The recipes of our cookery-books are
most of them of English origin, coming down from the times of our
phlegmatic ancestors, when the solid, burly, beefy growth of the foggy
island required the heat of fiery condiments, and could digest heavy
sweets. Witness the national recipe for plum-pudding: which may be
rendered: Take a pound of every indigestible substance you can think of,
boil into a cannon-ball, and serve in flaming brandy. So of the
Christmas mince-pie, and many other national dishes. But in America,
owing to our brighter skies and more fervid climate, we have developed
an acute, nervous delicacy of temperament far more akin to that of
France than of England.
Half of the recipes in our cook-books are mere murder to such
constitutions and stomachs as we grow here. We require to ponder these
things, and think how we, in our climate and under our circumstances,
ought to live; and in doing so, we may, without accusation of foreign
foppery, take some leaves from many foreign books.
XIV.
EARLY RISING
There is no practice which has been more extensively eulogized in all
ages than early rising; and this universal impression is an indication
that it is founded on true philosophy.
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