Cooking is a polite art. So is music, so are painting, architecture and drawing. The French excel in the art of cooking, and Paris is the Mecca of the bon vivant. A refined little dinner for six, served as the Parisian knows how to serve it, is a revelation, and is sure to bring out the better points of those who participate. Probably you will be served with several raw oysters, and following them a glass of white Burgundy. This gives a little zest for the soup. A few tablespoonfuls of this are followed by a glass of sound sherry. Now will come the fish, with a sauce such as only a well-educated chef knows how to concoct. A glass of white wine will help the flavor of the fish. Now will come the meat As a gustatory morsel nothing will complete the triumph more thoroughly than a truffled fowl. Champagne of a proper vintage may accompany it, and both wit and wisdom will come forth with moderate indulgence. One or two well-selected tender vegetables will add enjoyment to the course. Now a dainty salad with a modicum of ripe cheese will be a nice addition. A sweet and a demi-tasse will complete the satisfying and artistic sitting.

This is only a pleasant diversion. Now let us return to cooking as an art. Soups are the result of boiling different meats, fish, milk, and vegetables. The good housewife keeps her stock-kettle always active, and here has a basis for many of the best-flavored and nutritious soups. Meats are roasted, baked, fried, broiled, boiled, and stewed. Roasting, as a rule, should be done with a quick, sharp heat, so the outside.surface will quickly harden and retain the nutritious juices. Baking and frying should also be done under like conditions, and so should broiling. In boiling meats they should not be plunged at once into hot water. The result will be to toughen the fibres. Put the meat into cold water, over a sharp fire, and then boil it rapidly. Stewing of meats should be done slowly, to bring out and retain the flavors of the meats and vegetables of the combination. Fish, Sir Henry Thompson says, as a rule, should be baked. This will depend a great deal on the variety of the fish. Many fish in baking will become tough and hard. A perch or a smelt or a freshwater bass should be fried. A rock, more properly called a striped bass, or a salmon, or a cod, should be boiled to bring out the flavor, assisted, when served, by a proper sauce. To my own taste the best boiled fish is the shad. Retain the roe or the milt The milt shad is to be preferred. We get here its highest flavor and a dish for the gods. Broiling the shad is the most popular way of cooking it, but for a piece de resistance, outside of boiling, give us a planked shad, fresh from the water. Fry it never. The most indigestible of foods are probably fried foods. They are loaded, as a rule, with too much fat, both from themselves and from the vehicle used in frying. Vegetables are boiled, baked, fried, stewed, etc. Many of those containing much water are better baked, - as the potato, for example.

The foregoing statements are merely given as examples and a further discussion of methods will be out of place in a work of this character. As Dr. Atwater suggests, the cooking of food has much to do with its nutritive value. Many raw things must be cooked in some way to bring out their nutritive value. Bad cooking is an abomination and the cause of much suffering.