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.

A fine dinner is lost within me. A quail is but an inferior chicken--a poor
relation outside the exclusive hennery. Terrapin sits low in my regard,