390. The Colonel in the Kitchen--How to Cook a Beefsteak

There ought to be a law making it a crime, punishable by imprisonment, to fry a beefsteak. Broil it; it is just as easy, and when broiled it is delicious. Fried beefsteak is not fit for a wild beast. You can broil even on a stove. Shut the front damper--open the back one, and then take off a griddle. There will then be a draft down through this opening. Put on your steak, using a wire broiler, and not a particle of smoke will touch it, for the reason that the smoke goes down. If you try to broil it with the front damper open the smoke will rise. For broiling, coal, even soft coal, makes a better fire than wood.

391. Fresh Air

Make your houses comfortable. Do not huddle together in a little room around a red-hot stove, with every window fastened down. Do not live in this poisoned atmosphere, and then, when one of your children dies, put a piece in the papers commencing with, "Whereas, it has pleased divine Providence to remove from our midst--." Have plenty of air, and plenty of warmth. Comfort is health. Do not imagine anything is unhealthy simply because it is pleasant. This is an old and foolish idea.

392. Cooking a Fine Art

Cooking is one of the fine arts. Give your wives and daughters things to cook, and things to cook with, and they will soon become most excellent cooks. Good cooking is the basis of civilization. The man whose arteries and veins are filled with rich blood made of good and well cooked food, has pluck, courage, endurance and n.o.ble impulses. Remember that your wife should have things to cook with.

393. Scathing Impeachment of Intemperance

Intemperance cuts down youth in its vigor, manhood in its strength, and age in its weakness. It breaks the father's heart, bereaves the doting mother, extinguishes natural affections, erases conjugal loves, blots out filial attachments, blights parental hope, and brings down mourning age in sorrow to the grave. It produces weakness, not strength; sickness, not health; death, not life. It makes wives widows; children orphans; fathers fiends, and all of them paupers and beggars. It feeds rheumatism, nurses gout, welcomes epidemics, invites cholera, imports pestilence and embraces consumption. It covers the land with idleness, misery and crime. It fills your jails, supplies your almshouses and demands your asylums. It engenders controversies, fosters quarrels, and cherishes riots. It crowds your penitentiaries and furnishes victims to your scaffolds. It is the life blood of the gambler, the element of the burglar, the prop of the highwayman and the support of the midnight incendiary. It countenances the liar, respects the thief, esteems the blasphemer. It violates obligations, reverences fraud, and honors infamy. It defames benevolence, hates love, scorns virtue and slanders innocence. It incites the father to butcher his helpless offspring, helps the husband to ma.s.sacre his wife, and the child to grind the parricidal ax. It burns up men, consumes women, detests life, curses G.o.d, and despises heaven. It suborns witnesses, nurses perjury, defiles the jury box, and stains the judicial ermine. It degrades the citizen, debases the legislator, dishonors statesmen, and disarms the patriot. It brings shame, not honor; terror, not safety; despair, not hope; misery, not happiness; and with the malevolence of a fiend, it calmly surveys its frightful desolation, and unsatisfied with its havoc, it poisons felicity, kills peace, ruins morals, blights confidence, slays reputation, and wipes out national honors, then curses the world and laughs at its ruin.

394. Liberty Defined

The French convention gave the best definition of liberty I have ever read: "The liberty of one citizen ceases only where the liberty of another citizen commences." I know of no better definition. I ask you to-day to make a declaration of individual independence. And if you are independent, be just. Allow everybody else to make his declaration of individual independence. Allow your wife, allow your husband, allow your children to make theirs. It is a grand thing to be the owner of yourself. It is a grand thing to protect the rights of others. It is a sublime thing to be free and just.

395. Free, Honest Thought

I am going to say what little I can to make the American people brave enough and generous enough and kind enough to give everybody else the rights they have themselves. Can there ever be any progress in this world to amount to anything until we have liberty? The thoughts of a man who is not free are not worth much--not much. A man who thinks with the club of a creed above his head--a man who thinks casting his eye askance at the flames of h.e.l.l, is not apt to have very good thoughts. And for my part, I would not care to have any status or social position even in heaven if I had to admit that I never would have been there only I got scared. When we are frightened we do not think very well. If you want to get at the honest thoughts of a man he must free. If he is not free you will not get his honest thought.

