Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

D0&Min £• 2 ? 2 5 f £2 3 i. MRS. A. P. HILL, Editress. Thr. attention of all housekeeper* i* invited to this Depart ment, and the Editress urges them to send her copies of tried receipts. Let us make this an interesting and prof itable Department. WHAT SHALL THE SICK EAT I The question is often asked of the physician by the sick, “What do you wish me to eat?” Dr. Kitchener gives a pertinent answer: “It is not so much the article eaten as the quantity and quality. The most judicious choice of food will avail nothing unless the culinary preparation of it he equally judicious. How often is the skill of a pains-taking physician counteracted by want of corresponding attention to the preparation of food, and the poor patient is distressed by indi gestion. ” A young physician of my acquaintance re turned from a visit to one of his patients, an elderly lady suffering from chronic dyspepsia. His face wore a very discouraged look, and in answer to my inquiry as to the condition of the sick person, he replied: “I may as well give up the case; I can do no good.” “ Have any new symptoms come up?” I asked, remembering that when first called in he was quite hopeful of being able to afford relief. “No; but this evening my call was made about supper-time, and I could not well refuse the pressing invitation to remain and take a family meal. Biscuits were handed, black and blistered, and I found upon trial that they were heavy as putty, and about as digestible. My politeness would not go the length of eating scorched dough. After being very liberally helped to fried ham swimming in grease, I ac cepted with a sense of relief some kind of pre paration of corn-meal, at the same time remark ing to my host, that he might not be offended at my evident neglect of the biscuit, ‘ I am partic ularly fond of corn-bread.’ But oh, horror! I had, to use a familiar proverb, ‘jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire; for this was sodden and sour. But as I was ‘particularly fond of corn-bread,' my hospitable entertainer pressed it upon me; and there was no way of escape,—eat it I must, or wound the feelings of a worthy man. Now, if I feel so uncomfortable from eat ing only a few ounces of such food, what chance is there to relieve one who must starve or eat pounds of it—every mouthful of which increases the disease? You will now understand why I threaten to give up my patient; for I think that the physician who holds on to a case for the mere purpose of increasing his fee, is dishonor able.” “Did the family eat?” I asked. “Eat? I should think they did—voraciously— even the children, and they have a bloated, blood less look.” By way of comforting him, I laughingly said: “Well, just be patient, and you will have all the family upon your hands for medical treat ment.” “The Fates forbid,' was the reply. No doubt all physicians have some of this kind of experience, where their most skillful efforts to cure disease are frustrated by murder ous cooking. In the words of an author, “How much waste of the good gifts of Providence would be spared, and how much of the national disease of dyspepsia would vanish, if only half the thought were given to the art of preparing food for the table, which is devoted to the style and make of dress.” ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. “Bear Editress,—What is your authority for using ‘spoonfuls’? What do you mean by ‘Ampliitrion of the feast’? Ignoramus.” Answer.—1. I will simply refer you to Gould Brown, who says: “Compounds ending in fid, I and all those in which the principal word is put last, form the plural in the same manner as other nouns, as handfuls, spoonfuls,” etc. I certainly ! meant one spoon in measuring; more would have j been unnecessary and inconvenient. 2. “Giver ' of the feast ” is meant. “Dear Madam,—I see that your readers are invited, or rather permitted, to seek through your columns information on any subject. I avail myself of this privilege. I have so many questions to ask, I am embarrassed as to which I shall first propound. Some people might accuse me of an unusual amount of curiosity, but I am sure this state of mind grows out of an ! intense thirst for knowledge, and as such you will consider it laudable. Whilst stitching away on a shirt, with the machine our grandmothers used, it occurred to me to ask you why thimbles were so called ? Eva. ” Answer.—Some authorities give the English credit for inventing this protection to the finger, others attribute it to the industrious Germans; but all agree that they were worn first on the i thumb,—why, • I have never seen stated,—and called "thumb-bells,” which was easily contracted to "thimble.” I hope this explanation is sufii- ' eiently satisfactory to encourage you to perse- j vere in your “search after knowledge.” “ Dear Madam.