The pleasing discovery has recently been made by the writer, in the pursuit of a new business, that the interest in the subject of cookery is universal and only wants the proper sort of instructors, the right kind of books and some way or making it known that they are the right kind to set everybody to trying their capabilities in this at once the most useful and most ornamental art. True, there are cook books already by the hundreds, but that is not all that is required, a greater difficulty than to write and compile a book on the subject is to get people to read it, and certain pages or even certain items that might be veritable jewels of knowledge at times to the possessors of the books lie there undiscovered.

We have already tried the conversational style in writing about cooking, and have reason to be satisfied with the results of the experiment as far as it has gone. We have the satisfaction at least of finding that what has been written has been read, and what we have learned of our subject has in that manner been made plain to such readers as had need of the knowledge.

Amongst all the commendations of our published hotel book, the "American Pastry Cook," received from the workers who have tried and know, and some of whom have even written gratefully for the help they found in it, we have met no harsher adverse criticism than that of a fashionable caterer of prominence in his own city, who said that it was too good; that if the author could make the articles in it, and as good as described, he ought to be in a certain famous hotel, "where the best they can get is not good enough for them."

This though not intended for praise, certainly was praise of the highest kind, for the book having the ambitious title of American Pastry Cook, and the volume next to come being the American Cook, ought not to show American cookery and the American table to be in any repect inferior to that of any other nation or people whatsoever. That book does, and the whole work will when completed contain the cheapest and best articles as well as the costlier kinds, but cheapness is not put in the foreground.

It is now proposed to run serially in the Hotel Gazette a book with some original features, having the cost of each article carefully counted and all superfluities that are set down as optional in other books left out of this altogether. It is to be a book that will show how to make money by cooking; a book suited to the wants of an immense number who live by boarding others at the lowest rate compatible with respectability of appearances, and a book that shall be on the same plane of everyday life with the people in the smaller hotels and in private houses that the writer meets with every day. They' do not run bills of fare, nor plan nor reckon up their- meals at from fifty cents to one dollar each person.

A book of this character must recognize the great fact that there are infinitely more women engaged or interested in cooking than men; it is hardly too much to say that every woman is interested, and they do not need to be told that they ought to know how to cook, that is acknowledged in advance, but, "oh dearl the toil 1 the dry uninteresting study of the incomprehensible cook books! "

Said a lady laughingly, the other day in a parlor full of friends - a lady of wealth and position, the daughter of a prominent judge, and the wife of a leading lawyer of that section - "When we were married my husband said he would give me a fifty-dollar bill if I would learn to make good bread. We have been married five years and I have not learned yet, but I think I can out of this book. 1 am going to try to secure that greenback yet!"

Said another one the same day, and this one was extremely poor, the only worker in the family, having a sick husband - "Now I find I can make things from my book that sell well in the windows, we will give up trying to keep boarders, that is killing us both and paying nothing, almost."

To meet the wants of thousands such, it is necessary to adopt the household cup and spoon measures where measures are wanted. Curious as it may seem to workmen these people in small hotels find one of the greatest difficulties of life in having to weigh and measure, very few possess scales and they do not realize generally that absolute success, and success every time depends upon the exact proportions of their ingredients. As it is impossible for us to give exact proportions without a better standard than the variable size of the cups in use we shall have to give a double set of measures, one by the cup and the other by pint and pound.

Persons who practice from this book can find which cup holds half a pint, which is half a pound of water, and the standard, and always using the same can soon learn to measure as many ounces as they want in it by observing the difference of the specific gravity of each article used. Thus: