Part 21

I kept awake most of the time the man was lecturing on: “The Republic: Will it Endure?” but I don't remember that he said anything in it about the crops. (We can't go 'round meeting the folks all day. We really must give a glance at the exhibition.) And I am one of those who hold to the belief that while the farmers can raise ears of corn as long as from your elbow to your fingertips, as big 'round as a rollingpin, and set with grains as regular and even as an eight-dollar set of artificial teeth; as long as they grow potatoes the size of your foot, and such pretty oats and wheat, and turnips, and squashes, and onions, and apples and all kinds of truck, and raise them not only in increasing size but increasing quantities to the acre I feel as if the Republic would last the year out anyway. Not that I have any notion that mere material prosperity will make and keep us a free people, but it goes to show that the farmers are not plodding along, doing as their fathers did before them, but that they are reading and studying, and taking advantage of modern methods. There are two ways of increasing your income. One is by enlarging your output, and the other is by enlarging your share of the proceeds from the sale of that output. The Grand Dukes will not always run this country. The farmers saved the Union once by dying for it; they will save it again by living for it.

The scientific fellows tell us that we have not nearly reached the maximum of yield to the acre of crops that are harvested once a year, but in regard to the crops that are harvested twice a day it looks to me as if we were doing fairly well. Nowadays we hardly know what is meant by the expression, “Spring poor.” It is a sinister phrase, and tells a story of the old, cruel days when farmers begrudged their cattle the little bite they ate in wintertime, so that when the grass came again the poor creatures would fall over trying to crop it. They were so starved and weak that, as the saying went, they had to lean up against the fence to breathe. They don't do that way now, as one look at the fine, sleek cows will show you. A cow these days is a different sort of a being, her coat like satin, and her udder generous, compared with the wild-eyed things with burrs in their tails, and their flanks crusted with filth, their udders the size of a kid glove, and yielding such a little dab of milk and for such a short period. Hear the dairymen boast now of the miraculous yearly yield in pounds of butter and milk, and when they say: “You've got to treat a cow as if she were a lady,” it sounds like good sense.

Pigs are naturally so untidy about their persons, and have such shocking table-manners that it seems difficult to treat a sow like a lady, but that one in the pen yonder, with her litter of sucking pigs, seems very interesting. Come, let's have a look. Aren't the little pigs dear things? I'd like to climb in and take one of them up to pet it; do you s'pose she'd mind it if I did? I can see decided improvement in the modern hogs over old Mose Batcheller's. If you remember, his were what were known as “razorbacks.” They could go like the wind, and the fence was not made that could stop them. If they couldn't root under it, they could turn themselves sidewise and slide through between the rails. It was told me that, failing all else, they could give their tails a swing--you remember the big balls of mud they used to have on their tails' ends--they could swing their tails after the manner of an athlete throwing the hammer, and fly over the top of the tallest stake-and-rider fence ever put up. I don't know whether this is the strict truth or not, but it is what was told me as a little boy, and I don't think people would wilfully deceive an innocent child.

The pigs nowaday aren't as smart as that, but they cut up better at hog-killing time. They aren't quite so trim; indeed, they are nothing but cylinders of meat, whittled to a point at the front end, and set on four pegs, but as you lean on the top-rail of the pens out at the County Fair and look down upon them, you can picture in your mind, without much effort, ham, and sidemeat, and bacon, and spare-ribs, and smoked shoulder, and head-cheese, and liver-wurst, and sausages, and glistening white lard for crullers and pie-crust--Yes, I think pigs are right interesting. I know they've got Scripture for it, the folks that think it is wrong to eat pork, but somehow I feel sorry for them; they miss such a lot, not only in the eating line, but other ways. They are always being persecuted, and harassed, and picked at. Whereas the pork-fed man, it seems to me, sort of hankers to be picked at. It gives him a good chance to slap somebody slonchways. He feels better after he has seen his persecutors go away with a cut lip, and fingering of their teeth to see if they're all there.