—“I see from the Atlanta papers that the Irish citizens are intending to observe St. Patrick’s Day with unusual display. When is St. Patrick's Day ? And why do they wear I green on that day ? Please inform A Rustic. ” j Answer.—The seventeenth of March is St. Pat rick’s Day. In 433, A. D.. he was sent as a mis sionary to the Irish, who were then pagans. A youth named Benignus accompanied St. Patrick, j He greatly aided in gaining the good will of the people by his sweet singing. It was very diffi cult to make these people understand the doc trine of the “Trinity." Believing that God was everywhere, the missionary looked abroad for some object in nature to illustrate the doctrine he wished to explain to them. Seeing a sham rock, or treefoil, he exclaimed: “Is it not as pos sible for the Father, Son. and Holy Ghost to exist in one person as for these three leaves to grow upon one leaf-stalk?” The illustration made the doctrine plain.—since which time the sham rock and green have been adopted as the national mbol and color. St. Patrick died at Down, in Ireland, A. D. 462. BILL-OF-FA RE FOR TUESDAY. BREAKFAST. Krokile. Sausage. Pigs’ feet fried in batter. Mutton chops. Baked omelet. Irish potatoes sliced, stewed, and seasoned with cream and butter. Hominy, or oat-meal mush. Plain biscuit. Waffles. Milk toast. Cold light- bread. DINNER. (Soup is the preface to the dinner.1 Soup a la Julienne. Boiled leg of mutton with egg, or caper sauce. Boast pork. Gipsy stew. Turnips. Irish and sweet potatoes. Canned tomatoes. Boiled onions. Pickles. Bice omelet. Dessert—Mince or fruit pie. Quick pudding. Boiled cus tard. Jellies or preserves. Nuts. Coffee. TEA. Grated ham, or any cold meats left from dinner. Quails or birds on toast. Sally Lunn. Yeast powder biscuit. Souffle wafers. Chocolate, or cocoanut cake. Ambrosia. Tea and coffee. RECEIPTS. Krokile.—To mince cold meat of any kind add cold gravy; break in very small pieces, or grate as much cracker as meat; three eggs beaten to gether, butter, pepper and salt: stir all well to the meat; pour over sufficient water to cover the mixture—add a little onion, if liked: sprinkle over the top grated cracker; bake just long enough to brown—a few minutes will be suffi cient. Baked Omelet—Boil one pint of milk and drop into it one tea-spoonful of butter: mix to a paste with cold milk a table-spoonful of flour, and stir to the boiling milk. Beat eight eggs together, and pour the milk to them, stirring briskly; salt and pepper to taste. Butter a fire-proof dish; pour in the mixture, and bake in a quick oven until a light-brown color; watch carefully—too much baking will spoil it. Soup a la Julienne.—Cut up three carrots, two turnips, a quarter of a head of cabbage or let tuce, one white onion, two Irish potatoes, six heads of celery; boil a good shank-bone of beef or veal; to a half gallon of this broth add the vegetables, and boil until they are done. Skim the soup well; add salt, but not pepper—this can be used ex tempore and as suits individual taste. Mutton Sauce ( Egg) — Very Simple.—Half pint of the mutton broth when sufficiently boiled; put it in a stew-pan; add two table-spoonfuls of butter, half a tea-cup of sweet milk; make a paste of one table-spoonful of flour and a little cold milk. As the broth boils, add the flour paste: season with salt. Have four hard-boiled eggs chopped fine; lay them in the bottom of the tureen, and just before serving pour the broth over the eggs. Capers may be used if preferred, and a sufficient quantity made to pour a part over the mutton. Gipsy Stew.—Soak a tumbler full of white field peas an hour; cut fine half a head of cabbage, a carrot, turnip, two onions, parsley; two cloves of garlic, if the flavor is liked; four stalks of celery, if convenient; spices, if liked; pepper and salt. Fry four ounces of salt pork; add to it two pounds of fresh beef, mutton, veal or ven ison, and birds, all cut up; put all the meat in a pot or stew-pan, and just cover with water; let it stew half an hour; skim well, and then add the vegetables, stirring gently until thoroughly done; add boiling water to keep it covered, but no more. It will probably be rich enough with out butter; if not, a little may be added. To Boil Bice.—Rub the rice through several waters, to remove the glue. A vessel lined with porcelain is best for boiling. Put the rice in the stew-pan after it is well washed, and cover it with boiling water; stew a quarter of an hour; empty it in a cullender, and pour over cold water; shake the vessel well until the water all runs out; then pour over hot water, and after this has dripped through, set the cullender open on a warm part of the stove; boil salt in the water. If these directions are followed, the rice will be white and dry. The omelet is a nice, economical dish; for making it, see page 245 of Mrs. Hill’s cook book. Quick Pudding.