family, a calamity which, I grieve to add, only
one event can arrest, and that is the complete
re-organisation of society. My sole hope for
the attainment of this truly important end
lies, Mr. Conductor, in the printing of this
narrative. Permit me, then, I intreat you, to
appeal through your pages to an awe-stricken
universe on behalf of my papa, Mr. Alderman
Crumpet, my mamma, and myself, Marie
Crumpet, the family in question. An
eminent poet has well observed :

I do entreat your grace to pardon me;

and goes on to remark, in his lovely Midsummer
Night's Dream, for I allude here to the
celebrated Shakespeare:

I know not by what power I am made bold;

and, yet, I shall be pardoned, I feel sure.

More than two years have now elapsed,
since my respected father suffered from the
horrors; meaning the upholstery and
appointments of his happy home, as wickedly
condemned by the authorities at Marlborough
House. He suffered alone, and he himself
described to you the nature of his complaint
at page two, six, five, of your vol. six. I will
only observe here, that his sufferings were all
owing to his having caught the correct-principles-
of-taste at a place which he ought never
to have visited. Happily ma and I were not
infected by his fever, and he has himself
long recovered from it. But now, alas! a
much more serious calamity weighs on us
all. In the midst of abundance — we are
starving.

The circumstance arose in this way. On
Tuesday week last, Mr. and Mrs. Martin
Frippy, with their nursemaid and their sweet
babe, Aunt Sally Lunn, with her son James,
and an old and respected member of our
family, my grandmother upon mamma's side,
the widow of T. Cake, Esq., who was in her
youth a favourite toast and is still beautiful,
were to dine with us on the occasion of my
reaching the age of twenty. Some time
before the day arrived, the Alderman, my papa,
said to me one morning:

"Polly"—it is his way to call me Polly—
"you are old enough to be a cook."

"A what, pa, dear! " I said, unable to
suppress a little scream.

"Why," said the alderman, with his usual
jocosity, " now that you have left the teens
and got among the ties, you'll be thinking
about knots, and we shall have the parson
tying you to somebody. You'll have to bless
young Lunn."

"Never young Lunn," I said, and here I
repeat that decision publicly. " And how can I,
pa, whom you frown at so cruelly for quoting
the dear Shakespeare and for displaying such
ornaments as gems of thought, how can I
bring content to any husband?"

"There is only one way, Polly," said pa,
"you must learn to feed him. Buy a good
cookery book to-morrow, study it well, leave
off writing verses, and be the author of your
birthday dinner. We'll tell the Lunns that
you composed it, and believe me you will get
more credit for setting well before us, your
three courses of victuals, than if you read us
thirty cantos of your verse."

"But, papa," I replied. " How can you
tell that when you have never heard me read
my Ship of Melesinda ? "

"No doubt, Polly, it is profound. I grant
you are a great poet; now scale another
height, be a great cook."

Mamma seconded his entreaties, and I was
not stubborn. I accepted their commands as
fate, and in the words of the interesting
Prince of Denmark, answered them that I
would nerve myself against Tuesday to do
my best, and if possible produce a soup in
particular that should surprise the Frippys
and the Lunns. My fate, I said:

"Cries out,
And makes each petty artery in this body
As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve."

Immediately after breakfast, I addressed a
note to the alderman, my pa's bookseller,
requesting him to be so obliging as to send,
without delay, the latest scientific work upon
the mysteries connected with the preparation
of food. In reply to my note, a parcel arrived
in the evening containing an exceedingly
large book with a title that quite made me
jump — "Food and its Adulterations;
comprising the Reports of the Analytical Sanitary
Commission of the 'Lancet,' for the years
1851 to 1854 inclusive, revised and extended:
being records of the results of some thousands
of original microscopical and chemical
analyses of the Solids and Fluids consumed by
all Classes of the Public," and so on, by
Arthur Hill Hassall, M.D., Chief Analyst of
the Commission, and so on, and so on. How
frightful to be sure, but I was nerved, as I
have said already, and it did seem to me a
proper thing that the first application of a
mind like mine to the business of the kitchen
should be worthy of its superior organisation.
"Some kinds of baseness," as my Shakespeare
says, " are nobly undergone," and if I stooped
to the base things of the kitchen, I would
apply the torch of science to the fire of genius
already laid within my soul, and throw a
blaze of light over the whole range of my new
department. I determined, therefore, to
begin with a chemical and microscopical
comprehension of the solids and fluids consumed
by all classes of society, and read till I grew
haggard over Dr. Hassall's book. I went to
bed a miserable girl.

"Papa," said I next morning, at breakfast,
when I had handed his cup to the alderman;
"is your tea endurable?"

"Agreeable you mean, child."

"No," I said, " I shall never ask that
question again. Mixed tea it is, and what