Dear Sir: Though I am not one of your subscribers I am, I believe, one of your most faithful readers. I do not take your magazine, it is true, but I am at present employed in a family some member of which is evidently a subscriber, as the maid brings it out in the waste-paper basket regularly, once a month, when, according to her custom, she permits me to select from the month’s periodicals such journals as seem to me to be worthy of my attention in my leisure hours. I shall not conceal from you the fact that my fancy was first attracted to your publication by the fact that I always found it fresh and clean, with the leaves still uncut, and not soiled, bedraggled and often coverless as are some of the others which suffer more usage before reaching me. But having once cut the leaves with a convenient bread-knife and looked through one of your numbers, I perceived at once that you are, in your way, something of a philosopher, and I have ever been partial to everything that smacked of philosophy. Could you step into my pantry at the present moment you would find upon my shelves Plato and Aristotle as well as the immortal Mrs. Rorer, for I am, in my humble fashion, a philosopher as well as a cook. I do not at all agree with that learned and talented French gentleman who declared that to study philosophy was to learn to die; on the contrary, I hold that to study philosophy is to learn to live, and I see no reason why the study of philosophy is not as fitting an occupation for a cook as for a collegian. Therefore I cook or philosophize according to my inclination, and if it seem to you that I philosophize like a cook, my employer, I am proud to say, will tell you that I cook like a philosopher.
In youth I had the advantage of a grammar school education, and that education I have supplemented with reading and observation. If, as Pope has said,
“The proper study of mankind is man,”
then I have entered the right school for the completion of my education; for the kitchen is, it seems to me, a natural observatory for the study of human nature. Working away at my chosen profession in the seclusion of my kitchen, I can, without ever having laid eyes upon him, give you a complete character of the head of the household. I can not with certainty say whether he is a large or small man, because the appetite is sometimes deceptive in this respect, and I have known a small man to eat as much as would suffice for two stevedores, and I have known an athlete to peck at a meal that would leave a child hungry. It is not, then, by his physical character that I judge him, but by his mental and psychological symptoms. I do not gage him by how much he eats, but by what he eats. I can not tell you whether he is large or small, but I can tell you whether he is voluptuous or esthetic, good-natured or crabbed, rich or poor, wise or foolish.
It is really remarkable the knowledge I come to have of this person whom I have never seen, or it would be if the method by which I reach my conclusions were not so simple. If he keeps fast days and eats only fish upon Fridays, I know, of course, that he is a churchman. If he persistently eats food which is bad for any man’s digestion, I know that he is both irritable and obstinate, for no man can continue to eat what does not agree with him without becoming irritable, and no man will continue such a course in the face of his better judgment unless he is obstinate. If he eats only of rich food and shows a constant preference for taste over nutrition, I know that he is a voluptuary; it is seldom that a man indulges himself in a passion for over-eating who does not indulge himself in other passions as well, and even though his one indulgence be eating, he is none the less a voluptuary by nature. If he eats little and that in an abstracted manner, sometimes overlooking a favorite dish or allowing his soup to grow cold so that it is returned half-eaten, I know that he is absent-minded and eats merely because he has to, not because he loves eating for its own sake. If he insists upon having his toast an exact shade of brown and his coffee at a given degree of temperature, I know that he is exacting and particular as to details; that he thinks well of himself and thinks of himself often.
So, as you see, there are hundreds of these moral symptoms which are as familiar to me as physical symptoms are to a physician. Thus I supplement my theoretical knowledge of philosophy by my observation of life.
When I was casting about me for an occupation I had, being an orphan, a perfectly free choice. Had I followed my first impulse, I think I should have gone to live in a tub like Diogenes, and have resolved to spend my life, like Schopenhauer, in thinking about it. But a little observation soon convinced me that the man who lives in the fashion of Diogenes is not held in high favor in these days and that philosophy, as a profession, would be likely to prove unremunerative. Now I am not one who desires riches or who can not be happy without wealth, but I soon decided that I must be possessed of a certain amount of money in order to indulge my taste for personal cleanliness. I soon gave over the tub of Diogenes, but I was loath to forego all intercourse with the ordinary domestic tub.
Having determined, therefore, to enter upon some profession in which I could make a reasonable amount of money without requiring a great preliminary outlay, I looked about me for a vocation which might supply my physical needs, and at the same time, afford me some mental and spiritual satisfaction. I dismissed the study of the law or medicine as beyond my means, and I did not find myself sufficiently religious to permit me to enter the ministry with a clear conscience. For trade I had your true philosopher’s distaste, and I confess no sort of manual labor, except as cooking may be so described, held any attraction for me. I shuddered at the thought of becoming a barber, chiropodist or hair-dresser, and my pride would not permit me to suffer the rebuffs which fall to the lot of a pedler, book agent or commercial traveler.
It was then that I was struck with my happy inspiration. I would become a member of an old and honorable profession—I would become a cook. If I could not be a philosopher and nourish men’s minds, I would be a cook and nourish their bodies. I would make dishes so delicious and enticing that men upon the brink of suicide would turn back to life with new hope in their hearts. I would impart energy to the weary, peace to the troubled in mind and happiness to the discontented. I would become such a cook as might have won the praise of Lucullus; I would become an artist worthy to take the hand of Epicurus. Such were the extravagant hopes I hugged to my breast when I matriculated at the best cooking-school of my native state. It is true that my achievements have fallen far short of my ambitions, but I have never swerved from my allegiance to my ideal of the Perfect Dinner.
Upon finishing my course at cooking-school, I utilized my savings in indulging myself in a post-graduate course abroad. I went to Paris, and there I made the acquaintance of the immortal Frederick of the Tour d’Argent, he of the famous pressed ducks, and of other masters of the culinary art.