—Soften as much sponge cake as you wish to use with hot, rich sweet milk—let it soak. Just before dinner make a boiled cus tard of the yolks of the eggs, and pour it hot over the cake; beat it well; season to taste; bake until firm. Put a marengue over the custard. Make the marengue by whipping the whites to a stiff froth; add a table-spoonful of pulverized sugar for each egg; flavor. Better eaten with sauce. Souffle Wafers.—Rub into a quart of flour four ounces of butter; mix with sweet milk; roll thin; bake quick. These may be fried, and are then called puff's. Chocolate Cake.—One cup of sugar, two eggs, half cup of butter, the same of sweet, milk, two cups of flour, two tea-spoonfuls of yeast powder; bake this in a pan rather shallow. When cold, split the cake in half carefully without injuring the shape. Make a frosting or custard and place between the cakes; ice the top and sides of the cake. Frosting. —The whites of three eggs beaten to a stiff froth; a cup and a half of white sugar; six table-spoonfuls of sweet, grated chocolate; beat until thick; flavor with vanilla. Chocolate Custard.—One cup of sweet choco late, the same of white sugar and sweet milk, the white of one egg beaten; mix and boil until like custard; flavor with vanilla. When cold, spread between the cake. It may be iced. Cocoanut Cake.—A white cake is best for this. Some excellent receipts for this cake may be found in Mrs. Hill's cook book. Cut the cake in four pieces, but without injuring the shape. Make the frosting by any good receipt,—I prefer the boiled icing No. 1 in my cook book; reserve part of this icing for the outside, and in the re mainder stir grated cocoanut to make it as thick and rich as desired. The cocoanut may be scalded in milk, which should be drained from it before being stirred to the icing; this is put between the slices of cake. A rough icing may be made by adding grated cocoanut to all the icing, and using it for the outside as well as between the slices. Flavor with lemon or vanilla. “Courage,” says Sancho Panza, “supports a man in time of danger, but it is the stomach that supports his courage.” [For The Sutinv South.] THACKERAY. Why His Memory Should be Dear to Amer icans, and Especially mo to Southerner*. BY G. C. PLAYER. This may be illustrated, in part, by comparing his course in regard to America with that of his distinguished friend, Charles Dickens. As many know. Dickens, Thackeray and Bul- wer constituted a trio at the head of late English literature. The last, with more versatility than either of the others, has never written anything unfriendly to our country that we have seen. But Dickens visited it years ago, soon after he attained celebrity; and he was received in one of our leading cities, by some enthusiastic young men, with an abject homage which ought at least to have won his pity and forbearance. But in his novel of “Martin Chuzzlewit,”—in which Martin, the hero, comes to the United States, hoping to repair a shattered fortune, and is made the mouth-piece of the author on the affairs of the country generally,—disgust and contempt are expressed, of greater bitterness and longer drawn out than any author, perhaps, of such rank has ever indulged in. The ship had scarcely anchored in New Y'ork harbor when he began his abuse of editors and the spirit of the press, from whence he passsd on in hot haste to the manners and customs, the hollowness of the republican ism, the propensity to overreach in trade, the politicians, the frontier’s-men. and in fact, every thing. Chuzzlewit’s entire stay, including his journey to the West and back, is one unbroken tirade, except where he paused for a derisive laugh. The people are accused of wide-spread hypocrisy, of swindling and of black-mailing; and not content with scourging all the present with his fury, he digressed to draw dark forebod ings of the future. To those who have not read it, we would say it is worthy of perusal, as a curious example of how so great a genius could give so loose a rein to anger and prejudice. As the scenes of the above are laid in the North, the onslaught would have been a good joke for the South, if he had stopped there. But, as if with gathered strength from the exer cise of his rage on that section, he (in his Amer ican Notes) turned and emptied the vials of his wrath on our section for her slavery. He suffered himself to fall into the error so com mon with the outside world—of confounding negro slavery to higher races with slavery in the abstract; and also ignoring the fact that more crime, degradation, want and irremediable mis ery could have been found in the purlieus of London and Liverpool, and the British collier ies, than in the entire South. He stigmatized it as the great sin of the world. He seemed to be reckless as to fanning the already glowing flames of ignorance, hate and fanaticism. He let him self be gulled into publishing a long list of atro cious cruelties alleged to have been practiced upon slaves, furnished, no doubt, by some abo lition zealot who (like himself) had never so journed among slave-holders. So much for Dickens on America. And we ■ have written it in