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"The collection of pictures in the Old Museum," wrote George Eliot in 1855, "has three gems which remain in the imagination, 'Titian's Daughter, Correggio's 'Jupiter and Io, and his 'Head of Christ on a Handkerchief. I was pleased, also, to recognize among the pictures the one by Jan Steem which Goethe describes in the 'Wahlverwandschaften' as the model of a tableau vivant presented by Lucian and her friends.

The Shallun or deep purple berry is in form much like the huckkleberry and terminates bluntly with a kind of cap or cover at the end like that fruit; they are attatched seperately to the sides of the boughs of the shrub by a very short stem hanging underneath the same and are frequently placed very near each other on the same bough; it is a full bearer. the berry is easily geathered as it seperates from the bough readily, while the leaf is strongly affixed. the shrub which produces this fruit rises to the hight of 6 or 8 feet sometimes grows on the high lands but moste generally in the swampy or marshey grounds; it is an evergreen. the stem or trunk is from three to 10 Inches in circumference irregularly and much branched, seldom more than one steem proceding from the same root, tho they are frequently associated very thickly. the bark is somewhat rough and of a redish brown colour. the wood is very firm and hard. the leaves are alternate declining and attatched by a short fotstalk to the two horizontal sides of the boughs; the form is a long oval, reather more accute towards its apex than at the point of insertion; it's margin slightly serrate, it's sides colapsing or partially foalding upwards or channelled; it is also thick firm smothe and glossey, the upper surface of a fine deep green, while the under disk is of a pale or whiteish green. this shrub retains it's virdure very perfectly during the winter and is a beautifull shrub. the natives either eat these berrys when ripe immediately from the bushes or dryed in the sun or by means of their sweating kilns; very frequently they pound them and bake then in large loaves of 10 or fifteen pounds; this bread keeps very well during one season and retains the moist jeucies of the fruit much better than by any other method of preservation. this bread is broken and stired in could water until it be sufficiently thick and then eaten; in this way the natives most generally use it.

"No, by heaven!" exclaimed the down-at-heels gentleman. "I drank the fellow's beer, every drop could have drunk more. Our fat and furious friend labours under a delusion, for to drink good beer with a man out of that man's own pot is surely a mark of high esteem " "Dang your 'steem!" cried the stout fellow, flourishing his empty tankard threateningly.

"Wen de 'freshments parse 'roun', I'se 'steem it a oblergation ter me ef yer'll let me bring yer de cake an' cider. I'se sumpin fer yer. Gemmen an' ladies, took yer places," he added in a stentorian voice; "I ax yer' sideration fer bein' late, cose I had 'portant business; now, "Bow dar, scrape dar; Doan hang about de doah. Shine up ter de pretty gals, An' lead 'em on de floah"