Various

“ Our physical natures and our food are not so ignoble as some would have us think. We need only look at the thousand allusions to food in classic writings to realize that it is our attitude toward an object, not the thing itself, which makes it common and unclean.
Does it not seem strange that the art of cookery, which first distinguished man from beasts, has been so underrated and neglected? ”

“ He stands among the foremost of living novelists, and yet he is willing to spend a great deal of his valuable time to assist a writer just beginning to climb the tiresome ladder. This pure and undefiled religion of being willing to help a fellow-toiler is far more common than cynics will allow. It prevails among engineers, factory hands, and miners. With the exception of a few cads, it is doubtful if authors have sunk so low in the scale of humanity as to be unwilling to assist each other, when by so doing they will help themselves. ”

“ There will, of course, be strong opposition on the part of publishers to the formation of any protective authors' association, which would insist that the writer know the exact facts in those cases in which he is to be a partner in the share of the profits from his own work. If only a few authors joined the movement, publishers would undoubtedly combine to boycott them; but here, as in England, safety will be found in numbers. There is not a railroad in the United States that dares select any special engineer and treat him unjustly. ”

“ We are not all interested in the success of either political party, nor are we all thirsty for items of society gossip, nor are the details of every murder or railroad accident more important than our daily bread. ”

“ To cookery we owe well-ordered states,
Assembling men in dear society."
Surely no one better than a newspaper reporter, who must snatch a bite here and there of whatever is at hand, can appreciate the force of the words of an old physician: "The faculty the stomach has of communicating the impressions made by the various substances that are put into it is such that it seems more like a nervous expansion of the brain, than a mere receptacle for food." ”

“ Though not always competent to do special newspaper cookery in the best way, she may help mould public opinion in the right way on the great questions of temperance, domestic economy, coöperative housekeeping, and, above all, help to change the prevailing belief that work with the hands is degrading.
The great social questions of the day are largely dependent upon the food supply. Show the working men and women how to obtain attractive, palatable, and nourishing food at less cost than that which is unsatisfying, and their wages will really be doubled. ”

“ Hale's rules for writing are evidently those which have always governed his own literary work; and while others may not be able to follow them with equal success, they are worth remembering by every writer. ”

“ Therefore, the individual who contemplates becoming an author must be a law unto himself. If he finds his truest expression, his greatest delight in literary work, let him [Pg 75] persevere, all the world to the contrary notwithstanding. ”

“ T. De Witt Talmage has said: "The kitchen is the most important end of the household. If that goes wrong, the whole establishment is wrong. It decides the health of the household, and health settles almost everything."
May we all live to see the day when every town shall have a food experiment station, which shall do for the cook and the kitchen what the agricultural stations do for the farmer and farm. The cooking schools are a step in the right direction, but their work should be broadened and put upon a more scientific basis. ”

“ Without a hint concerning the proper method of combining the ingredients, a string of recipes are worthless, and mean as little as a column from the dictionary.
So accustomed has the public vision become to this artificial, improbable, housekeeping that it fails to recognize veritable facts and pronounces them impossible.
Food is a subject which demands the careful consideration of every human being daily, and therefore claims ample space in the newspapers. The wise man of the Old Testament has said: "All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the appetite is not filled." ”

“ It may do us good to know that the English Society of Authors protects writers from dishonest publishers; but why should not our authors form a union of their own and enjoy the same advantages? It has been shown that our literary men have been repeatedly imposed upon; that the publisher in many cases takes all the profits; that his accounts are not open to the verifiable inspection of authors ”

“ Winsor's rank as an historian is so high that whatever he writes is read with respectful attention. Especially regarding the early history of America he is an authority, and probably no one in this country is better fitted than he to write the story of Columbus. The view he takes of the life and character of the admiral in this exhaustive study of his career will surprise those who have looked on Columbus as a hero, with ideas far in advance of the age in which he lived, and with no blemishes upon his reputation. ”

“ While this incident has not altered my liking for newspaper work, it has very materially modified my ideas concerning certain branches of it. From the reporter's desk to the editor's chair is a natural and easy transition; and the outsider, unless he possesses the genius of George Kennan and his companions, must go through this stage of preliminary training. Those of us who have no influence, no startling genius, and a decided dislike to becoming inquisitive nuisances feel that we are overweighted in the journalistic handicap. ”

“ The newspaper's cooking, like its editorials, must not be so narrow and partisan but that it may command the respect of those who do not wholly agree with it.
We must strive to separate the essentials from the non-essentials in our housekeeping; to recognize the various conditions of life among those to whom we are writing.
We do not want to copy the food fashions of any other land in a servile manner; no French, Italian, or English teacher can best instruct us in methods of cooking. ”

“ There is plenty of freemasonry among publishers. Their contracts read very much alike. They resort to the same subterfuges to get the lion's share of the profits. They care nothing for the logic of the situation. What did a grasping palm ever care for logic which told against itself? An American author has just shown by indisputable figures that many of our publishers treat the writers of books as badly as the worst Hebrew sweating shops do their employees. ”

“ Those of one class employ their best effort in dissuading young writers from writing; those of another set forth an author's life in glowing colors. One faction will tell you that half the manuscripts sent to editors are not even accorded the courtesy of an examination unless signed by a well-known name. Another says that editors are keenly on the outlook for original matter, seizing with avidity anything that promises to make a new element in current literature. ”

