ALEXANDRE DUMAS, père, after writing five hundred novels, says, "Iwish to close my literary career with a book on cooking."And in the hundred pages or so of preface--or perhaps overture would bethe better word, since in it a group of literary men, while contributingrecondite recipes, flourish trumpets in every key--to his huge volume hesays, "I wish to be read by people of the world, and practiced by people of the art" (gens de l'art); and although I wish, like every one who writes, tobe read by all the world, I wish to aid the practice, not of the professors ofthe culinary art, but those whose aspirations point to an enjoyment of thegood things of life, but whose means of attaining them are limited.There is a great deal of talk just now about cooking; in a lesser degree ittakes its place as a popular topic with ceramics, modern antiques, andhousehold art. The fact of it being in a mild way fashionable may do a littlegood to the eating world in general. And it may make it more easy toconvince young women of refined proclivities that the art of cooking is notbeneath their attention, to know that the Queen of England's daughters--and of course the cream of the London fair--have attended the lectures onthe subject delivered at South Kensington, and that a young lady of rank,Sir James Coles's daughter, has been recording angel to the association, isin fact the R. C. C. who edits the "Official Handbook of Cookery.

"But, notwithstanding all that has been done by South Kensington lecturesin London and Miss Corson's Cooking School in New York to popularizethe culinary art, one may go into a dozen houses, and find the ladies of thefamily with sticky fingers, scissors, and gum pot, busily porcelainizing clayjars, and not find one where they are as zealously trying to work out theproblems of the "Official Handbook of Cookery."I have nothing to say against the artistic distractions of the day. Anythingthat will induce love of the beautiful, and remove from us the possibility ofa return to the horrors of hair-cloth and brocatel and crochet tidies.