recovering the lost remembrance—to topics of
local interest.

Here, he got on glibly enough. Trumpery
little scandals and quarrels in the town, some
of them as much as a month old, appeared
to recur to his memory readily. He chattered
on, with something of the smooth gossiping
fluency of former times. But there were
moments, even in the full flow of his talkativeness,
when he suddenly hesitated—looked at
me for a moment with the vacant inquiry once
more in his eyes—controlled himself—and went
on again. I submitted patiently to my
martyrdom (it is surely nothing less than martyrdom,
to a man of cosmopolitan sympathies, to
absorb in silent resignation the news of a
country town?) until the clock on the chimney-
piece told me that my visit had been prolonged
beyond half an hour. Having now some right to
consider the sacrifice as complete, I rose to take
leave. As we shook hands, Mr. Candy reverted
to the birthday festival of his own accord.

"I am so glad we have met again," he said. "I
had it on my mind—I really had it on my mind,
Mr. Blake, to speak to you. About the dinner at
Lady Verinder's, you know? A pleasant dinner
—really a pleasant dinner now, wasn't it?"

On repeating the phrase, he seemed to feel
hardly as certain of having prevented me from
suspecting his lapse of memory, as he had felt
on the first occasion. The wistful look clouded
his face again; and, after apparently designing
to accompany me to the street door, he suddenly
changed his mind, rang the bell for the servant,
and remained in the drawing-room.

I went slowly down the doctor's stairs,
feeling the disheartening conviction that he
really had something to say which it was vitally
important to me to hear, and that he was morally
incapable of saying it. The effort of remembering
that he wanted to speak to me was, but too
evidently, the only effort that his enfeebled
memory was now able to achieve.

Just as I had reached the bottom of the
stairs, and had turned a corner on my way to
the outer hall, a door opened softly somewhere
on the ground floor of the house, and a gentle
voice said behind me—;

"I am afraid, sir, you find Mr. Candy sadly
changed?"

I turned round, and found myself face to
face with Ezra Jennings.

LEAVES FROM THE MAHOGANY TREE

         A PRETTY KETTLE OF FISH

Horace in one of his noblest odes speaks
finely of the triple brass that must have wrapped
the heart of that venturous man who first
launched forth in hollow palm tree, or on
rude cedar raft, to explore the great howling
wilderness of blue ocean, never before ploughed
by keel or fanned by sail. Great, indeed, was
that primeval voyager, but he needs no eulogy
from us. No one will question his greatness.
But we have in view a still greater, more daring,
and heroic man—the man who ate the first fish.
A great experimenter, a Titan of the first water,
a Napoleon of enterprise, an Alexander, a
Leonidas, a Julius Cæsar, rolled into one. He had
with his rude cookery, probably, exhausted the
other elements of earth and air, and there was
nothing worth eating in the fire but salamanders.
His flint-headed knife and fork had been thrust
into the ox and the camel, the horse and the ass;
perhaps he was weary of these creatures, and
craved a new and more savoury dish; perhaps
deserted by his subjects, and beleagured by
enemies on some scorched, sea-girt Syrian rock,
he had nothing left to eat, and was driven by
Invention's mother to search a new place for
new food.

The sea alone now remained to explore. It
was a great lottery, perhaps without prizes. Its
inmates might refuse his bait, or, when they
took it, might prove poisonous and forbidden
to man. He had seen the porpoises roll by, like
spokes of some half-hidden machinery; he had
seen the sharks' fins gleam white through the
surf; no, he resolves to starve; but another
day arises hot and lurid, keener pangs of
hunger seize him, he must eat or die. He has
only had half a scorpion since Monday week;
he is faint, and has scarcely strength to hurl
down blocks of rock on the more daring of
the enemy who try to climb to where he is
citadelled. He hastily unravels one of his
knitted stockings and forms a fishing line; he
baits it with a dragon-fly that has just settled
near him on an aloe flower. He drops the line
into the blue glittering sea. He lies on his
stomach on a cliff five hundred feet above and
watches. For ten minutes there is no bite. All
at once he sees a monster rise near his float.
There spreads a surging whirlpool; then a dead
weight almost drags him in over the precipice.

Slowly (for he is weak now—he who could
once brain a bull at a stroke, and overtake the
antelope) he drags up the monster, hand over
hand. It is a fish in a huge dappled shell that
is divided into square bosses. It is a strange
creature, with a head like a tortoise and meek
little helpless eyes. In a moment the man beats
the shell in two with his flint mallet, and scoops
out the flesh. Instinct teaches him to light a
fire and prepare water. He makes of the sea-
tortoise, a luscious soup that gives him new life.
He falls asleep in the shadow of the crag, careless
of friends or foes. A discharge of cannon
awakes him. His subjects have rallied, driven
away the enemy, and now they crown him king
of the whole desert and lead him to his palace.
That king's name was Nimrod, and the soup he
invented was afterwards known as TURTLE. This
man was perhaps a tyrant, but he was a
benefactor of his species; therefore we would have
his statue in a conspicuous place in the Crystal
Palace and at Madame Tussaud's, and near him
should rise the effigy of another immortal man,
second to him only in fame—the man who first ate
an oyster.

Seriously (for turtle soup is too sublime
a thing to treat wilh levity) fishes, in the
abstract, are rather "gruesome" and " ogglesome"
things, and it must have required fortitude