Cleanliness
There are few satires on modern civilization which bite deeper than the incessant inculcation of cleanliness in the cookery books. It appears not to be enough to insist in general terms on this virtue, and to take for granted that it will be observed. It would be possible to quote hundreds of receipts in which the writers cannot mention a single utensil of the kitchen without on each occasion stipulating in an adjective that it shall be clean. This is to be put into a clean saucepan, that shall be passed through a clean napkin. Here care must be taken that the Cleopatra's Supper spoon shall be perfectly clean; there it is necessary that the mortar shall be free from all impurity. There are some books in which the word clean is repeated so often with a severe injunction, that if all these phrases were cut out and collected together into an appendix, they might make up a chapter of thirty or forty pages. What a satire on our ways of living if these reiterated injunctions are really needed! Let it be enough here to repeat once for all the fine old saying that Cleanliness is next to goodliness. This has been exaggerated into Cleanliness is next to godliness; and if it includes a clean heart as well as clean hands it is no exaggeration at all.