from rice and barley flour, with seeds like caraway
strewed on the top. Heavy sponge cakes
made in a mould, and cakes made from bean
flour, are also in request.

The mere naming of the Chinese wines would
fill a chapter; let it be enough to say that use
is made of a great many sorts, and that some
of them are by no means contemptible. Tea is
drunk at every meal; and, at all hours of the day,
there is a pot of tea ready for use. It is taken
without sugar or milk. Milk indeed is scarcely
used by the Chinese, and curious substitutes
are sometimes sold to the foreigner.

The Chinese aristocrat never feasts (if he can
help it) without roast sucking-pig for one dish;
and of roast pig the part he prefers is the
cracklling. Every reading child knows about bird's-
nest soup and the Indian sea-slug biche de mer.
Eggs are baked in clay until quite hard, and
eaten in slices. Deer's sinews and pig's ears are
great favourites. They have also excellent
soups, thickened with first-rate vermicelli. In
Foo-chow-foo, bacons and hams are prepared
which many pronounce to be as good as
English; at all events they are famous all over
China, and are always a very acceptable present
to the residents at the other ports. They have
even been exported to America, though, no
doubt, only as curiosities. It is said that the
art of curing hams was introduced into Foo-chow
by a resident English lady some twelve years ago.

In pastry the Chinese fail, their dough being
always heavy. But they seldom attempt more
than a mincemeat dumpling or a sweet dough
pudding. They have a fairy cake, not thicker
than a couple of wafers, made of a leaf of the
lotus flower baked between two thin layers of
paste.

Chinese cooks can soon learn to dress most
foreign dishes to perfection. I have tasted
as good English plum-pudding and cake made
by a Chinese cook as it would be possible to
get at home. The native cook in a European
family does, no doubt, make occasional mistakes,
such as boiling a salad, or serving up green
peas in the pods.

Let me close with a story or two which I
don't believe, though a grave travelled Chinaman
is my authority. He declares that the
following cruel receipt makes a favourite dish with
the mandarins in some of the northern provinces.
(When a Chinaman invents a marvel, he invariably
places his scene of action in the north.) Set
butter in a frying-pan over a fire, having near at
hand plenty of cayenne pepper, salt, soy, &c.
Then take a fowl, duck, or goose, and hold it
alive, over the frying-pan with its feet just
touching it. The excessive heat will cause
the bird's feet to swell, and will at the same
time draw the blood into them. After a minute
or two, dip the feet alternately into all the
condiments, and return them to the frying-pan. By
repeating this process several times, nearly all
the blood of the body will run to the feet, which
will swell to the thickness of a couple of inches
and be finely spiced. The feet are the only part
to be eaten.

Another story of cooks in the north. They
build a low mud wall, inclosing a space two or
three feet across, and another wall outside, forming
a circus of about two feet wide, in which
they set pots containing wine, vinegar, soy, &c.
In the inner space they light a good fire, and in
the circus thus prepared, put a live lamb. The
lamb naturally becomes thirsty from the great
heat of the fire, and drinks what he finds as he
runs backward and forward in search of means
of escape. When the drinks are all swallowed,
and dried into the animal's flesh, the lamb
becomes exhausted, falls down dead, and in a very
short time is completely roasted.

Turtle may be prepared, according to the
same northern authority, by placing it over
the fire in a pot of water, in the lid of which
there is a hole large enough to allow the turtle
to put out his head. As the water becomes hot,
the turtle naturally thrusts his head out to get
at the cooler air, when he is fed with spiced
wine and soy, which he drinks readily as a relief
from the heat. This goes on as long as he has
strength to keep his head up, and, as the turtle
does not part with life easily, he seldom fails to
go on stuffing himself till he is cooked. The
first man who used this method was a priest,
who, as it happened, lived next to a soy
manufactory. His house one night caught fire, and
he, being unable to escape, was discovered at the
point of death, drinking greedily of the soy
which was running from his neighbour's house.

A DAY'S RIDE: A LIFE'S ROMANCE.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

MY poor companions had but a sorry time of
it on that morning. I was in a fearful temper,
and made no effort to control it. The little
romance of my meeting with these creatures was
beginning to scale off, and, there beneath, lay the
vulgar metal of the natures exposed to view.
As for old Vaterchen shuffling along in his
tattered shoes, half-stupid with wine and shame
together, I couldn't bear to look at him; while
Tintefleck, although at the outset abashed by
my rebukeful tone and cold manner, had now
rallied, and seemed well disposed to assert her
own against all comers. Yes, there was a
palpable air of defiance about her, even to the way
that she sang as she went along; every thrill
and cadence seemed to say, " I'm doing this to
amuse myself; never imagine that I care whether
you are pleased or not." Indeed, she left me no
means of avoiding this conclusion, since at every
time that I turned on her a look of anger or
dipleasure her reply was to sing the louder.

'"And it was only yesterday," thought I,
"and I dreamed that I could be in love with
this creature—dreamed that I could replace
Kate Herbert's image in my heart with that
coarse travestie of woman's gentleness. Why,
I might as well hope to make a gentleman of
old Vaterchen, and present him to the world as
a man of station and eminence."

What an insane hope was this! As well might
I shiver a fragment from a stone on the road-