and punctured, and bleeding from the golden
dagger-point of the blackbird's bill, others cleft
to the very stones by the blue jay's beak. Then
came the apricot picking, each orange- velvet
fruit—freckled here and there with red, like
the cheek of a country girl—had to be lifted
from its stem with the tender care with which
one lifts precious stones in and out of their
white satin case. To see the presiding goddess
in her stately way dismember these apricots,
remove the clean nutmeg-coloured stone (not
with the rosy windings of the coarser peach
stone) and prepare them for preserving, by
snowy dustings of white sugar was a special
treat to us young epicures.

A curious old cookery book of 1710, written
by one Patrick Lamb, fifty years a master cook
to royalty, and who in his time had cooked for
Charles the Second, James the Second, King
William, and Queen Anne, contains one or two
receipts for pies and tarts, which are interesting,
as showing the culinary fashions of the
seventeenth century. Mr. Patrick Lamb's
cowslip tart may not be familiar to some of
our readers, although the tart is mentioned by
incomparable Mrs. Rundell. We have never
tasted it, and presume it to be a mere culinary
fantasy, with a pretty April name, which is
ingratiating and full of the golden age. Mr.
Lamb says, as if wishing to begin by giving his
cook maid a holiday morning in the fields:

"Take the blossoms of a gallon of cowslips,
mince them exceedingly small and beat them in
a mortar; put to them a handful or two of
grated Naples biskit, and about a pint and a
half of cream; boil them a little over the fire,
then take them off, and beat them in eight eggs
with a little cream; if it does not thicken,
put it over again, till it doth; take heed
that it doth not curdle. Season with sugar,
rose water, and a little salt; bake it in a
dish or little open tartlet. It is best to let
your cream be cold before you stir in the
eggs."

Mr. Lamb's book contains a pretty series of
pies arranged according to the months which
they specially become. For January, oyster pie;
for February, spring pie; for March, skerret
pie; for April, buttered apple pie; for May,
oringado pie; for June, humble pie (he shall
eat humble pie—the inferior part of venison
—a woodman's proverb); for July, potato
pie; for August, cream tart; for September,
lumber pie; for October, artichoke pie; for
November, quince pie; for December, steak
pie.

Delightful way of recording the changes of
a year! Almost as good as an epicurean wine
tour, once planned by our friend Professor
Dreikopf. We were to begin with Rome and
march straight from there on Montepulciano;
thence, we were to take ship for Sicily, and
examine the sites of the old Roman vintages.
Germany would come next, we touching at each
Rhenish town to taste its varieties of hock.
Then came the claret, and the Burgundy, a
delicious episode in champagne. Spain
followed Greece, and we were to wind up with
a bottle of Lacrymæ Christi on the edge of the
crater of Vesuvius.

THE IMPOSTOR MÈGE.

A CERTAIN dervish once confided to a certain
caliph that he (the dervish) had acquired the
secret of throwing his own soul or spirit into
any inanimate creature, thereby restoring it to
life; and that, although by so doing his own
body would become vacant and lifeless, he could,
nevertheless, return to it at pleasure.

The caliph, incredulous, pointed to a dog
that had just expired, and told him to throw
his spirit into that. The dervish at once
accepted the challenge, stretched himself at full
length on the grass, and, after muttering sundry
spells, to all appearance breathed his last.
Instantly, the dead dog revived, and, running to
the caliph, caressed him with such intelligence,
and performed such singular feats at word of
command, that there could remain no reasonable
doubt of his being vivified by a human
soul. As soon as the caliph was fully convinced,
the dog in turn lay down and died, and the
dervish's body returned to life.

The caliph insisted on knowing this wonderful
secret, and on being himself able to perform
the feat. The dervish stoutly refused at the
outset; but, after great persuasion, yielded, as
a proof of his devoted and disinterested
friendship.

The caliph, we may guess, was not very long
in putting his newly acquired faculty to the
test. The dog once more was resuscitated, the
caliph's body being, for the time, an unoccupied
tenement. But it soon revived; too soon, in
fact, for its owner's liking. The dervish took
possession of it, and expressed his intention of
keeping it. The poor caliph, therefore, forced
to make his choice whether he would be a dog
or a dervish, after reflection chose the latter;
in which capacity he had the mortification of
seeing his substitute coolly enter his palace and
enjoy his privileges.

Strange as it may be, within quite recent
times (historically speaking), men have
succeeded in doing what the dervish did. The
instance we are about to relate, is a modern
case of stepping into a dead man's shoes.

At Manosque, a small town in the ancient
province of Provence, there lived, about 1660,
one Scipion Le Brun de Castellane, Seigneur
of Caille and of Rougon. He had married, in
1655, the Demoiselle Judith le Gouche, of a
good family belonging to the bar. Both husband
and wife were Calvinists.

In 1685, Louis the Fifteenth, having
revoked the Edict of 1598, called the Edict of
Nantes, which granted tolerance and safe places
of residence to Protestants, Le Brun de Castellane,
like many other of his unfortunate
countrymen, driven from his native land by Catholic
intolerance, went and settled in Lausanne,
Switzerland. The exiled family of the De