Your case is
dreadful, and it is hopeless, because long usage and habit have rendered
your host perfectly incapable of discovering what is the matter. "Don't
like the butter, sir? I assure you I paid an extra price for it, and
it's the very best in the market. I looked over as many as a hundred
tubs, and picked out this one." You are dumb, but not less despairing.
Yet the process of making good butter is a very simple one. To keep
the cream in a perfectly pure, cool atmosphere, to churn while it is
yet sweet, to work out the buttermilk thoroughly, and to add salt with
such discretion as not to ruin the fine, delicate flavor of the fresh
cream--all this is quite simple, so simple that one wonders at thousands
and millions of pounds of butter yearly manufactured which are merely
a hobgoblin bewitchment of cream into foul and loathsome poisons.
The third head of my discourse is that of _Meat_, of which America
furnishes, in the gross material, enough to spread our tables royally,
were it well cared for and served.
The faults in the meat generally furnished to us are, first, that it
is too new. A beef steak, which three or four days of keeping might
render palatable, is served up to us palpitating with freshness, with
all the toughness of animal muscle yet warm.
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