All duties are reciprocal: and if you hope to receive favour, endeavour to deserve it by showing yourself fond of obliging, and grateful when obliged; such behaviour will win regard, and maintain it: enforce what is right, and excuse what is wrong.
Quiet, steady perseverance is the only spring which you can safely depend upon for infallibly promoting your progress on the road to independence.
If your employers do not immediately appear to be sensible of your endeavours to contribute your utmost to their comfort and interest, be not easily discouraged. Persevere, and do all in your power to MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL.
Endeavour to promote the comfort of every individual in the family; let it be manifest that you are desirous to do rather more than is required of you, than less than your duty: they merit little who perform merely what would be exacted. If you are desired to help in any business which may not strictly belong to your department, undertake it cheerfully, patiently, and conscientiously.
The foregoing advice has been written with an honest desire to augment the comfort of those in the kitchen, who will soon find that the ever-cheering reflection of having done their duty to the utmost of their ability, is in itself, with a Christian spirit, a never-failing source of comfort in all circumstances and situations, and that
“VIRTUE IS ITS OWN REWARD.”
[46-*] A chapter of advice to cooks will, we hope, be found as useful as it is original: all we have on this subject in the works of our predecessors, is the following; “I shall strongly recommend to all cooks of either sex, to keep their stomachs free from strong liquors till after dinner, and their noses from snuff.”—Vide Clermont’s Professed Cook, p. 30, 8vo. London, 1776.
[50-*] Meat that is not to be cut till it is cold, must be thoroughly done, especially in summer.
[51-*] See chapter XV. “Chaque Pays, chaque Coutume.”—Cours Gastronomique, 8vo. 1809, p. 162.
[52-*] Cook to Sir Joseph Banks, Bart., late president of the Royal Society.