soaked for a time previous to cooking,
or parboiled for a half hour and then put into new water, to make them
less strong in flavor and less dark in color.

_RECIPES._

LENTIL PUREE.--Cook the lentils and rub through a colander as for
peas _puree_. Season, and serve in the same manner.

LENTILS MASHED WITH BEANS.--Lentils may be cooked and prepared in
the same manner as directed for mashed peas, but they are less strong in
flavor if about one third to one half cooked white beans are used with
them.

LENTIL GRAVY WITH RICE.--Rub a cupful of cooked lentils through a
colander to remove the skins, add one cup of rich milk, part cream if it
can be afforded, and salt if desired. Heat to boiling, and thicken with
a teaspoonful of flour rubbed smooth in a little cold milk. Serve hot on
nicely steamed or boiled rice, or with well cooked macaroni.

TABLE TOPICS.

The men who kept alive the flame of learning and piety in the Middle
Ages were mainly vegetarians.--_Sir William Axon._

According to Xenophon, Cyrus, king of Persia, was brought up on a
diet of water, bread, and cresses, till his fifteenth year, when
honey and raisins were added; and the family names of Fabii and
Lentuli were derived from their customary diet.

Thomson, in his poem, "The Seasons," written one hundred and sixty
years ago, pays the following tribute to a diet composed of seeds
and vegetable
products:--#/

"With such a liberal hand has Nature flung
These seeds abroad, blown them about in winds-- ...
But who their virtues can declare? who pierce,
With vision pure, into those secret stores
Of health and life and joy--the food of man,
While yet he lived in innocence and told
A length of golden years, unfleshed in blood?
A stranger to the savage arts of life--
Death, rapine, carnage, surfeit, and disease--
The _lord_, and not the _tyrant_ of the world."

Most assuredly I do believe that body and mind are much influenced
by the kind of food habitually depended upon. I can never stray
among the village people of our windy capes without now and then
coming upon a human being who looks as if he had been split, salted,
and dried, like the salt fish which has built up his arid organism.
If the body is modified by the food which nourishes it, the mind and
character very certainly will be modified by it also. We know enough
of their close