like
little chips than like a garden vegetable; so that, at taverns and
eating-houses, there frequently seems to be a rivalship on the point of
toughness between the horse-radish and the beef-steak; and it would be
well if this inconvenient rivalship never discovered itself any where
else.

_Eating Mushrooms._

I once ate about three spoonsful at table at Mr. Timothy Brown's, at
Peckham, which had been cooked, I suppose, in the usual way; but I had not
long eaten them before my whole body, face, hands, and all, was covered
with red spots or pimples, and to such a degree, and coming on so fast,
that the doctor who attended the family was sent for. He thought nothing
of it, gave me a little draught of some sort, and the pimples went away;
but I attributed it then to the mushrooms. The next year, I had mushrooms
in my own garden at Botley, and I determined to try the experiment whether
they would have the same effect again; but, not liking to run any risk, I
took only a teaspoonful, or, rather, a French coffee-spoonful, which is
larger than a common teaspoon. They had just the same effect, both as to
sensation and outward appearance! From that day to this, I have never
touched mushrooms, for I conclude that there must be something poisonous
in that which will so quickly produce the effects that I have described,
and on a healthy and hale body like mine; and, therefore, I do not advise
any one to cultivate these things.

_Peas._

The late king, George the Third, reigned so long, that his birthday formed
a sort of season with gardeners; and, ever since I became a man, I can
recollect that it was always deemed rather a sign of bad gardening if
there were not green peas in the garden fit to gather on the fourth of
June. It is curious that green peas are to be had as early in Long Island,
and in the seaboard part of the state of New Jersey, as in England, though
not sowed there, observe, until very late in April, while ours, to be very
early, must be sowed in the month of December or January. It is still more
curious, that, such is the effect of habit and tradition, that, even when
I was last in America (1819), people talked just as familiarly as in
England about having green peas on the _king's birth-day_, and were
just as ambitious for accomplishing the object; and I remember a gentleman
who had been a republican officer during the revolutionary war, who told
me that he always got in his garden green peas fit to eat on o