An old friend of mine went as steward to open the new and splendid Winnipeg-away House at Red Lake Falls, and when I arrived there a week or two after and asked "how's everything"he said, rather sorrowfully that everything was all rigtt, "except - blame the luck - !"

I thought he was going to say the drainage or climate or railroad connections or something large, but, after all it is the small troubles that are hardest to bear - he said he couldn't get a bit of corned beef fit to put on the table, and he had all the directors of the new concern there, hawk-eyed and exacting to the smallest particulars; just as is always the case whilst a new hotel is the new toy of a company.

They had salt beef but it would not turn to that pink or scarlet color which you like to see - a streak of pink and a streak of fat - upon a bed of pale green boiled cabbage for your New England boiled dinner; for plain salt beef turns dark, almost black after slicing, and has something of the depressing effect upon the diner of a cloudy day. It was not only their own which they had tried to pickle, but the village butcher's was equally poor,

It is saltpeter that gives the required color. They had both employed saltpeter. They were a good way from a large town, but both had obtained their stores from the same place. Told the steward that I thought I used to know that there are two sorts of saltpeter, but it does not make any difference if you make sure to get the large crystals, size of your thumb, look like washing soda or alum. That which they had used was small like common salt. We obtained the right article the next day, made new brine according to the following receipt; dropped some beef in it while it was warm - almost hot - and in twelve hours thereafter used some of the thin pieces that boiled as red as a painted town.