Put into a stewpan some olive oil (half a tablespoonful for each person) and a little garlic finely chopped. When the garlic is well fried add some Tomato Sauce No. 1 (see Mrs. Henderson's " Practical Cooking," Harper & Brothers), half a tablespoon-ful for each person; then put in your shellfish - all sorts of small shell-fish, cockles, winkles, even mussels, etc., such as the market offers - well washed and brushed beforehand. Now add a spoonful of consomme for each person, a few cloves, and a little nutmeg. If your kitchen boasts no consomme you may use good bouillon, strengthened with a little of Liebig's extract. When the soup has begun to tremble and throw up a few bubbles add a little more tomato; let it boil awhile, and serve it clear with cubes of bread fried in oil. In order that the bread may still be crisp when eaten, the cubes, or crolitons, may be served apart, and some put into each plate just before the soup is ladled on them. Henri Fourth's Poule-au-Pot. - The homely dish which Henri IV. wished each one of his subjects to enjoy on Sunday is not a soup, but it is one of those household dishes the making of which gives an excellent soup. Indeed, the poule-au-pot constitutes a meal of several courses.

Make a pot-au-feu (see "Unrivalled Cook-Book," p. 35, Harper & Brothers); only instead of beef use a piece of brisket of mutton, with the usual vegetables and savory herbs. Take a young hen and stuff it with the liver and a little fresh pork. When the pot-au-feu boils put in the hen and cook it tender. Serve the bouillon as soup ; the hen with salt and tomato-sauce; bread the brisket of mutton, broil it on the gridiron, and serve with piquante sauce.

Mlle. Francoise's Poule-au-Pot. - Take three pounds of beef, a big hen, two cabbages, pease, beans, and pot-au-feu vegetables (see uUnrivalled Cook-Book/' p. 35), a pound of raw ham, a Strasbourg or a Viennese saucis-son, half a pound of bacon. Put the beef in first, without the vegetables, start the decoction, skim, and then put in the hen. When half-cooked take out the hen and put in all the vegetables, having previously put the following farce or stuffing, into the cabbages:

Bread-crumbs, six eggs, a quarter of a pound of bacon, six chickens' livers, or the equivalent in calf's liver, ham, parsley, onions, a grain of garlic; chop all this up very fine, stuff it into the heart of the cabbages, and bind the leaves up with string before putting them into the pot.

Now take a stewpan and put into it some bacon cut up into small pieces, and then the half-cooked hen, and then brown the whole with butter. Make a brown sauce with butter and flour (see "Unrivalled Cook-Book,' p. 395, "Roux"), enough to just cover the hen in the stewpan; add a little uncooked rice, a dozen boiled onions, and let it stew until the rice bursts. Serve the poule-au-riz with the addition of a little nutmeg and cay-enne, or with the sweet Hungarian paprika, if you have any.

The soup and the beef of this poule-au-pot, served together with all the vegetables, constitute the "Petite Marniite" that has become so popular in Parisian restaurants of late years. In many restaurants little earthen marmites, containing one or two portions, are served on the tables, and in each marmite is a small fragment of beef, pieces of all the vegetables, and a portion of the clear bouillon.

Soup is really good only when it is eaten hot. Its warmth is an essential part of its excellence, and prepares the stomach for the important functions of the digestion of the succeeding and more substantial courses.

The soup-plates should be hot, and the soup-tureen should be heated before the soup is poured into it. At a truly scientific table the spoons and ladles ought to be heated.

Now, let us suppose a dinner of nine persons. If the host or hostess serves the soup, the last guest served will begin to use his spoon when the first served has finished, unless, out of politeness, all wait until the last is served, and then attack all together. If the soup is served from the side, and one or two servants pass the plates, the result will be the same. In both cases, during the time required to fill nine plates and pass them, there will be a loss of heat, and the beginning of the dinner will be wanting in unison. The best way is to serve the soup in hot plates immediately before the dinner is announced. Then the guests enter the dining-room, take their seats, and begin to dine all at the same time and in perfect unison.