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grayish flour, very heavy and very sweet. The chestnut millstone is of far coarser grain than that used for grinding flour, and one lasts about forty years.

Some of the mills look very ancient, and not a few date back to the fourteenth century. Seeing an old millstone built into a moss-grown wall, I asked the white-haired miller what he thought about its age.

He replied: "My grandfather died at the age of ninety, before I was born, but he told my father that the millstone was set in the wall before his father's day."

2. The year's store of chestnut flour is kept in a big chest which stands in the kitchen, and is made of chestnut wood. On many of these bins is carved a date of two or three centuries ago, but the wood is as firm and as solid as if cut last year. The common way of preparing chestnut flour for the table is to mix it up with water in a wooden bowl, and then boil the porridge in a copper kettle. When done, the stiff, brown mass is poured out on the deal table, and, after cooling a little, it is sawed into slices by a tow string, a steel blade being considered injurious to the flavor of the porridge.

But if the family cook be in a good humor, she makes her household happy by baking necci, which in color and shape are very much like buckwheat cakes. They are tough, sickeningly sweet, and very indigestible, yet they are considered the "doughnuts" of an Apennine kitchen.

3. The baking apparatus is as crude as it is unique: it consists of round tiles chipped from mountain slate, and kept in a triangular rack in a corner when not in use. These tiles are heated in the ashes of a wood fire, and then

covered with chestnut leaves that have been soaked in water to prevent them from scorching.

Tile after tile is spread thickly with the batter, and pressed into the rack which holds them in place, until the stack is as high as the upright rods of the rack. After baking between the heated tiles for a few minutes, the cakes are served hot for supper, and what is left over will be eaten cold for tomorrow's breakfast.

4. Hanging from the smoked rafters of every kitchen, are great festoons of dried chestnut leaves, ready to line the baking tiles. The gathering and stringing of these leaves in the autumn is the work of the young folks, who make it the occasion of much fun.

Word gets abroad that a stringing "bee" is on hand at a certain house, and soon after supper the rustic maids appear with needle and thread. They string and chatter busily for an hour or so, when the swains begin to drop in, and dancing is in order. The music is furnished by a cracked fiddle or a wheezy accordion, or by some obliging whistler.

5. One can scarcely speak of Apennine peasantry without emphasizing the fact that for ten months in the year their bill of fare alternates between chestnut porridge and chestnut cakes. It is small wonder, then, that in October and November freshly boiled chestnuts are welcomed as a dainty novelty.

6. "The lean and hungry look" which every mountain peasant wears, together with a half-famished gleam in his hollow eyes, tell a pitiful tale of the lack of nourishing food, although he may have never known actual hunger.

The taste for chestnuts would seem to pervade the Italian

cities, for in the winter the chestnut vender is found at every other corner. Many a child on his way to school adds a cent's worth of roasted chestnuts to his lunch-a cent's worth varying from twenty to ten, as the season advances. The chestnuts are as large as English walnuts, and of too coarse a flavor to be eaten raw; but, when cooked with lamb, they taste like sweet potatoes.

7. Boiled chestnuts, passed through a sieve and served with whipped cream, form a popular dessert at the big hotels; but necci, or chestnut cakes, can be relished by few except those born to an appreciation of them. A Roman beggar or a Neapolitan lazzarone will turn up his nose at necci as food fit for hogs only; but the Apennine peasant, wandering far from home, longs for them like a toper for his cups.

A poor mountain mother once asked me to carry down some home-knit socks to her soldier boy in Rome. I felt inclined to smile when the recipient opened the bundle in my presence, and came upon some flabby necci several days old. With Tuscan courtesy he immediately asked me to partake, and I read in his eyes the keenest enjoyment of this reminder of his Apennine childhood.

Since then, when I see a man with a tray of chestnut cakes hanging about the barracks, I no longer look upon him as a petty hawker, who is trying to wheedle the poor soldiers out of their scanty pence; to my enlightened vision, he seems a philanthropist, seeking to refresh the homesick mountain boys as with a whiff of their native air.

DEFINITIONS.-1. Põr'ridge, broth. 2. Ap'pa rā'tus, implement; utensil. 3. Crude, rough; imperfect. 4.

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II. Věnd'er, 13. Re

Unique', without a like or equal; singular. 5. Tileş, thin pieces of slate or baked clay. 6. Fes toons', wreaths hanging in curves. 7. Swains, country lovers; rustics. 8. Al'ter nätes, varies by turns. 9. Făm'ished, starved; hungry. 10. Per väde', fill. seller. 12. To'per, one who drinks largely. cip'i ent, receiver. 14. Par take', take a part. 15. Băr'racks, houses for soldiers. 16. Hawk'er, vender; seller. 17. Whee'dle, coax; flatter. 18. En light'ened, made clear. 19. Vi'sion, perception.

lover of mankind.

20. Phi lănthro pist, a

LESSON XLI.

A Dream of the South Wind.

Paul Hamilton Hayne.

66

PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE has justly been called the Laureate of the South." He was born at Charleston, and, being left an orphan by the death of his father, Lieutenant Hayne, of the navy, he was reared and educated by his uncle, Robert Young Hayne. His fortune was ample, but he studied law, although he never practiced. He became editor of Russell's Magazine and a contributor to the Southern Literary Messenger. His genius and lovely nature made him a favorite with all of his companions, among whom were, notably, William Gilmore Simms and Henry Timrod.

During the Civil War he served in the Confederate army. His entire property, the inheritance of several generations, was destroyed in the bombardment of Charleston. From 1865 till his death, in 1886, he resided at Copse Hill, a small cottage home in the pine hills near Augusta, Georgia, "keeping the wolf from the door" only by the point of his pen.

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O fresh, how fresh and fair

Through the crystal gulfs of air,

The fairy South Wind floateth on her subtle wings of balm! And the green earth lapped in bliss,

To the magic of her kiss,

Seems yearning upward fondly through the golden-crested calm.

From the distant tropic strand,

Where the billows, bright and bland,

Go creeping, curling round the palms with sweet, faint undertune;

From its fields of purpling flowers,

Still wet with fragrant showers,

The happy South Wind lingering sweeps the royal blooms of June.

All heavenly fancies rise

On the perfume of her sighs,

Which steep the inmost spirit in a languor rare and fine, And a peace more pure than sleep's

Unto dim half-conscious deeps,

Transports me, lulled and dreaming, on its twilight tides divine.

Those dreams! ah, me! the splendor,

So mystical and tender,

Wherewith, like soft heat lightnings, they gird their meaning round,

And those waters, calling, calling,

With a nameless charm enthralling,

Like the ghost of music melting on a rainbow spray of

sound!

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