no spirit of unkindness, be ing, as we are, of his warmest admirers (as was Thackeray); but have done it, as was our right to use the historical fact, to show how very far he could fall below our author in a profound and unerring insight into life. Thackeray visited America twice, and traveled lecturing through North and South. He who was so candid in reproof throughout the old world, uttered no unkind words against our peo ple or institutions. The scenes of his novel, “The Virginians,” are laid partly in dear old Virginia; and in this work, as in others, he dis plays the faculty he possessed in so high a de degree (like Scott, Bulwer and Miss Muhlbach) of entering into the spirit and manner of other generations and countries. He has described the colonial life in that State better than any of our countrymen: the dignified old society; the frontier life; the poor and the aristocracy; the slaves and their cordial relations to their mas ters; the motley' militia organized by T the y'ounger Warrington, who took the American side in the Revolutionary' War; how old Braddock, with the characteristic drunken military arrogance of those times, snubbed the nascent philosopher, Frinklin, because he was only a printer; and, overbearing the remonstrances of the cool and skillful y'oung Colonel Washington, marched his army' headlong into the ambuscade of the Indians. Washington is introduced sparingly (in a few chapters) in this novel, and surely our justly-idolized Irving has hardly portrayed this great patriot in as lofty' colors as did Thackeray', the foreigner. For this, and the other reasons just given, it would seem strange not to And some of his writings in every library' in Virginia. But we come now to the main reason why Thackeray is entitled to the warm and lasting gratitude of our Southern people; and it turns on his remarkable faculty (already alluded to) of looking at men and things divested of prejudice and with a deeper scrutiny than others are capa ble of. Bear in mind that his experience as a passionate art-student, conning lineaments, atti tude and countenance, aided him here again es sentially. Some years before our civil war, he made a summer tour by invitation, in a ship in the Peninsula and Oriental Steam Navigation Company's service, via Gibraltar and through the Mediterranean, to the Orient. The trip em braced, besides other places of great interest, the following belonging to the Ottoman Empire: Alexandria and Grand Cairo, in Egypt; Jaffa and Jerusalem, in Syria; and Smyrna and Con stantinople He wrote a concise little sketch, one-fourth the size of most books of travel, de scribing this tour, which he called, “A Journey from Cornhill to Cairo,” (Cornhiil being the lit erary street of London in which he resided.) It was known to but few, and those mainly travelers and foreign diplomatists, until this hook was written, that slavery existed outside of the Southern States, Cuba and Brazil; and strangely enough, all the odium was attached to our de voted section, as if Christendom could not see the evil in but one country' at a time. But our author met with it in these venerable and exten sive dominions of the sultan at every turn; it was in vogue, as it has been ever since the times of the Ptolemies and Carthage; at the wonted season annually, the “straight-nosed” dealers came down with them from the slave villages of the interior, pretty much as our Kentucky brethren bring horses and mules. Some were disposed of here in the land of the Pharaohs, while others were passed on for sale into other portions of the empire. Here are the remarks he made upon the negro slavery as he met with it again and again. At Cairo, love of art impell ing him, he went to see the “desolated, noble old buildings outside the city, known as the tombs of the caliphs. Every'"one of these edi fices, with their domes, and" courts, and min arets, is strange and beautiful. In one of them there was an encampment of negro slaves newly arrived. A series of studies of negroes alone would form a picture-book delightfully gro tesque. Some scores of them were huddled against the sunny wall; two or three of their ■ masters lounged'about the court or lay smoking upon carpets. There was one of these fellows, a straight-nosed, ebony-faced Abyssinian, with an expression of such sinister good-humor in his handsome face as would form a perfect type of vallainy. He sat leering at me over his car pet as I endeavored to get a sketch of that incar nate rascality. ‘“Give me some money,’ said the fellow. * I know what yon are about. Von will sell my ; picture for money' when you get hack to Europe; give me some of it now.'" * * * * “Then one of his companions got up and showed us his black cattle. The male slaves were chiefly lads, and the women young, well- formed and abominably hideous; the dealer pulled her blanket off one of them and bade her stand up. which she did with a great deal of shuddering modesty. She was