Split the kidneys lengthwise, but not quite through, leaving enough meat and skin at one side to act as a sort of hinge. Rub them well inside with melted butter, and lay them open, as you would small birds, the back downward, upon a buttered gridiron, over a bright fire. They should be done in about eight minutes. Turn often while broiling. Have ready the stuffing of crumbs, parsley, onion, and butter, well seasoned. Heat in a saucepan, stirring until smoking hot. Add the lemon-juice; dish the kidneys, put some of this mixture inside of each, close the two sides upon it, butter and pepper them, and serve.
A few bits of fat salt pork, minced very fine, gives a good flavor to the stuffing. The pork should have been previously cooked.
HASTE OR WASTE?
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“Ah! you forget my sedan-chair,” said Madame de Staël, when, at the height of her social and literary fame some one wondered how she found time for writing amid her many and engrossing engagements.
The sedan-chair was the fashionable conveyance for ladies, at that day, in their round of daily calls or evening festivities, and the brilliant Frenchwoman secured within its closed curtains the solitude and silence she needed for composition.
An American authoress who wrote much and with great care—never sending her brain-bantlings into the world en déshabille—replied to a similar question: “My happiest thoughts come to me while I am mixing cake. My most serious study-hours are those devoted apparently to darning the family stockings.”
I entered a street-car, not many days ago, and sat down beside a gentleman who did not lift his eyes from a book he was reading, or show, by any token, his consciousness of others’ presence. A side-glance at the volume told me it was Froude’s “History of England,” and I cheerfully forgave his inattention to myself. The conductor notified him when he reached his stopping-place, and, with a readiness that betrayed admirable mental training, he came out of the world through which the fascinating historian was leading him, pocketed his book, recognized me with a pleasant word, and stepped to the pavement in front of his store, the thorough business man.
“That is an affected prig,” said a fellow-passenger, by the time the other had left the car. “He and I take this ride in company every morning and afternoon. It takes him half an hour to go from his house to his store; and, instead of amusing himself with his newspaper, as the rest of us do, he always has some heavy-looking book along—biography, or history, or a scientific treatise. He begins to read by the time he is seated, and never leaves off until he gets out. It is in wretched taste, such a show of pedantic industry.”