The last dinner was not well planned; there were good things in plenty but they ought not to have met in the same bill of fare; there were too many fries; came near being all fried; the fish in batter with potatoes and onions fried, chicken cutlets breaded and fried, croustades the same, croutons too, and then apricots a la Colbert. It was a mistake to have it so, and such mistakes are being made wherever bills of fare are written continually. When we see a bill of fare in print in a newspaper, it generally is a model one or tries to be so; but models there are few or none in actual practice. The cook does not intend to get several dishes of the same nature or appearance in the same dinner and generally does not know it till it is too late to make a change; perhaps his time for reflection was short or he was thinking about the butcher's bill, or had found one thing he intended to use was spoiled, and an unsuitable substitute was put in hastily. While one bill may be all fries, perhaps another time it will be all cream - cream soup, fish with cream sauce, macaroni a la Bechamel, onions in cream, fried cream fritters, cream cakes and ice cream - for if there is a pastry cook he is sure to be lucky enough to come in with his contribution of creams at the same time. Another day the dinner will be all dough, with nudel soup, fish in batter, meat pie rissoles or kromeskies, fritters of some kind or pancakes and a batter pudding, or fruit cobbler. Still again there may be a surfeit of oysters; oysters raw, oyster soup, fish with oyster sauce, oyster stuffing in the turkey and oyster patties. So it goes about planning a dinner. One of Thackeray's novels has a French chef for a character, who goes off and plays the piano while composing his bill of fare and seems ludicrous to the reader but there is nothing extravagant about that. Most cooks make up the bulk of the bill of fare for to-morrow whilst carving or dishing up their entrees to-day when their thoughts are upon the subject; but some must go off and smoke or sit alone, and there is no reason why a piano or a banjo might not come in useful at such a time and help to prevent the bad arrangement which makes a dinner be all cream or all dough, or of any one thing more than its due proportion. And we have not touched the still higher consideration of how some dinners are all heaviness and indigestibility, beginning with a heavy soup and stuffed fish running on through dishes that allow no relief by contrast to plum pudding, mince pie and tutti frutti; while others are as uniformly thin and meagre, going from weak consomme through water, and more water to a finale of lemon water ice. If a piano will help the proper planning of a dinner, every house ought to have one.