O salad, what monstrosities are perpetrated in thy name! Let the genteel boarding-house cook-maid, the young lady who has studied harmony and the higher mathematics at the Board School, spread herself over the subject; and then invite the angels to inspect the matter, and weep! For this is the sort of "harmony" which the "paying guest," who can appreciate the advantages of young and musical society, an airy front bed-chamber, and a bicycle room, is expected to enthuse over at the _table d'hôte_: a _mélange_ of herbs and roots, including water-cress and giant radishes, swimming in equal parts of vinegar and oil, and a large proportion of the water in which the ingredients have been soaking for hours--said ingredients being minced small, like veal collops, with a steel knife. And the same salad, the very identical horror, obtrudes itself on the table at other genteel establishments than boarding-houses. For they be "mostly fools" who people the civilised world. Let it be laid down as a golden rule, that the concoction of a salad should never, or hardly ever, be entrusted to the tender mercies of the British serving-maid. For the salad-maker, like the poet, is born, not made; and the divine _afflatus_--I don't mean garlic--is as essential in the one as in the other. We will take the simple mixture, what is commonly known as the _French Salad_, first. This is either composed, in the matter of herbs, of lettuce, chopped taragon, chervil, and chives; or of endive, with, "lurking in the bowl," a _chapon_, or crust of bread on which a clove of garlic has been rubbed. But the waiter, an he be discreet, will ask the customer beforehand if he prefer that the _chapon_ be omitted. The dressing is simplicity itself: Within the bowl of a table-spoon are placed, in succession, a spot of made mustard, and a sprinkling of black pepper and salt. The bowl is filled up with vinegar, and with a fork in the other hand the waiter stirs quickly the mustard, etc., afterwards emptying the contents of the spoon over the green-stuff. Then the spoon is refilled--either twice or thrice, _ad lib._--with Lucca oil, which is also poured over the salad. Then the final mixing takes place, in the salad bowl. But there be many and elaborate ways of salad-making. Here is the writer's idea of a _Lobster Salad_ for half-a-dozen guests: