"A meal - what is it? Just enough of food to renovate and well refresh the frame, so that, with spirits lightened and with strength renewed, we turn with willingness to work again."

In the chapter on Hospitality, reference is made to what may be called, for want of a better term, menus of inheritance, but in these later days frequent mention is made of a "well-balanced menu," and a word on this subject may not be amiss. The remark is common that the importance of diet to health is just now beginning to receive attention, but this is not strictly true. The old philosophers wrote on this subject and understood its import, but the condition of the times did not lead them to treat the matter after the scientific spirit of these later days. Whatever of accurate knowledge we possess of this and kindred subjects is due primarily to the investigations of the Germans. The German Government, by generous expenditure of money, made it possible for some of the brightest minds in the land to devote themselves to the task, and the universities provided a place for carrying out the necessary experiments. Then our own Government took up the matter, and, for the past fifteen years, Professor Atwater and his colleagues have been working along similar lines of effort and in the same scientific spirit. But neither the old philosophers, the scientific Germans, nor our own countrymen have ever been able to formulate a dietary that can be said to be "constant." For feeding is an individual matter; and while dietaries worked out in the laboratory are helpful in a general way, each housekeeper must of necessity work out these problems independently, since the needs of no two families, of no two individuals, even, in the same family, are exactly alike. Indeed, the proper dietary for one individual is a "variable equation," for each day he is a day older.

And, besides, the individual housekeeper has neither the kind of training, the proper appliances, nor the requisite time to enter into investigation. Availing herself, however, of the figures and deductions of trained scientists, she may formulate dietaries for her family that shall, in the quantity and relative proportion of the different food principles, approximate very nearly to what may be called the standard or laboratory requirements. The desire to do this, seconded by an attempt, is a long step in the right direction. In studying formulas that have been worked out in the laboratory for different classes and ages of individuals, we need keep in mind two things: (1st) that these dietaries do not take into consideration personal idiosyncrasies of digestion, assimilation, and excretion; (2nd) that the food value of the same nutrients varies, and that its conservation depends in large measure upon the skill of the cook.