2, 3. Of two nurses, who are prime-ministers, one of domestic affairs,
one of private education.
4, 5. Of a cook and table-girl, who are chancellor and foreign
secretary. These four make the cabinet.
6-8. Three older children; these are in the government, but not in the
cabinet.
9 and 10. Lois and I,--who pay the taxes, fight common enemies, and do
what the others tell us as well as we can.
This family, you observe, consists of six grown persons, and three
children old enough to eat, who are equivalent to a seventh. I may say,
in passing, that it therefore consumes just seven barrels of flour a
year.
To feed it, as Lois has just now shown you, cost in the year 1863 nine
hundred and twenty-six dollars and thirty-two cents. That is the way we
chose to live. We could have lived just as happily on half that sum,--we
could have lived just as wretchedly on ten times that sum. But, however
we lived, the proportions of our expense would not have varied much from
what I am now to teach you, dear Hero (if that really be your name).
BUTTER is the biggest expense-item of all. Of our nine hundred and
twenty-six dollars and thirty-two cents, ninety-one dollars and
twenty-six cents went for butter. Remember that your butter is one-tenth
part of the whole.
Next comes flour. Our seven barrels cost us seventy dollars and
eighty-three cents. We bought, besides, six dollars and seventy-six
cents' worth of bread, and six dollars and seventy-one cents' worth of
crackers,--convenient sometimes, dear Hero. So that your wheat-flour and
bread are almost a tenth of the whole.
Next comes beef, in all forms, ninety dollars and seventy-six cents;
there goes another tenth. The other meats are, mutton, forty-seven
dollars and sixty-seven cents; turkeys, chickens, etc., if you call them
meat, sixty-one dollars and fifty-six cents; lamb, seventeen dollars and
fifty-three cents; veal, eleven dollars and fifty-three cents; fresh
pork, one dollar and seventy-three cents. (This must have been for some
guest. Lois and I each had a grandfather named Enoch, and have Jewish
prejudices; also, fresh pork is really the most costly article of diet,
if you count in the doctor's bills. But for ham there is ten dollars and
twenty-two cents. Ham is always available, you know, Hero. For other
salt pork, I recommend you to institute a father or brother, or cousin
attached to you in youth, who shall carry on a model farm in the
country, and kill for you a model corn-fed pig every year, see it salted
with his own eyes, and send to you a half-barrel of the pork for a _gage
d'amour_. It is a much more sentimental present than rosebuds, dearest
Hero,--and it lasts longer. That is the way we do; and salt pork,
therefore, does not appear on our bills. But against such salt pork I
have no Hebrew prejudice. Try it, Hero, with paper-sliced potatoes fried
for breakfast.) All other forms of meat sum up only two dollars and
twenty-three cents. And now, Hero, I will explain to you the philosophy
of meats. You see they cost you a quarter part of what you spend.
Know, then, my dear child, that the real business of the three meals a
day,--of the neat luncheon you serve on your wedding-silver for Mrs.
Dubbadoe and her pretty daughter, when they drive in from Milton to see
you,--of the ice-cream you ate last night at the summer party which the
Bellinghams gave the Pinckneys,--of the hard-tack and boiled dog which
dear John is now digesting in front of Petersburg,--the real business, I
say, is to supply the human frame with carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and
nitrogen in organized forms. It must be in organized matter. You might
pound your wedding-diamonds for carbon, you might give water from Jordan
for oxygen and hydrogen, and the snow-flakes of the Jungfrau might serve
the nitrogen for Leander's dinners, but, because these are not
organized, Leander's cheek would pale, and his teeth shake in their
sockets, and his muscles dwindle to packthreads, as William Augustus's
do in the Slovenly-Peter books, and he would die before your eyes, Hero!
Yes, he would die! Do not, in your love of him, therefore, feed him on
your diamonds. Give him organized matter. Now, in doing this, you have
been wise in spending even a tenth of your substance on wheat. For wheat
is almost pure food; and wheat contains all you want,--more carbon than
your diamonds, more oxygen and hydrogen than your tears, more nitrogen
than the snow-flake,--but not nitrogen enough, dear Hero.
