villainously long hill and pop out upon an open
platform above the city.

The height commands a prospect to the west. Below is the smoke of a
thousand suppers. Up from the city there comes the hum of life, now
somewhat fallen with the traffic of the day--as though Nature already
practiced the tune for sending her creatures off to sleep. You light a
fire. The baskets disgorge their secrets. Ants and other leviathans think
evidently that a circus has come or that bears are in the town. The chops
and bacon achieve their appointed destiny. You throw the last bone across
your shoulder. It slips and rattles to the river. The sun sets. Night like
an ancient dame puts on her jewels:

And now that I have climbed and won this height,
I must tread downward through the sloping shade
And travel the bewildered tracks till night.
Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed
And see the gold air and the silver fade
And the last bird fly into the last light.

By these confessions you will see how unfit I am to comment on the old cook
book of Sir Kenelm Digby. Yet it lies before me. It may have escaped your
memory in the din of other things, that in the time when Oliver Cromwell
still walked the earth, there lived in England a man by the name of Kenelm
Digby, who was renowned in astrology and alchemy, piracy, wit, philosophy
and fashion. It appears that wherever learning wagged its bulbous head, Sir
Kenelm was of the company. It appears, also, that wherever the mahogany did
most groan, wherever the possets were spiced most delicately to the nose,
there too did Sir Kenelm bib and tuck himself. With profundity, as
though he sucked wisdom from its lowest depth, he spouted forth on the
transmutation of the baser metals or tossed you a phrase from Paracelsus.
Or with long instructive finger he dissertated on the celestial universe.
One would have thought that he had stood by on the making of it and that
his judgment had prevailed in the larger problems. Yet he did not neglect
his trencher.

And now as time went on, the richness of the food did somewhat dominate his
person. The girth of his wisdom grew no less, but his body fattened. In
a word, the good gentleman's palate came to vie with his intellect. Less
often was he engaged upon some dark saying of Isidore of Seville. Rather,
even if his favorite topic astrology were uppermost about the table, his
eye travelled to the pantry on every change of dishes. His fingers, too,
ca