To housewives in rural districts we offer a "wrinkle" that may be found of use at the present season, when most vegetable gardens may be ransacked in vain for delicacies that shall be common enough at a later period. While rambling through the district a few days ago, we chanced to drop in upon a widow lady and daughter, who occupy a nice little cottage. They were going to sit down to an early dinner, and although we were not very hungry, and could have fasted till a later hour, not merely without inconvenience, but from choice, yet on their earnest invitation we sat down along with them. The fare consisted of soup and a boiled fowl, the latter fat, tender, and good as a fowl should always be, and the soup was simply delicious. A green vegetable of some kind floating thickly in it, gave it a relish and gout that was very remarkable, and we asked what it was. "Nettle-tops, sir," was the answer, and had we not been told, it is probable that we should have guessed and blundered long ere we could hit upon it. But not only can nettle-tops be thus utilised as an admirable condiment in soup at this season, but they may also be served up asparagus-wise, and, to our taste, are every whit as good. In this latter form we have eaten them often, and, as Johnson said, after swallowing several platefuls of Scotch broth, in reply to Boswell's observation--"You never ate it before?" "No, sir, but I don't care how soon I eat it again." And so say we invariably when we have finished a dish of nettle-top asparagus. After our nettle-top soup it occurred to us that there might be more truth in Goldsmith's remark about the French than he was perhaps aware of, for he meant it as satire, that they can roast a sirloin if they only had beef, and prepare "ten different dishes from nettle-tops." We had occasion to be up and about very early this morning, not, however, for the purpose of washing our face in May dew, although the morning was very beautiful, and the dew lay plentiful enough, and pearl-like on grass and birchen bough, but in order to go on what some may think an even sillier errand, to wit, a birds'-nesting. For this sort of thing the earlier the hour the better at this season, and as we mounted the coppiced slopes which we proposed searching, the sun was beginning to gild the loftiest peaks of Glencoe with purple and amber and gold, and all the cocks in the hamlet, as if at a preconcerted signal, were cheerily greeting the rising god, or if their thoughts were more mundane and prosaic, as perhaps they were, you may interpret the crowing of each individual chanticleer as some one else did before you in some such lines as these-- "The cock rose in the morning; He called his favourite hen, With a cockle-do-doo, and a how-d'ye-do, And how-d'ye-do again."