396. Ingersoll Prefers Shoemakers to Princes

The other day there came shoemakers, potters, workers in wood and iron, from Europe, and they were received in the city of New York as though they had been princes. They had been sent by the great republic of France to examine into the arts and manufactures of the great republic of America. They looked a thousand times better to me than the Edward Alberts and Albert Edwards--the royal vermin, that live on the body politic. And I would think much more of our government if it would fete and feast them, instead of wining and dining the imbeciles of a royal line.

397. Sham Dignity

I hate dignity. I never saw a dignified man that was not after all an old idiot Dignity is a mask; a dignified man is afraid that you will know he does not know everything. A man of sense and argument is always willing to admit what he don't know--why?--because there is so much that he does know; and that is the first step towards learning anything--willingness to admit what you don't know, and when you don't understand a thing, ask--no matter how small and silly it may look to other people--ask, and after that you know. A man never is in a state of mind that he can learn until he gets that dignified nonsense out of him.

398. A Good Time Coming!

The time is coming when a man will be rated at his real worth, and that by his brain and heart. We care nothing now about an officer unless he fills his place. The time will come when no matter how much money a man has he will not be respected unless he is using it for the benefit of his fellow-men. It will soon be here.

399. Who is the True n.o.bleman?

We are a great people. Three millions have increased to fifty--thirteen States to thirty-eight. We have better homes, and more of the conveniences of life than any other people upon the face of the globe.

The farmers of our country live better than did the kings and princes two hundred years ago--and they have twice as much sense and heart.

Liberty and labor have given us all. Remember that all men have equal rights. Remember that the man who acts best his part--who loves his friends the best--is most willing to help others--truest to the obligation--who has the best heart--the most feeling--the deepest sympathies--and who freely gives to others the rights that he claims for himself, is the true n.o.bleman. We have disfranchised the aristocrats of the air and have given one country to mankind.

400. Wanted!--More Manliness

I had a thousand times rather have a farm and be independent, than to be President of the United States, without independence, filled with doubt and trembling, feeling of the popular pulse, resorting to art and artifice, inquiring about the wind of opinion, and succeeding at last in losing my self-respect without gaining the respect of others. Man needs more manliness, more real independence. We must take care of ourselves. This we can do by labor, and in this way we can preserve our independence. We should try and choose that business or profession the pursuit of which will give us the most happiness. Happiness is wealth.

We can be happy without being rich--without holding office--without being famous. I am not sure that we can be happy with wealth, with office, or with fame.

401. Education of Nature

It has been a favorite idea with me that our forefathers were educated by nature; that they grew grand as the continent upon which they landed; that the great rivers--the wide plains--the splendid lakes--the lonely forests--the sublime mountains--that all these things stole into and became a part of their being, and they grew great as the country in which they lived. They began to hate the narrow, contracted views of Europe. They were educated by their surroundings.

402. The Worker Wearing the Purple

I want to see a workingman have a good house, painted white, gra.s.s in the front yard, carpets on the floor and pictures on the wall. I want to see him a man feeling that he is a king by the divine right of living in the Republic. And every man here is just a little bit a king, you know.

Every man here is a part of the sovereign power. Every man wears a little of purple; every man has a little of crown and a little of sceptre; and every man that will sell his vote for money or be ruled by prejudice is unfit to be an American citizen.

403. Flowers

Beautify your grounds with plants and flowers and vines. Have good gardens. Remember that everything of beauty tends to the elevation of man. Every little morning-glory whose purple bosom is thrilled with the amorous kisses of the sun tends to put a blossom in your heart. Do not judge of the value of everything by the market reports. Every flower about a house certifies to the refinement of somebody. Every vine, climbing and blossoming, tells of love and joy.