the knowledge of that fact alone was worth the whole price of the lectures. " Go on." I added, "6"/ momimentum quceris, in spice^'' and handed him my note-book. He slowly turned the leaves, held the book right side up, wrong side up, and diagonally in succession, and asked where it began. I answered, on a venture, that it began at the beginning, of course. He said a man would have to stand inside a mill-wheel in motion to read it. I was obliged to admit that it did need an editor. There was a great quantity of valuable material in an undigested state, with an inexhaustible amount of bay leaf and garlic scattered through it.

" It begins at the beginning, does it ?" said my friend. "Let us, then, begin there." And he fastened upon the inside of the first cover, and read, in a monotonous, inexpressive, unintelligent tone,

" ' Bay leaf at druggist's.

" * Every dish look at once in a while to see how it goes.

" ' Chicken when one horn — ' "

" It is not horn," I interrupted.

"What is it, then .?" passing me the book,

"It looks like a horn," I said, after a silent contemplation, "but it must mean hour."

He read on :

" ' Two stalks parsley half onion —

" * Stuck in it.

" ' One or two cloves half bay leaf —

* Skim it' Skim what?

"'Half tea -spoonful butter h— ty [Humpty-dumpty— I could make nothing of it myself] — flour mix together a little juice and stir to melt and mix — take off onion cloves and bay leaf— odd mixture.' I should think it was 1"

"^^/^ mixture!" I explained.

" Add what mixture ?"

" Why, the mixture you have just been making !"

" Add it to what ?"

" To the mixture you had been making before you began this. Why, the chicken !"

"'Little lemon-juice — shake.

"'One yolk with— no, into— beaten — into bestow— into vesture — ' What is that word ?"

I studied it attentively, but was unable to decipher it.

" Never mind," I said ; " go on."

"Your chicken seems to have come to an end, my dear."

" Oh no ; there must be more. He can't end in that yolk."

" No ; he more naturally begins there. Still, if I were called upon to pronounce an opinion on this particular chicken, I should say that by the time he reached this stage he was no chicken !"

In hot pursuit of the missing chicken we turned page after page, but the only vestige of his creation was an entry of —

i_i £ I Fricassee chicken entre'e.

^ S -I Wash — put in toast-pan — ^just cover with cold water ^ I salt cover the pan.

This certainly was not the original fowl, but a distinct and subsequent individual, while the cabalistic marginal note was quite unintelligible. There was nothing for it but to take high moral ground at once, and assume that the chicken was off the stage before the yolk was brought on. That egg was broken into some other dish.

" Yes," Hassan said ; " that last shake probably finished him prematurely. What next?"

"To explain precisely how this hop, skip, and jump came about. In the beginning, Professor Blot wrote the whole dinner on the blackboard. Then he cooked it on the range. We had consequently to make history and to write history at one and the same moment, and were constantly darting from point to point. When it was time to put salt in the pudding he made a note of it ; and immediately there was a bay leaf to be stuck in an onion, and we turned the page and made a note of that. Then, before you had fairly seen how a bay leaf would look in an onion, you were directed to put butter in the pudding ; so you dropped your bay leaf, and turned back to the pudding again. Thus you were kept ever on the stretch. Is it any wonder if you sometimes flavored the pudding-sauce with parsley, or scattered sugar on the roast? It is certainly some such mistake which sent that yolk on its wanderings. Find now a definite programme for a regular dinner. There are plenty of them. Here is one that looks systematic. Read that straight through."

" ' Riz au lait.

" ' Fish caper sauce.

" ' Beef piquante sauce.

" * Croquettes.' (A game dinner certainly.)

" ' Potatoes a la Franyaise.

" ' Plat au beurre.

" * Pie.' (How that one little English word shines among all these foreign folk, like a good deed in a naughty world !)

" * Creme patissiere.' Is that all ?"

" Now you will find a page devoted to each one of these dishes. Somewhere. You must look till you find it."

" Sure enough. Here is —

" * Fish caper sauce.'

a7id Worthies sness. 29

" Let us see, said the blind man.

" * Set on fire just cover with water — always put a table-s vinegar to a pound of (boil) fish — salt caper sauce — \ table-s butter — same flour — i gill warm water on fire — stir salt and pepper to taste — a little water in which fish has cooked — caper in sauce just before serving.'

"That is certainly very direct and intelligible. I like that — especially capering in the sauce. It reminds one of bucolics : and in the vats of Luna this year the must shall foam round the white feet of laughing girls. A New England housewife dancing in the fish-sauce must make a sauce piquante.

