But Christiana’s breakfast is ready by this time, and we will see what she eats. Coffee: well, housekeepers buy the ready-ground coffee now, and it is mixed trash, wanting the heartiness of a good pure cup, but no great harm at worst. Meat: do you call that bit the width of two fingers, crisped, greased at one end, raw and bleeding at the other, fit sustenance for a woman who is to grow, work, walk, dance, and sing to-day? She is made to live neither on leather nor raw meat. Cook a slice of thick beef-steak as quickly as possible till the color is changed all the way through without drying any of the juice. The albumen of the blood must be coagulated before meat is fit for human stomachs, and proper cooking means something more than mere warming through, and a great deal less than crisping. Now let at least a quarter of a pound of this browned and fragrant sacrifice be cut for this young woman--better if she eat half a pound--to be converted into energetic work and Christian good-humor in the course of the day. One, two, three, four slices of fried potato withered in fat! And this is what some people call nourishment! Put on her plate two baked potatoes of unimpeachable quality--poor potatoes are poison--and let each be the size of her small fist. Where are the tomatoes, the celery, the artichokes, salads, and sauces? She has tomatoes, three bits in a tiny saucerette, as if it held some East Indian condiment. There ought to be a saucer piled with them, or some savory vegetable delicately cooked; for breakfast ought to be next to the heartiest meal of the day. It is far the best way to take coffee and bread on rising, and eat the meal later when one has worked into an appetite for it. Those who find it impossible to alter their habits enough for this usually have duties which ought to call them up long enough before to be quite hungry by seven or eight o’clock, the usual hours in this country for breakfast.