This shall be the salad. With the heady Mexican wine - be sure you do not drink too much - and the clear strong coffee to come after, you will have a feast that should live in your recollection many a day.

Drain the contents of a small can of red peppers. After drying in a towel, slice in rings, cut fine an equal amount of celery, and mix. Add one teacupful of tiny balls made from MacLaren's Imperial cheese, which should be rolled in fine cracker crumbs. Rub the yolks of two hard-boiled eggs to a paste with the oil drained from the peppers. Rub the salad bowl with garlic and put in the salad, over which pour a good French dressing. Serve on crisp lettuce leaves, and then pat yourself on the back over the success of your dinner. What liqueur? You know!

Nowhere else in America is there a cuisine like that of New Orleans. The delicate blending of the French and Spanish schools with a sublime - it's nothing else-touch of negro cookery gives it a particularly unctuous flavor, to be compared perhaps to the musical Gumbo French spoken by the darkies in the kitchen.

The salient points of this Creole cookery are the artistic manipulation of the onion, which gives to cooking the same suggestion of diablerie to be found in the coquettish smile of a pretty woman - nothing more tangible - the uses of roux, and the coffee. One who has tasted New Orleans coffee will give it precedence over Turkish, Dutch, or the cafe au lalt of La Belle France. Nowhere have housewives labored more devotedly than in New Orleans, where they have striven for generations to preserve their own peculiar cooking, and in most households one will be served at every meal with at least one dish typical of the Creole cuisine. Among the most famous of these plats are a few that will bear trying in the bachelor kitchen. And the first is from no less talented a lady than Dorothy Dix. Men may not altogether approve of her unerring printed judgment of them, but her oysters are sure to be popular with the most critical.

OYSTERS A LA DOROTHY DIX For each person to be served select half a dozen large oysters in the shell and roast them. When done, remove the upper shell, .

leaving the oyster in the lower, and serve on hot oyster plates. For the accompanying sauce, allow for each individual one heaping teaspoon butter, which should be melted, juice of one-fourth a lemon, a drop of Tabasco, a drop of onion juice, and a pinch of salt, with a sprinkling of chopped parsley thrown in while blending. Pour sizzling hot over the oysters and serve. Some toasted saltines will accompany this, and one's favorite brand of imported beer, or perhaps a bottle of Scotch ale.

Have you eaten Creole bisque? Then of course you will want to make that for your formal dinner, for it is a delight, and will surely be a success if the following rule is carefully followed.

CREOLE BISQUE. Half a dozen slices of okra or half a can of canned okra should be used. If fresh, wash and slice. Add half a can of tomatoes, one sliced onion, three whole cloves, a finely-chopped green pepper, half a teaspoonful each of allspice and salt and a tablespoonful of butter. Cover these ingredients with a quart of cold water and place on the fire in an enamel kettle and bring to the boiling point. Add more water, if needed, then strain and set on the back of the stove where it will not boil. In a double boiler heat one pint of milk and thicken with a small teaspoon of corn starch blended with a little cream and let come to a boil. Then pour the prepared soup into a tureen, stir in a pinch of baking soda to prevent curdling, and pour over the cream sauce, stirring all the while. Stir in croutons of toasted bread and serve very hot.

CREAM OF PEA SOUP. This is another Creole soup that will find instant favor. Have a can of small French peas, drain and wash carefully. Place in a small saucepan, adding a sprig of fresh mint, a little onion juice, a pinch of sugar, a dash of cayenne, and a generous saltspoonful of salt. Cover with a pint of cold water and cook until the peas will easily mash and press through a sieve. Return to the fire and gradually stir in a half-pint of cream and a small cup of

Mexican and Creole Cooking milk, and just before it comes to the boiling point add a tablespoonful of butter blended to a roux with a tea-spoonful of flour. Pulled bread should be served with this.

BOUILLA-BAISSE is another typical Creole dish - but should be made on the Gulf, where the red snapper is just from the water, where the redfish is fresh, and then only can it be known in perfection. Those who live on the Gulf know how to make it - those who do not cannot obtain the ingredients in their perfection, so I will simply say it's delicious.