wattles. Our hostess there might be a shapeless, wrinkled, clumsy old woman. Her kitchen equipment might be confined to an open fire and a spit, and a few battered pots.

   Her larder might be most meagrely circumscribed as to variety, and generally was. But she could concoct such savoury dishes for us—such marvellous, golden-brown fried potatoes; such good soups; such savoury omelets; such toothsome fragrant stews! Especially such stews!

   For all we knew—or cared—the meat she put into her pot might have been horse meat and the garnishments such green things as she had plucked at the roadside; but the flavour of the delectable broth cured us of any inclinations to make investigation as to the former stations in life of its basic constituents. I am satisfied that, chosen at random, almost any peasant housewife of

   France can take an old Palm Beach suit and a handful of potherbs and, mingling these together according to her own peculiar system, turn out a ragout fit for a king. Indeed, it would be far too good for some kings I know of.

   And if she had a worn-out bath sponge and the cork of a discarded vanilla-extract bottle she, calling upon her hens for a little help in the matter of eggs, could produce for dessert a delicious meringue, with floating-island effects in it. I'd stake my life on her ability to deliver.

   If, on such an occasion as the one I have sought to describe, we were perchance in the south of France or in the Côte-d'Or country, lying over toward the Swiss border, we could count upon having a bait of delicious strawberries to wind up with. But if perchance we had fared into one of the northeastern provinces we were reasonably certain the meal would be rounded out with helpings of a certain kind of cheese that is indigenous to those parts. It comes in a flat cake, which invariably is all caved

   in and squashed out, as though the cheese-maker had sat upon it while bringing it into the market in his two-wheeled cart.

   Likewise, when its temperature goes up, it becomes more of a liquid than a solid; and it has an aroma by virtue of which it secures the attention and commands the respect of the most casual passer-by. It is more than just cheese. I should call it mother-of-cheese. It is to other and lesser cheeses as civet cats are to canary birds—if you get what I mean; and in its company the most boisterous Brie or the most vociferous Camembert you ever saw becomes at once deaf and dumb.

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