coal-black; her lips were the size of sausages, her eyes large and good-humored: the hair or wool on this young person's head was curled and greased into a thousand filthy little ringlets. She was evi dently the beauty of the flock. They are not unhappy: they look to being bought, as many a spinster looks to an establishment in England; once in a family they are kindly treated and well clothed, and fatten, and are the merriest people of the whole community.” Many of the streets of this great “thorough fare of travel,” Cairo, being too narrow for vehi cles, those who do not choose to go afoot, ride on horses or donkeys: and usage gives the privi lege to those mounted, or their attendants, to lash those on foot out of the way. He writes: “The whip is in everybody's hands: the pasha’s running footman, as he goes hustling through the bazaar; the doctor's attendant, as he soberly threads the crowd on his mare: the negro stare, who is riding by himself, the most insolent of all, strikes and slashes about icithout mercy, etc.” On the way to Jerusalem he saw "a negro, of preternatural ugliness, in a yellow gown, with a crimson handkerchief streaming over his head, digging his shovel-spurs into the lean animal he rode, and driving three others before—swaying backwards and forwards on his horse, now em bracing his ears, and now almost under his belly, screaming yallah, with the most frightful shrieks, and singing country songs." On a day of royal procession in Constantino ple— “The common women were assembled by many hundreds; the yak mac, a muslin chin- cloth which they wear, makes almost every face look the same; but the eyes and noses of these beauties are generally visible, and, for the most part, both these features are good. The jolly negresses wear the same white vail, but they are by no means so particular about hiding the charms of their good-natured black faces, and they let the cloth blow about as it lists, atui grin unconfined. Wherever we went the negroes seemed happy. They have the organ of rhikl-loving; little creatures were always prattling on their shoul ders—queer little things in night-gowns of yel low dimity, with great flowers, and pink, or red, or yellow shawls, with great eyes glistening un derneath. Of such the black women seemed always the happy guardians. I saw one at a fountain, holding one child in her arms and giving another a drink, a ragged little beggar— a sweet and touching picture of black charity.” In the rejuvenated Egyptian port, Alexandria, he says: “The best sight I saw was a negro holiday, which was celebrated outside the town by a sort of negro village of huts, swarluing with old, lean, fat, ugly, infantine happy faces, that Na ture has smeared with a preparation more black and durable than Warren’s blacking. * * * Every one of these jolly faces was on the broad grin, from the dusky mother to the India-rubber child sprawling upon her back, etc. * * * To these dancers a couple of fellows were playing on a drum and a little banjo. They were sing ing a chorus which was not only singular and perfectly marked in the rythm, but exceed ingly sweet in the tune. They danced in a cir cle, and performers came trooping from all quar ters, who fell into the round and began wag ging their heads and waving their left hands, and tossing up and down the little thin rods which they each carried, and all singing to the very best of their power. “I saw the chief eunuch of the Grand Turk at Constantinople pass by, but with what a dif ferent expression! Though he is one of the greatest of the great in the Turkish Empire (ranking with a Cabinet Minister or Lord Cham berlain in England), his countenance was cloud ed with care and savage with ennui. Here his black brethren were ragged, starving and happy; and I need not tell such a fine moralist as you are how it is the case, in the white as well as the black world, that happiness (republican leveler that does not care a fig for the fashion) often disdains the turrets of kings, to pay a visit to the ‘ tabemas pauperum.’ “We went the round of the coffee-houses in the evening, both the polite Europen places of resort, where you get ices and the French papers, and those in the town—where Greeks, Turks and general company resort, to sit upon uncomfort able chairs and drink wretchedly muddy coffee, and to listen to two or three miserable musi cians, who keep up a variation of howling for hours together. But the pretty song of the niggers had spoiled me for that abominable music." (The Italics are ours.) The shrewdest and most learned scion of the oldest and most experienced slave-holding fam ily of Virginia (nay, the shade of Jefferson arisen) could not have summed up, more briefly and fit tingly, negro traits and ways in slavery, than did this Englishman at a glance,—their easy adapta tion to this condition of servitude, their thought less merriment, their imitative insolence, their good humor, their kindness, their “child-lov