spoon, taking care not to alter their natural
shape, about an hour before cooking them.

The next point to attend to is the fire,
which should be rather fierce, and composed
of nothing but cinders; not the slightest
particle of coal smoke should be seen anywhere,
and coke should be absolutely tabooed. The
cook who really desires to excel in chop cooking
should keep a special box for chop cinders,
and should be always on the look-out for them.
In the morning, for instance, before the fires
are lighted, the grates should be cleared of
their cinders, and all the nice, clean, round
pieces, of the size of a large walnut and
upwards, should be picked out and put away in
the chop cinder-box. The fire should be made
up with them at least three-quarters of an
hour before cooking. If more than one batch
of chops is required, the fire should be made
pretty high in the first instance, and the top
bar of the grate let down for the second batch.
It is generally a dangerous thing to touch the
fire during cooking; but if there is any necessity
for it the poker ought never to be used,
but only a few well-burnt cinders should be
popped on here and there. The gridiron,
which should be of iron or silver, must be
kept scrupulously clean, and never used for
anything else. Some cooks use enamelled
gridirons, with channelled bars, to keep the fat
from running into the fire; but these refinements
are not at all necessary if the gridiron is
placed well slanting forward, so that the fat
may trickle along the bars and drop into the
fire away from the chop. The chop should be
turned either with two silver spoons, or else
with a pair of tongs made for the purpose.
The cook that would turn a chop by sticking
a fork into it, and so letting out all its most
delicious gravy, ought to be treated in a
precisely similar manner, and then broiled over a
slow fire.

Chops should be served on a dish kept hot
with spirits of wine or hot water, and each
guest should be provided with a hot-water
plate. Comply with the proper conditions,
and chop cooking ought to be as successfully
carried out at the Leather Breeches, by Tom
O'Donnell, at Ballyshillelagh, in the County of
Cork, as at the Cock, in Fleet-street—in your
own kitchen at Notting-hill as at any tavern
in the City of London.

The conditions are, a thick chop; a bright,
clear, fierce fire; a clean, well-tilted gridiron;
a quick hand for turning, and a sharp eye
that can tell when a chop is done by the
change of colour on its surface—comply with
them and success is certain.

One word at parting. Having achieved
success, do not profane the altar on which the
victim is sacrificed by incongruous adjuncts.
A well-cooked chop is best honoured by a
snowy table-cloth, bright plate and glass,
sharp cutlery, willow- patterned crockery,
white stale bread, floury potatoes, true
mushroom ketchup, and the best stout to be
procured for love or money. Eyes that beat the
glass in brightness, and wits that distance
the knives in keenness, are not wholly to be
despised by the worshippers at the shrine of
chop.

A BLIND MAN'S FIRESIDE.

TALK to me, oh ye eloquent flames,
Gossips and comrades fine!
Nobody knows me, poor and blind,
That sit in your merry shine.
Nobody knows me but my dog;
A friend I've never seen,
But that comes to my call, and loves me
For the sympathies between.

'Tis pleasant to hear in the cold, dark night,
Mounting higher and higher,
The crackling, chattering, sputtering, spattering
Flames in the wintry fire.
Half asleep in the corner,
I hear you prattle and snap,
And talk to me and Tiny,
That dozes in my lap.

You laugh with the merriest laughter;
You dance, you jest, you sing,
And suggest in the wintry midnight
The joys of the coming spring.
Not even the lark on the fringe of the cloud,
Nor the thrush on the hawthorn bough,
Singeth a song more pleasant to hear
Than the song you're singing now.

Your voices are all of gladness:
Ever they seem to say,
After the evening—morning!
After the night—the day!
After this mortal blindness,
A heavenly vision clear,
The soul can see when the eyes are dark;
Awake! let the light appear!

THE MAN IN THE MOON.

WE have all heard in our time the
nursery song of the Man in the Moon, of his
fondness for claret, and of his singularity
in preferring such weak drink to brandy.
We have also heard of his having tumbled
from the sky and asked his way to
Norwich, and of a mishap which he brought
upon himself in that city by his greediness.
Some of us have heard, too, the supposed
Talmudic legend that the Man in the Moon
is the unhappy wight who was stoned to
death by the Jews in the Wilderness for
gathering sticks on the Sabbath day, whose
spirit was imprisoned in the moon, and
whose face looks down upon the earth,
when the melancholy planet is at the full,
to warn the nations against the sin of
Sabbath-breaking. The Italians of the
middle ages, as may be seen from a
passage in Dante's Inferno, Canto xx., verse
124, considered the Man in the Moon to be
Cain, the first murderer. The Man in the
Moon was pictorially represented by our
ancestors as an elderly person with a
bundle of sticks on his back, a lantern
in his hand, and a little dog at his side.
An allusion to him in this guise occurs