" 'Potatoes entremet a la Franyaise fillets.' What is fillets?"

" Fillets ? Curl-papers ? It has a familiar sound, but I do not at this moment recall its kitchen range."

" Potatoes in curl-papers. They must be lady-fingers.'*

" There was something in curl-papers, if it was not potatoes. I think it was mutton-chops. Read on. Perhaps the sequel will show."

" Here, again, we seem to come to an untimely end."

I instituted a personal investigation, but could discover no clew. The thread was broken off short.

" When I was in the middle of one of the most interesting dishes — "

" Then the sauce was not the only thing you capered in !"

" While I was lost in contemplation of the simmering and steaming, I suddenly awoke to the fact that a caterpillar was creeping over my dress. I struck him off with my note-book into the aisle, but with unparalleled resolution he kept constantly heading my way, so that I was forced to divide my already overstrained attention between tne cooking and the caterpillar, and had no sooner jotted down one item than I dropped pencil, took up parasol, and poked back caterpil-

3© WomarCs Worth

lar. I assure you the intense mental effort gave me a headache. Those unfinished potatoes mark the spot where that caterpillar thrust his head in. Every gap you may fill up with caterpillar."

" Charge the deficit, then, to him. Here is a page of what seem to be general directions :

" ' Never use soda sal c of t c pepper (here) parsley for fish and chicken.

" ' Plants easily grown.

" ' Veal must be overdone.

" 'Broth — stir again — spoonful of gravy.

" ' All kinds of fat strain —

" ' And put in stone jars.'

" This is somewhat unintelligible to me, but I suppose you understand it ?"

" Y-e-s. But here is a long, fair page, that looks as if it would run smooth. ' Broth !' That is an important matter. Professor Blot puts broth into every thing."

" ' Three lbs. lean beef — must be fresh never more than 2 oz. bones with lb. meat — no bones best put it in soup-kettle or sauce-pan — ' "

I could not help interrupting the reading to announce a discovery. There is a species of large dipper in family use. We always called it Ursa Major. It was interesting to learn from Professor Blot that it was a sauce-pan. One is familiar with sauce-pans in literature, but it is delightful to know that one has a personal acquaintance with them. Ah ! la belle chose que de savoir quelque chose I

But when I defended from the dictionary, which is one of our most important kitchen utensils, my life-long impression that all pans were milk-pans, broad and shallow, and that nothing with a handle could properly be called a pan, Hassan immediately quoted warming-pans and the Panhandle of geography against me !

*' Go on," I said, seeing he was disposed to trifle.

" ' Cover with 3 qts. cold water — set on good fire in about \ hour boil — then remove kettle don't boil much — skim scum.' (That apt alliteration's artful aid reminds me of a Magazine story named ' Snip Snap.') ' If it has boiled unaware gill cold water and skin \ middle-sized carrot \ as much turnip i leek small onion with 2 cloves stuck in it 2 stalks parsley i celery i bay leaf salt and pepper keep simming — ' "

" Simmering," I corrected under my breath, too much pleased at so long a run of smooth sailing to break it for any slight deviition.

" ' For 5 hours— no boil for rich broth have 2 qts. water poor 2 qts.' "

" You have not read that right. It can not be two quarts for both rich broth and poor."

" Look before you leap to such a conclusion."

" It was the caterpillar," I said, after a prolonged examination.

"That is the most responsible caterpillar that ever crawled. Well —

" ' Two qts. water — no fat — no bones must be clean.' How is that ?"

" My dear, you punctuate with your elbows."

" My dear, I follow your punctuation to the letter, to the smallest Abyssinian quirk."

" But can you not see that, weary and worn, not to say saturated and suffocated with savors, one's brain might become a little muddled ; and can not you bring your reason to the aid of your eyes ; and does it not stand to reason that bones must be clean for soup, and that there must not be any bones ?"

" Nothing easier. Hereafter, then, I follow my unassist cd reason in punctuating your bones.

" ' Take off meat — put bottom paste for pie 4 oz. flour and knead with 2 oz. butter — knead — ' "

"You are surely off the track again."

"Not in the least."

" Is there no dividing-line ?"

"If there is, it is equatorial and invisible."

" But do you not see that you have suddenly emerged from the broth, and fallen plump into a pan of pastry ?"

" There is no way," he replied, slowly turning the leaves, and looking up and down the pages with great solemnity — " there is no way out of that broth except plumping into the flour and butter."

