the name, if not exactly a fraud, is calculated to mislead. Doubtless
it is the mint sauce that satisfies the uncritical palate. Just as the
boy who, when asked after a treat of oysters how he liked them, said
with gusto, "The oysters was good, but the vinegar and pepper was
_de_licious!"

It is well known that there is a tendency among men in charge of
special kinds of domestic animals gradually to approximate to them in
appearance, and we are told that men sometimes gradually acquire a
resemblance to men they admire. I knew a pedigree-pig herdsman, very
successful in the show-ring, who was curiously like his charges, and I
had at least two shepherds whose profiles were extraordinarily
sheepish--though not in the ordinary acceptation of the term. Such an
appearance confers a singularly simple expression. It must have been a
man whose character justified such a facial peculiarity, who, having
to bring the flock of one of my neighbours over a railway crossing
between two of his fields, neglected to open the further gate first,
drove the sheep on to the rails, and proceeded to do so, only to find
the sheep, in the meantime, had wandered down the line. Before he
could collect them a train dashed into them, and many were killed and
others injured. The railway company not only repudiated all liability,
but sent in a counterclaim for damage to their engine!

But the tables were turned morally, if not actually, by a friend of
mine, who certainly scored off a railway company. My friend's waggon,
with two horses and a load of hay, was passing over a level crossing
on his land, when the London express came into view slinging downhill
in all the majesty of triumphant speed, but far enough away to be
brought up in time, ignominiously and abruptly. The railway company
wrote my friend a letter of remonstrance suggestive of pains and
penalties, and telling him that his waggoner should have made sure of
the safety of crossing before attempting it--not an easy thing to do
at this particular place. My friend replied that his right of way
existed centuries before the railway was dreamed of, that the crossing
was a concession for the company's convenience, it had saved the
expense of a bridge, and that his hay was an urgent matter in view of
the weather; and that uninterrupted harvesting was of more importance
than the punctuality of their passengers.

I have sometimes passed through a remote village on a Sunday where the
obsequies of a