of you," put in Vincent. "Adelaide has no continuity of purpose, and you, Pete, are wretchedly kind-hearted; but Mathilde would go into it to the death."

"Oh, I don't know what you mean, Mr. Farron," exclaimed Mathilde, tremendously flattered, and hoping he would go on. "I don't like to fight."

"A former beauty thinks she can put anything over, and in a way she can. I feel rather friendly toward her."

The Farrons had decided while they were dressing that after dinner they would retire to Vincent's study and give the lovers a few minutes to themselves.

Left alone, Pete and Mathilde stood

Mathilde, dropping her eyes, saw Pete's hand lying on the table. It was stubby, and she loved it the better for being so; it was firm and boyish and exactly like Pete. Looking up, she caught her mother's eye, and they both remembered. For an instant indecision flickered in Adelaide's look, but she lacked the complete courage to add that to the list-to tell any human being that she had said his hands were stubby; and so her eyes fell before her daughter's.

As dinner went on the adjustment between the four became more nearly perfect; the gaiety, directed by Adelaide, lost all sting. But even as she talked to Pete she was only dimly aware of his existence. Her audience was her husband. She was playing for his praise and admiration, and before soup was over she knew she had it; she knew better than words could tell her that he thought her the most desirable woman in the world. Fortified by that knowledge, the pacification of a cross boy seemed to Adelaide an inconsiderable task.

By the time they rose from table it was accomplished. As they went into the drawing-room Adelaide was thinking that young men were really rather geese, but, then, one would n't have them different if one could.

Vincent was thinking how completely attaching a nature like hers would always be to him, since when she yielded her will to his she did it with such complete generosity.

Mathilde was saying to herself:

"Of course I knew Pete's charm would win mama at last, but even I did not suppose he could do it the very first evening." And Pete was thinking:

at the room which only a few weeks before had witnessed their first prolonged talk.

"I never saw your mother look a quarter as beautiful as she does this evening," said Wayne.

"Is n't she marvelous, the way she can. make up for everything when she wants?" Mathilde answered with enthusiasm.

Pete shook his head.

"She can never make up for one thing." "O Pete!"

"She can never give me back my first instinctive, egotistical, divine conviction that there was every reason why you should love me. I shall always hear her voice saying, 'But why should Mathilde love you?' And I shall never know a good answer."

"What," cried Mathilde, "don't you know the answer to that! I do. Mama does n't, of course. Mama loves people for reasons outside themselves: she loves me because I'm her child, and grandpapa because he 's her father, and Mr. Farron because she thinks he 's strong. If she did n't think him strong, I'm not sure she 'd love him. But I love you for being just as you are, because you are my choice. Whatever you do or say, that can't be changed—”

The door opened, and Pringle entered with a tray in his hand, and his eyes began darting about in search of empty coffee-cups. Mathilde and Pete were aware of a common feeling of guilt, not that they were concealing the cups, though there was something of that accusation in Pringle's expression, but because the pause between them was so obvious. So Mathilde said suddenly:

"Pringle, Mr. Wayne and I are engaged to be married."

"Indeed, Miss?" said Pringle, with a smile; and so seldom was this phenomenon seen to take place that Wayne noted for the first time that Pringle's teeth were false. "I'm delighted to hear it; and you, too, sir. This is a bad world to go through alone."

always wondering how it is going to turn out, and hoping the other party won't know that they 're wondering. But when you get old, and you look back on all the mistakes and the disadvantages and the sacrifices, you'll find that you won't be able to imagine that you could have gone

The cups, revealing themselves one by one, were secured as Pringle answered:

"In my class of life, sir, we don't give much time to considering what we approve of and disapprove of. But young people are all alike when they 're first engaged,

When he was gone, Pete and Mathilde turned and kissed each other.

"When we get old-" they murmured. They really believed that it could never happen to them.

WHEN Sydney Smith said that it

takes a surgical operation to get a joke into a Scotchman's head, he indulged in humorous exaggeration; but it is literally true that it took a world war to arouse the American public to the importance of the food question. This, to be sure, is not a joke, yet it has its comic side, for surely it is as amusing as it is consoling to find that the things demanded of us by the national food administration (that we should eat less butcher's meat, less white bread, less white sugar, and more of our abundant and cheap fruits and vegetables, with their precious mineral salts and vitamines, which we need for health and efficiency) are precisely the things that Dr. Wiley, Prof. Allyn, Dr. Kellogg, Alfred W. McCann, and others have been urging us for years to do.