"More nitrogen!" gasps Leander, "more nitrogen, my charmer, or I die!"
This is the real meaning of the words, when he says, "Let us have
roast-beef for dinner," or when he asks you to pass him the butter.
Although beef, then, has little more than a quarter as much food in it
as wheat has, you must have some beef, or something like it, because
Leander, and you too, my rosy-cheek, must have nitrogen as well as
carbon.
I beg you not to throw the "Atlantic" away at this point, my child. Do
not say that Mr. Carter is an old fool, and that you never meant to live
on vegetables. A great many people have meant to, and have never known
what was the matter with them, when the real deficiency was nitrogen.
Besides, child, though wheat is the best single feeder of all, as I have
told you, because in its gluten it has so much nitrogen, this is to be
said of all vegetables, that, so far as we live on them, we exist
slowly; to a certain extent we have to ruminate as the cows do, and not
as men and women should ruminate, and all animal or functional life goes
more slowly on. Now, Hero, you and Leander both have to lead a rapid
life. Most people do in the autumn of 1864. So give him meat, dear Hero,
as above.
As for my being an old fool, my dear, I have said I am one hundred and
nine, which is older than old Mr. Waldo was, older than everybody except
old Parr. And after forty, everybody is a fool--or a physician.
Let us return, then, to our mutton,--always a good thing to return to,
especially if the plates are hot, as yours, Hero, always will be. For
mutton, besides such water as you can dry out of it, contains
twenty-nine per cent. of food,--for meat, a high percentage.
Let us see where we are.
Our butter costs us one-tenth.
Our flour and wheat-bread cost us almost one-tenth.
Our beef costs us one-tenth.
Our other meats cost us a tenth and a half of what we spend for eating
and drinking.
"Where in the world does the rest go, Mr. Carter? Here is not half. But
I could certainly live very well on these things."
Angel, you could. But if you lived wholly on these, you would want more
of them. You see we have said nothing of coffee and tea,--the princes or
princesses of food,--without which civilized man cannot renew his
brains. In such years as these, Hero, when our brave soldiers must have
coffee or we can have no victories, coffee costs me and Lois fifty
dollars,--cheap at that,--for, without it, did we drink dandelion like
the cows, or chiccory like the asses, how were these brains renewed?
"Tea and coffee are the same thing," says Liebig; at least, he says that
_Theine_, the base of tea, and _Caffeine_, the base of coffee, are the
same. What I know is, that, when coffee costs fifty dollars a year, tea
costs thirty dollars and eighty-nine cents.
For tea and coffee, Hero, allow about another tenth,--the cocoa and
cream will bring it up to that.
Our sugar cost us fifty-four dollars and twenty-two cents; our milk
fifty dollars and sixty-two; our cream ten dollars seventy-seven.
"Buy your cream separate," says Hero, "if you have as good a milkman as
Mr. Whittemore."
You have not as many babies as we, Hero. When you have, you will not
grudge the milk or the sugar. Lots of nourishment in sugar! Sugar and
milk are another tenth.
I do not know if you are a Catholic, Hero; but I guess your kitchen is;
and so I am pretty sure that you will eat fish Fridays. I know you are a
person of sense, so I know you will often delight Leander, as he rises
from the day's swim which, for your sake, Hero, he takes across the cold
Hellespont of life,--(all men are Leanders, and all women should be
their Heros, holding high love-torches for them,)--as he rises, I say,
with "a sound of wateriness," I know you will often delight him with
oysters, scalloped, fried, or plain, as _entremets_ to flank his
dinner-table. For fish count two per cent., for oysters two more, for
eggs three or four, and for that stupid compound of starch which some
men call "indispensable," and all men call "potato," count three or four
more. My advice is, that, when potatoes are dear, you skip them.
Rice-_croquets_ are better and cheaper. There goes another tenth.
Tea and coffee, etc., one-tenth.
Sugar and milk, one-tenth.
