"There are several taverns pleasantly situated upon East River, near New York, where it is common to have these turtle feasts. These happen once or twice a week. Thirty or forty gentlemen and ladies meet and dine together, drink tea in the afternoon, fish, and amuse themselves till evening, and then return home in Italian chaises, a gentleman and lady in each chaise. On the way there is a bridge, about three miles distant from New York, which you always pass over as you return, called the Kissing Bridge, where it is part of the etiquette to salute the lady who has put herself under your protection." No wonder that, with such delightful privileges, the days of our roistering greater-grandfathers were referred to as "the good old colony times." It has been properly held that austerity of diet, though not always productive of austere morals, invariably leads to an acerbity of temperament inimical to social and artistic development, that poor food is a begetter of dyspepsia, and that in dyspepsia lurks crime. A well-nourished nation becomes a progressive nation, and poor nourishment results in intemperance and maleficence. The mobile human face, first to show the effects of the emotions and the passions by its lines, is no less indicative of meagre or improper alimentation. "Both in mind and body, where nourishment ceases vitality fails," and hence a perfect cuisine must prove the best of doctors if supplemented by the adage, "Know thyself, obtain a sufficiency of sleep, and exercise abundantly in the outer air." As to the ideal cuisine, this may be briefly defined as that which supplies an abundant variety of the best procurable material prepared in the most wholesome manner, in distinction to innumerable mixed and highly spiced viands, which assuredly have their place, but which require to be employed with precaution. The merit of the best American cookery consists in its comparative simplicity. Writing in 1852, Count d'Orsay complained that even then the culinary art had greatly deteriorated in Paris, and had been transferred to England. At the time referred to, the Frères Provençeaux, Philippe, and the Café de Paris were the most famous restaurants at the French capital, Véry, Véfour, and the Café Anglais having declined in favour. His remarks concerning England applied of course to the nobility, who could outbid the titled classes of France, as to-day America in its turn is enabled to command the greatest culinary skill. A similar complaint was made by Nestor Roqueplan in 1866 in "Le Double Almanach Gourmand": "The French cuisine has lost much of its originality and special characteristics. We no longer find places devoted to the Flemish kitchen, others to the Normandy, Lyonnaise, Toulousian, Bordelaise, and Provençale kitchens. But France nevertheless is still the country where eating is found at its best."