ing,” and their sweet, simple music. And he wrote this, too, utterly regardless of the power ful current of public opinion in the opposite direction at home. All honor, Southerners, to the practical phi losopher who, uninvited, uttered so complete a palliation of the entailed “institution,” for which it was the fashion with other men to deride us. Oh, that the Republican statesmen (so called) could have had a tithe of his wisdom ! Then would they have gone on to a peaceful termination of slavery, instead of drenching the country in blood. [For The Sunny South.] IS LETTER-WRITING AT AN END? BY C. WOODWARD HUTSON. Are the telegram and the postal card really : going to make an end of letter-writing ? Is pos- j terity to he deprived of any chance of receiving the sort of enlightenment about the daily life and the heart-history of society in our time, which makes us so thankful to Madame de Sev- igne and Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Horace Walpole, Gray, Cowper and Byron, for the way in which they filled up the historic back-ground of their days? Or is it only business that will use the modern improvements, in the long run, leaving the gossip and the self-revelation, the jottings-down of witty triflers, the rapid record of some picturesque event that has escaped the newspaper reporters, and the confidential sketch of character, to the dear old time-honored friendly letter. Yet again: If the letter-writing of our fore fathers is to be a lost art, may we still hope, for the use of future historians and biographers, and the delectation of readers among our great- grand-children, such treasures as Pepys’s and Evelyn’s and Crabb Robinson's diaries, "and Dr. Thomas Carlyle’s autobiography, and memoirs like those of the Youngs, and a score more that will rush to the mind of any one who enjoys that delightful class of literature, as real and ' far fresher than the life that goes on around most of us ? These are questions that may be asked, but who shall answer them ? There is a great fear upon the heart of every cultivated man in our day, that the ways of life have become so terri bly practical, and the communication between man and man so practicable, that there will soon be no leisure left to pause and mark the forms of the life we are living, and that the manner of our communication will henceforth he as abrupt as that short, quick nod of recognition which the French Revolution (the first of them all) is said to have brought into fashion. Such, indeed, are already the tendencies of all intercourse be tween man and man. Commerce, in every sense of the word, is the fittest term for it. But how is it as to the communication between man and woman, and again, between woman and woman ? Surely, the oldest and deepest instincts of human nature must intervene here, and forbid the art of letter-writing wholly to die out. Wherever there is a little leisure left in the wild rush and business-hurry of modern life, there must be some few men and women left in the gentle eddy made by the sweep of the current, to think of little pleasant things to write to one another, and to put what idle trifles they have to utter into neat and graceful forms. To he sure, if the passion of the age for level ing everything and everybody runs its free course, we shall not know much difl'erenee be tween the sexes; there will be no leisure left for anybody; ltttle things, however pretty, will be thrown into the mould that is to fashion all material into the same shapes: and the graceful will be pooh-pooh'd as of no earthly consequence. We seem rather to he drifting to that state of things. But it is to he hoped there will be a halt called somewhere on this march to the land of bricks. Indeed, the like has been tried more than once before in the history of the human race: and human nature has always been too strong for the communists. As Horace says, push out nature with a pitch-fork, and the old lady 'll be back again in a hurry. They tried agragrianism in old Rome several times, but it did not succeed. The leaders in the movement perished, and those who came into power through agitating the same popular measures, in a modi fied form, ended by establishing a plebeian aris tocracy by the side of the patrician. They tried compulsory education—a favorite measure with both the One-man Tyrant and the Mob Tyrant— and a sort of military commune in Sparta; but Sparta never accomplished the mighty things which have made the name of Athens a beauty and a gloiy for all time. Moreover, she was beaten in her own peculiar sphere of glory by the Thebans, as soon as their great leaders had applied to them the secret of Spartan success— thorough military discipline. They tried sofnething of the same kind in ancient China, and China has ever since remain ed —China,—a symbol for defeated progress and stereotyped half-development. The Christians of the early church began with a community of goods; hut the life that glowed in