fundity without obscurity, perspicuity without prolixity, ornament without glare, terseness without barrenness, penetration without subtlety, comprehensiveness without digression, and a great number of other things without a great number of other things."

The present work might not inaptly be styled an odd volume, were it not intended to be even with its predecessor, of which, indeed, it forms the counterpart. It is odd in its plan and arrangement, consists of odd sayings and selections, from many odd and out-of-the-way authors. It is, moreover, fitted for odd readers, and odd half-hours, and, oddly enough, is the handiwork of a very odd specimen of an author. Oddities are not, however, without their use; they sometimes dispel ennui, the headache, and even the heartache.

Our design has been to minister to intellectual entertainment with instruction, mingling

Sayings fetched from sages old,

Laws which Holy Writ unfold,

Worthy to be graved in gold;

Lighter fancies not excluding,

Blameless wit, with nothing rude in,

Sometimes mildly interluding.

For we hold, with Rabelais, that the funds of wit and merriment are not yet exhausted—that the wings of fancy are not yet clipped, and that our ancestors have not said and sung all our good things.

"What more refreshing than a Salad, when your appetite seems to have deserted you, or even after a generous dinner-the nice, fresh, crisp salad-full of life and health, seems to invigorate the palate and dispose the masticatory powers to a much longer duration."*

*Soyer.

"Salads," according to a modern French authority,* "refresh without exciting, and make people younger." The Salad we offer ought to have this effect; and we hope everybody will bring to it—what everybody wishes for, and as soon as possessed, loses a good appetite. Salads are not generally suited for weak digestions, or sickly folk; yet we have it certified on professional authority that this salad is adapted for the especial cure and comfort of any who may have such malady as that complained of by the author of Elia, who thus piteously portrays his sufferings to Bernard Barton: "Do you know what it is to succumb under an insurmountable day-mare-an indisposition to do anything, or to be anything-a total deadness and distaste-a suspension of vitality— an indifference to locality, a numb, soporific good-for-nothingness-an ossification all over, an oyster-like indifference to passing events-a mind stupor a brawny defiance to the needles of a thrashing-in consciencewith a total irresolution to submit to water-gruel processes?"

After sundry erasures, blottings, corrections, insertions, enlargings and liminishings, with interlineations, we have at length completed the work, which, whatever may be alleged against it, shall be innocent of all heresy of necromancy, geomancy, alchymy, exorcism, phantasmagoria, witchcraft, metoposcopy, sorcery, or thaumaturgie.

As this is a Salad for the Social, it is to be hoped that it will prove savory to the palate of a goodly number of good-natured guests; since even frugal fare is rendered relishable by the presence of smiling faces and happy hearts, while the most costly viands often lose their zest where these are not. Foremost among the pleasures of the table are, what an elegant novelist has termed "those felicitous moods in which our animal spirits search, and carry up, as it were, to the surface, our intellectual gifts and acquisitions." The invitation to this repast is,

Brillat Savarin.

therefore, respectfully tendered all genial spirits who will bear company with the humble host; and being unknown to the great world, "I will tell you, sirs, by way of private, and under seal, I am a gentleman, and live here obscure, and to myself."*

Ben Jonson.

F. S.