It must not be forgotten that this simplicity which is so commended can only be obtained by the most studied, artful care. As Gray's Elegy reads as the most consummately easy and plain poetry in the world, so that we feel that we have but to sit down at the writing-desk and indite one exactly like it, we learn in giving a little, simple, perfect dinner that its combinations must be faultless. Gray wrote every verse of his immortal poem over many times. The hostess who learns enough art to conceal art in her simple dinner has achieved that perfection in her art which Gray reached. Perfect and simple cookery are, like perfect beauty, very rare.
However, if the art of entertaining makes hostesses, hostesses must make the art of entertaining. It is for them to decide the juste milieu between the not enough and the great too much.
BREAKFAST.
Before breakfast a man feels but queasily,
And a sinking at the lower abdomen
Begins the day with indifferent omen.
Browning.—The Flight of the Duchess.
And then to breakfast with what appetite you have.
Shakspeare.
Breakfast is a hard thing to manage in America, particularly in a country-house, as people have different ideas about eating a hearty meal at nine o'clock or earlier. All who have lived much in Europe are apt to prefer the Continental fashion of a cup of tea or coffee in one's room, with perhaps an egg and a roll; then to do one's work or pleasure, as the case may be, and to take the déjeûner à la fourchette at eleven or twelve. To most brain-workers this is a blessed boon, for the heavy American breakfast of chops, steaks, eggs, forcemeat balls, sausages, broiled chicken, stewed potatoes, baked beans, and hot cakes, good as it is, is apt to render a person stupid.