Munich and Heidelberg-I found the same opposition everywhere. When I first went to Germany the feeling against women was much stronger than it is now. I had to persuade the professors to give me permission to take their courses. Then the matter was taken up by the faculty of the university, and if the petition was approved it was turned over to the ministry for consideration. You can imagine how unpleasant it was to attend lectures where one was the only woman among 200 men. Some professors would not consider the possibility of a woman student doing the required work, and would not allow one to listen to their lectures.

"One day at Heidelberg a certain professor sent me to a library to consult some books. I was hard at work over them when another professor entered.

"What are you doing here?' he demanded. "I explained that my professor had sent me, and outlined the work I was doing.

"Well, you can go away again, and at once,' he said gruffly.

"Of course I went, for there was no appeal. I could hardly blame the blunt old man, however, for he was simply following the views which he had held all his life.

"During the last two years, however, I have noticed that the opposition to women was becoming less. The German professors are waking up to the fact that women can do the required work. They have passed their examination with uniform success, while a great many men fail every year. The professors still try to make the women fail by giving them most severe examinations. The younger students also are beginning to look with more favor on co-education. Many of them believe that they can reach a broader culture through the education of their women. I believe that the presence of American women students has had much to do with this change of feeling. And just here I want to sound a note of warning to the American women who expect to study in Germany. They should be most careful not to abuse such freedom as is now accorded them. I have heard of girls who went to Germany with this idea, 'I will see and hear everything, whether they like it or not. What do I care for their oldfashioned rules and regulations?'

"A very little of this spirit will do much to foster the feeling of opposition. It will not only make it difficult for American women who desire to study there, but it will delay the cause of coeducation in Germany."

Concerning

Port

About 1868 Lord Lytton, at that time Secretary of Legation at Lisbon, sent a thrill through the frames of habitual drinkers of port wine by stating in an official report that "all port intended for the English market was composed almost quite. as much of elderberries as grapes." This startling assertion was afterward qualified by his explaining that his allusion only applied to the deepening of the color of the wine with extract from the skins of dried elderberries, and not to any admixture of elderberry juice with the wine itself. Lord Lytton had, moreover, affirmed that the Paiz Vinhateiro of the Alto Duro abounded with elder-trees. Both statements were inaccurate at the time, and are equally inaccurate to-day.

The principal shippers of port wine to England either own or rent quintas in the Alto Duro, or, what is equivalent, contract to purchase their

*New York Evening Post.

Wine

produce in the form of wine. During the time of vintage they or their representatives are every day engaged in riding about from one vineyard to another, for the purpose of seeing that the vintage is properly made; that green or damaged grapes do not get into the Logaros; that the pressing and fermentation take place under favorable conditions; and that brandy from the juice of the grape alone, which they take care themselves to supply, shall be added only at such times and in such quantities as they shall approve.

It is only after having been drawn off into large tunnels, when the second fermentation has ceased through cold weather having set in, that it acquires the rich purple hue common to young port wine. That port wine has spirit put in it to conserve a portion of its saccharine when the grapes are not over-ripe, is well known. The cost of this spirit is always greater than that of the best wine; hence the minimum quantity possible is always used, and it is never used unless absolutely

necessary.

The late Baron Forrester was one of the first to advocate the shipment of wine from the Alto Duro without any addition of spiritbut then it is no longer port wine, for the reason that having consumed all its natural sugar by means of its more perfect fermentation, it has none of the rich, fruity flavor of the younger vintage wines, nor the refined liqueur-like character of the older growths to which old port wine drinkers were accustomed. Hence they have refused to accept it as a substitute, and from this has dated the decline in the use of port wine.