“ Lately, in conversation with a man who forms one of the great majority of those who gain a moderate competence in business life, his days spent in the wearisome routine of mercantile life, his nights in painful figurings about that delusive "deal" which is to settle satisfactorily all questions of financial perplexity, our talk turned on books, literary celebrities, the chat of the profession of letters. ”

“ But Walt Whitman stood forth, besides, as the representative of a principle which, as yet, is looked upon with suspicion by the old world,—of the principle of a broad, grand, all-embracing democracy, which elevates manhood above all forms, all conditions, and all limitations. ”

“ Of course, he dreaded to have the newspapers turn the light on his record, and he developed many remarkable arguments against such privileges on the part of the press. When more light streams in on certain publishers' methods, authors may then be able to select better men to represent them.
It has been said that the jealousy of authors is such as to keep them from working in harmony; that authors who have won their spurs have a supreme contempt for one who has not; that they omit no opportunity of indulging in sarcasm at his expense ”

“ In these days of specialties, when one man devotes himself to politics, another to finance, or music, or art, it would not seem that a woman, because she is a woman, is therefore fitted to care for the household department of a paper; yet this is usually the first work given into her hands. Probably there are many teachers of cookery who could not write a catchy newspaper article, but it may be questioned whether such writing is desirable upon this subject. ”

“ The power to pique one's interest to the last page belongs to Mr. Harte above all other writers of stories of American life. His latest book has all the good qualities of its predecessors. It tells a perfectly natural story of life in California. The hero is a newspaper man; the other characters are a man who makes a big "strike" in land, and becomes suddenly rich, his two daughters, a newspaper proprietor with an axe to grind and a secret love, a beautiful and rich Boston widow, and a civil engineer. ”

“ Those whose objections rested on their incapacity of penetrating further than the surface of the headline are rapidly beginning to discern in Walt Whitman's writings a force, a sentiment, a moral passion, and a natural grandeur that is amply compensating for the occasional roughness or looseness of the expressions he mirrors them in. ”

“ The temperance question is so closely connected with the food supply that it is astonishing that more attention has not been given to this side of it. We often ascribe the intemperance of the poor man to poor food; but are not the excesses of the rich also due to food, poor because it is too highly seasoned and improperly cooked? ”

“ He can tie up any railroad with a snap of his finger if his men are not treated squarely. In such a literary dreamland an author might do one-third of his present work and get far more pay than now. Publishers and editors would not then have a superfluity of matter. They would then have to bow to the authors' trust before the desired material could be obtained. ”

“ Or is it true that human nature is very much alike everywhere and easily warped to look at things only in the line of its own advantage, wherever that can be done without coming to the knowledge of the world? ”

“ There are undoubtedly many recipes which belong to the whole world, and have been in use for generations, yet some teachers may claim original methods of combining these ingredients. Has a reporter any right to make such ideas appear as her own, without due credit to the authors? Whether this sort of work is done in newspapers, or appears in book form, or whether it is in direct violation of copyright laws or not, it is at least discourteous. Poems are sometimes stolen, but the literature of the kitchen oftener suffers. ”

“ Many a newspaper woman has found a safety-valve in doing her housekeeping with her own hands, the needed reaction after prolonged mental effort, and by the divine law of compensation has thus worked out with her hands something of which the brain alone was not capable. Michelet says that "A man always clears his head by doing something with his hands." ”

“ If a sporting editor is essential, why should not special training be required for the cooking department?
Under present conditions, the best teachers can afford to do little newspaper work; a demonstration requires little more time and effort than the preparation of a newspaper column, and the compensation is double or quadruple, and is promptly paid. ”

“ Some of the advertising agents of patent medicines have been wiser in their generation than the newspaper men, and from the days of Mrs. ——'s Soothing Syrup until now their cook-books have been passports for their medicines into many a home, not that a call for medicine was the natural result of the use of these recipes, but that the name of the medicine became a household word through the use of the cookbook, and hence was the first thought when any panacea was required. ”

“ While I might become a successful reporter, in doing so I fear I should lose that regard for the rights of others, the petty conscience of every-day life, that is conspicuously absent in so many of the men we meet. ”

“ But the genuine merit of Walt Whitman's works, as the true inspiration of individualistic genius is always destined to do, is rapidly conquering the opposition and prejudice even of those whose obtuse minds seldom discover the intrinsic good motive frequently underlying an indifferent form. ”

“ The question where metre comes in in poetry, whether it is simply a means of accentuating rhythm, and is not the rhythm itself, and whether it is legitimate to do as Whitman did, to prolong the rhythmic phrase at the expense of metre, until the sense is completed,—all this was a problem for the professors and the critics to decide, and they might wrangle as they pleased. ”

“ When any one living in this age of the world feels that he has thoughts clamoring for utterance, he seeks advice from some one who has attained success in the profession of literature. In most instances he receives no satisfactory criticism, and is compelled to act on innate conviction of his right to enter the "thorny path" and fight his way up to the top, where, we are told, there is always room. ”

“ Notwithstanding the fact that there has never been a time when literature has been produced so prolifically, a man can only make a moderate competence, and that after years of weary uncertainty and a constant strain on the [Pg 71] waiting nerves, and, even at the end, he gets but a meagre reward: lots of newspaper notoriety and a scanty bank account. ”