Shave raw potatoes into the thinnest possible slices, drop a a few at a time into a saucepan of hot lard and let fry to a deep yellow color. Drain them well, keep hot in a colander set in a pan, sprinkle with fine salt. They curl up like shavings if sliced thin enough. Not really necessary to dry each slice on a towel before frying, although it has been done at some places of great repute.

Busy day in the kitchen and dinner must stand back and make itself small. Fruit is very a bundantand cheap and the hostess and that one of her hired girls that has the biggest arms are twisting and squeezing currants and raspberries in strong towels expressing the juice to boil down with equal weight of sugar to make jelly. It is a pressing business which makes the girl red in the face, as pressing might be expected to do, and the landlady herself has her lips seriously set as she says she is "afraid somebody will be very much annoyed by their putting up fruit in the kitcken, but - ."

I don't know what the final but, was intended to mean, unless it was: "But when she will she will, you may depend on't, And when she won't she won't, and there's an end on't." However, the landlady is very kindly disposed and interested, as this is Mr. Farewell's birthday, and a little supper is in preparation to celebrate the anniversary. The cakes are already ornamented with initials and dates on them as large as life and wreathed with roses, but carefully hidden away to guard against springing the surprise too soon. The chickens are already boiling for salad, and the manager went to the depot this time under heavy injunctions not to forget the lemons. Mrs. Farewell also, made a special request of me that the frosting on the cakes be of such a nature that it can be sliced evenly with the cake itself, whether the slices be thick or thin; not break off in the annoying way of their town confectioner's cakes as soon as the cake is cut. Requests like these are imperial orders and must be obeyed, and - "Our praises are our wages. - (Shakespeare.)

But, Mary! It is time now to set your preserving kettle away off the stove until after dinner; it would break my heart to see you all starving to death at one o'clock precisely.