The happy possessors of port in perfection are popularly supposed to be those individuals who have inherited a cellar of wine laid down a century or so ago by a grandfather or great-uncle; and while they are to be congratulated upon having so excellent an ancestor, there is really no reason why, at the present time, a man should not lay down port wine for his own drinking, as it is quite possible to obtain wine of fifty to sixty years of age at a price not to exceed $10 to $12 a gallon at the present time. Wine from ripe, but not over-ripe grapes, with fine full firmness and sufficient richness, is certain to improve, with this great advantage, that it does not absolutely require long keeping in bottle. It is necessary, however, that it should be allowed to mature, and get rid of its coarse parts in the wood, and if kept thus for three or five years and then bottled, it will in two years' time be better than if bottled green and kept ten years in bin.

The most famous vintages are 1834 and 1858. Since 1834 there have been in the Upper Duro sixteen years classed as vintage years, '36, '40, '42, '44, '47, '50, '51, '53, '58, '61, '63, '67, '68, '70, '72-3, and '75, but out of these sixteen years there were only four grand years, '40, '47, '63, '70, with two others which almost deserve to be thus classed'42 and '68-showing that, on an average, not more than really one grand vintage can be reckoned upon in each decade. In 1815 there was a grand wine, remarkable for the refinement of its flavor, and exhaling a soft and delicate bouquet; it was scarcely darker in color than a good sherry. The only time that I ever saw any in this country was a small lot brought here by the late John T. Howard, which sold ten or fifteen years ago for $48 a dozen. It has not been procurable since, and does not exist in Portugal at the present writing. Vintage of 1870 is remarkable also for the great delicacy and fine perfume; that of 1873 is dry and emits a strong bouquet.

Unlike sherry, port is not kept to any extent in Soleras. Most large Oporto shippers have stocks of old wines of fine vintages, the character of which they keep up by "refreshing" them, as

it is termed, with wines of a more youthful but equally high character. Port wine is believed to mature less perfectly when subject to the influence of light, and the stores in which they are kept have but few windows or skylights. This is also the reason why port wine bottles are generally of dark glass. In these Oporto cellars, the walls and timbers alike are blackened by the constantly evaporating alcohol, and monster cobwebs hang in fantastic festoons before the dingy windows and from the dark, decaying rafters. There was a famous Oporto maxim: "If it is a good vintage, sell your coat, sell the shirt off your back, sell your skin if you can get any one to buy it, in order to purchase wine."

Some natural ports of the vintage of 1877 from Norval and Covelhinos are sound and clean wines; and white port, when it is not a rain-water freak, is made from the "sheeps'-tail" grape. Malmseys of a pale golden color, with a most pronounced flavor and powerful bouquet, and a luscious and delicate muscatel, are largely exported in bottles to Brazil. There is also a Solera, the original foundation of which dates back to 1827, which is known as the "Bismarck Port," from the circumstance that several pipes of it were supplied every year to the German Chancellor for his own special drinking through the German Consul at Oporto.

About ten years ago I was sent for by the late Cyrus W. Field to see a lot of port wine, which had been presented to him by Dean Stanley of Westminster. It had been bottled in curious dwarf port wine bottles, and from lying upon its side for many a long year had deposited a rich heavy sediment that clung to the under side of the bottles like a thick paste. The corks had shrivelled up to about one-quarter of their former size, and any attempt at moving the bottles would have so disarranged this sediment that the wine would have become muddy and not fit to drink. I had all the bottles stood upright for several weeks, and then again visited the closet where the wine was stored. The sediment had settled, and it was quite possible then to draw the old corks and replace them with new ones without disturbing the wine. The character of this wine was full-bodied, light, and delicate port, of great power, and was the finest port wine that I had ever seen in this city. It is often the case that port wine thus for years lying on its side is absolutely unfit to drink, for the reason that it is impossible to decant the clear wine. There is no reason whatever why corks that are good at the time of bottling should not last for twenty-five or thirty years without needing to be touched. The oldest known unblended wine is 1851.

Famous Coffee and Tea Drinkers..............Saturdag Evening Post An interesting and not uninstructive volume might be written on the favorite edibles and potables of famous literary men-especially on the stimulants in which they have sought refreshment or inspiration. Few persons realize what a transformation tea and coffee-those beverages which the plain-speaking William Cobbett denounced as "slops"-have wrought in the tastes of this class of workers, weaning them, as they have, from the heavy potations of wine and spirits in which they once indulged.

