Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1886 — Critics on Cooking. [ARTICLE]

Critics on Cooking.

It is one of the strange things about poor human nature that everybody's else occupation is so much easier and pleasanter than one’s bwn. Housekeeping is the most delightful affair in the world to those who have never tried it. They really have hot the least idea how difficult it is to cook or serve a perfect mead with no failures nor’ “hitches” in it. Their backs do not ache, their heads do not throb, their nerves are not in a quiver oyer the awkward mistakes of servants. They cannot understand why the hot tears start in your eyes, or worse yet, the hot words drop from your lips at their careless criticism of bread, or cake, or meat. It may seem hard that after a morning’s toil in a hot kitchen, or af-ter careful and minute directions, there will be some lamentable failure somewhere in the meal which you hoped would please, and that somebody’s eagle eye will pounce upon that one weak point in the whole affair, perhaps the very thing over which you have toiled the most patiently, while all the excellencies of all the rest are forgotten. The spot on the sun in household astronomy usually puts out thu sun entirely. But never mind if it does. Remember that no one means to be unkind. ®

They have a right to expect you to give them good things to eat, and they are disappointed if they do not get them, that is all. Make up your mind what is reasonable for your family to expect of you, do it just as well as you can, and then harden your heart. If jou are selfish and indolent you jriU probably fall short of your duty. If you are conscientious and devoted you will probably do more. The average householder thinks the three meals are the only important thing, and that- your main strength should be given to them. Ton kfiow that the neatness and pleasantness of the house demand something; if there are little children, they demand still more. Keep the due proportion. Waste no time on the unattainable. Do not model your housekeeping or serving on some one else’s whose circumstances are either much beyond or below yours. Then if criticisms or comparisons come, take them kindly. Stop and think before you let them hurt you. “Do I deserve it?" If you do, you need it, and it will do you no harm. If ybu not, let it go. The heavens will not fall if the roast is undergone to-day, or the cake scorched to-morrow, provided it could realty not be helped. Be sure always and do your best, then send no unavailing regrets after it, if it is not a very good “best.”— -Mary Ann Blake, in Good Housekeeping. It has been said-: Nothing can be both a failure and a success. How about the youth who is a success as a dude and a failure as a man ? Kind words are like an oasis to a roan in the troubled desert.