unseasoned for the passage.  Like the elder Hamlet’s brother, they were engaged upon an act that had no relish of salvation in it.  You may remember the lamentable child somewhere in Dickens, who because of an abrupt and distressing accident, had a sandwich in its hand but no mouth to put it in.  Or perhaps you recall the cook of the Nancy Bell and his grievous end.  The poor fellow was stewed in his own stew-pot.  It was the Elderly Naval Man, you recall—­the two of them being the ship’s sole survivors on the deserted island, and both of them lean with hunger—­it was the Elderly Naval Man (the villain of the piece) who “ups with his heels, and smothers his squeals in the scum of the boiling broth.”

And yet by looking on these torsos of the haberdasher, one is not brought to thoughts of sad mortality.  Their joy is so exultant.  And all the things that they hold dear—­canes, gloves, silk hats, and the newer garments on which fashion makes its twaddle—­are within reach of their armless sleeves.  Had they fingers they would be smoothing themselves before the glass.  Their unbodied heads, wherever they may be, are still smiling on the world, despite their divorcement.  Their tongues are still ready with a jest, their lips still parted for the anchovy to come.

A few days since, as I was thinking—­for so I am pleased to call my muddy stirrings—­what manner of essay I might write and how best to sort and lay out the rummage, it happened pat to my needs that I received from a friend a book entitled “The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened.”  Now, before it came I had got so far as to select a title.  Indeed, I had written the title on seven different sheets of paper, each time in the hope that by the run of the words I might leap upon some further thought.  Seven times I failed and in the end the sheets went into the waste basket, possibly to the confusion of Annie our cook, who may have mistaken them for a reiterated admonishment towards the governance of her kitchen—­at the least, a hint of my desires and appetite for cheese and pippins.

“The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened” is a cook book.  It is due you to know this at once, otherwise your thoughts—­if your nature be vagrant—­would drift towards family skeletons.  Or maybe the domestic traits prevail and you would think of dress-clothes hanging in camphorated bags and a row of winter boots upon a shelf.

I am disqualified to pass upon the merits of a cook book, for the reason that I have little discrimination in food.  It is not that I am totally indifferent to what lies on the platter.  Indeed, I have more than a tribal aversion to pork in general, while, on the other hand, I quicken joyfully when noodles are interspersed with bacon.  I have a tooth for sweets, too, although I hold it unmanly and deny it as I can.  I am told also—­although I resent it—­that my eye lights up on the appearance of a tray of French pastry.  I admit gladly, however, my love of onions, whether they come hissing from the skillet, or lie in their first tender whiteness.  They are at their best when they are placed on bread and are eaten largely at midnight after society has done its worst.