Which reminds me that it is better to be born lucky than rich. How many lucky rascals there are wherever there is a good hotel, not really deserving more than stale bread and butter, who manage to get either by audacity, favoritism or some petty terrorism of influencing trade a living that a king might envy, the first, best and dearest of everything that comes to market; and how many deserving- but unlucky rich people there are in private homes who never know what it is to have a really good meal. One such family living in a small city in the Delectable Mountains, on a certain occasion employed me to get up a "Mother Hubbard party" supper for fifty.

These good people had an income from a fortune of two hundred thousand dollars; they were amiable, generous to an extreme; the lady was sunshine itself in spite of poor meals; they deserved really, to live in a good hotel and enjoy the best of cookery and yet in fact they had nothing but Mary Jane and a kitchen, that was little more than a board on a barrel. As for my own three days' work that did not concern me, for I had a separate room and everything needful, but then I could see the gentleman was not happy. He was intended by nature to be a man of a large and portly presence; the frame was broad, but there was not much upon it; his vest was not filled out and could not be with such poor cooking as a board on a barrel affords. I could not see without some concern their Mary Jane trying to broil large and thick beefsteaks over the holes of a stove filled with soft coal, doing the same thing three times each day and sending them in half cooked, halt raw, blackened with coal smoke, dirty. Carrot croquettes she tried to make and they melted down in the grease, (not hot enough) and were sent in that way, soft and disgusting and a dozen such blunders or more I should have liked to correct but the contract would have been too large, and, besides, there was no convenience. When their Mary Jane made bread she mixed up a pan of dough, using for her table a board set on top of the barrel of flour. When she wanted a handful of flour she had to set the pan over on the dish sink and remove the board, and then set them back again - and it was a fine painted, grained and ornamented kitchen too - and when she made rolls she could not knead the dough, but seized a handful, squeezed it and pinched off the little dumpling shape that rose up out of her fist. Well, they were not very bad rolls, and not very good; just the commonest of the common although the people were rich and might as well have had the finest; and neither Mary Jane nor I could roll out the pastry on a board on a barrel that tipped over.

We may take Mr. Toots' view of such a matter saying, "it's of no consequence," for health ana strength may be kept up on very plain food, if one will be an ascetic ana philosopher, but that is what very few will be. in this family were four daughters, young ladies for whose pleasure this party was given, and the mischief of the situation is, that having grown up with nothing better before their eyes they will go out to their own housekeeping thinking that a board on a barrel is all that is needed to set up a kitchen, and that the miserable ways of Mary Jane which they have seen are the ways they must remember and carry on as all that is necessary to know about cooking.

Finding these good people inclined to liberality in the matter of expenditure, when sending for some Lie big's extract of meat, wherewith to make their bouillon of extra fineness, I sent for twice as much as was needed that some might remain to give them pleasure some other day; the same by the finest salad oil, the walnut catsup to give a new zest to their soups; mushroom catsup to transform their chicken stews and pies; genuine table sauces to help ameliorate those dreadful beefsteaks; some kirchwasser for the ladies' punch; genuine maraschino to implant a new sensation for them in the' creams and jellies; a few truffles to cause them to ask questions; Camembert cheese in tiny round boxes; Roquefort cheese in larger bulk; biscuits of the superfine sorts and choice fruits, all in excess of the needs of the one night. After the supper was over I had the satisfaction of seeing the remainders of the goods. and sweets with the unwonted flavors spirited away to secure hiding places by fairy fingers, and then had to leave these poor two-hundred-thousand-dollar people to the maladministrations of Mary Jane with her board on a barrel; but they seemed to deserve a better fate.