No sooner was it resolved to celebrate
Shakespeare's birthday in Dullborough, than the
popularity of the immortal bard became surprising.
You might have supposed the first edition of
his works to have been published last week,
and enthusiastic Dullborough to have got half
through them. (I doubt, by the way, whether it
had ever done half that, but this is a private
opinion.) A young gentleman with a sonnet,
the retention of which for two years had
enfeebled his mind and undermined his knees,
got the sonnet into the Dullborough Warden, and
gained flesh. Portraits of Shakespeare broke
out in the book-shop windows, and our principal
artist painted a large original portrait in oils for
the decoration of the dining-room. It was not in
the least like any of the other portraits, and was
exceedingly admired, the head being much swollen.
At the Institution, the Debating Society discussed
the new question, Was there sufficient ground for
supposing that the Immortal Shakespeare ever
stole deer? This was indignantly decided by
an overwhelming majority in the negative;
indeed, there was but one vote on the Poaching
side, and that was the vote of the orator who
had undertaken to advocate it, and who became
quite an obnoxious character—particularly to
the Dullborough "roughs," who were about as
well informed on the matter as most other
people. Distinguished speakers were invited
down, and very nearly came (but not quite).
Subscriptions were opened, and committees
sat, and it would have been far from a popular
measure in the height of the excitement, to
have told Dullborough that it wasn't
Stratford-upon-Avon. Yet, after all these
preparations, when the great festivity took place,
and the portrait, elevated aloft, surveyed the
company as if it were in danger of springing a
mine of intellect and blowing itself up, it did
undoubtedly happen, according to the inscrutable
mysteries of things, that nobody could be
induced, not to say to touch upon Shakespeare,
but to come within a mile of him, until the
crack speaker of Dullborough rose to propose the
immortal memory. Which he did with the
perplexing and astonishing result that before he had
repeated the great name half a dozen times, or
had been upon his legs as many minutes, he was
assailed with a general shout of "Question!"

THE SOUP QUESTION.

WE eat and drink at once when we take soup;
that is to say, we supply at once the daily waste
of solids and of fluids. Eating and drinking are
two names for the one act of feeding. Soup is
above the arbitrary distinction between food
that is thin and food that is thick. We drink
water, we eat porridge. But soup we eat, and
soup we drink, soup we take, and soup we have.
It is the greater that contains the less. Soup
contains all sorts of meat, soup contains also
vegetables of every kind, soup contains pepper and
salt and all condiments, soup contains water, and
soup often contains wine. Soup is meat and a
great deal more, vegetables and a great deal
more, the refreshing draught and a great deal
more; at once the whet and satisfaction to the
appetite. It is the elixir of life, rich creative
essence of man's flesh and blood. Always upon
condition that it be good soup.

Good catholic victual should contain not
merely one or two of the constituents of solid
humanity, but as nearly as possible all of them,
many as they are, and soup can do that. Let
the chemist whisper to the cook, and every
element of man's substantial life can be provided
in this palatable brew, that has the very name
of deglutition given to it, as a thing not to
be conceived apart from the enjoyment of it, as
that which we sup or swallow. In Wiclif's
Bible, death is said to be not swallowed, but
souped or supen up in victory.

But some of the old Germans, like
Geheimrath Hofmann of Halle, saw with regret the
soup-eating of their countrymen. Soup, they
said—warm soup—is expanded with hot air, it
distends the stomach, it dilutes the gastric
juice. If you must eat soup, take it for supper,
but don't fill your stomach with it, and then
drop into it salt meat, tough relishes, sauerkraut,
and over-baked solids. Soup has possession
of the stomach, and soup cannot digest
them. Nonsense, said the German householder,
who took his couple of plates of soup as preface
to a savoury substantial dinner. Nonsense, look
at the French, how they make everything into
soups, and flourish thereupon. Ah, yes, replied
the warning doctors; look at the French,
indeed; but they almost live on their soups, and
have accordingly soup-eating stomachs. They
don't want such masses ot hard stimulating
food as we hungry Germans do, and French
gastric juice isn't equal to the digestion of such
victuals. Once soup-eaters, always soup-eaters.
The elderly Frenchman who should put a pound
of German sausage into his stomach, would have
to go down with it into his grave, unless it were
extricated by an operation. Avoid soup, ye
full blooded, said, also, the German Geheimrath,
for it makes rich blood very fast, and you'll soon
have excess of it. German gastric juice is very
good and strong, and it wants something tough
and hard at mid-day, to occupy it well, and keep
it out of mischief. That is the true theory of
sauerkraut and sausage. Without some such
inward bolstering, every man would be devoured
by his own stomach in course of time. The
German people would disappear, and there
would remain covering the ground, like leeches
in a tropical forest, millions of hungry stomachs
gaping for their food. The Geheimrath
Hofmann recommended tough hard meat for dinner,
and a lump of butter sent after it to grease its
passage out of the stomach, when the strong
German gastric juice had settled with it.
Something to that effect is the old theory of butter
after dinner, but the theory of after-dinner
cheese is wholly different. The practice of
cheese after dinner began in the opinion that
cheese stopped at the entrance of the stomach.
The final piece of cheese was the stopper put