It is no laughing matter, but rather a spectacle to feel sad at, when
we see a man who would really have attained excellence in one occu-
pation foolishly devoting himself to another for which he has no special
talent at all, except in his own conceit. Yet how often do we sec
this! We find a man painting pictures who ought to be shovelling
coal, and another giving lessons in grammar who cannot read or
write correctly. Anybody who can stamp around, and rant, and
rave, and frown, and' start, and roll his eyes, and throw his head
back, thinks he is a born actor. He resolves to eclipse Edwin Booth
or Salvini, but is amazed at seeing a broad grin on every face at his
most pathetic passages, and at finding himself regarded rather as a
remarkable specimen of the donkey than as a tragedian.
He is like the youthful artist who has to explain in writing under
each sketch what it represents, otherwise " Mother Eve and the
apple " would be taken for the cook about to construct an apple-
dumpling, and the gorgeous palace be mistaken for a mud hut. The
label, " This is a man's head," is our only safeguard against thinking
it something else, and, without an explanation, it would baffle our
skill to tell " which are Daniel and which is the Lions." So many
people think themselves first-class in the work they are most
inefficient in. Did you ever meet a cook who did not think his or
her cooking the very best cooking possible ? When a whole family
is afflicted with spasms, cramps, dyspepsia, groanings, ill humor,
mutual snappishness and quarrelling, a total loss of cheerfulness,
atheism or superstition, belief in witchcraft, and a desire to torture
and burn other people alive, soon after they have all partaken
innocently of the new cook's latest and most stalwart effort in
dough and invention in pie-crust, will the cook admit for a single
instant that she has been the cause of this indigestive anguish and
stomachic miser)'? Certainly not. She will put her elbows a-kimbo,
and stand you out to your face that pie-crust is her particular forte, and
CHOICE OF OCCUPATION.
147
that her synthetical method of mixing the ingredients of a pudding
has made her a domestic blessing to every family she has lived with.
Perhaps the chambermaid may really possess, without knowing it,
the requisite genius for broiling a chop or boiling a potato, had she
not been misled into chamber-work. The too solid cook also
may have her divine afflatus. She may be well adapted for platform
oratory or the character of fish-wife on the stage. But she has
chosen the very thing for which heaven has denied her the qualifi-
cations, and society has to suffer because genius has mistaken its
department.
Page 90
Presented as published in 1883. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
AI-modernized reading of the original text
It is no laughing matter, but rather a spectacle to feel sad at, when we see a man who would really have attained excellence in one occupation foolishly devoting himself to another for which he has no special talent at all, except in his own conceit. Yet how often do we sec this! We find a man painting pictures who ought to be shovelling coal, and another giving lessons in grammar who cannot read or write correctly. Anybody who can stamp around, and rant, and rave, and frown, and' start, and roll his eyes, and throw his head back, thinks he is a born actor. He resolves to eclipse Edwin Booth or Salvini, but is amazed at seeing a broad grin on every face at his most pathetic passages, and at finding himself regarded rather as a remarkable specimen of the donkey than as a tragedian.
He is like the youthful artist who has to explain in writing under each sketch what it represents, otherwise " Mother Eve and the apple " would be taken for the cook about to construct an appledumpling, and the gorgeous palace be mistaken for a mud hut. The label, " This is a man's head," is our only safeguard against thinking it something else, and, without an explanation, it would baffle our skill to tell " which are Daniel and which is the Lions." So many people think themselves first-class in the work they are most inefficient in. Did you ever meet a cook who did not think his or her cooking the very best cooking possible ? When a whole family is afflicted with spasms, cramps, dyspepsia, groanings, ill humor, mutual snappishness and quarrelling, a total loss of cheerfulness, atheism or superstition, belief in witchcraft, and a desire to torture and burn other people alive, soon after they have all partaken innocently of the new cook's latest and most stalwart effort in dough and invention in pie-crust, will the cook admit for a single instant that she has been the cause of this indigestive anguish and stomachic misery? Certainly not. She will put her elbows a-kimbo, and stand you out to your face that pie-crust is her particular forte, and
that her synthetical method of mixing the ingredients of a pudding has made her a domestic blessing to every family she has lived with. Perhaps the chambermaid may really possess, without knowing it, the requisite genius for broiling a chop or boiling a potato, had she not been misled into chamber-work. The too solid cook also may have her divine afflatus. She may be well adapted for platform oratory or the character of fish-wife on the stage. But she has chosen the very thing for which heaven has denied her the qualifications, and society has to suffer because genius has mistaken its department.