TO many people the lunch basket and its contents are quite as important as any regularly set-out meal of the day—more important than such occasional luxuries as ceremonious dÉjeÛners À la fourchette and standing lunches.

Among this number are not only the school-children who, five days out of the week, must carry what the Southern boys and girls would term a "snack" with them to school, but also the army of men and women whose employment takes them to such a distance from their homes that it is impracticable for them to return there for the midday meal. With these must not be forgotten the band of night workers who, in one capacity or another, have part in making the morning papers, and who, turning day into night, find it as essential to take a midnight as others do a midday repast.

In a less degree interest is felt in the lunch basket by those young people who regard the coming of the summer chiefly as the return of the picnic season. All these desire to know of something appetizing to supply their needs, and nearly all agree in condemning certain articles as stale and hackneyed, asserting that they are tired to death of them. Among these are generally ham and tongue sandwiches.

In making suggestions on this subject, the first thing to be considered is the basket, and to begin with, it should be a basket, and not a close tin box or pail that cannot be sweetened except by scouring and scalding between the times of using. A basket, by permitting the passage of air through its interstices, prevents the food acquiring a close, musty taste; and even the basket should have frequent airings and sunnings, and an occasional plunge into hot salt and water, followed by a rinsing in fresh hot water, and a wiping and drying in the sun or near the fire.

Only fresh napkins must be used for wrapping about the lunch, and if their use proves too severe a strain upon the linen drawer, Japanese paper napkins may be substituted, or even fresh white tissue-paper, or druggist's paper. The daintiness of ribbons to tie the different parcels is all very pretty, but it is hardly possible for the hurried house-mother who has to put up even one lunch a day, much less when she has two or three to prepare. In order to succeed in making them even ordinarily attractive, she must take thought for these lunches as carefully as she does for the other meals of the day, and make provision accordingly, not waiting until the last moment, and then hastily gathering up whatever odds and ends she can find, and hurriedly cramming them all together into the basket in a manner that savors unpleasantly of the bestowal of "broken victuals" and cold bits upon the beggar at the kitchen door.

Not until she gives the matter serious thought does the housewife appreciate what a variety she can select for the lunch basket of her boy or girl, or of her husband. Hot foods are out of the question, of course, and even hot drinks, unless a tiny alcohol "pocket stove," filled and ready for lighting, and a tin or agate-iron cup, accompany the outfit. In that case, many a hot cup of cafÉ au lait or chocolate, of soup or bouillon, may be enjoyed by the luncher.

But even when this cannot be managed, cold coffee and tea are not to be despised, while cold bouillon is preferred by many to the hot beef tea. Or, for a change from this, a small flask of milk or of lemonade may be carried. In any case the bottle should be a stout one, and provided with a good stopper, that no break or leakage may cause the ruin of the rest of the refection.

China makes the lunch basket too heavy, and takes up too much room. If a plate is required, let it be one of the little wooden butter plates that can be thrown away after using. It is often possible to procure a glass from which to drink, but even when it is not, a flat glass or a collapsing cup may easily be carried in the pocket; or an ordinary flask, having a cup fitted to the bottom, may be purchased and kept for service in the lunch basket. A tiny cruet for salt and another for pepper should also be part of the outfit.

Often it does not seem to occur to the housekeeper that it is quite practicable to carry a cup custard, a baked apple or pear, a tiny mould of jelly or blanc-mange, as well as uncooked fruit. While the latter is always wholesome and generally popular, there are times when one wants something else. To paraphrase Miss Woolson's words in "For the Major," "A large cold apple on a winter day is not calculated to arouse enthusiasm."

Other dainties are easily prepared. Every one who has read "Little Women"—and who has not read it?—will remember Meg and Jo March trudging off to their work on frosty mornings, each carrying the turnover that was to compose her lunch, and gaining comfort for the cold fingers from its warmth.

A tiny pie baked in a saucer, a small tart, a diminutive rice or tapioca pudding in a patty-pan, are not hard to make, and are a welcome variety at the midday "snack."

While it might possibly be an expensive item to provide potted meat for sandwiches for every day in the week, there are often odds and ends that, with a little "doctoring," may be made into excellent substitutes. The meat on the drumstick left from the roast or stewed chicken of last night may be chopped fine, moistened with a little gravy or melted butter, seasoned, and spread on thin slices of buttered bread. The bit of steak that clung to the bone may be minced, and have stirred into it a little Worcestershire sauce and a suspicion of made mustard; while the slice of cold lamb or veal, also minced, may be flavored with curry-powder and softened with melted butter to make filling for sandwiches.

The one or two cold sausages left in the pantry will make an appetizing sandwich when crushed fine with the back of a spoon, and laid between the two sides of a buttered roll or biscuit; while the last spoonful of lobster or chicken salad scraped from the bottom of the dish may be spread on buttered bread for yet another kind of sandwich.

White, Graham, brown, or whole-wheat bread may be used in turn, with an occasional roll or biscuit to still further vary monotony. Egg sandwiches, cheese sandwiches, sweetbread sandwiches, sardine sandwiches, minced ham, tongue, ham and chicken, chicken and bacon sandwiches—their name is legion.

But some one may object, one does not want all sandwiches. True enough, but they are the piÈce de rÉsistance of the lunch. They may be supplemented, however, by a piece of cold fowl, by, once in a while, a broiled bird, by a few pickled oysters, by deviled and plain hard-boiled eggs, by salads without number, by olives, cheese, and pickles. And for desserts are there not the little dishes already suggested, to say nothing of cake, cookies, ginger-snaps, apples, oranges, mandarins, bananas, pears, grapes, and other fruits? For school children there are such simple dainties as bread or rolls spread with jam, jelly, marmalade, or apple-sauce. And are not crackers and cheese always at hand, and almost always popular?

While all this may at first seem to impose additional labor upon the housekeeper, she will soon find, when the habit is once established of providing regularly for the lunch, that she feels it no more of a burden than she does to cater for the other meals of the day. Let her keep on the alert for new fancies, and they will come to her more rapidly than she can utilize them.