Fish, eggs, potatoes, etc., one-tenth.
Thus is it, Hero, that three-quarters of what you eat will be spent for
your bread and butter, your meat, fish, eggs, and potatoes, your coffee,
tea, milk, and sugar,--for twenty-one articles on a list of one hundred
and seven. Fresh vegetables, besides those named, will take one-fifth of
what is left: say five per cent. of the whole expense. The doctor will
order porter or wine, when your back aches, or when Leander looks thin.
Have nothing to do with them till he does order them, but reserve
another five per cent. for them. The rest, Hero, it is mace, it is
yeast, it is vinegar, pepper, and mustard, it is sardines, it is
lobster, it is the unconsidered world of trifles which make up the
visible difference between the table of high civilization and that of
the Abyssinian or the Blackfoot Indian. Let us hope it is not much
cream-of-tartar or saleratus. It is grits and grapes, it is lard and
lemons, it is maple-sugar and melons, it is nuts and nutmeg, or any
other alliteration that you fancy.
Now, pretty one, I can see you smile, and I can hear you say,--"Dear old
Mr. Carter, I am very much obliged to you. I begin to see my way a
little more clearly." Of course you do, child. You begin to see that the
most desperate economy in lemons will not make you and Leander rich, but
that you must make up your mind at the start about beef and about
butter. Hear, then, my parting whisper.
Disregard the traditions of economy. What is cheap to-day is dear
to-morrow. Do not make a bill-of-fare, and, because everything on it
tastes very badly, think it is cheap. Salt codfish is cheap sometimes,
and sometimes very dear. Venison is often an extravagance; but, of a
winter when the sleighing is good, and when the hunters have not gone
South, it is the cheapest food for you. Eggs are dear, if they tempt you
to cakes that you do not like. But no eggs can be sent to our brave
army, so, if you do choose to make a bargain with your Aunt Eunice at
Naugatuck Neck to send you four dozen by express once a week, they will
be, perhaps, the cheapest food you can buy. What you want, my child, is
variety. However cheaply you live, secure four things: First, a change
of fare from day to day, so as to have a good appetite; Second,
simplicity, each day, in the table, so as to lose but little in chips;
Third, fitness of things there, as hot plates for your mutton and cold
ones for your butter, so that what you have may be of the best; and,
first, second, third, and last, love between you and Leander. This last
sauce, says Solomon, answers even for herbs. And you know the Emperors
Augustus and Nebuchadnezzar both had to live on herbs,--I am afraid,
because love had been wanting in both cases. If you have a stalled ox,
you will need the same sauces,--much more, unless it is better dressed
than the only one I ever saw, which was at Warwick, when Cheron and I
were going to Stratford-on-Avon. It was not attractive. You will need
three of these four things, if you are rich. Rich or poor, buy in as
large quantities as you can. Rich or poor, pay cash. Rich or poor, do
not try to do without carbon or nitrogen. Rich or poor, vary steadily
the bills-of-fare. Now the minimum of what you can support life upon, at
this moment, is easily told. Jeff Davis makes the calculation for you.
It is quarter of a pound of salt pork a day, with four Graham hard-tack.
That is what each of his soldiers is eating; and though they are not
stout, they are wiry fellows, and fight well. The maximum you can find
by lodging at the Brevoort, at New York,--where, when I last went to the
front, I stopped an hour on the way, and, though I had no meals, paid
two dollars and eighty cents for washing my face in another man's
bedroom. A year of Jeff Davis's diet would cost you and Leander, if you
bought in large quantities, sixty dollars. A year at Rye Beach just now
would cost you two or three thousand dollars. Choose your dinner from
either bill; vary it, by all the gradations between. But remember,
child, as you would cheer Leander after his swim, and keep within your
allowance, remember that what was dear yesterday may be cheap
to-day,--remember to vary the repast, therefore, from Monday round to
Saturday; eschew the corner-shop, and buy as large stores as Leander
will let you; and always keep near at hand an unexhausted supply of
Solomon's condiment.