a captured crumpet, a collection of buns, a dinner-roll, and a something novel to us, called Pumpernickel, that we had rather be without, or rather—­for the expression is ambiguous—­that we had rather not be without, but altogether remote from.  And all these things have been tested by an analyst, with the most painful results.  Nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen, and the like nasty chemical things seem indeed to have occurred in everything he touched.  Those sturdy mendicants who go about complaining that they cannot get food should visit this Parkes Museum and see what food is really like, and learn contentment with their lot.

There were no real vegetables, but only the ideals of a firm of seedsmen, made of wax and splendidly coloured, with something of the boldness and vigour of Michael Angelo about the modelling of them.  And among other food stuffs were sweetmeats and yellow capers, liver flukes, British wines, and snuff.  At last we felt replete with food stuffs, and went on to see the models to illustrate ventilation, and the exhibits of hygienic glazed tiles arranged around a desert lecture-theatre.  Hygienic tiles stimulate the eye vigorously rather than relax it by any aesthetic weakness; and the crematory appliances are so attractive as they are, and must have such an added charm of neatness and brightness when alight, that one longs to lose a relative or so forthwith, for the mere pleasure of seeing them in operation.

A winding staircase designed upon hygienic principles, to bump your head at intervals, takes one to a little iron gallery full of the most charming and varied display of cooking-stoves and oil-lamps.  Here, also, there are flaunted the resources of civilisation for the Prevention of Accidents, which resources are four, namely, a patent fire-escape, a patent carriage pole, a coal plate, and a dog muzzle.  But the labels, though verbose, are scarcely full enough.  They do not tell you, for instance, if you wish to prevent cramp while bathing, whether the dog muzzle or the coal plate should be employed, nor do they show how the fire-escape will prevent the explosion of a paraffin lamp.  However, this is a detail.  We feel assured that no intelligent person will regret a visit to this most interesting and instructive exhibition.  It offers you valuable hints how to live, and suggests the best and tidiest way in which you can, when dead, dispose of your body.  We feel assured that the public only needs this intimation of its whereabouts to startle the death-like slumbers of Margaret Street with an unaccustomed tumult.  And the first to arrive will, no doubt, find legibly and elegantly written in the dust that covers the collection the record of its discovery by Euphemia and me.

BLEAK MARCH IN EPPING FOREST