“Company? Thanks for teaching me that word. The kind hospitality of this social little village of Tweenit enables me to be ‘company’ myself very frequently. And I am aware that much time is spent in the preparation of viands to set before me, which, for variety and richness, could not be excelled. Shall I add, that whenever, at the bountifully-spread tea-tables, I have attempted to start a rational conversation, the attempt usually has been a failure? Books, public men, public measures, new ideas, new inventions, new discoveries, what is doing for the elevation of women,—on none of these subjects had my entertainers a word to offer. Their talk was, almost without exception, trivial, not to say gossipy.
“Therefore, as a member of that institution, which, as everybody says, ‘makes a sight of work,’ namely, ‘company,’ I protest. I petition for less variety in food, and more culture. And your petitioner further prays, that some of the spices and good things be left out in cooking, and put into the conversation.”
“But the ‘men-folks’? Ah, to be sure! Perhaps, after all, it is they who need an appeal.”
II.
A WORD TO THE “MEN-FOLKS.”
“WHAT! do without cake entirely?” cries Mr. Livewell in alarm. By no means, sir! Poor human nature craves something sweet. The trouble lies in making palate king. In many families this is done at terrible cost on the part of the woman. I say terrible, because human sacrifice, in whatever shape, is terrible. And when a woman uses herself up in cooking, and, as a consequence, dies, or half-dies, what is that but human sacrifice?
It was a remark made by Mrs. Melendy which first called my attention to this subject. I had been saying something complimentary of her very interesting little family.
“Ah, yes! Mr. McKimber,” she answered, “if I only knew how to bring them up as they ought to be brought up!”
I suggested that children need, more than any thing, a mother’s time and attention.
“But that’s just what they can’t have,” said she; “for, to tell the truth, the three meals take about all day, so I have to turn off the children.”
Mrs. Melendy is the woman whose husband “always wants his piece o’ pie to top off with.”