It may be that she _ought_ to cultivate assiduously
or with enthusiasm a calling which all the other women of the
country ostentatiously despise, but she would be more than human if
she did so. She imitates American women as closely as she can, and
cannot live on the same soil without imbibing their ideas; and
unhappily, as in all cases of imitation, vices are more easily and
earlier caught than virtues.
She can make, too, an economical defence of the most powerful
kind, to the attacks on her in this line, and it is this: that
whether her cooking be bad or good, she offers it without
deception or subterfuge, at a fair rate, and without compulsion;
that nobody who does not like her dishes need eat them; and that
her defects of taste or training can only be fairly made a cause
of hatred and abuse when she does work badly, which somebody else
is waiting to do better, if she would get out of the way. She has
undertaken the task of cooking for the American nation, not of
her own motion, but simply and solely because the American nation
could find nobody else to do it.
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