Little attention was paid by the public at large to their pleas, for it is the hardest thing in the world to make people change their eating habits. But now what a change! Goaded by the Government and the newspapers, our whole country is fast becoming, like Europe, a vast laboratory in which experiments are being made that will "help win the war" and will have an effect on our daily bread long after it is over, and probably for all time. At least let us hope so.

One of the most instructive war-diet experiments recorded in Europe was made in England. It proved a failure, but is on that account all the more valuable, as it will keep us from making the same mistake. It was an attempt to regulate the number of courses in public eating-rooms, in accordance with the "Runciman Order," which allowed only two courses for lunch and three for dinner. After four months the order was revoked because it

was found that it had not lessened, as it was hoped it would, the consumption of butcher's meats or of bread and other staples; but had actually increased it, while diverse luxuries like grouse, salmon, and turtle, which wealthy diners would otherwise have preferred to these muchneeded staples, were left to spoil.

WHY LOBSTER PALACES NEED NOT

BE CLOSED

To prosperous American lovers of good cheer this episode is gratifying, because it assures them that they need not feel disloyal in frequenting lobster palaces as usual, and ordering trout, terrapin, venison, squabs, wild duck, capons, French artichokes, alligator pears, Casaba melons, and other costly delicacies, provided these are not hothouse products that involve a waste of coal.

Not the rich alone, however, but those who have to count their dimes and nickels, may in war time continue to enjoy the pleasures of the table if they will go about it in the right way. Indeed, my object in writing this article is to show that it is not only possible, but easy, for us to meet present conditions in such fashion that our table pleasures will actually be multiplied and intensified by them.

Please do not make the colossal blunder of thinking that this multiplying and intensifying of food enjoyment is a matter of slight importance or puritanically reprehensible. It is as clear as daylight that the orders of our food administration are much more likely to be obeyed if people. realize that they are not expected to give up all the things they like to eat to act as if everybody were sick and dieting. It is all very well to appeal to patriotism, but, as George Washington, who knew

WITHOUT

So far as meat is concerned, the simplest way to solve the war problem would be for us all to turn vegetarians. Dietetists without exception seem to agree that we eat too much meat. Why eat any at all? Because meat furnishes the maximum of nourishment in the minimum of bulk. Because meats are more digestible than most vegetables. Because a meatless diet is monotonous. Because recent discoveries by chemists regarding amino acids have shown the inadequacy of an all-vegetable diet. Above all, because the elimination of meats would deprive us of a multitude of delicious flavors which are of enormous importance to us as aids to digestion. Flavor is the pleasure-giving element in food, and unless we enjoy a meal, it is likely to disagree with us. Everybody knows how the appetizing fragrance and flavor of food makes the mouth water. The Russian physiologist, Professor Pavlov, proved by experiments that the same. fragrant flavors promote also the free flow of digestive juices in the stomach and intestines.

It is therefore not only our privilege, but our dietetic duty, to enjoy our meals. Unless we do, we lose some of the health and efficiency we need to win the war. To be absent-minded, to allow worry or business thoughts to distract one's thoughts from the food one is eating, is a slow, but sure, way to reduce one's efficiency. Eat with the mind as well as with the mouth. In other words, focus one's full attention on the flavor of one's food, chewing it very slowly in order to prolong the pleasure of eating.

This is Fletcherism, and our compatriot, Horace Fletcher, though a layman, "has almost revolutionized the science

of

dietetics," as the new Encyclopædia Britannica, in the article on dyspepsia, admits. He might have revolutionized it entirely had he not failed to show his devotees the best way to concentrate and enjoy, because he completely ignored the extremely important coöperation of the sense of smell. This underrated sense provides nine tenths of the pleasures of eating, not by the breathing in of the fragrance of foods, but by breathing out through the nose very slowly while we are munching our viands, a procedure which, provided, of course, the food is of good quality and properly cooked, liberates a whole flower garden of delicious flavors, voluptuous, appetizing, and therefore digestive.