The roll of literary men who have been passionately fond of that

"Coffee, which makes the politician wise,

And see all things through his half-shut eyes," is decidedly shorter than that of the illustrious tea-tipplers, although to-day, perhaps, the difference is fast disappearing. Voltaire, the king of wits and literateurs, was the king, too, of coffee-drinkers. In his old age he took fifty cups a day, which sadly hurt his digestion and hastened his death. The abstemious Balzac was fond of the same drink, stimulating himself with it from midnight, when he began his literary work, till daybreak, when, starved and self-forgetful, he would find himself, bare-headed and in dressinggown and slippers, in the Place du Carrousel, ignorant how he came there, and miles from home.

Sir James Mackintosh was so fond of coffee that he used to assert that the powers of a man's mind would generally be found to be proportional to the quantity of that stimulant which he drank. His brilliant schoolmate and friend, Robert Hall, preferred tea, of which he sometimes drank a dozen cups.

Cowper's fine tribute to "the cups that cheer but not inebriate"-a phrase, by the way, which he borrowed from Bishop Berkeley-is one of the most pleasing pictures in the "Task." Porson and Parr, the famous Greek scholars, indulged in frequent and copious potations of the Chinese beverage. Sir James Scarlett once saw the former drink sixteen cups of tea, one after another, at Bayne's chambers in Lincoln's Inn-an innocent stimulant compared with others that he indulged in. Once, having been asked, after he had drunk a dozen cups at a lady's table, if he would have another, he replied with a line from Catullus: "Non possum tecum vivere, nec sine te."

Of Dr. Samuel Johnson it is almost impossible to think except as one drinking interminable

"dishes" of tea. The teapot he used was a huge one, of old Oriental porcelain, painted and gilded, and holding not less than three quarts of liquid.

In his review of Jonas Hannay's Essay on Tea, he speaks of himself as "a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, whose kettle has scarcely time to cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and with tea welcomes the morn." Tea to the great literary despot was like sack to Falstaff: it "ascended him into the brain, made it apprehensive, quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery and delectable shapes"; and his learning was "a mere hoard, kept by a devil," till tea unlocked it and "set it in act and use." Richard Cumberland, the prolific playwright, whose autobiography we have recently read, relates an amusing incident which happened at his own house, when Sir Joshua Reynolds ventured to remind Johnson that he had drunk eleven cups of tea.

"Sir," replied the great literary mogul, “I did not count your glasses of wine; why, then, should you number up my cups of tea? Sir, I should have released the lady from any further trouble had it not been for your remark; but you have reminded me that I want one of the dozen, and I must request Mrs. Cumberland to round up my number."

If Johnson drank tea oftener and more copiously than any other literary potentate of England, William Hazlitt, the writer and critic, probably surpassed every other author in the singularity and strength of his potations. Rising usually at one or two o'clock in the day, he would sit over his breakfast of exceedingly strong black tea and a toasted French roll-if he had no work on hand-for hours, silent, motionless, and selfabsorbed as a Turk over his opium-pouch. It was the only stimulant or luxury, Douglas Jerrold says, he ever took, and he was very fastidious about its quality, using always the most expensive kind, and consuming, when he lived alone, about a pound a week. He always made the tea himself-half filling the teapot with tea, pouring boiling water on it, and then almost immediately pouring it out, and mingling with it a great quantity of sugar and cream.

ties, has progressed the least in the amazing evolution of the centuries. In other words, bread to-day is little different from the bread of thousands of years ago, and in its mode of manufacture it has undergone little material change.

This does not mean that the flaky white loaves produced by the baker of to-day are not good, especially if they agree with one; it only means that the perfect bread has yet to come, and that advance toward it has been woefully slow when compared with the other things we eat.

