But after a while the romance is all gone, and then there is something
to be prepared for the table that the book called "Cookery Taught in
Twelve Lessons" will not teach. The receipt for making it is not a
handful of this, a cup of that and a spoonful of something else. It is
not something sweetened with ordinary condiments, or flavored with
ordinary flavors, or baked in ordinary ovens. It is the loaf of
domestic happiness; and all the ingredients come down from heaven, and
the fruits are plucked from the tree of life, and it is sweetened with
the new wine of the kingdom, and it is baked in the oven of home
trial. Solomon wrote out of his own experience. He had a wretched
home. A man cannot be happy with two wives, much less six hundred; and
he says, writing out of his own experience: "Better is a dinner of
herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith."