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Baked Rice and Raisin Pudding

Same as the last with raisins instead of apples. None of the foregoing rice puddings should ever be stirred while baking. The rice grains should be whole when done.

The next needs no help of sauce for its appearance. It is as rich and delicate as a rice pudding pure and simple can be made.

So, sonny, you say you have a mother to help, and you have been trying everywhere and you can't get anything else whatever to do, therefore you want to get a job in the kitchen. Now, don't you see that is not at all complimentry to the kitchen? Hotel keepers have a hard enough time without having to contend with the leavings and castaways of all other occupations and employments. Yet they always want smart, intelligent and industrious boys. You appear to have sense, perhaps you even have sense enough to become a good cook. And you might do worse. You will probably live to see the time when a man of sense and sensibility will not be ashamed in the United States to say he is a hotel cook. And we all want helpers of the right sort. Our good seconds, whose ways and dispositions we know, and who know ours, are continually drifting away from us. They are always wanted to go to the head of some other kitchen. They take partnerships in restaurants. They open ice cream saloons, bakeries, railway eating houses, saloons, lunch stands; they go as stewards; and some are lost and never are found. So there is room for intelligent boys like you--if you are intelligent. She keeps you clean and decent, doesn't she? Can you read and write? Yes. Have you worked in a kitchen before--know a stock boiler from a chopping machine? Yes, you have worked about a kitchen a little. Good enough; now go and make me this rice pudding. You can't make a rice pudding? Oh, yes you can; the finest rice pudding you ever saw; just as good as I can. Take this receipt; hang it on the nail before you; follow it out; you will come out right. But observe there is not a word too much, and every word means something. When it says buttered pans it means you are to butter the pans before you pour the puddings in. When it says well washed rice it means you are to sure enough wash the rice--rub it clean in cold water, pick out the specks; pour water on and off it till there is no more sign of meal in it. It is the meal or flour in rice that burns at the bottom of the saucepan, not the rice alone. When you have made this successfully preserve the receipt. You will not be a cook or pastry cook because that one thing is done perfectly; it will take you five years to learn it all, and then there will be just as much more that you will never learn. But if you do some new thing each day and hold on to the knowledge, and observe all that is done around you you will have gained so much over and above your wages. Count it in dollars if you like; one dollar, five dollars; according to the desirableness of the article you have learned to produce; according to the difficulty of making it which you will have overcome. So in a year or two you will have a trade better for you than if your daddy had left you a fortune. Now scoot. Don't speak to me anymore till I speak to you. The other boys will show you where to find the rice, milk, sugar, butter, eggs. You will be slow at first. We don't allow youngsters to do guess work. Old hands may guess, but even they can't always hit it, and your ingredients cost money. Afterwards you must learn to work fast if you are going to be a hotel cook. I shall know by to-night exactly what you are worth. "For man is man and master of his fate." How goes that song? I will make that boy learn it if it can ever be found again. "Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and let it turn, Thy wheel and thee we neitherfear nor hate. Our lands are little but our hearts are great, And man is man and master of his fate," Or words to that effect.