I could love, these circumstances tended to
invest a cripple with peculiar interest in my
eyes, and I have made it a rule to seek the
acquaintance ot those I met. As my position
and presumed object became known,
was made the victim of several unworthy
artifices, so that I determined to make all
future advances under an assumed name,—as
I did to you, Mary. At first I was pleased
with the notion that you loved me for
myself; but when I came to know your
excellencies, your cultivated intellect, your delicate
sense of honour, and your modest reserve, I
did not dare to confess I had deceived you,
until I had called to my aid the adventitious
influences of position and fortune, and by
them won over your friends to my side. Yet
when you were here, I had not courage to
tell you personally, and I suffered you to find
it out for yourself.'

"' Sir,' interrupted Mary, rising, ' I am
ashamed to say that I have been guilty of
contemptible curiosity this day; but I have
not read your papers. Forgive me; this is
the last time I shall ever doubt you.'

"'But what caused your very belligerent
aspect ? ' said Mr. Gordon to my husband,
after he and Mary had quite settled the
question of forgiveness. ' I thought you and
Mrs. Wigley were both going to attack me;
and if you did not know I had been twice a
widower, what occasioned your solemn
manner of reception? '

"'The two wooden legs!' I replied.

"In four months after their first meeting, we
had the grandest wedding that was ever seen
in our chapel; which was registered for the
celebration of marriages. Mary and Mr.
Gordon left the town in great glory.

"Since then we have often visited them;
and my own little Mary is now being
educated with their children.

"I believe the two wooden legs still remain
in the dark little closet; but there is no
apparent probability of a third defunct limb
at present."

"We ought to" be more patient under
deprivations," added our minister's wife;
"for who knows all the advantages of
disadvantages?"

THE REAL COOK'S ORACLE.

WHICHEVER of those compact pocket
definitions that ingenious spirits have hunted up
regarding the special characteristics of man, be
the right one; whether he be a talking animal,
or a two-legged animal; a clubable or a
dancing animal; however else socially
distinguished from that meaner company whom we
must perforce hail as fellow creatures; there
can be no question but that he has one proud
characteristic, which at once sets them far
below him. He is a cooking animal. He is
a roasting, boiling, stewing, frying, sauce-
extracting, gravy-making animal. He knows
the philosophy of exquisite juices, of
profound savours, of delicious extracts, of
heavenly essence! The animals' friends, the
bold propagandists who plead for the dog,
and hint at the possibility of that noble
animal's carrying about with him a soul, can
never get over this stumblingblock. Your
noble animal, the dog, cannot cook—cannot
extract juices, save, indeed, in that crude,
hasty fashion, by machinery of his own poor
jaws. Though that be a reasoning process
in him, his sniffing at each arm of the
crossroads, and so, by a syllogism, as it were,
lighting on the right path taken by his
master; still the famous dog Millennium will
have to come round before he reach that
mystical process which will prompt him to
grilling of his bone, or to extracting its
mysterious juices in the shape of soup.

That other noble animal—need we say the
horse—must needs starve and die, if he have
to wait for the inspiration of grilled oats, or
hay soufflet. So long, then, as this agreeable
disqualification exists, men walk abroad
securely, and have no fears from the development
of those powers of reason in his fellow
animals. He shall stand for ever on that
'vantage ground of cooking: the rest shall
not travel out of raw diet and unconverted
juices.

Though comforting to think there exists
this broad line of demarcation, never to be
overleaped, still must it be borne in mind
that there are qualities and degrees even
among faggots. Man is, beyond dispute, a
cooking animal; no one shall take from him
this crown: but there is one sort of cooking
animal, and there is another. There are
nations who may be written down, all cooking
animals; and there are nations quite
imbeciles and helpless as children in this
all-important matter. Infants yet in their
mother's arms have been known to lisp with
indistinct sounds respecting Vol-au-vents and
Salmis, and have closed their little fingers
affectionately on a ladle, in preference to the
most popular toy! Heroes, great afterwards
in kitchen campaigns, and giants of the
range, have before now leaped in their
mother's arms with curious prescience of
the strange destiny before them. But there
have been those countries where ages have
rolled past, one after the other, in culinary
darkness, without so much as a single ray to
illumine the obscurity. France and Italy
have in their Fasti many proud names,
illustrious in this peculiar walk: while England,
alas! must needs hang her head for shame,
having no children who have fought in this
good fight, and handed down their deeds to a
grateful posterity. Those favoured countries
have indeed raised many mortals to the
skies: our own has, unhappily, brought not
the smallest angel down!

Let Britannia find a feeble gratification in
ruling the waves: what far greater
glorification finds Gallia in ruling the roast?
Britons, in a curious spirit of self-assertion,