these
occult substances of uninviting appearance on a clean napkin, and then
plunge once more into profound reflection at the sight of them, my
curiosity could be no longer restrained. I ventured to say, "What are
those things, Mr. Dexter, and are we really going to eat them?"

He started at the rash question, and looked at me with hands outspread
in irrepressible astonishment.

"Where is our boasted progress?" he cried. "What is education but a name?
Here is a cultivated person who doesn't know Truffles when she sees
them!"

"I have heard of truffles," I answered, humbly, "but I never saw them
before. We had no such foreign luxuries as those, Mr. Dexter, at home in
the North."

Miserrimus Dexter lifted one of the truffles tenderly on his spike, and
held it up to me in a favorable light.

"Make the most of one of the few first sensations in this life which
has no ingredient of disappointment lurking under the surface," he said.
"Look at it; meditate over it. You shall eat it, Mrs. Valeria, stewed in
Burgundy!"

He lighted the gas for cooking with the air of a man who was about to
offer me an inestimable proof of his good-will.

"Forgive me if I observe the most absolute silence," he said, "dating
from the moment when I take this in my hand." He produced a bright
little stew-pan from his collection of culinary utensils as he spoke.
"Properly pursued, the Art of Cookery allows of no divided attention,"
he continued, gravely. "In that observation you will find the reason why
no woman ever has reached, or ever will reach, the highest distinction
as a cook. As a rule, women are incapable of absolutely concentrating
their attention on any one occupation for any given time. Their
minds will run on something else--say; typically, for the sake of
illustration, their sweetheart or their new bonnet. The one obstacle,
Mrs. Valeria, to your rising equal to the men in the various industrial
processes of life is not raised, as the women vainly suppose, by the
defective institutions of the age they live in. No! the obstacle is in
themselves. No institutions that can be devised to encourage them will
ever be strong enough to contend successfully with the sweetheart and
the new bonnet. A little while ago, for instance, I was instrumental in
getting women employed in our local post-office here. The other day I
took the trouble--a serious business to me--of getting downstairs, and
wheeling myself away to the office to see how the