acid seems ready to go out to pasture and eat the fences.
Chemists will say, if bread must be improvised, use soda and muriatic
acid. These combined in precise proportions are supposed to evaporate in
the baking, and leave common salt. But this acid is such furious stuff!
It will come to you from the druggists in a bottle marked "Poison," and
it is not pleasant to put into one's mouth a substance that will burn a
hole in her apron. It is too much of the Roland for an Oliver,--You eat
me and I will eat you. For it is quite difficult to perfectly combine
the acid and alkali, and then the bread is streaked with muriatic fire;
then one might easily take into the system a thousand streaks a year,
and then one would become a fire-eater.

But probably the greatest of all bread wonders are the unleavened Graham
cakes. These are worth a special mail and large postage to tell of. I
was about to beg that you surprise H. with them at your next breakfast.
But no, he won't like them; besides, according to the theory of "Woman
and her Era," they're a deal too good for men, they are fit only for
women and angels. So just salt and scald some Graham meal into a dough
as soft as can be and be handled. Roll it an inch thick, cutting in
diamonds, which place on a tin sheet and thrust into the hottest of
ovens. (Note this last direction, or the diamonds will be flat leather.)
Strange to say, they will rise, and keep rising, till in ten minutes you
take them out quite puffed. One would never guess them innocent of
yeast. An inch thick is the rule; but there is nothing like an
adventurous courage. It is at once suggested, if they are so good at an
inch, will they not be twice as good at two inches. And certainly they
are. The meal will not be outwitted. It is the liveliest and most
buoyant material. Its lightness keeps up with the utmost experiment.
Finally, it may be turned into a massive loaf, and with a brisk heat it
will refuse to be depressed.

The morning when were produced these charming little miracles remains a
red-letter day in our household. Who ever tasted anything, save a nut,
half so sweet, or who ever anything so pure? We ate, lingered, and
revelled in them, thus becoming epicures at once. It seemed as if all
our lives we had been seeking something really _recherche_, and had just
found it. They were as great a revelation to the palate as Bettine or
Thoreau might be to the mind. Now all was _couleur de rose_. Here was
found, if