TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14916, 14 March 1914, Page 10

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

"Simplify, Simplify!"

Writing in tho "World's Work," Mr James Collins contrives to make bookkeeping interesting even to tho man who knows nothing about it. He shows how modern our systems of keeping books are, and traces the evolution of book-keeping from rough and ready sinv plicity to complexity, and then to the organised simplicity which now has a wide vogue. Even a hundred years ago sales of goods were recorded in chalkmarks representing shillings, and "to pay tho score" is a term derived from the days when the account was settled at tho twentieth chalk-mark. Another common method was that of tho "tallystick," a strip of wood split in halves, the transactions being recorded by notches. Double entry book-keeping was invented by an Italian in th© loth century, but found little favour until the early years of the nineteenth century. Mr Collins says it was the railways that compelled business men to adopt elaborate systems of book-keeping, for transactions then began to pass out of sight. But of late years th© work and position of the book-keeper has been greatly affected by the development of accounting machinery, and what may be called bookless bookkeeping. Tho book-keeper used to be "a creature of routine, bound down by figures and figure-drudgery," but now his imagination is given wide play, and he is a ruler in business affairs. Elimination and the saving of human labour are two guiding principles of up-to-date book-keeping. Labour-saving devices "have really given individua-

lity and initiative their first chance in all the history of accounting. Work for a machine has been turned over to. the machine, and the mind of the accountant has been set free in another direction." Tho statiou agent of an American railway may spend far moro time in proportion on his figures and reports than is spent by the accouutants at headquarters, and many of these agents buy adding machines out of their own pockets to save their own time and energy. To illustrate a policy of elimination, the case is mentioned of a big instirance company with several millions of industrial policy-holders, who pay in weekly premiums of threepence. To keep millions of accounts would greatly reduce benefits, so the company opens an account with a policy-holder only when he falls behind in his Tjiy T ments. Simplication is the order of the day. In some houses there is hardly a book-keeping fixture that an old-time accountant would recognise.

The Landscape Cook

Tho landscape cook stands described | by Corinno Lowe, in Miss Flickmann's new paper, '"Everyone's." What the modern kitchen artist really wants to do is not to provide nourishment, but to furnish landscapes. Even a modern "cook-book" will inform the novice that "colours may be combined as carefully as in the finest picture." She probably begins experiments with parsley. ''She has it drifting idly down the stream of soup; she erects of it stately avenues leading from the meat course; she screens beneath its over-arching foliage tho rude form of halibut and codfish. The fact is, indeed, that you cannot get into any modern dish without breaking down a wholo rustling undergrowth of parsley." Lettuce also supplies the decorative effect; salad, of course, is all mixed up with it by nature, but on up-to-date tables not the tiniest croquette or entree or vegetable can appear without its spacious lawn of lettuce green. Then the lemon, orce used for flavouring merely, is valued now as an artistic adjunct to any and every dish. Cooks' may hollow it into littlo baskets and fill it with irrelevant choppings; or stick slices of it through slits cut in tomatoes, in order to combine the charm of bright rod with paJo yellow. "If they canuot do anything else, they make of it littlo hoops, through which they pass three limp pieces of asparagus and two dejected sardines. Alices and disks —disks and slices—verily tho lemon has made all food look like cubist impressionist studies." Cheese is another favoured tint of yellow. After nibbling cheese through every course of a specially artistic dinner, one harassed man cried out, "Do all these modern cooks imagine they aro cooking for mice?" And the most hopelessly dull food-stuff maybe triumphed over by a variegated sauce. Sauce may bathe tho bleak outlines of the roast in a dazzling Turner sunset, or cloak the identity of tho rustic egg from the eyes of tho most sensitive observer. The passion for filling things with other things is only equalled •hy the passion for covering things over with other things. There are no eggs plain boiled, poached, or fried, in the homes where a landscape cook holds sway. "Vf© get eggs a l'estragon, and eggs vermicelli, and eggs Beauregard. Wo get eggs drifted over with cheese, and eggs floating in h rich, dramatic sauco of Pompeian red, and eggs thrust at us in insulting little ramekins. But where do wo ever find an egg that is permitted to bo itself ?" As for 6alads named after aviators or named after steam yachts, heavy with mayonnaise, or "aglint with rippling currents of French dressing," one easy recipe is given for all—"stand within reach of all the remnants of yesterday's meals, and make ardent use of your proximity." And the modern ideal had been reached, when, after enjoying the combined charms of twenty-eight different colours and ingredients, a guest reported rapturously, "We had the most delicious salad at the Gold-Heathering-ton's the other day. It made everybody ill!"