58

56 CHAPMAN'S HANDY-BOOK.

better, but their temper would be sweeter. I find invaria-
bly that people who like honey are persons of genial
and affectionate temper. If Mr. Cobden and Mr.
Roebuck had only taken honey at breakfast, or a very
choice fragment of virgin honey at dessert, they would
never have given utterance to those vinegar and acetic-
acid speeches which did them no credit. I wish somebody
would send Mr. Spurgeon a super of good honey. Three
months' diet on this celestial food would induce him to
give up those shockingly bitter and unchristian tirades he
has been lately making against the clergy of the Church
of England. The producers of honey never draw their
stings unless in defence of their homesteads, and the eaters
and admirers of honey rarely indulge in acrimonious lan-
guage. I believe a great deal of bad feeling is not moral
or mental, but physical, in its origin. If you have in a
congregation, or in a school, or in a convocation, some one
who sets everybody by the ears, treat him to a little honey
at breakfast for six months, and the "thorn will blossom
as the rose."
Therefore, as you take the honey combs out of the hive,
separate those which are quite full from such as are only
partly so; those which are pure white combs from such as
are dark in colour, or have some of the cells filled with
bee bread. This separation may easily be made by having
several dishes or milk pans by you, in which to lay the
different sorts of comb as they come to hand. By making
this division at once, will save a good deal of honey; for if
all the combs are heaped together in one vessel, the dark
combs which are the hardest, will crush and otherwise
injure the pure white combs; in them the wax is very
thin and fragile, hardly able to bear the weight of the
honey which they contain, and sinking immediately under
any external pressure. Often you will find two sorts of
honey comb, the pure and the impure, in the same cake.
Separate them at once with a sharp knife.
If you take a top box or a glass entirely full of pure
honey, you need not be in a hurry to cut it out; it will
keep better where it is, if only you place it in security,
where no bee on a foraging excursion can possibly find
it out.