is a dishonoured man!" [Illustration] [Illustration: DAY'S CLOSING HOUR From the etching by Charles Jacque] [Illustration] THE COOK'S CONFRÈRE "Les vûës courtes, je veux dire les esprits bornez et resserrez dans leur petite sphère, ne peuvent comprendre cette universalité de talens que l'on remarque quelquefois dans un même sujet."--LA BRUYERE: Du Mérite Personnel. It were ungracious to trace the development of gastronomy further, or to peruse its literature at greater length, without rendering justice to the chief cause of its progress, deprived of which a Carême and a Gouffé were impossible, and cookery, from a fine art, would resolve itself into a perfunctory obligation. The reader who has followed the writer thus far will surely not require to be told that the great evolutionist of the table is neither the cook nor yet the range or the pot-au-feu so much as the quadruped that Rome once selected for its badge and cognisance. _A tout seigneur, tout honneur!_--let us not be unmindful of the inestimable benefits the hog has conferred upon mankind. Where, indeed, may one find that universality of talents referred to by La Bruyère so combined in a single individual as in the animal which the "short-sighted and narrow-minded" has so unjustly maligned? To what utilities does he not lend and blend himself, and where among _Ungulata_ or ruminators terrene were his substitute--a _pièce de résistance_ for the poor, a _jouissance_ and benison for all. If we accept the testimony of various pagan writers, pork, of which the ancients were so fond, originally came into use about a thousand years after the deluge, when Ceres, having sown a field of wheat, found it invaded one day by a pig. This so incensed the goddess that she forthwith punished the offender with death, and afterwards, having him cooked, discovered his superior virtues--to set the example of utilising him as food. The usual corn-cob placed in the mouth of a freshly killed porker, therefore, not only reflects the delicacy of his tastes, but is also classic in a measure--a symbol of his intimate relationship with mythology and his place amid the Graces.