Another old friend, General Hazen, called on us to-day. General Hazen visited the headquarters of the German army during the siege of Paris, and was for some time in residence at Versailles, where I often had the pleasure of meeting him, and he subsequently made an extensive tour over Europe, with the view of examining the military establishments of the Great Powers, of which he recorded the results in a very useful volume. He is now in charge of the Meteorological Department, to which the Duke paid a visit in the afternoon; and the mechanism and arrangement of the extensive system of observations for national purposes conducted under his care were shown and explained to us by the officers of the department in the most painstaking manner.
And then there was the Smithsonian to be visited, where the rooms seemed to me haunted by the shade of the dear Professor Henry who was wont to accompany me through the galleries in times past, explaining the mysteries of the contents of the institution over which he presided with such care, knowledge, and judgment, with that gentle and persuasive inductiveness which we recognise in the style of Professor Owen.
The Patent Office, which would repay a week's careful study, was hurriedly inspected, and the Post Office and Agricultural Department shared the same fate. Everywhere we had to acknowledge the extreme courtesy of the officials of the national establishments in the United States.
In a restaurant in Pennsylvania Avenue, where, in the midst of all these multifarious labours, we took refuge for a moment, to eat an oyster, there was lying on the table a dish of frogs' legs about the size of those of a chicken, neatly garnished with green leaves, beneath a block of ice. The Duke asked the attendant whether they were really good to eat. "I believe you!" he replies. "For myself I cannot bear poultry, but I can always eat those. And now look!" said he, "I will show you a curious thing. You would think that these legs have no life in them. But just watch." He took up a pinch of salt from a cellar near at hand and sprinkled it on the legs, which immediately were agitated with convulsive twitches, amounting in several instances to vigorous kicks. I felt as surprised as Galvani was when he touched the leg of the frog with his scalpel. Apropos of this _plat_ I may mention that subsequently we overcame our repugnance so far as to order a dish, and found it very excellent indeed, and whenever the delicacy was obtainable it became quite a usual portion of our more sumptuous entertainments. But for my part I considered it very like flavourless but tender chicken. Once, indeed, long ago, I had had an involuntary experience of the taste, for, walking one morning with a southern planter by the side of a shallow ditch bordering his sugar-cane field, I saw an enormous thing about the size of the top of a man's hat, struggling in the mud, upon which one of the black attendants precipitated himself, and seizing it, he mounted the bank with a frog the size of a good fowl in his hand. "What on earth is that for?" "Oh, it is most excellent eating," said my friend. "I would die of starvation," exclaimed I, "before I would touch a morsel of it." At lunch that day there was put upon the table a spatch-cock fowl, which my host asked me to try. "What do you think of it?" "It is excellent." "That," he said, "is a part of the frog you despised so much this morning."