Chapter 6

Before the worms are cooked, they are, each in its turn, carefully pricked with an orange-thorn, and thrown into a vessel containing a sauce of lime-juice and salt. This is for the purpose of cleansing them from the viscid fluids they may have imbibed from the palmiste. Notwithstanding this discipline, the worms retain their vitality till they are deprived of it by the culinary process. The simpler mode of dressing them is to spit a number together on a piece of stick or a long orange-thorn, and roast them before the fire in their own fat. The general mode, however, is by frying them with or without a sauce, and when dressed in this manner, they form a most savoury dish.

Groogroo worms are considered great delicacies in some parts of the West Indies, chiefly in those whose inhabitants are of French or Spanish origin. The good old planter at his table presents you with a dish of worms, with as much pride as an epicure in England introduces you to cod-sounds, eels, or high venison. Nor does it appear that there is any peculiarity in the taste of those who relish the insects; because it very frequently happens, that the stranger, who manifested on his arrival the greatest disgust at the idea of eating worms, becomes immediately converted into an extravagant lover of them.

It may appear strange, that in the tropics, especially, where nature provides so abundantly for the wants of man, such creatures should be resorted to as articles of consumption; but while we on this side of the Atlantic are shocked at the idea of eating worms, the West Indian consumer in his turn expresses surprise that human beings can use things which resemble snakes so much as eels, and pronounces it to be the height of uncleanness to eat frogs, as some of the continentals do. Indeed, the groogroo worm is by no means more repulsive in appearance than any of the other unprepossessing creatures which are so highly prized. It would be a difficult matter to decide on the merits of the many extraordinary things which the taste of man, in its morbid cravings, has discovered and converted into luxurious use; and the philosopher finds himself at last driven to take shelter from his own unanswerable inquiries behind the concluding power of that most true, but somewhat musty proverb: 'De gustibus non est disputandum.'

GRATITUDE OF THE COUNTRY FOR STEAM COMMUNICATION.

Mr Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, who first experimented in the application of steam to navigation, never received any mark of gratitude from his country; his family, though long in comparatively reduced circumstances, remain to this day equally without requital on that account. Henry Bell, who, taking his ideas from Mr Miller's experimental boat, first set a steam-vessel afloat in this country, spent his latter years in poverty, from which he was rescued only a short time before his death by a small pension from the Clyde Trustees. Mr Thomas Gray, whose Observations on Railways, published about thirty years ago, may be said to have given origin and impulse to our present railway system, by which three hundred millions have been expended, died in poverty, to which he had been reduced by his exertions in the cause; his widow and children are at this day in that state, without any public acknowledgment of his services to the country; and his son has lately applied to nearly every railway company in the kingdom for a situation, but in vain. Beyond a pension of L.50 a year to the widow of Mr James Taylor, who prompted Mr Miller to try his experiments, we are not aware of a single penny having been expended by the country in requiting the services, or compensating the losses, of individuals in respect of steam communications of any kind.

A DREAM OF RESURRECTION.

So heavenly beautiful it lay, It was less like a human corse Than that fair shape in which perforce A dead hope clothes itself alway.

The dream shewed very plain: the bed Where that known unknown face reposed-- A woman's face with eyelids closed, A something precious that was dead:

A something, lost on this side life, By which the mourner came and stood, And laid down, ne'er to be renewed, All glittering robes of earthly strife;--

Shred off, like votive locks of hair, Youth's ornaments of joy and strength, And cast them in their golden length The silence of that bier to share.

No tears fell--but a gaze, fixed, long, That memory might print the face On the heart's ever-vacant space With a sun-finger, sharp and strong.

Then kisses, dropping without sound; And solemn arms wound round the dead; And lifting from the natural bed Into the coffin's strange _new_ bound;

Yet still no parting--no belief In death; no more than we believe In some dread falsehood that would weave The world in one black shroud of grief.

And still, unanswered kisses; still, Warm clingings to the image cold, With an impossible faith's close fold, Creative, through its fierce '_I will_.'

Hush, hush! the marble eyelids move; The kissed lips quiver into breath; Avaunt, thou ghastly-seeming Death! Avaunt! We are conquerors--I and Love!

Corse of dead hope, awake, arise! A living hope, that only slept Until the tears thus overwept Had washed the blindness from our eyes.

Come back into the upper day! Dash off those cerements! Patient shroud, We'll wrap thee as a garment proud Round the bright shape we thought was clay.

Clasp, arms! Cling, soul! Eyes, drink anew, Like pilgrims at a living spring! Faith, that out-loved this perishing, May see this resurrection too.

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End of Project Gutenberg's Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451, by Various