d nine tenths that beverage which bears the name
of an old royal house of France.

How were the eggs cooked? I knew somebody would ask that impertinent
question. Well, they were not fried, they were not boiled, they were
not poached, they were not scrambled, they were not omeletted, they were
not roasted on the half-shell, they were not stuffed with garlic and
served with cranberries, they were not boiled and served with anchovy
sauce, they were not "_en salmi_." I think I had better stop there, lest
I betray my knowledge of cookery. It is sufficient to say that they were
not cooked in any of the above-named fashions, nor in any other way
mentioned in Catharine Beecher's or Marion Harland's cookbooks. They
were baked _a la mode_ backwoods. It is hardly proper for me to give a
recipe in this place, that belongs more properly to the "Household
Departments" of the newspapers. But to satisfy curiosity, and to tell
something about cooking, which Prof. Blot does not know, I may say that
they were broken and dropped on a piece of brown paper laid on the top
of the old box-stove. By the time the egg was cooked hard the paper was
burned to ashes, but the egg came off clean and nice from the stove, and
made as palatable and indigestible an article for a late supper as one
could wish. It only wanted the addition of Mandluff's peculiar whisky to
make it dissipation of the choicest kind. For the more a dissipation
costs in life and health, the more fascinating it is.

There was an egg-supper, as I said, at Mandluff's store. There was to be
a "camp-meeting" in honor of Norman Anderson's successful return to his
liberty and his cronies. It gave Norman, the greatest pleasure to return
to a society where it was rather to his credit than otherwise that he
had gone on a big old time, got caught, and been sent adrift by the old
hunk that had tried to make him study Latin.

The eggs were baked in the true "camp-meeting" style, the whisky was
drunk, and--so was the company. Bill Day's rather red eyes grew redder,
and his nose shone with delight as he shuffled the greasy pack of
"kyerds." The maudlin smile crossed the habitually melancholy lines of
his face in a way that split and splintered his visage into a curious
contradiction of emotions.

"H--a--oo--p!" He shouted, throwing away the cards over the heads of his
companions. "Ha--oop! boys, thish is big--hoo! hoo! ha--oop! I say is
big. Let's do somethin'!"

Here there was a confused