on the spot. He made great improvements in
the art of preserving vegetables, and, in the
windy language of the day, carried the month of
May into the heart of December.

Dr. Kitchener, often eccentric, but always
full of shrewd common sense, has left some
useful remarks on cooking vegetables, the look
and taste of which he truly says, form a great
mark of difference between an elegant and an
ordinary table. In London, vegetables are apt
to be stale, and freshened up with water. They
should be nearly full grown, fresh picked, green,
and plump. They must soak for an hour after
being rinsed, and must be boiled with plenty of
water. Every moment's neglect stamps an
indelible mark of second class on vegetables. If
the boiling have been stopped, they will be brown
instead of green. If not taken up at the
moment when they sink, they will be dull and
dingy. If not well drained, they will be mashy.
The quicker they boil, the greener they will
be; take care, moreover, to put in the bigger
vegetables first; mind that in large cauliflowers
the stalk and flower can never both be well
cooked; and you will have your vegetable-
marrows marrowy, your peas buttery, your broad
beans soft, your French beans tender; and your
potatoes balls of flour.

And this recalls us to one of the most
important branches of the Apician art— the most
dangerously simple in appearance, but in reality
the most rarely attainable. Was it not Lord
Sefton, or some other equally celebrated
epicure, who, being on the committee of a club
deciding on the choice of a new chef, after the
most abstruse subtleties of art had been
exhausted, put this simple and staggering question:

"Can you cook a potato?"

Whether the chef fainted or challenged Lord
S., tradition—being, indeed, often rather hard
of hearing—has not condescended to relate.

But Lord S. was right; no doubt in the mere
boiling of a potato the profoundest chemical
laws are evolved, and a Faraday might have
lectured upon the process as embracing all
the mysteries of the kitchen. It involves the
discovery of the powers of steam, and the laws
of caloric; though all these are known by
implication to every good and thoughtful cook.
The worst of potato cooking is, that no
experience in the art seems to teach it to the
ordinary domestic.

Choose your potatoes carefully; the yellow
are more worthy than the red, and the red are
more worthy than the white. Potatoes are best
of a moderate size, without specks, heavy,
and clear in the rind. They should not be
washed until they are pared and prepared for
cooking. Boil, Dr. Kitchener (what a fortunate
name for a writer on gastronomy!) says,
potatoes of the same size together: otherwise
the smaller ones will be boiled to pieces before
their larger brethren are softened at the core.
Above all things, do not fill your saucepan more
than half full; and remember that it is
especially important not to put more water than
will cover the potatoes about an inch, so that,
allowing for waste in boiling, they may still just
be covered.

Set them on a moderate fire till the lid of
the saucepan begins to trot and bump; then
lift the pot off the fire to the hob, there to
simmer as slowly as possible, till the potatoes
will admit the prongs of a steel fork. Moderate
sized potatoes take about twenty minutes boiling.
The cracking of the coats is no proof of
their being done, as some potatoes, when boiled
too fast, will open before they are half done;
when the fork test satisfies you, pour off the
water, uncover the saucepan, and set it by the
fire for fifteen or twenty minutes, so as to let
the moisture pass off in steam. The potatoes
will then come to table dry and mealy. This
mode Dr. Kitchener much preferred to steaming.

ALONE IN CHAMBERS—THE OLD LATIN
GRAMMAR.

MY poor old dog's-eared Latin grammar,
   Sole relic of my schoolboy years,
When knowledge, like a great sledge-hammer,
    Battered my brain amid my tears.
I gaze upon thy woful pages,
    And think, remembering parted pain,
That no philosophers or sages
    Would like the past to come again.

I know I wouldn't. Greek and Latin
    Made misery of my youthful time;
Though mathematics I was pat in,
    And not amiss in rhythm and rhyme.
My boyhood's days were days of grief,
    My appetite outran my dinner;
And pocket money's scant relief
    Still left my appetite the winner.

And then the pangs of hopeless passion,
    Which in my burning teens I knew,
Though comic in a certain fashion,
    Were bitter sorrows while they grew!
I long'd to leap Time's bars and jailers—
    To be my self's own king and lord;
To pass " the Rubicon of tailors,"
    And fight the world with pen or sword.

Great were the ambition and the folly
    That sent my soul to future days,
Amid a present melancholy,
    To seek for glory and its bays.
I thought all pleasures were before me—
    Love, Fortune, Fame—all bliss combined.
Poor fool! ere forty years flew o'er me
    I'd left the best of them behind.

Still Fortune or its chance is left me,—
    My stomach's good, my brain is clear;
My heart is hard, for it bereft me
    Of twice five thousand pounds a year.
I might have married all that money,
    But chose to wed a poor young maid—
Fair as the morn and sweet as honey,
    Who loved me dearly—I'm afraid.

This grammar stirs my soul too sadly!
    Go rest, old relic, on the shelf!
I fear my life has passed but badly;
    I do not care to know myself.