However, there is said to be a prospect of better things soon, and it may surprise the general reader to know that bread-making is no longer considered a trade by those who have begun to take it seriously, and that it has been dignified by the term of an exact science. It is only recently that it has begun to attract the attention of men of the higher grades of education and intelligence, and these are finding in it a field of interesting and profitable research and experi

ment.

Everybody remembers the old country fairs, where good housewives had on exhibition bread made by some new process-each her own-that was to revolutionize the bakery business, according to her way of thinking. These were followed by the more enterprising of the mill owners, who began to send out demonstrators to food shows to exhibit to an enduring public the only bread worth considering, made on the spot from the particular brand of flour being boomed at the time.

Then came the pooling of the interests of the big milling concerns of the country, and out of this came the first of the serious attempts to give one standard of bread that would combine attractiveness, nutrition and cheapness. This stimulated a new and growing interest in the production of the "staff of life," so variously created, from the pumpernickel of the European peasant to the dainty non-nutritious squares of the five o'clock tea table.

Whatever progress may be made in the making of bread, however, it will hardly affect, for some years at least, the heavy massive coarse bread of the lower grades of Europeans who flock to America, to which they are so accustomed. In the Russian quarter of New York the popular bread is made in huge round lumps, baked, and sold at two cents a pound. It is made of cornmeal, cheap fats, and very little yeast, but with lots of salt and water. The black bread of the Italian colony is as much an institution to it as the vendetta, and the day laborer of that nationality is seemingly content to eke out his subsistence upon it, aided with a green pepper, a raw

tomato or two, with a little beer every day and some stew on Sunday. The well-known French bread of the table d'hote and the farmer's bread used as a specialty at several of the high-class restaurants, come very near the class of bread the American is trying to make, but there is a long step in between, which time and experiment alone will surmount. The methods of making the various breads consumed by the cosmopolitan millions of this city would make an inventive man wonder why he had not taken this field for effort. The more important of the breadmakers have now begun to lay out large sums yearly for new and improved methods for ovens, or for mixing, and as for "kneaders," a fortune awaits the man who will invent a perfect machine.

There is also the very important feature of ventilation and temperature. Almost any one can remember how mother or the cook would wrap up carefully the "sponge" for to-morrow's bread and generally set it back of the stove or in a warm corner of a closet over night, so that it might rise properly. It was no more important to keep the old home-made bread warm than the ton or two of "sponge" that the modern baker uses. Temperature in a bakery must therefore be made easily changeable, and by methods of construction that so far are largely experimental. Ventilation goes hand in hand with this. Nothing made is so susceptible to foul gases as bread.

"The demand for pie," said an authority on the subject, "increases with the population, but customs in eating it have somewhat changed.

"Forty or fifty years ago, for instance, in the Eighth and Ninth wards of this city, populated then almost exclusively by Americans, you could, I venture to say, have found pie on the table of every family at dinner every day. Now that custom by no means so commonly prevails; but the descendants of those families are still eating pie; if not at home, in restaurants.

“Pie is eaten mainly by the native population. Foreigners eat very little of it. A German restaurant, for example, might not sell three pies a day. The Germans are small pie eaters, and the same is true of the English, the Italians and the French. The Englishmen eat plum pudding, the Italians eat fruit.

"The area of greatest consumption in the United States is in New England and the Middle States, though pie is eaten extensively all through the West. Pie is eaten much more commonly in the North than in the South. Chicago is a good pie town. St. Louis, on the other hand, is not so good a place for pies.

"And then Eastern cities may have their peculiarities. A New York pie-baking establishment that started a pie bakery in Philadelphia in 1876, the year of the Centennial Exhibition, found, strange as it may seem to a New Englander, or a New Yorker, acquainted with that delight, that Philadelphians ate very few green-apple pies and also that they ate very few pumpkin pies, while sweet-potato pies were a fashion there; and further, that the Quaker City was not a great pie-eating community for an Eastern city anyway. But Philadelphia has taken kindly to green-apple and pumpkin pies, and it is now eating more pies in general per head than ever before.

