"Of all appeals - although

I grant the power of pathos and of gold,

Of beauty, flattery, threats, a shilling - no

Methods more sure at moments to take hold

Of the best feelings of mankind, which grow

More tender as we every day behold,

Than that all-softening, over-powering knell,

The tocsin of the soul - the dinner bell."

- Byron.

The present work is not what the Germans call a versuch, or what the English call an essay, yet it is an attempt. Not an attempt to meet a long felt want, but to show how, in the best possible way, many felt wants may be supplied.

The ladies of the Ladies' Aid Society, of the Fort Street Methodist Episcopal Church, Los Angeles, California, are the authors and publishers of this book. They have two objects in view in sending out the work. First - That of supplying the house-keepers of the country with a large list of tried and valuable recipes. Second - To raise funds to help pay off the indebtedness of the church. Both objects are reasonable and worthy. The recipes are mostly plain and simple, such as every house-keeper will find valuable every day, and are adapted to the poor and rich. Others are for more select dishes, and are more or less expensive. To every recipe is attached the name of the lady furnishing it. Each lady has practically tried those which she furnishes. The book is published for the use of families and is scrupulously temperate. What shall we eat? and how shall it be prepared for our use? are questions which may with propriety exercise the minds of the best scholars and writers in any nation. There are no doubt extremists, epicureans whom the Savior justly rebuked.

The prominence of all bodily appetites and pleasures and the natural ignorance of, and the not so easily understood character of spiritual pleasures, have led man in his natural condition to exalt, possibly, too much the former. The Esquimaux, according to Dr. Johnson, looks for a heaven where "oil is always fresh and provisions always warm."

The christian, alone, has left out this idea, and given the spiritual heaven. But among the ascetics we find the other extreme. And withal, in the happy medium, there is a true way and a right. Man has a body and it must be cared for as the home of the immortal soul.

The great activities of the soul largely depend on a healthy and well cared for physical being, and may we not say a well-fed physical being. According to Bishop Wiley, a good beefsteak helps to make a good sermon. No doubt but that much of the strong, healthy thought of Old England and the early New England depended on the good, sensible supply of excellent food, which was found always in the larder, and on the table, in the days of yore, in those countries.

The real causes of happiness are inter prcecordia; yet human happiness, I dare say, is not wholly independent of good, wholesome living. Cowper says:

"Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast, "Let fall the curtains and wheel the sofa round, "And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn "Throws up a steamy column, and the cups "That cheer, but not inebriate, wait on each, "So let us welcome peaceful evening in."

The formula of Sydney Smith, given to one inquiring how to make home happy, was "always have a bright and cheerful fire, the kettle simmering on the hob, and a paper of sugar plums on the mantle."

A good, wholesome meal is "a great keeper-off of depression" and a great promoter of cheerfulness. I cannot see how any christian can neglect such simple means of happiness and sunshine and then go groaning. through this world as a "wilderness of woe," or how they can ask for grace to make them cheerful and happy, and all the while eat unwholesome food, or starve themselves, as a christian duty. God never gives a man grace to make him cheerful with an empty stomach when he has supplied him with daily bread to satisfy his hunger. The Colony of the Fraternia is a fraud, than which there is none greater except it is the correspondent who lauds and magnifies the Colony. It may be well to state that the people of this Colony live wholly on raw fruits and vegetables.

The advance made in producing and preparing articles of food, by the farmer and the merchant, vastly exceeds that made in the kitchen in the art and science of cooking Much of the cooking of to-day is but little in advance of that of a century ago.

And may we not seriously enquire: is not cooking, in a certain degree, a lost art? Did not ye house-wives of ye olden time know many ways of serving an excellent dinner, which are wholly unknown to the ladies of the present day? The authors of this book are doing the world a great service in helping on the work of restoration and advance in this most ancient and useful of all arts.

M. M. Bovard.

General Direction. - In cooking, as in poetry, architecture and the other fine arts, preserve the unities. A skillful cook may produce a composition, such as a mine.

pie, which the puzzled eater will regard with mingled wonder and delight. But though the cook should not wholly neglect this composite art, for every day comfort cultivate simplicity and directness. Do not let your bread be a puzzle, nor your coffee. If you are asked for a potato, do not cook it in such a manner that the eater will think you did not rightly hear what was asked for. Many eat raw tomatoes or baked potatoes, because that is the only way in which they can get the natural flavor. But a tomato may be cooked so that it will have as distinct and decided a tomato flavor as the raw tomato itself has. So, an apple may be cooked to taste as an apple, a peach to taste as a peach, a turnip as a turnip, and a potato to taste as a potato. Beware of messes. Do not let a stewed chicken remind the eater of boiled pork. Say to your chicken, your coffee, your beefsteak or your potato, as you prepare it for the table, "be yourself, be natural."

E - R.