Alas ! it was, as Professor Blot remarked, " too true." After " put" came " bottom paste ;" and the page went on from bad to worse in this random fashion :

" In crockery —

" Longer it keeps, always put —

" The quicker you cool it the —

"Then strain the broth and done."

Hassan suggested that it might be read like Hebrew, from right to left. He builded better than he knew, for by reading it from bottom to top it was easy to unearth the meaning. Some sudden emergency had deranged the ordinary stratification, and interjected the trap rock of the pastry-pan. Farther explanation it was impossible to give. However^ the broth was done. There was comfort in that.

Similarly it seemed as if a blight had fallen on all my receipts. Professor Blot had cooked them through before my very eyes, and I had watched them with an intelligent interest, and transferred them to my note-book with conscientious fidelity ; but the trail of the serpent was over them all. A hiatus, a disjointure, a confusion was sure to develop itself at the vital points, and destroy the value of the whole. And by as much as the important circumstance was left out, and Worthkss?tess. 33

the unimportant one was sure to be in. The particular ingredient necessary to round and perfect a dish was not to be found ; but in letters of living light was sure to appear the warning that roast beef and stuffed turkey must not be served together ! As if people with our income were in the least danger of suffering from a conjunction of roast beef and stuffed turkey !

" But you may have it a la mode," added the notes, with grim sarcasm.

" Soup," prescribes the same discriminating monitor, giving a bill of fare for a dinner —

" Soup.

" Fish on one end.

" Butcher's meat, chicken and game.

" Puree, with meat or fish.

" Vegetables.

"Dessert (cheese first)."

An unexceptionable dinner, no doubt, if one could command it. But what, save total depravity, could account for the careful record of all these luxuries, and a total failure to secure the simplest directions for the preparation of a single dish ?

Were Professor Blot's lectures, then, a failure ? As the wise do not need them, if the ignorant can not assimilate them, of what avail are they ? Of the greatest in the v.'orld. Their moral uses are incalculable. They relieve your imagination. They give you a certain confidence, an acquaintance with modes of operation, a positive and comforting assurance that causes will produce effects. It is possible — your own eyes bear you witness — for meats and vegetables, fishes and puddings,, to glide along parallel lines harmoniously and majestically to the table. A raw, red joint goes into the oven ; a crisp, delicate roast comes out.

B 2

" You might see the same thing at home," suggests the practical mind. But you do 7iot see the same thing at home. Nothing lures you to the sight. Very likely the sight is not there, and if it be, you do not care to see it. You might assiduously frequent twenty kitchens without being sure that you were not learning what a truer knowledge of the mysterious art will force you to unlearn. But good company, novelty, immunity from grease-spots and burns, and, best of all, a perfect confidence in the source of knowledge, make these lectures both entertaining and instructive. You leave them feeling that if you should ever be obliged to fight it out on that line, you will know how to sight your guns ; and this, of itself, is no small part of the battle. Your ideal has a shape, your ambition a goal. You are not necessarily master of arts, but you know in what direction to advance in order to become one. Moreover, the processes are carried on so neatly and sweetly that, you may say, children cry for them. And this is a benefit whose value is not to be spoken. Cooking wears so winning an air, it opens a field for so much skill, it displays results so agreeable, that your old repugnance changes unawares into interest, into admiration, into impatience, and you burn to shoulder your crutch and show how fields are won.

For example :

It is a very simple thing to break an egg. He who has enthusiastically climbed up hay-mows, and across the great beam, to rifle hens' nests, and come down with half a dozen eggs in his pockets, and then forgotten them — he knows, to his consternation, how easy it is to break an Qgg. But to break it over the cake-pan, to break it in a regular equatorial line, without shattering the shell, and scattering the bits in the sugar, or daubing your fingers with the stringy white, is quite another thing. Of what nature, then, must be that task which the cookery-books assign when, piling Ossa on

Pelion, lliey bid you beat the yolks and whites separately? It is like those sarcastic receipts for making hare-soup — first catch your hare ; or for capturing birds — put salt on their tails. You can beat the yolks and the whites well enough when they are once apart, but how separate two fluids inseparably mixed? Who shall say to the white, " Come forth !" and to the yolk, "Keep back !" Who does not know that by the laws of matter, when the shell is broken, the two fluids come gulping out together ? No. Whenever a receipt talks in that wild way, the only resource for weak human nature is to follow the example of the Scotch divine in the presence of a scriptural difficulty — " Look it square in the face and pass on."

