AMONG the countless varieties of food, bread, in some form or other, has been almost universally recognized as “the staff of life.” When it became so truly a necessity, or who was the happy inventor, we know not. How far before the creation wise men have pushed their researches and discoveries, we have not the skill to ascertain. The first mention of bread we remember is in the third chapter of Genesis, when Adam was driven from Paradise and compelled “in the sweat of his face to eat bread,” “because he hearkened to the voice of his wife.” Many of his sons have, since their forefathers’ time, regained Paradise, because they _did_ listen to their wives’ counsels. We wonder if men do not sometimes forget this, and cherish a little spiteful vindictiveness, because through the first mother their prototype fell, and he had to “work for his living.” Perhaps it is this memory which makes them so restive under the present efforts for a recognition of a broader platform for “women’s rights.” How silly, brethren! Let bygones be bygones. Did not the curse fall heavier on us for our first mother’s folly, than on you for Adam’s very ready participation in it? Don’t bear malice! Help us up,--not above you, for we do not belong there, but close by your side,--where we may do good to you, as you do good to us. If Adam had not been off on a council committee, public dinner, or at a club house, but working and caring for his farm in Eden with his wife, we don’t believe Eve would have been tempted, or, being tempted, would have eaten that miserable apple. But we shall never learn how bread was invented if we linger. “Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.” The production of grain for food has always been recognized as the sign of an advanced stage of civilization. Like most of the early traces of progress, the time when grain first began to be transformed into bread is quite obscure. For a long period the grain was eaten, when green, either raw, boiled, or roasted. The Greeks usually deified every new thing. Ceres was supposed to have first brought husbandry into some regular system; therefore they at once constituted her the goddess of Agriculture; and Pan, according to their belief, invented bread, and was forthwith exalted into a god; but long before Ceres or Pan were worshipped, the Egyptians cultivated the earth and made bread from the grain. When the angels appeared on the plains of Mamre and foretold the birth of a son, in Abraham’s old age, he hastened into a tent and said to Sarah, “Make ready quickly three measures of meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth.”