that organization was too heathful for so un natural a system to last, and the whole principle lapsed away so silently that no records survive to tell us how or when it ceased to be operative. In almost every stirring age, some effort has been made to reduce the separate elements of society to parts of a great co-operative machinery; and in every age the experiment has failed when ever the God-ordained distinctions of sex and age and condition were cast out of the account. The principle of inheritance—that is, the hered- itariness of qualities physical, mental and moral; the doctrine of property acquired and inherited, and the relations of the family, are great facts in human nature and human history which can never be disregarded with impunity, and every revolt against their authority must end in the overthrow of the system which aims to set them aside. Hence, when the material progress of our day would dally with the temptation to util ize everything under the sun in the same way and on the same scale, without regard to the distinctions and the limits appointed by nature, and would fuse all the social elements in the same crucible, to be put to the same use, it is the tool of a limited science, working within a narrow scope and from a one-sided point of view; and it breaks in the hands of those who ignorantly use it thus. To go back to the trifle which I took as a text for this little sermon on the drift of modern thought—the affections and the frailties of hu manity alike will prove too strong for the busi ness spirit of our time, in the end, in the matter of correspondence as well as in greater things. Mothers will still write fond letters to their ab sent sons, yearning to be with them in spirit, and to guide, as of old, the tenor of their ways, counseling and exhorting, planning for them and indulging in golden dreams of what they may accomplish if they will but bestir them selves and show what is in them, and striving, by a thousand tender references to the home- world, to keep their hearts warm to the sweet influences of that fireside circle in which the thought of them is ever present. Lovers will still be penning long epistles in the vain attempt to express the unutterable emotions which crowd the soul in so rich an exuberance at that dawn-tinted time of human experience. Friends will still be filling many a page with lively non sense and pleasant chit-chat, exchanging desul tory reflections on things in general, and re counting plans and prospects. School-girls will still be retailing multitudinous gossip and mingling endless terms of endearment with a vast assortment of under-scored sentiment; and prosy old fellows will still be busily explaining everything in the world to a dozen or so corres pondents, as if there were not a superfluity of encyclopedias and popular magazines in the land, to say nothing of the school-books and the newspapers. No, there will be no sensible decay in letter writing. Paper is cheap now-a-days, and will become far cheaper in process of time. Postage has long been no very alarming item of expense to any but business men and the heads of large families. The desire to hear and to tell some new thing, or the old things in one’s own way, has never been confined to the Athenians, and seems to be as much a characteristic of man, woman and child in our time as it ever was in times past. If it he true that of the making of books there is no end, it is no less true that of the writing of letters there is none, nor indeed ever will be. Human nature will always he human nature, and, in spite of telegrams and postal cards, let ter-writing will not cease. Shade of Charles Lamb! what would become of us withont these welcome visitors, solace, as they are, of many a weary, many a heart-sick hour? The following rules were made by a girl in fashionable society when she went into company: “To give away more than I spend on myself. To do all I can for every one at home first, be fore I go to walk or to parties. At every party to make one forlorn girl happy, and introduce her to some pleasant gentleman. To draw other people out without trying to shine myself. As soon as I feel that I am talking or acting in such a way that I should hesitate from shame to pray at that moment, to leave the room. ” Peru may yet prove a paradise for the woman suffrage agitators. A young lady of Cuzco, the old capitol of Incas, has applied for permission to study for the degree of doctor of laws. The Peruvian Minister of Justice has replied that the laws of the republic recognize no such dif ference between the sexes as would prevent a woman being a lawyer. A missionary in India says that he regards the conversion of one woman as equal to the con version of twenty men, so far as their influence in the propagation of Christianity in that coun try is concerned. The wife of MacMahon is very popular amon» the poor of Paris, to whom she devotes much of her time and a deal of her pin-money.