But French skill laughs at human nature, and is a match for universal law. That round-cheeked cook solved the insoluble. With one white arm-sweep, like Juno on Ida — say rather by one little peck outside, such as the future chick would have made within, could he have been spared till his set time was come — she smote the shell into two little cups, and, by pouring the yolk back and forth, divided as deftly the yellow gold from the liquid crystal as the blue sea stands divided from the burning beach. Of course, now you have seen it done, you want to do it yourself But be not rash. Seeing is believing, but it is not doing. Shall I ever forget how she snatched the whites from the Celtic scullion who, at her directions, was beating them, but with that slow, awkward, uncertain movement which belongs to the natural man ; and how, with a preternatural swiftness not devoid of grace, and dazzling to the naked eye, she whipped them into a froth and foam, into a sea of lightness and whiteness, or ever the surprised blood had faded from the Celtic cheek ?

So, though possibility is far remote from accomplishment, Professor Blot seemed to throw a new light into the kitchen, or, leaving out the adjective, he threw light upon the dark-

36 Wo?na?i's Worth

ness hitherto visible. "All hope abandon, ye who enter here," had appeared to me as fit a motto for the kitchen door as for the one over which it was originally inscribed j but when I next passed into that loveless realm it was with an enthusiasm and a buoyancy which had hitherto been a stranger there. I was determined no more to creep timidly along the coast, as in the days of my ignorance. Professor Blot was a mariner's compass, in the confidence engendered of which one could strike out boldly into the open sea.

" No more pottering with drop-cakes and rye muffins," I said. " Professor Blot washed his hands of all such trivialities. I shall plunge at once into the middle of things. I shall undertake that most formidable of feats,* a regular dinner.' Roast beef and plum-pudding.

" ' He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small.

That dares not put it to the touch To win or lose it all.' "

"If my desserts were all that will be small," said my friend, "I think I should be able to meet my fate undaunted !"

Professor Blot's cook had a scullion. I appointed my friend my scullion. He stipulated for a salary. I refused it, and offered wages small but sufficient, and capable of indefinite enlargement according to increase of services. He was accessible in point of price, but impregnable in point of technicalities. What objection had I to a salary?

It was too fine for the thing.

Not at all. It was peculiarly appropriate. Salar}', sal, salt, salt-money — money given you to buy your salt — your necessary outlay ; thence money for your services. What more fit than that money awarded you for kitchen-service should be salary — salt-money ?

What's in a name ? " Sal, salt, salt-money," I said, " for him who just earns his salt." He made a brilliant scullion.

and WortJikssness. 37

I stationed him at the end of the table, intrenched behind the cookery-books for purposes of reference, if memory or judgment should fail me. We had an ample library of this entertaining literature ; for, whenever there was an interregnum in our culinary kingdom, and it became necessary for me to make a descent into the kitchen, I always signalized my advent by the purchase of a new cookery-book. To these must be added, in the present exigency, the undigested mass of the notes of Professor Blot's lectures.

The experiment of the dinner was completely successful, thanks to French tact and mother-wit. The beef stopped at the precise point where continuance would have changed completeness into superfluity. I do not mean to say that there were no false steps. I do not mean to say that it was an easy matter to get the dripping-pan out of the oven and upon the table without spilling liquor or burning fingers. I do not mean to say that when I would fain have turned the meat over in the pan it did not slip from my hands and splash the fat on my face and dress ; nor that, when I would have basted it, the fat did not have a way of running outside the pan instead of inside. " Basting it !" said my scullion ; "you mean bathing it."

" Not at all. Who ever heard of meat being bathed ? The original cow might be bathed ; but when the cow has been reconstructed into roast beef, we baste her."

"When a cow has been reconstructed into leather she may possibly be basted with a waxed end, but to drench her with hot fat is a new use for a sewing-machine."

"There is no good in talking. I know it by mnemonics. When Professor Blot spoke of it, I connected it at once with basting a hem."

" And is there the smallest resemblance between basting a hem and basting a joint .?"

" No ; that is why I remembered it."

38 IFomans Worth

" Very convincing. It must be basting, because it is exactly the opposite of basting. Like the village of Gilmanton Iron-works, so called, according to living tradition, because there are no iron- works there."

" But, my dear, get the best — get Webster's, and see."

"Why have recourse to fallible man, when the light of unassisted reason is sufficient? You admit that your word in no sense represents the process. How with my word ? You pour the hot fat over the meat. It is a bath. And what, pray, is the name of this receptacle ?"