OF all the needless discomforts common to boarding-houses and hotels, we know of none so truly inexcusable, nor which subtracts more from one’s enjoyment, than the use of bad butter for cooking purposes. When placed on the table in the butter-dish, if found to be imperfect or quite unpalatable the butter can easily be rejected. To eat good bread without butter, or, if the bread is unsatisfactory, a fine mealy potato with a little salt, is by no means the greatest hardship that you may be subjected to. But imagine yourself seated at the table, and a large dish of fresh peas, green and tender, brought in. You have been hoping, almost impatiently, to see them each day, and now what a feast is yours, in anticipation. You can hardly wait till the soup is removed. Visions of the splendid peas, of sweet and delicious flavor, which you used to eat at your father’s table, are floating before you; and tender remembrances of the dear hand that then so deftly ministered to your childish appetite are rising, until you are fast verging toward sentimentality, when your turn comes to be helped. These peas are the first real _country_ peas, picked right from the vines, you have tasted since your home was established in the city, and you eagerly bid farewell to sentiment, and address yourself to the full enjoyment of visible, tangible things. How you would like to take a real big mouthful in a childlike manner! But you control your eagerness, and, ladylike, demurely carry the spoon to the mouth. O horrors! Have you fortitude and self-possession sufficient to enable you to swallow that detestable morsel? Politeness and unwillingness to exhibit your disgust to others at the table control you. With a shuddering gulp you swallow, but hold your breath till you snatch a piece of bread or a mouthful of water to send after, with some faint hope of removing the vile taste. What is it that so disturbs you? _Rancid butter!_ Is there anything, any taste more revolting and abominable? That delicious dish of peas spoiled, irretrievably, by a spoonful of the nauseous abomination, manufactured by careless dairy-women, and bought by easily gulled grocers, or by those persons possessed of india-rubber consciences, capable of stretching to any imaginable length, who will sell this abomination for good butter. Or it may be some sharp, managing landlady has bought it, knowing its bad character, for economical reasons. Her boarders will not eat very heartily of any dish that is flavored with such butter, and yet they will be compelled to eat something, even if distasteful. We know such ideas of economy--not honesty--are common; but boarders are very foolish who submit to this imposition. If they choose, they can easily teach such unscrupulous managers that being “penny wise and pound foolish,” in the long run, will not secure prosperity.