Always use the leaves only, never the stems; gather the leaves firmly between the thumb and three fingers of the left hand; let a sharp knife shave them through as you push them forward under it; turn them round; gather them up again and cut them across in the same way; then finish by chopping with both hands.

This is the way to get them finely and evenly chopped. When sweet herbs are called for, it means three parts parsley, two parts thyme, one part marjoram.

garnishing.

No matter how well a dinner may be cooked if it is ill served it will lose a great deal. Everybody should insist on the dishes being well arranged, and trimmed or garnished before they are sent to table.

Corned beef is a very homely dish, yet if the carrots and turnips are Cut into nice forms and served round it alternately, with here and there a sprig of green pars-ley, it will look far more appetizing than if it is on a bare dish, and so it is with most other things, from hash to croquettes.

Parsley is probably the most useful garnish we have, yet a dish garnished with parsley does not mean a kitchen-garden of it, and the tendency is usually to overdo. The mere fact, that you insist on the dishes being made to look their best, tends to make a cook careful in her cooking. They are impressed with the fact that the slap-dash method will not do. An Hibernian damsel applied to me for a place, and in awestruck tones, as if it enhanced her own value to be so near the rose, told me her sister was cook to Mr. Y., who never had a dish sent to table without "Varnish." My thoughts flew to "glaze," and as it was rather an advanced form of cooking for our locality, I asked if she herself knew how to make the "Varnish." A bewildered look passed over her face, a suspicion that I was laughing at her, as she said in a tone of dignified rebuke: "It grows;" so I knew her "Varnish" was "garnish," her one idea of "garnish " parsley.

Fried parsley is suitable for any light brown article, such as savory patties, croquettes, cromesquis, sweetbreads, etc.; and it makes a change from the too pervasive uncooked article, pretty as it is.

For hot dishes with brown gravy, fried bread cut into pretty shapes will not take two minutes, or as they will keep a month in cool weather many may be prepared when there is leisure, and made quite hot in a slow oven. They will not be so nice, yet better than sodden toasted sippets.

White dishes such as fricassee are very nicely garnished with little ornaments of puff paste glazed with egg and baked a pale brown. Clubs, hearts, diamonds and spades cut out of carrots, beetroot, and English pickled walnuts and scattered over a white entree makes a novel garnish. But the ways are many and open to any one's invention, only take care that the garnish suits the dish.

I am unorthodox enough to think that flowers do not suit salad unless they are the flowers of a vegetable, or salad plant, such as nasturtiums and scarlet runner blossoms, bean or pea blossoms, etc. To me flowers suggest sweet things, and are appropriate to fruit dishes.