Now, if you had taken needle and thread and made the pouch yourself--ah, then what a difference! Then, indeed, a dozen stanzas would not have been too great a return. But it would hardly be proper to ask a famous warrior like yourself to lay down sword and shield for needle and thread. Nor, dear friend, am I likely to get the pouch at all, if you take offense at these little jokes of mine. What I advise you to do is, to bear with me patiently, send the tobacco-pouch, and wait for the stanza until it comes. --_Letters._ _RECIPES_ Birds’ nests and water-slugs have no particular flavor of their own, and are therefore not worth eating. The best cook cannot prepare artistically more than five or six different dishes in one day. A host of mine once had forty courses served at a meal, and as soon as I got home I called for a bowl of rice to still my hunger. In order to enjoy the pleasures of the palate to the fullest degree, you must be sober. If you are drunk, you cannot tell one flavor from another. The ingredients of a dish should always harmonize with one another--like two people in marriage. Some cooks use the flesh of chickens and pigs for one soup, and as chickens and pigs have souls, they will hold those cooks to account, in the next world, for their treatment of them in this. Bamboo-shoots ought never to be cut with a knife which has just been used on onions. While cooking, do not allow ashes from your pipe, perspiration from your face, soot from the fuel, or beetles from the ceiling to drop into the saucepan: the guests would be likely to pass the dish by.--_Cookery Book_ * * * * * The following proverbs are generally attributed to the Chinese, some of them being the wisdom of Confucius. _PROVERBS_ An avaricious man, who can never get enough, is like a snake trying to swallow an elephant. To draw the picture of a tiger, and make a dog out of it, is to imitate a masterpiece and spoil it. Human pleasures are like the flittings of sparrows. A narrow-minded man resembles a frog in a well. Do not pull up your stockings in a melon-patch, or straighten your hat in a peach orchard; any one seeing you may think you are stealing. To talk much and arrive nowhere is the same as climbing a tree to catch a fish. One thread does not make a rope. The tiger does not walk with the hind. You can neither buy wood in the forest nor fish by the lake. If a blind man leads another blind man, they will both fall into a hole. No maker of idols worships the gods; he knows their composition too well. A man with a purple nose may be very temperate in drink, only no one will believe it. Money makes the blind man see. We admire our own writings, but other men’s wives. If you are afraid of being found out, leave it alone. Bend your neck if the eaves are low.