As for my being an old fool, my dear, I have said I am one hundred and nine, which is older than old Mr. Waldo was, older than everybody except old Parr. And after forty, everybody is a fool--or a physician.
Let us return, then, to our mutton,--always a good thing to return to, especially if the plates are hot, as yours, Hero, always will be. For mutton, besides such water as you can dry out of it, contains twenty-nine per cent. of food,--for meat, a high percentage.
Our flour and wheat-bread cost us almost one-tenth.
Our other meats cost us a tenth and a half of what we spend for eating and drinking.
"Where in the world does the rest go, Mr. Carter? Here is not half. But I could certainly live very well on these things."
Angel, you could. But if you lived wholly on these, you would want more of them. You see we have said nothing of coffee and tea,--the princes or princesses of food,--without which civilized man cannot renew his brains. In such years as these, Hero, when our brave soldiers must have coffee or we can have no victories, coffee costs me and Lois fifty dollars,--cheap at that,--for, without it, did we drink dandelion like the cows, or chiccory like the asses, how were these brains renewed?
"Tea and coffee are the same thing," says Liebig; at least, he says that _Theine_, the base of tea, and _Caffeine_, the base of coffee, are the same. What I know is, that, when coffee costs fifty dollars a year, tea costs thirty dollars and eighty-nine cents.
For tea and coffee, Hero, allow about another tenth,--the cocoa and cream will bring it up to that.
Our sugar cost us fifty-four dollars and twenty-two cents; our milk fifty dollars and sixty-two; our cream ten dollars seventy-seven.
"Buy your cream separate," says Hero, "if you have as good a milkman as Mr. Whittemore."
You have not as many babies as we, Hero. When you have, you will not grudge the milk or the sugar. Lots of nourishment in sugar! Sugar and milk are another tenth.
I do not know if you are a Catholic, Hero; but I guess your kitchen is; and so I am pretty sure that you will eat fish Fridays. I know you are a person of sense, so I know you will often delight Leander, as he rises from the day's swim which, for your sake, Hero, he takes across the cold Hellespont of life,--(all men are Leanders, and all women should be their Heros, holding high love-torches for them,)--as he rises, I say, with "a sound of wateriness," I know you will often delight him with oysters, scalloped, fried, or plain, as _entremets_ to flank his dinner-table. For fish count two per cent., for oysters two more, for eggs three or four, and for that stupid compound of starch which some men call "indispensable," and all men call "potato," count three or four more. My advice is, that, when potatoes are dear, you skip them. Rice-_croquets_ are better and cheaper. There goes another tenth.