Equal competency is demanded with reference to his purchases, the varying of his menus, anticipating the complaints of a jealous cook, maintaining his authority over the other servants, and regulating the financial part of the kitchen and household,--truly a difficult combination to procure. As to his probity, the author reasons that one may scarcely expect to find the phœnix, and that to the victor naturally belong the spoils--that it is better to have a competent officer, who can buy to advantage, than a novice who, gaining nothing on his purchases, is imposed upon by the venders and cannot control his household expenditures. "What difference does it make to the employer if his steward help himself a little in serving him, provided he look after his interests sufficiently and charge him only with the market price of a commodity?" Upon a good commissary in particular depends the success of a club or a restaurant. Without a competent purchaser who combines most of the qualities enumerated in the "Almanach," the chef must labour at a disadvantage; and, in the case of a club, a house committee bear the odium of a poor cuisine and the maledictions of the members. The "Almanach" abounds in piquant aphorisms, some of which perhaps will better serve to illustrate the spirit of the work than a more lengthy abstract of many of the essays themselves: "The kitchen is a country in which there are always discoveries to be made. "It is the entrées that cooks usually invest with their greatest cunning, and it is principally through these that they expect to be judged. "An overturned salt-cellar is to be feared solely when it is overturned in a good dish. "The table is a magnet which not only draws to itself, but joins together all those who approach it. "It is as necessary that the master of the house should understand how to carve well as it is for a young girl to dance in order to secure a husband. "Digestion is the business of the stomach, and indigestion that of the doctors. "The stomach of a true gourmand, like the casemates of a besieged city, should be proof against bombs. "Thirteen at table is a number to be dreaded when there is only enough to go round for twelve. "A good pastry-maker is as rare as a grand orator. "It is especially at table that one should attend carefully to the matter in hand and consider what one is about. "True gourmands have always finished their dinner before the dessert; that which is eaten after the roast is done only out of pure politeness. "Pastry is to the cuisine what figures of rhetoric are to discourse. An oration without figures and a dinner without pastry are equally insipid. "There is a precise moment at which every dish should be savoured, previous to which or after which it causes only an imperfect sensation. "Wine is the milk of the old, the balm of adults, and the vehicle of the gourmand.