she called better ones; but I would joyfully,
many a time in America, have exchanged all my boarding-school
smatterings for her knowledge how to produce a wholesome and palatable
dinner. As it was, all I learned of her, to my sorrow, was a detestation
of bad cookery, and a firm conviction that that which was exquisite was
both wholesomer and more economical than any other. Dr. Kitchener, the
clever and amiable author of that amusing book, "The Cook's Oracle" (his
name was a _bona fide_ appellation, and not a drolly devised appropriate
_nom de plume_, and he was a doctor of physic), was a great friend and
admirer of hers; and she is the "accomplished lady" by whom several
pages of that entertaining kitchen companion were furnished to him.

The mode of opening one of her chapters, "I always bone my meat" (_bone_
being the slang word of the day for steal), occasioned much merriment
among her friends, and such a look of ludicrous surprise and reprobation
from Liston, when he read it, as I still remember.

My mother, moreover, devised a most admirable kind of _jujube_, made of
clarified gum-arabic, honey, and lemon, with which she kept my father
supplied during all the time of his remaining on the stage; he never
acted without having recourse to it, and found it more efficacious in
sustaining the voice and relieving the throat under constant exertion
than any other preparation that he ever tried; this she always made for
him herself.

The great actors of my family have received their due of recorded
admiration; my mother has always seemed to me to have been overshadowed
by their celebrity; my sister and myself, whose fate it has been to bear
in public the name they have made distinguished, owe in great measure to
her, I think, whatever ability has enabled us to do so not unworthily.

I was born on the 27th of November, 1809, in Newman Street, Oxford Road,
the third child of my parents, whose eldest, Philip, named after my
uncle, died in infancy. The second, John Mitchell, lived to distinguish
himself as a scholar, devoting his life to the study of his own language
and the history of his country in their earliest period, and to the
kindred subject of Northern Archaeology.

Of Newman Street I have nothing to say, but regret to have heard that
before we left our residence there my father was convicted, during an
absence of my mother's from town, of having planted in my baby bosom the
seeds of personal vanity, while indulgin