A Letter From P. Z. Didsbury To The Author.

My dear Author, -

I have read your savory little volume with interest, amusement, and satisfaction. So far as concerns myself I cannot but feel flattered by your respectful quotation of my aphorisms, and by your very appreciative and useful comments upon them. You know that these aphorisms are the result of the experience of the many years which I have passed in the ardent study of delicate feasting - that art which, as Victor Hugo says in his Titanic way, consists

" de faire aboutir, La mamelle du monde a la bouche d'un homme."

You dwell with laudable persistency upon the necessity of criticism in gastronomic matters, and the usefulness of your book will consist largely in awakening a spirit of criticism and in calling attention to the roles of intellect and sentiment in the art of cooking. There is no severer and more conclusive test of a country's state of civilization than the way its inhabitants dine.

How often we hear cultivated European travellers say that America is a country where there is the greatest variety of primary alimentary substances of the finest quality, but, unfortunately, the cooking and serving of them leaves much to be desired. Certainly there is 110 lack of cook-books. Indeed, this special branch of literature is more flourishing in the United States and in Great Britain than it is in the country where good cookery is not yet entirely a souvenir of the past. These books, however, are often merely compilations of recipes, and few of them are based on careful observation or on truly scientific and artistic principles. The writers of these works, too, are often led away by the mere love of novelty, as if the caprices of fashion were to be allowed to perturb the immutable theories of scientific dining/ Moreover, the neglect or ignorance of the kitchen and table is partly the fault of some of the ideas that were brought over to us in the "Mayflower."

My more recent visits to my native land have, I must confess with joy, caused me to recognize the pleasing fact that the culinary art has made great progress in America during the past twenty years. It is now possible (generally with the aid of French cooks, it is true) to obtain at one or two restaurants in each of the principal cities, and in many of the clubs, a dinner fairly well prepared and passably served. In private houses, it seems to me, the advance beyond the old state of things is not so perceptible. Generally speaking, there is always a great abundance of food, but it is not well cooked or attractively presented on the table; and it is only in certain families, whose members have travelled, and whose tastes and opportunities have led them specially to observe the arrangement of a dinner in a first-class French restaurant or private house, that we yet find the matchless cookery and perfection in all the details of table-service without which a dinner is a failure. Much, therefore, remains to be done, and I am sure that your dainty volume - which is a sort of higher hand-book of the kitchen and dining-room, if I may so express myself (and I think I may) - will greatly help to increase in America a knowledge of the true principles of delicate feasting.

If, after reading your pages, so full of ideas - so suggestive, as the French modernists would sa - my countrymen do not become convinced, with that charming poet and gastronomist, Theodore de Banville, that the hygiene of the stomach is also the hygiene of the mind and soul, and that delicate cookery develops the intelligence and the moral sensibility, the fault will not be yours. I approve you heartily and wholly, even in your paradoxes, which always contain a kernel of logical observation and judicious criticism.

Adieu, my dear author; macte virtute, by which I mean, continue in your efforts to win a glorious pair of gouty crutches, and believe me always your devoted and inseparable companion in gastronomy,

P. Z. Dids Bury.