WORTH READING. A DISSERTATION UPON -CHARLES LAMB K. TOMPKINS, 16 CEDAR STREET, NEW YORK. 1874. A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. MANKIND, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as they do in Abyssinia to this day.) This pe riod is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second book of his Mundane Mutations, where he designates a kind of golden age by the term. Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' holiday. The manuscript goes on to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally discovered in the manner following. The swineherd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling. quickly, spread the conflagration over every part of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian make-shift of a building, you may think it) what was of much more importance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, perished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest A periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost con sternation, as you may think, not so much for the sak of the tenement, which his father and he could easil build up again with a few dry branches, and the labour an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pig While he was thinking what he should say to his fathe and wringing his hands over the smoking remnan of one of those untimely sufferers, an odour assaile his nostrils unlike any scent which he had ever befor experienced. What could it proceed from ?-not fro the burnt cottage he had smelt that smell before-in deed this was by no means the first accident of the kin which had occurred through the negligence of th unlucky young fire-brand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. premonitory moistening overflowed his nether lip. H knew not what to think. He next stooped dow to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. H burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them i booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs c the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life indeed for before him no man had known it) he tasted—crackling Again he felt and fumbled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding, that it was the pig that smelt so. and the pig that tasted so delicious; and, surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders, as thick as hail-stones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure, which he experienced in his lower regions, had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situation, something like the following dialogue ensued. "You graceless whelp, what have you there devouring Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you, but you must be eating fire, and I know not whatwhat have you got there, I say!" “O father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats." The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget a son that should eat burnt pig. Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out "Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste-O Lord,"—with such-like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would. choke. Ho-ti trembled in every joint while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his |