I take this opportunity of forwarding to you a curious memorandum which I found in rummaging the papers of a "note-maker" of the last century. It appears to be a bill of fare for the entertainment of a party, upon the "flitch of bacon" being decreed to a happy couple. It is at Harrowgate, and not at Dunmow, which would lead us to believe that this custom was not confined to one county. The feast itself is almost as remarkable, as regards its component parts, as that produced by Mr. Thackeray, in his delightful "Lectures," as characteristic of polite feeding in Queen Anne's reign: "_June 25.--Mr. and Mrs. Liddal's Dinner at Green Dragon, Harrowgate, on taking Fflitch Bacon Oath._ _Bill Fare._ Beans and bacon. Cabbage, colliflower. Three doz. chickens. Two shoulders mutton, cowcumbers. Two turbets. Rump beef, &c. &c. Goose and plumbpudding. Quarter lamb, sallad. Tarts, jellies, strawberries, cream. Cherrys, syllabubs, and blomonge. Leg lamb, spinnage. Crawfish, pickled salmon. Fryd tripe, calves' heads. Gravy and Pease soup. Two piggs. Breast veal, ragoud. Ice cream, pine apple. Surloin beaf. Pidgeons, green peas. Lobsters, crabs. Twelve red herrings, twenty-two dobils." W. R. Stockwell. * * * * * ON THE USE OF THE HOUR-GLASS IN PULPITS. (Vol. vii., p. 489.) Perhaps the following may be of service as a farther illustration of this subject. Zacharie Boyd says, in _The Last Battell of the Sovle in Death_, 1629, reprinted Glasgow, 1831, at p. 469.: "Now after his Battell ended hee hath surrendered the spirit, _Clepsydra effluxit_, his _houre-glasse_ is now runne out, and his soule is come to its wished home, where it is free from the fetters of flesh." This divine was minister of the barony parish of Glasgow, the church for which was then in the crypt of the cathedral. I have no doubt the hour-glass was there used from which he draws his simile. Your correspondent refers to sermons an hour long, but, to judge from the contents of "Mr. Zacharie's" MS. sermons still preserved in the library of the College of Glasgow, each, at the rate of ordinary speaking, must have occupied at least an hour and a half in delivery. When he had become infirm and near his end, and had found it necessary to shorten his sermons, his "kirk session" was offended, as-- "Feb. 13, 1651. Some are to speak to Mr. Z. Boyd about the soon skailing (dismissing) of the Baronie Kirk on Sunday afternoon."