s, in the next breath inquiring, "What are you
going to do with our niggers?"

No, we could not, with Ward Beecher, "bless the man who discovered the
immortal berry." Nor could we, with De Quincey, apostrophize to a
certain other excitant, "O just, subtle, and mighty opium! thou boldest
the keys of Paradise!" Yet one must concede the possible uses of a
stimulant. Coffee has been priceless to our army, on its cold, wet
marches; and benedictions should be ordered in the churches, if need be,
to the man who made it into that wondrous pemmican, so that the coffee
of a regiment may be carried in a few tin cans. Then, too, it seems good
for men who go driving up and down the world on stage-coaches and
locomotives; but for stay-at-home, counting-house mortals, is it not a
mere delicious superfluity? Quite as much of one as a cigar, I think.

But henceforth, when Rio is high, drink rye. If one must have either,
better the simulant than the stimulant.

Among other things, you have doubtless discovered that one admirable
breakfast dish is eggs. If you serve them in the shell, it is quite
worth while to follow the English way, keeping them close covered for
ten minutes in very hot water without boiling. The yolks are thus left
running, and the whites are beautifully jellied. These are convenient to
get when relations arrive at night, and there is no meat in the house.
Relations always expect meat for breakfast.

In fact, it is just at this point that one's genius is to come in,--when
a nice meal must be gotten at short notice, and the larder is empty.
None but the woman of resources can do it; and she knows her realm is as
full of strategies as was ever the Department of the Potomac. Under her
hand, when there was supposed to be nothing for breakfast, I have seen
bits of meat snatched from cold soup, and wrought up into the most
savory morsels,--one would never guess that the goodness was all boiled
out of them; while a cup of yesterday's griddle-cake batter went
suddenly into the oven, and came out a breakfast-cake finer than
waffles.

One who had the knack of the heroine Fleda, in "Queechy," would be
friendly to omelets, and tell of them too. But you must be self-reliant,
and put them on the list of experiments. It will probably be some time
before you come to that refinement of egg-eating which Mrs. Stowe found
at the mansion of the Duke of Sutherland, where she was honored with
lunch. Her sylvan spirit was somewhat startl