MASHED CHESTNUTS.—­Prepare and boil the chestnuts as in the preceding recipe.  When tender, mash through a colander with a potato masher.  Season with cream and salt if desired.  Serve hot.

TO KEEP NUTS FRESH.—­Chestnuts and other thin-shelled nuts may be kept from becoming too dry by mixing with an equal bulk of dry sand and storing in a box or barrel in some cool place.

TABLE TOPICS.

    Who lives to eat, will die by eating.—­Sel.

Fruit bears the closest relation to light.  The sun pours a continuous flood of light into the fruits, and they furnish the best portion of food a human being requires for the sustenance of mind and body.—­Alcott.

The famous Dr. John Hunter, one of the most eminent physicians of his time, and himself a sufferer from gout, found in apples a remedy for this very obstinate and distressing malady.  He insisted that all of his patients should discard wine and roast beef, and make a free use of apples.

    Do not too much for your stomach, or it will abandon you.—­Sel.

The purest food is fruit, next the cereals, then the vegetables.  All pure poets have abstained almost entirely from animal food.  Especially should a minister take less meat when he has to write a sermon.  The less meat the better sermon.—­A.  Bronson Alcott.

There is much false economy:  those who are too poor to have seasonable fruits and vegetables, will yet have pie and pickles all the year.  They cannot afford oranges, yet can afford tea and coffee daily.—­Health Calendar.

     What plant we in the apple tree? 
     Fruits that shall dwell in sunny June,
     And redden in the August moon,
     And drop, when gentle airs come by,
     That fan the blue September sky,
     While children come, with cries of glee,
     And seek there when the fragrant grass
     Betrays their bed to those who pass
     At the foot of the apple tree.

    —­Bryant.

LEGUMES

The legumes, to which belong peas, beans, and lentils, are usually classed among vegetables; but in composition they differ greatly from all other vegetable foods, being characterized by a very large percentage of the nitrogenous elements, by virtue of which they possess the highest nutritive value.  Indeed, when mature, they contain a larger proportion of nitrogenous matter than any other food, either animal or vegetable.  In their immature state, they more nearly resemble the vegetables.  On account of the excess of nitrogenous elements in their composition, the mature legumes are well adapted to serve as a substitute for animal foods, and for use in association with articles in which starch or other non-nitrogenous elements are predominant; as, for example, beans or lentils with rice, which combinations constitute the staple food of large populations in India.