This method, which epicures practise instinctively, creates a glow that warms the whole body, producing an exhilaration as agreeable as alcoholic intoxication, but without any of its evil consequences; quite the contrary. Try it, and save the money you now waste on liquors, on doctors, who are needed abroad, anyway, or on soda mints, aromatic spirits of ammonia, and that sort of camouflage for your dietary indiscretions and your ignoring of the fact that eating is a fine art.

Now that we seem to be on the brink of national prohibition, the substitution of the enjoyment of intensified food flavors for alcoholic stimulants is surely worth trying. It will add ten years to one's life.

EXTENDING THE FLAVOR OF MEAT

Bearing these elucidations in mind, we may now add a sixth reason to the five just given why even in war-time we should not give up meat entirely. It is that the natural flavors of meats are the strongest of all physiological stimulants of the digestive juices. Fortunately, the food administration does not ask us to give them up. We are simply urged to go slow on butcher's meats. Even on "meatless" days we may eat all the poultry or game we desire, or any of the multitudinous varieties of fish which abound in our waters and which can be multiplied indef

initely in a short time by stocking our countless lakes, as some European and Oriental nations have been stocking theirs for generations.

We are living in the greatest foodproducing country in the world. Our meat and animal products alone exceeded in 1916 twenty billions of pounds. But even if the war should last several years longer and meat prices should soar beyond the reach of the average man, he need not despair, for he can still enjoy the flavors and the digestive advantages of meats if he only knows how. The lesson is very simple. The proteins, or tissuebuilders, to which meats chiefly owe their nutritional value, are also found, sometimes in even greater proportion, not only in eggs and cheese, but in such cheap foods as dried beans, peas, and lentils. These have agreeable flavors of their own, and therefore suggest one of the poor man's ways of insuring desirable war-time pleasures of the table. Yet he need not by any means go without the intoxicating meat flavors. While he may not be able to enjoy a broiled steak or a roast leg of lamb, he may have on his table dishes flavored with the cheaper cuts of meat, which, if properly cooked, compare favorably with those made of the costliest cuts.

Years before the war began to boost prices Dr. Wiley made the startling prediction that in the future "meats will be used more as condimental substances than as staple foods." The war has brought that "future" to the door. Let us profit by it and regale our palates by extending the flavor of meat-a small piece of a cheap cut will do-to diverse vegetable or cereal dishes. We have long done this in the case, for instance, of pork and beans, where a moderate chunk of fat meat gives zest to a whole pot of legumes.

In few American families has sufficient attention been paid to the important. culinary maxim that cuts of tough meats, when steamed in a casserole, or earthenware pot, in their own juices, with vegetables, yield a rich flavor quite as delicious as the most expensive cuts, which are preferable only for broiling or roast

ing. Directions for developing appetizing flavors in the cheaper cuts of meat are given in the Farmers' Bulletin entitled, "Economical Use of Meat in the Home," which can be obtained by mailing five cents (not in stamps) to the Superintendent of Documents in Washington. It tells how to extract gelatin, fat, and digestive flavor from bones in soups and stews; gives receipts for meat pies, dumplings, borders of rice, hominy, mashed potatoes, hash, macaroni with chopped meat, salads, and many other ways of extending the appetizing and digestive flavors of meat to other and cheaper foods.

EAT BUTTER AND CHEESE ALL YOU

PLEASE

There is one article of food which nearly everybody craves and relishes quite as much as the flavor of meat—a food we owe to the adorable cow. When my book on "Food and Flavor" appeared, a Boston reviewer declared that I was a fanatic on the subject of butter. A fanatic I was, and a fanatic I am more than ever, because of the recent discovery that the mysterious chemical substances known as vitamines, which are essential to our normal health and bodily and mental growth, exist in greater concentration in butter than in anything else we eat. Most of us seem to have known this instinctively, which accounts for the general desire to have butter on our bread.

If the national food administrators had put a ban on butter, our war-time pleasures of the table would indeed have been seriously curtailed. But although the demand in Europe for our butter is so great that our exports increased from four and a half million pounds a year before the war to nearly twenty-seven million pounds. in the last fiscal year, Mr. Hoover and his staff had not the heart to forbid us this seeming luxury, yet real necessity, of life. All they have asked is that we should not use it for cooking. There are plenty of vegetable oils and fats to take its place. As we are already consuming nearly 150,000,000 pounds of such substitutes every year voluntarily, this is surely not an un