We have not time to enter into the discussion of the problem why the laboring classes have taken upon trust the dogma that potatoes and cabbage are especially adapted to their wants, and may be drawn upon for daily strength for daily needs. While more nutritious than the turnip, which carries a weight of ninety-two per cent. of water into the human stomach, it has little to boast of in the way of food for blood, brain, brawn, or bone. Out of one hundred parts of constituent matter eighty-nine parts of cabbage are water; one and a fifth part albuminoids; five and an eighth sugar, starch, and gum; next to nothing fat; two parts cellulose; one and one half part minerals. The cousins-germ an of English-born cabbage - cauliflower and broccoli - are somewhat richer in nutriment-values than itself.

Whether or not it is worth the time and strength of a rational being to distend his stomach with so much to get so little is a question the cabbage-loving reader must decide for himself.

Boiled Cabbage

Quarter a firm cabbage, take off the outer leaves, and cut out the stalk. Wash thoroughly, keeping a sharp lookout for insects, and put into a pot of boiling water in which have been dissolved two teaspoonfuls of salt and a bit of carbonate of soda as large as a filbert. Cook the cabbage fifteen minutes after the boil begins again; turn off the water and fill up with fresh from the boiling tea-kettle ; drop in a teaspoonful of salt and cook ten minutes longer. Turn into a colander, drain off all the water, pressing until no more runs out. Chop the cabbage in a chop-ping-tray, quickly; stir in butter, salt, and pepper; return to the fire in a saucepan and stir until it is smoking hot, and dish. Send around vinegar with it for those who like it.

Creamed Cabbage

Cook as directed in last recipe, chop and turn into a saucepan, and mix with it a sauce made of one tablespoonful of flour stirred into one of hot butter until it bubbles, then thinned with four tablespoonfuls of hot milk and seasoned with salt and pepper. Cook one minute and dish.

Scalloped Cabbage

Cut a small cabbage into quarters, and boil tender in hot, salted water. When perfectly cold chop and season with pepper and a little butter. Beat up a raw egg and stir it in. Moisten well with liquor from the beef-pot. Turn the mixture into a greased bake-dish, and cover with fine bread-crumbs. Wet these with pot-liquor and bake, covered, half an hour, then brown. The time required to transform the homely farm fare of corned beef and cabbage into a dinner to which no man need be ashamed to invite his most honored guest will not transcend the season usually given to cooking the plainer dish by forty-five minutes. Perhaps half an hour would suffice.