shell, but with this difference, that the cook's
combats are unceasing, and without glory; for
the name of the most admirable cook is, alas!
unknown by half the guests who frequent his
master's table. An eminent cook should be
seen daily by his physician—that is the dictum
of a great gastronomic authority, De la
Reynière himself, who says: "Tasting is
indispensable in the practice of cooking. The
fingers of a good cook must be incessantly
travelling up to his mouth, for it is only by
incessantly tasting his ragoûts that he can
accurately determine their seasoning. His palate
must therefore possess the extremest delicacy,
so that the merest trifle may stimulate it, and
warn him of his faults. If his palate be
blunted his sense of taste is injured. Many
things contribute to blunt and pervert the sense
—the continual smell of the stove, the necessity
of drinking constantly beer and wine (and those
often bad) to cool a burning throat." By degrees
the sense of taste loses its tact, fineness, and
exquisite sensibility, and by degrees becomes
dull as the conscience of an old attorney. The
only way to restore this lost flower, and to
renew its pliancy and delicacy is medical treatment.
It is necessary, then, whatever resistance
your cook may offer, to often hand him over
to the doctor. The moment his ragoûts are too
salt, too hot, to the doctor with him without
mercy. His palate has lost its sensibility; it
must be renewed by means of acid drugs, and
minerals, and the searching infusions of bitter
herbs. All great cooks submit to such treatment
without a murmur. It is a tacit part
of their engagement. Those who kick at it
are not born for greatness; the indifference to
true glory irrefutably proves them underlings,
and they will slowly but surely sink into sellers
of potatoes, herrings, wine, and small coal.

WALKS AND TALKS WITH THE
PEOPLE.

NO. III. THE BROKEN SERGEANT.

IT is not often in my walks that I am induced
to parley with professional tramps, young or
old. Lying is so much their trade and habit
that it becomes part of their nature, from their
earliest youth, and is as ineradicable from the
constitution of their minds, as hatred of work is
from the constitution of their bodies. Whether
they be indigenous or foreign, Anglo-Saxons or
gipsies, they are all, as far as my experience
extends, alike in their falsehood and laziness.
They take the curse pronounced upon Adam at
the Fall, in its literal exactness, and look upon
labour with invincible repugnance. A great
hulking vagabond of this class looked over my
garden-gate one day last summer, and catching
sight of me, began immediately a doleful story
of his hunger and misery. There was a
considerable pile of fire-wood in the yard that
required sawing and splitting. I pointed it out
to him, and said:

"Do a good day's work at that, and I will
pay you a good day's wages." He looked at
me dubiously as if he were not quite sure
whether I was in jest or in earnest. At last he
inquired,

"How much?"

"Well," I replied, "five shillings for the
job, and take your own time to it." He might
have done it in a day, or if he had worked very
leisurely, in a day and a half. He took a little
time to consider, and said at last,

"I'll try; I'll show willing!"

"Show willing! what do you mean? Why
not be willing?"

"Well, I'll be willing, but I'm so weak and
hungry, that I can't work until I've had
something to eat. Not a mouthful of food has
passed my lips since yesterday morning. Give
me sixpence on account, and I'll get a breakfast,
and come back and work like a man."I
shook my head. "Well," he replied, "let me
have twopence."

I was all but certain that if I gave him the
twopence I should see no more of him; but as
an experiment, and with a kind of forlorn and
shadowy hope that he might not be the incorrigible
vagabond that he looked, I let him have
the money. As I anticipated, he returned no
more. The loss of the twopence did not offend
my amour propre, but I had occasion during
the ensuing fortnight to regret that I had
parted with it so easily. It brought a plague
of tramps upon me. On the heels of that
luckless twopence, came ten tramps, where
but one had come before. Tramps single,
tramps married, or worse; a tramp with two,
three, four, and six children, in all varieties
of simulated misery. There is, as most of
us know, a kind of freemasonry among these
people, and they use a system of marks upon
door-posts and lintels, invisible to unpractised
eyes, but plain enough to those who
know where to look for them, to notify whether
the master or mistress is good for a penny or
for broken victuals, or keeps a savage dog;
whether there is the slightest use in making
application, and above all, whether the occupier
be a "beak." Whether the mark of liberality,
or soft heartedness was put on my door, I am
unable to say, but if it were, the stern inflexibility
in giving nothing, which I exhibited
during the whole time that the plague was
upon me, must have convinced the "Circuit"
that it had been misinformed, as regarded me,
and that application at my gate was useless.

There are, however, chance beggars—not
regular tramps, who are sometimes met with on
the road—and whom it is not difficult to distinguish
from the professionals. They do not
snivel or cringe so much as the cadgers who
adopt the lachrymose style, neither are they so
insolent as the sturdy vagrants, who try to carry
matters with a high hand when they meet with
women or old men in lonely places; but beg
with a sort of self-respect, which is very
different from the hypocritical whine of the born
beggar. Such a one I met with a year and a
half ago on his way from London to Aldershot,