The mistress of the household who would render herself trebly appreciated, and who by ministering to man's palate may the more readily guide, direct, and control his character, should train herself unerringly in the art of compounding appetising and wholesome sauces. To be sure, some of these manipulated by competent masculine hands--but how often slurred by some fatigued or indifferent _sous-chef_!--may be obtained at one's club or the better-class restaurants. But here in many instances the wine-cellar is apt to be uncertain; while frequent dining out is not to be compared with the sense of comfort of dining at home when the kitchen, even though unpretentious, is carefully administered, the menu varied, the wines perfect of their kind, and where Her Gracious Serenity's address may have conjured some dainty entrée whose sauce, sapid and velvety, leaves nothing to be desired. One might tire of this, perchance, with no change for a sixmonth, as one might weary of constant sunshine or a too lavish profusion of tender epithets. Yet it is a desirable condition, nevertheless, to fall back upon; and in the end far the safest for digestion. And this despite Balzac, who well understood the cuisine no less than the "Comédie Humaine,"--that "marriage must necessarily combat a monster who devours everything--daily routine"; or his other definition in the "Physiology of Marriage," a physiological study that was inspired by Savarin's "Physiology of Taste,"--"_Pressurez le mariage, il n'en sortira jamais rien que du plaisir pour les garçons et de l'ennui pour les maris._" The wise woman will have many side-lights in her composition; and in the kitchen her sauces will have many shadings. Let us toast her in a glass of sparkling St. Péray, and acknowledge that without her there were no home cuisine and consequently no home life. So closely does the art advocated by the late lamented Mrs. Glasse touch upon the fundamental happiness of mankind; and sauces which render it an art supreme still further accentuate the amenities. It has been said that it is not obligatory for lovely arms and shoulders to be acquainted with rhetoric. However this may obtain--and there are admirers both of shapely shoulders and of the graces of languages, there can be no doubt that charming women who possess a taste for gastronomy which they can put to practical use upon occasion, are an infinitely greater desideratum than whose energies may be centred strictly upon flounces or the study of metaphysics.