CONFECTIONERY. 195 
Ah me! those happy days have flown ! 
My boy’s a father too ; 
And little Willies of his own 
Do what he used to do: 
And I—ah ! all that’s left for me 
Are dreams of pleasure fled : 
My life’s not what it used to be 
When Willie wet the bed.” 
Lord Macaulay, when he retired from Parliament (1856), 
lived at Campden Hill, and took to gardening. He disliked 
dandelions singularly, and relates how he ‘‘ exterminated all the 
dandelions which had sprung up since yesterday.” Again, 
when writing to his niece, “‘ Dear little Alice,” he tells her: 
‘“T have had no friends near me but my books and my flowers ; 
and no enemies but those execrable dandelions! I thought 
I was rid of the villains! but the day before yesterday when 
I got up and looked out of my window, I could see five or six of 
their great, impudent, yellow, flaring faces turned up at me. 
‘Only you wait till I come down,’ I said. How I pulled them 
up! How I enjoyed their destruction! Is it Christian-like to 
' hate a dandelion so savagely?” Bergins says he has seen 
intractable cases of chronic liver congestion cured, after many 
other remedies had failed, by the patients taking daily for some 
months a broth made from dandelion roots sliced, and stewed 
in boiling water, with some leaves of sorrel, and the yolk of an 
egg. These roots are in their best condition for yielding juice 
about November. During winter the sap is thick, sweet, and 
albuminous, but in summer time it is bitter and acrid. Frost 
causes the bitterness to diminish, and sweetness to take its place ; 
but after the frost this bitterness recurs, and is intensified. 
The whitened growth of a dandelion root when it has been 
blanched, and drawn out in length by having to become developed 
through a mole-hill, is much more sweet, and tender, and free 
from bitterness than if ordinarily grown. Parkinson writes 
(1640): ‘“ Whoso is drawing towards a consumption, or ready 
to fall into a cachexy, shall find a wonderful help from the use 
of young, tender dandelion leaves, blanched, and eaten with 
bread and butter in the spring for some time together.” 
CONFECTIONERY. 
ForMerty there was made by the cook a rich syrup with the 
spicy aromatic CARNATION flower contained therein, the same 