"Pies are made now in greater variety than ever, and pie supplies are now drawn from greater distances than in old times, being now brought from California and from the Southern States, as well as, for instance, from the Bahamas, whence we get pineapples. The seasons of pies made of green fruits have been much prolonged, and pies are made the year round of fruit canned

Over the

or otherwise preserved. In either case the fruit used is the best that can be bought.

"The time-honored mince, long a pie of great and steady sale all through winter and the other cold months, has been peculiarly a Christmas pie for some years, and it is more so now than ever. It seems as though almost everybody that ate pies at all bought a mince pie at Christmas. One big pie concern in this city made up into mince pies last Christmas ten tons of mincemeat, and this same concern sold on the day before Christmas, from a little store, perhaps ten by twenty feet, which it maintains on the premises for the convenience of people in the neighborhood, mince pies to the value of $500 at retail.

"Export? No, there are no pies exported; there is no demand, and the pie couldn't very well be exported any distance, even if it were desired, because the crust would absorb the moisture and so become soggy, which is, of course, the very reverse of a desirable condition."

-Once a captain in the army was cornered by the enemy and he addressed his men as follows: "My men, fight like demons until your powder gives out, then run. I'm a little lame, I'll start now."

-Easily Found. Recently when looking for the house of a cousin in a town unfamiliar to myself, I inquired of a passing negro where I should find it. "Down dar, sir," he replied, indicating a number of houses down the road. "What's the number?" "You'll find dat on de door, sir."

It was during the Civil War that a captain of a New York regiment was inspecting his company. At length he came to one private whose shirt was badly begrimed. "Patrick O'Flynn!" called out the officer. "Here, yer honor," promptly responded Patrick, with his hand to his cap. "How long do you wear a shirt?" "Twenty-eight inches," was the rejoinder.

-Judge Lindley, of the St. Louis Circuit Court, like many another good judge, is fond of a quiet joke. A raw German, who had been summoned for jury duty, desired to be relieved. "Schudge," he said, "I can nicht understand English goot." Looking over the crowded bar, his eye filled with humor, the judge replied: "Oh! you can serve! You won't have to understand good English. You won't hear any here."

-While Mr. Webster was once addressing the Senate on the subject of internal improvements, and every Senator was listening with close attention, the Senate clock commenced striking, but instead of striking twice at 2 p. m., continued to strike without cessation more than forty times. All eyes were turned to the clock, and Mr. Webster remained silent until the clock struck about twenty, when he thus appealed to the chair: "Mr. Presi

dent, the clock is out of order! I have the floor!" To say that a long and loud laugh from every Senator and person in the august chamber was indulged in is a faint description of the merriment this exquisite pun produced.

-Patrick Murphy was conspicuous for a very homely face. He used to say that it seemed like "an offince to the landscape," a conclusion in which his acquaintances fully concurred; and he was as poor as he was homely. One day a neighbor met him and said: "And how are ye, Pat?" "Mighty bad," was the reply. "It is shtarvation that is starin' me in the face." "If that is so," said his neighbor. “sure and it can't be very pleasant for aither of ye!"

-Wu Ting Fang, His Excellency the Chinese Minister, on one occasion listened with intense approval and much industry of thought to William Gillette's performance of his own play, "Secret Service," and asked in reverential courtesy to be presented to the actor-author. Into Gillette's fourby-six milk-white dressing room crowded his excellency and his suite, all bowing gracefully and unrolling their pretty little tan hands from silk sleeves to be clasped in Gillette's firm American grasp. "Do you work this way every night for many weeks?" asked the diplomat, driving a piercing glance at Mr. Gillette. "Yes; many months, and years if people will stand it." "How do you make this sort of a play-so beautiful a story-not interfered with in any way by the characters?" To this question Mr. Gillette could not unfold an impromptu drama-recipe, so he took refuge in the ambush of the special Gillette wit in its solemn vein of boyishness, and answered, "The best way is to write your play first, and then chuck in the characters where they do the least harm."