comes to the table eager and hungry; he swallows his soupthere is an undefinable lack about it somewhere; thinks the fish is going to be the thing he wants-eats it and isn't sure; thinks the next dish is perhaps the one that will hit the hungry placetries it, and is conscious that there was a something wanting about it also. And thus he goes on, from dish to dish, like a boy after a butterfly, which just misses getting caught, every time it alights, but somehow doesn't get caught after all; and at the end the exile and the boy have fared about alike: the one is full, but grievously unsatisfied, the other has had plenty of exercise, plenty of interest, and a fine lot of hopes, but he hasn't got any butterfly. There is here and there an American who will say he can remember rising from a European table d'hôte perfectly satisfied; but we must not overlook the fact that there is also here and there an American who will lie.

The number of dishes is sufficient; but, then, it is such a monotonous variety of unstriking dishes. It is an inane dead level of fair-to-middling." There is nothing to accent it. Perhaps if the roast of mutton or of beef-a big generous one-were brought on the table and carved in full view of the client, that might give the right sense of earnestness and reality to the thing, but they don't do that; they pass the sliced meat around on a dish, and, so you are perfectly calm, it does not stir you in the least. Now a vast roast turkey, stretched on the broad of his back, with his heels in the air and the rich juices oozing from his fat sides. . . But I may as well stop there, for they would not know how to cook him. They can't even cook a chicken respectably; and as for carving it, they do that with a hatchet.

This is about the customary table d'hôte bill in summer:
Soup (characterless).

Fish-sole, salmon or whiting-usually tolerably good.

Roast-mutton or beef-tasteless-and some last year's

potatoes.

A pâte, or some other made-dish-usually good-" considering."

One vegetable-brought on in state, and all alone-usually insipid lentils, or string beans, or indifferent asparagus.

Roast chicken, as tasteless as paper.

Lettuce-salad-tolerably good.

Decayed strawberries or cherries.

Sometimes the apricots and figs are fresh, but this is no advantage, as these fruits are of no account anyway.

The grapes are generally good, and sometimes there is a tolerably good peach, by mistake.

The variations of the above bill are trifling. After a fortnight one discovers that the variations are only apparent, not real; in the third week you get what you had the first, and in the fourth week you get what you had the second. Three or four months of this weary sameness will kill the robustest appetite.

It has now been many months, at the present writing, since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon have one—a modest, private affair, all to myself. I have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill of fare-which will go home in the steamer that precedes me, and be hot when I arrive-as follows:

Radishes. Baked apples, with cream. | Cranberry sauce. Celery.

Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs.
American coffee, with real cream.
American butter.

Fried chicken, Southern style.
Porter-house steak.
Saratoga potatoes.

Broiled chicken, American style.
Hot biscuits, Southern style.
Hot wheat-bread, Southern style.
Hot buckwheat cakes.
American toast.
Clear maple syrup.
Virginia bacon, broiled.
Blue-points, on the half shell.
Cherry-stone clams.

San Francisco mussels, steamed.
Oyster soup. Clam soup.
Philadelphia Terrapin soup.
Oysters roasted in shell-Northern
style.

Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad.
Baltimore perch.

Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas.
Lake trout, from Tahoe.

Roast wild turkey. Woodcock.
Canvas-back duck, from Baltimore.
Prairie hens, from Illinois.

Missouri partridges, broiled.
'Possum.

Coon.

Boston bacon and beans.

Bacon and greens, Southern style.
Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips.
Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus.
Butter beans. Sweet potatoes.
Lettuce. Succotash. String beans.
Mashed potatoes. Catsup.

Boiled potatoes, in their skins.

New potatoes, minus the skins.
Early Rose potatoes, roasted in the

ashes, Southern style, served hot. Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes.

Green corn, cut from the ear and ser-
ved with butter and pepper.
Green corn, on the ear.

Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Scuth-
ern style.

Sheep-head and croakers, from New Hot hoe-cake, Southern style.

Orleans.

Black bass from the Mississippi.

American roast beef.

Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style.

Hot egg-bread, Southern style.
Hot light-bread, Southern style.
Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk.
Apple dumplings, with real cream.

Apple pie. Apple fritters.

Apple puffs, Southern style.

Peach cobbler, Southern style.

Peach pie. American mince pie.

Pumpkin pie. Squash pie.

All sorts of American pastry.

Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries, which are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way.

Ice-water-not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator.

Americans intending to spend a year or so in European hotels, will do well to copy this bill and carry it along. They will find it an excellent thing to get up an appetite with, in the dispiriting presence of the squalid table d'hôte.

WE read that Esaw sold out hiz birth rite for soup, and menny wonder at hiz extravegance, but Esaw diskovered arly, what menny a man haz diskovered since, that it iz hard work tew live on a pedigree.

If i waz starving, I wouldn't hesitate tew swap oph all the pedigree I had, and all mi relashuns had, for a quart of pottage, and throw two grate grandfathers into the bargain.

JOSH BILLINGS.

THE VACATION OF MUSTAPHA.

BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE.

Now in the sixth month, in the reign of the good Caliph, it was so that Mustapha said, "I am wearied with much work; thought,

care and worry have worn me out; I need repose, for the hand of exhaustion is upon me, and death even now lieth at the door."

And he called his physician, who felt of his pulse and looked upon his tongue and said:

"TWODOLLAHS!"

"Twodollahs!" (For this was the oath by which all physicians swore.) "Of a verity thou must have rest. Flee unto the valley of quiet, and close thine eyes in dreamful rest; hold back chy brain from thought and thy hand from labor, or you will be a candidate for the asylum in three weeks."

And he heard him, and went out and put the business in the hands of the clerk, and went away to rest in the valley of quiet. And he went to his Uncle Ben's, whom he had not seen for lo! these fourteen years. Now, his Uncle Ben was a farmer, and abode in the valley of rest, and the mountains of repose rose round about him. And he was rich, and well favored, and strong as an ox, and healthy as an onion crop. Ofttimes he boasted to his neighbors that there was not a lazy bone in his body, and he swore that he hated a lazy man.

And Mustapha wist not that it was so.

But when he reached his Uncle Ben's they received him with great joy, and placed before him a supper of homely viands well. cooked, and piled up on his plate like the wreck of a box-car. And when he could not eat all, they laughed him to scorn.

And after supper they sat up with him and talked with him about relatives whereof he had never, in all his life, so much as heard. And he answered their questions at random, and lied unto them, professing to know Uncle Ezra and Aunt Bethesda, and once he said that he had a letter from Uncle George last week.

Now they all knew that Uncle George was shot in a neighbor's sheep pen, three years ago, but Mustapha wist not that it was so, and he was sleepy, and only talked to fill up the time. And then they talked politics to him, and he hated politics. So about one o'clock in the morning they sent him to bed.

Now the spare room wherein he slept was right under the roof, and there were ears and bundles of ears of seed corn hung from the rafters, and he bunged his eyes with the same, and he hooked his chin in festoons of dried apples, and shook dried herbs and seeds down his back as he walked along, for it was dark. And when he sat up in bed in the night he ran a scythe in his ear.

And it was so that the four boys slept with him, for the bed was wide. And they were restless, and slumbered crosswise and kicked, so that Mustapha slope not a wink that night, neither closed he his eyes.

And about the fourth hour after midnight his Uncle Ben smote him on the back and spake unto him, saying:

"Awake, arise, rustle out of this and wash your face, for the liver and bacon are fried and the breakfast waiteth. You will