A certain Englishman who breakfasted with the Washington family in 1794 wrote of the occasion: "Mrs. Washington, herself, made tea and coffee for us. On the table were two small plates of sliced tongue and dry toast, bread and butter, but no broiled fish, as is the general custom." However sparing the mistress of Mt. Vernon might have been, it was the usual custom in old times to eat a hearty breakfast of meat or fish and potato, hot biscuits, doughnuts, griddle cakes and sometimes even pie was added. A section of hot mince pie was always considered a fitting ending to the winter morning meal in New England, at least. When Charles Dickens was in the United States, in 1842, he stopped at the old Tremont house in Boston. In his "American Notes," which followed his visit to this country, he wrote critically of the American breakfast, as follows: "And breakfast would have been no breakfast unless the principal dish were a deformed beefsteak with a great flat bone in the center, swimming in hot butter and sprinkled with the very blackest of pepper." For a time my household included a colored cook, who, according to local custom, went to her own home every night. Invariably before leaving she came to me with the short and abrupt question, "What's for?" This experience taught me the difficulty of planning breakfasts off hand. More than one beginner in housekeeping wonders whether a light breakfast of little but a roll and coffee is more healthful than one of several courses. It is an old American idea that luncheon or supper may be light, dinner varied and heavier, but breakfast must be wholesome and nourishing. This is based on the belief that it is natural for man and beast to wake up in the morning with a desire for food and unnatural to try to do the hardest work of the day with but a pretence at eating. About twenty years ago there was much talk of the alleged healthfulness of going without breakfast entirely. For a time this plan was the object of much discussion and experiment by medical and scientific men and workers in general. The late Edward Everett Hale was a strong opponent to abstinence from breakfast by brain workers, while those who labored with hand and muscle looked with little favor on the morning fast. Finally the no-breakfast idea went the way of most fads in food. As a compromise between the extremes of going without any breakfast, and the old-time, over-hearty meal of several courses, there came into fashion the simple meal of fruit, cereal and eggs. This is to be commended, if the egg, or its substitute in food value, is not omitted. Too often a sloppy cereal is washed down rapidly with a cup of coffee and called sufficient. Sometimes the ready-to-eat cereal and the milk bottle left at the kitchen door include the entire preparation for the morning meal.