The above is a fraction - about the ninth of a cent over 10 cents a meal average, including the extravagance of the 16-cent and 17-cent dinners, the 54-cent wedding breakfast and the birth day suppers.

That is an expense of 30 cents a day for each person, or $2.10 a week, for living on the fat of the land and having choice of nearly all the desirable dishes with milk and cream without stint and first quality of butter, coffee and bread. It does not seem very high, not even when the additional expenses are added. Yet as an incentive to carefulness it should be borne in mind that a saving of but one cent a meal on 4,000 will yield 40 dollars; it reduced by 2 cents 80 dollars will be saved and if the meals can be held down 3 cents, or at 7 cents a meal there will be a saving over our figures of 120 dollars, or for 6 weeks a saving of 20 dollars a week on provisions alone. This is why it pays to give good wages to a cook who knows how and is willing to keep down the expenses by avoiding waste and profusion. The dinners can be kept down to 10 cents and breakfasts and suppers to 6 cents and the average of 7 cents all around will easily be maintained; that is 21 cents a day for each person or about $1 50 a week. As a rule

- - - -

Slipper is the cheapest meal, breakfast a little higher, dinner costs as much as both the other meals put together; where dinner rules at 12 cents breakfast will cost 7 and supper 5; where lunch is served and a 5 or 6 o'clock dinner, the lunch is or ought to be as cheap as the ordi nary supper.