But, as the present generation have acquired extravagant tastes with regard to food, as well as in dress, there certainly is cause for gratitude that great improvements in the machinery by which such work can be performed have kept pace with the cultivated taste that demands so much more skill to gratify it. We doubt, however, if any modern improvement can ever set before us food that will have the rare excellence, the exquisite flavor, of that which used to come from our mother’s great brick oven. Ah, the bread,--the rich-colored brown bread; the creamy-white bread; the pies, puddings, and cakes! “’Twere worth ten years of modern life, One glance at that array!” We have yet to see the device which can compensate for the loss of the old brick oven! But wishing will not restore it to us who live in cities or large towns, unless we can bring back the old primeval forests, and, instead of the “coal-bins,” possess again the old-fashioned wood-houses with their rich stores of seasoned wood, piled high to the rafters; and the huge piles of green wood in the yard, waiting for the leisure days to be cut, split, and housed; or we must emigrate to the unsettled parts of the West and South, which are still rich in splendid woodland, where the settlers are cutting down the grand old forests, or wastefully burning them. In their present haste to clear the land, they forget their own future interest and the comfort of their children, who, by this waste and destruction, will be denied the luxury of wood fires, and compelled to content themselves with coal, and all the annoyances and discomfort connected with its habitual use. Coal is excellent for the cook-stove; but it is a great sacrifice when none but the rich can afford wood fires, in their family room at least.