The Ivy Green BY CHARLES DICKENS. Oh! a dainty plant is the Ivy green, Of right choice food are his meals, I ween, The walls must be crumbled, the stones decayed, And the mouldering dust that years have made Is a merry meal for him. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old plant is the Ivy green. Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings, How closely he twineth, how tight he clings And he joyously twines and hugs around A rare old plant is the Ivy green. Whole ages have fled, and their works decayed, But the stout old Ivy shall never fade The brave old plant in its lonely days For the stateliest building man can raise Creeping where no life is seen, The Origin of Roast Pig BY CHARLES LAMB. ANKIND, says a Chinese manuscript, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing it or biting it from the living animal. The art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother), was accidently discovered in the manner following: The swineherd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the wood one morning, as his manner was, to collect food for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son, Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who, being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which, kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage, what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils unlike any scent which he had before experienced. What could it proceed from? Not from the burnt cottage-he had smelt that smell before; indeed, this was by no means the first accident of the kind which had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young firebrand-much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them, in his booby fashion, to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life, indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted -crackling! Again he felt and fumbled the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious; and, surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel; and, finding how matters stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders as thick as hailstones. "You graceless whelp! What have you got there devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you, but you must be eating fire, and I know not what? What have you got there, I say?" "O father, the pig-the pig! Do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats!" Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, "Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father; only taste! O Lord!" with such-like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke. Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural monster, when the crackling scorching his fingers as it had done his son's, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavor. In conclusion both father and son fairly sat down to the mess, and never left off till they had despatched all that remained of the litter. It was observed that Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more frequently than ever. Nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would break out in broad day, others in the night time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze, and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length they were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize-town. Evidence was given, the obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be handed into the box. He handled it, and they all handled it, and, burning their fingers as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature prompting to each of them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts and the clearest charge which judge had ever givento the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, reporters and all present-without leaving the box, or any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty. The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very science of architecture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time a sage arose who made the discovery that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked (burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string, or spit, came in a century or two later I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees do the most useful and seemingly the most obvious arts make their way among mankind. Longing is God's fresh heavenward will We quench it that we may be still Content with merely living; But would we know that heart's full scope, Our lives must climb from hope to hope -James Russell Lowell. The Sulks BY HELEN HICKS BATES. A feller's fam❜ly anyway's If things ain't jest to suit their taste, It's like as not there ain't a soul But that don't count a mite with them, O' course I don't mean Ma, you know, You can't tell which'll git 'em next. Nen Ma, she whispers me aside: Now Pa's a man-an' growed up men But Pa jest grumbles to hisself |