Yet a kitchen may illustrate all of these principles and still lack those subtle features that establish, unconsciously, some connection between it and its predecessors in other times and in other places. If the theory of evolution has taught us not only in science but in art and in politics and in everything connected with our daily life to look behind the surface and to seek the origins of things, if it has taught us ever to look for the relationship between the present and the past, surely the kitchen must not be excluded from this process of thought. Apparently the work performed there each day has neither connection with the past nor outlook into the future, yet this is but a superficial aspect of the situation. The kitchen of to-day with gas-range and instantaneous water-heater is the direct heir of the kitchen of yesterday with coal-range and copper boiler, and of that of the day-before-yesterday, with open fire and cauldron. An attempt to maintain this connection with the past is sought through the photographs on the walls. Two views of early colonial kitchens give historic continuity with the past, a photograph of the interior of a Dutch kitchen gives a touch of that cosmopolitanism that makes the whole world akin, while that of a famous hotel in New York City places us by prophetic fiction in the class of millionaires. Such is our kitchen. “Does it pay?” It has paid us. AN ILLUSTRATED EDITION It is the day of the illustrated edition, and even more the day of the illustrator. Happy is the author to whom is accorded the honor of an illustrated edition of his latest book. Still happier is he whose facile, practiced pen is called into requisition to illustrate the works of the great artists found in our monthly magazines. Unhappy is the one whose book _no_ artist, even if gifted with imagination, can illustrate, and whose name no publishing house has ever entered on its card catalogue of pen illustrators of artistic sketches. But more fortunate times may await the unillustratable and non-illustrating author. A changing phraseology reflects a new _rapprochement_ between author and artist and a breaking-down of the barriers that once confined each within definite limits. There are even indications that the present positions of author and artist may be reversed and that the non-illustrating author may become quite independent of the previously necessary artist. “Pen pictures,” “sketches in black and white,” “pastels in prose,” all indicate the possibilities open to the author of combining with his own vocation that of the artist whose existence thus becomes unnecessary to his own. Nay more, the unillustratable author may take heart, for as the skillful acrobat learns the feat of walking on his hands, so the literary trickster may achieve the paradox of illustrating works that cannot be illustrated.