Strangers in search of Rollrich Stones may
find them more quickly than I did by directing
their steps to a clump of lofty fir-trees,
which, grown within the arena of the Druid
temple, form a landmark for several miles
round.

CHIP.

PEN AND INK PIES.

WE profess a respect for literature, but we
also love cooks. Well, what is writing an
article, but making a pie? You roll out your
crust, or general subject, which is a nutritious
compound of wheaten flour, butter, milk, and
useful knowledge. You prepare your fruit,
or meat, or poultry, or special and novel
information. You throw in a few bits of
preserved quince, or anecdotes, or forcemeat
balls, or happy illustrations. You sweeten
to your taste with syrup, brown sugar, or
amiable philanthropy; or you season with
pepper, salt, and smart remarks, dusting the
interior of the paté with fine-chopped lemon-
peel, aromatic herbs, and all the small fragments
of wit you can muster. When
you have roughly got the whole together
into shape, you polish up; you cut off' round
the edges superfluous bits of paste and
redundant phrases; you divide into
paragraphs and mark out into portions to help;
you smooth, and scrape out, and decorate
with flowers of eloquence or macaroons and
moulded buttons of crust; you varnish with
white of egg or glibness of style; and, when
the whole is finished to your mind, in the
shape of a fair copy and the dish of a neatly-
trimmed tart, you send your handiwork
or your mindiwork to the oven or the
printing-office.

Then comes the rub and the test; the proof
of the pudding and the page is in the eating
and the reading. If your composition be
badly put together, the oven and the press
will only make it worse; little cracks will
gape open wide, and small weak places will
become yawning holes. But, if your task
have been artistically completed with a
spontaneous touch of impulsive genius, it
will often turn out better than you
expected. You will be agreeably surprised at
the result of your efforts, and will chuckle to
find it read (or eat) so well. No man can
judge of his own performances in their crude
manuscript or uncooked state. Sometimes,
however, bakers, or editors and printers,
will spoil all when you don't deserve it. They
will stick your pie or paper in a corner that
is too fierce or too slow for it; they will keep
it too long, till it gets heavy and loses its
flavour. What you expected would be light
puff paste proves a leathery and indigestible
substance. Sometimes they will pull out the
plums and tit-bits, for mere mischief's sake,
to show they are somebody with a right to
have a finger in; but, against that we
ought to set their frequent abstraction of
tasteless morsels that are as much out of
place as chips in porridge. Occasionally they
will make sad errata and fractures, which let
out all your spirit, juice, sense, veracity, and
gravy. The dropping of a letter or a burning
hot patty-pan will make a mess of what was
perfect when it came into their hands:
indeed, the technical term for a confusion of
types is the very thing; printers call it
"pie." For such misfortunes the only
remedy is patience, seeing that both bakers
and printers and cooks and periodical writers
are but imperfect creatures at the best.

SCHOBRY THE BANDIT.

OF Schobry, the Hungarian captain of
banditti, there are told some Robin Hoodish
stories. If I repeat one, it is not for any love
I bear to bandits. They are thieves at best,
and often something worse than thieves.
They are not greatly to be admired if they
will now and then do that upon impulse
which honest men do always upon principle.
As for their generosity with other men's
possessions, I do not quite see the admirableness
of it, and I never did. It is the light going
of what has lightly come, the wrenching of
hard earnings from the man who had an
honest and wise use for them, and scattering
them away, if not in vicious indulgence, yet
in idle waste. Schobry has been known to
commit a daring robbery, buy jewellery and
rings with the larger half of the proceeds, and
dissipate the remainder in revelry and
indiscriminate donation. Schobry took great
pleasure in laughing at his Austrian pursuers,
and amused himself with many practical
jokes at the expense of the armed force,
when it was called out in consequence of
some audacious act of his.

The last joke of this kind preluded his end.
Disguised as a common grazier, he waited
upon an imperial-royal colonel to represent
that Schobry had robbed him on a particular
road, and that he thought he could point out
the brigand's den. At the same time he went
to the head of the police, and declared that
he knew Schobry's hiding-place, but would
consent to indicate it to the civil power only.
This assurance was agreeable to the police,
inasmuch as a large reward had been offered
for Schobry's apprehension. Of the military
expedition, led by a major and directed by
Schobry's lieutenant, four soldiers took occasion
to desert, two were suffocated in a most
intricate swamp, and the rest of the party,
having lost their guide, returned next day
to quarters in but sorry plight. The police
did not fare better. They were to be posted
in a cavern, twelve miles from the morass
chosen for the manoeuvres of the military,
and in an opposite direction. Into the cave,
it was said, Schobry would pass, unarmed and
drowsy, at the time of taking his siesta.