of a Pall Mall Club Committee specially
called for the selection of a cook. The
candidates were an Englishman, from the Albion
Tavern, and a Frenchman recommended by
Ude. The eminent divine who presided in
right of distinguished connoisseurship put the
first question to the candidates. It was this:
—' Can you boil a potato? '

Let us hope that these hints will fructify
and be improved upon, and that the first principles
of cooking will become, in some way, a
part of female education. In schools, however,
this will be difficult. It can only be a branch
of household education; and until it does so
become, we shall continue to be afflicted with
' Good Plain Cooks.'

TWO-HANDED DICK THE STOCKMAN.

AN ADVENTURE IN THE BUSH.

TRAVELLING in the Bush one rainy season,
I put up for the night at a small weather-
bound inn, perched half way up a mountain
range, where several Bush servants on the
tramp had also taken refuge from the
downpouring torrents. I had had a long and
fatiguing ride over a very bad country, so,
after supper, retired into the furthest corner
of the one room that served for ' kitchen, and
parlour, and all,' and there, curled up in my
blanket, in preference to the bed offered by
our host, which was none of the cleanest; with
half-shut eyes, I glumly puffed at my pipe in
silence, allowiug the hubble-bubble of the
Bushmen's gossip to flow through my
unnoting ears.

Fortunately for my peace, the publican's
stock of rum had been some time exhausted,
and as I was the latest comer, all the broiling
and frying had ceased, but a party sat round
the fire, evidently set in for a spell at 'yarning.'
At first the conversation ran in ordinary
channels, such as short reminiscences of old
world rascality, perils in the Bush. Till at
length a topic arose which seemed to have a
paramount interest for all. This was the
prowess of a certain Two-Handed Dick the
Stockman.

' Yes, yes; I 'll tell you what it is, mates,'
said one; ' this confounded reading and writing,
that don't give plain fellows like you and me a
chance;- now, if it were to come to fighting for
a living, I don't care whether it was half-minute
time and London rules, rough and tumble,
or single stick, or swords and bayonets, or
tomahawks,- I 'm dashed if you and me, and
Two-Handed Dick, wouldn't take the whole
Legislative Council, the Governor and Judges
—one down 'tother come on. Though, to be
sure, Dick could thrash any two of us.'

I was too tired to keep awake, and dozed
off, to be again and again disturbed with
cries of ' Bravo, Dick! ' ' That's your sort! '
' Houray, Dick! ' all signifying approval of
that individual's conduct in some desperate
encounter, which formed the subject of a
stirring narrative.

For months after that night this idea of
Two-Handed Dick haunted me, but the bustle
of establishing a new station at length drove
it out of my head.

I suppose a year had elapsed from the night
when the fame of the double-fisted stockman
first reached me. I had to take a three days'
journey to buy a score of fine-woolled rams,
through a country quite new to me, which I
chose because it was a short cut recently
discovered. I got over, the first day, forty-five
miles comfortably. The second day, in the
evening, I met an ill-looking fellow walking
with a broken musket, and his arm in a sling.
He seemed sulky, and I kept my hand on my
double-barrelled pistol all the time I was
talking to him; he begged a little tea and
sugar, which I could not spare, but I threw
him a fig of tobacco. In answer to my
questions about his arm, he told me, with a
string of oaths, that a bull, down in some
mimosa flats, a day's journey a-head, had
charged him, flung him into a water-hole,
broken his arm, and made him lose his sugar
and tea bag. Bulls in Australia are generally
quiet, but this reminded me that some of the
Highland black cattle imported by the
Australian Company, after being driven off by a
party of Gully Rakees (cattle stealers), had
escaped into the mountains and turned quite
wild. Out of this herd, which was of a breed
quite unsuited to the country, a bull
sometimes, when driven off by a stronger rival,
would descend to the mimosa flats, and
wander about, solitary and dangerously fierce.

It struck me as I rode off, that it was quite
as well my friend's arm and musket had been
disabled, for he did not look the sort of man
it would be pleasant to meet in a thicket of
scrub, if he fancied the horse you rode. So,
keeping one eye over my shoulder, and a
sharp look-out for any other traveller of the
same breed, I rode off at a brisk pace. I made
out afterwards that my foot friend was Jerry
Jonson, hung for shooting a bullock-driver,
the following year.

At sun-down, when I reached the hut where
I had intended to sleep, I found it deserted,
and so full of fleas, I thought it better to
camp out; so I hobbled out old Grey-tail on
the best piece of grass I could find which was
very poor indeed.

The next morning when I went to look for
my horse he was nowhere to be found. I put
the saddle on my head and tracked him for
hours, it was evident the poor beast had
been travelling away in search of grass. I
walked until my feet were one mass of
blisters; at length, when about to give up
the search in despair, having quite lost the
track on stony ground, I came upon the
marks quite fresh in a bit of swampy ground,
and a few hundred yards further found
Master Grey-tail rolling in the mud of a
nearly dry water-hole as comfortably as
possible. I put down the saddle and called
him; at that moment I heard a loud roar and