[12] _Hlapet_, or pickled tea, made up with a little oil, salt, and garlic, or assafoetida, is eaten in small quantities by the Burmese, after dinner, as we eat cheese. They say it promotes digestion, and they cannot live in comfort without it. Hlapet is also passed around on many ceremonial occasions, and on the conclusion of lawsuits. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A QUACK. IN TWO PARTS. PART I. At this present moment of time I am what the doctors call an interesting case, and am to be found in bed No. 10, Ward II. Massachusetts General Hospital. I am told that I have what is called Addison's Disease,--and that it is this pleasing malady which causes me to be covered with large blotches of a dark mulatto tint, such as I suppose would make me peculiarly acceptable to a Massachusetts constituency, if my legs were only strong enough to enable me to run for Congress. However, it is a rather grim subject to joke about, because, if I believe the doctor who comes around every day and thumps me, and listens to my chest with as much pleasure as if I was music all through,--I say, if I believed him, I should suppose I was going to die. The fact is, I don't believe him at all. Some of these days I shall take a turn and get about again, but meanwhile it is rather dull for a stirring, active person to have to lie still and watch myself getting big brown and yellow spots all over me, like a map that has taken to growing. The man on my right has consumption, smells of cod-liver oil, and coughs all night. The man on my left is a Down-Easter, with a liver which has struck work; looks like a human pumpkin; and how he contrives to whittle jack-straws all day, and eat as he does, I can't understand. I have tried reading and tried whittling, but they don't either of them satisfy me, so that yesterday I concluded to ask the doctor if he could n't suggest some other amusement. I waited until he had gone through the ward, and then I seized my chance, and asked him to stop a moment. "Well," said he, "what do you want?" "Something to do, Doctor." He thought a little, and then replied: "I'll tell you what to do; I think if you were to write out a plain account of your life, it would be pretty well worth reading, and perhaps would serve to occupy you for a few days at least. If half of what you told me last week be true, you must be about as clever a scamp as there is to be met with, and I suppose you would just as lief put it on paper as talk it." "Pretty nearly," said I; "I think I will try it, Doctor."