You'll just have to take me gently but firmly by the sleeve and lead me past the next exhibit, the noisy one, where there's so much cackling and crowing. I give you fair warning that if you get me started talking about chickens, the County Fair will have to wait till some other time. I don't know much about ducks, and geese, and guinea-hens, and pea-fowl, and turkeys, but chickens--Why, say. We had a hen once (Plymouth Rock she was; we called her Henrietta), and honestly, that hen knew more than some folks. One time she--all right. I'll hush. Let's go in here.

I don't remember whether the pies, and cakes, and canned fruit, and such are in Pomona Hall or the Fine Arts Hall. Fine Arts Hall I think. They ought to be. I speak to be one of the judges that give out the premiums in this department. I'd be generous and let somebody else do the judging of the cakes, because I don't care much for cake. Oh, I can manage to choke it down, but I haven't the expert knowledge, practical and scientific, that I have in the matter of pie. I'd bear my share of the work when it came to the other things, jellies and preserves, and pies, but not cake. Wouldn't know just exactly how to go at it in the matter of jellies. I'd take a glass of currant, and hold it up to the light to note its crimson glory. And I'd lift off the waxed paper top and peer in, and maybe give the jelly a shake. And then I'd take a spoon and taste, closing my eyes so as to appear to deliberate--they'd roll up in an ecstacy anyhow--and I'd smack my lips, and say: “Mmmmm!” very thoughtfully, and set the glass back, and write down in my book my judgment, which would invariably be: “First Prize.” Because if there is anything on top of this green earth that I think is just about right, it is currant jelly. Grape jelly is nice, and crab-apple jelly has its good points, and quince jelly is very delicate, but there is something about currant jelly that seems to touch the spot. Quince preserves are good if there is enough apple with the quince, and watermelon preserves are a great favorite, not because they are so much better tasting, but because the lucent golden cubes in the spicy syrup appeal so to the eye. But if you want to know what I think is really good eating in the preserve line, you just watch my motions when I come to the tomato preserves, these little fig-tomatoes, and see how quick the red card is put on them. Yes, indeed. It's been a long time, hasn't it? since you had any tomato-preserves, you that haven't been “Back Home” lately.

It's no great trick to put up other fruit so that it will keep, but I'd look the canned tomatoes over pretty carefully, and if I saw that one lady had not only put them up so that they hadn't turned foamy, but had also succeeded with green corn, and that other poser, string beans, I'd give her first premium, because I'd know she was a first-rate housekeeper, and a careful woman, and one that deserved encouragement.

But I'd save myself for the pies. I can tell a rich, short, flaky crust, and I can tell the kind that is as brown as a dried apple, and tough as the same on the top, and sad and livery on the bottom. And I know about fillings, how thick they ought to be, and how they ought to be seasoned, and all. Particularly pumpkin-pies, because I had early advantages that way that very few other boys had. I was allowed to scrape the crock that had held the pumpkin for the pies. So that's how I know as much as I do.

I suppose, however, when all is said and done, that there is no pie that can quite come up to an apple-pie. You take nice, short crust that's been worked up with ice-water, and line the tin with it, and fill it heaping with sliced, tart apples--not sauce. Mercy, no!--and sweeten them just right, and put on a lump of butter, and some allspice, and perhaps a clove, and a little lemon peel, and then put on the cover, and trim off the edge, and pinch it up in scallops, and draw a couple of leaves in the top with a sharp knife, and have the oven just right, and set it in there, and I tell you that when ma opens the oven-door to see how the pie is coming on, there distils through the house such a perfume that you cry out in a choking voice: “Say! Ain't dinner 'most ready?”

But I fully recognize the fact that very often our judgment is warped by feeling, and I am inclined to believe that even the undoubted merit of the apple-pie would not prevail against a vinegar-pie, if such should be presented to me for my decision. A vinegar-pie? Well, it has a top and bottom crust, the same as any other pie, but its filling is made of vinegar, diluted with water to the proper degree of sub-acidity, sweetened with molasses, thickened with flour, and all baked as any other pie. You smile at its crude simplicity, and wonder why I should favor it. To you it doesn't tell the story that it does to me. It doesn't take you back in imagination to “the airly days,” when folks came over the mountains in covered wagons, and settled in the Western Reserve, leaving behind them all the civilization of their day, and its comforts, parting from relatives and friends, knowing full well that in this life they never more should look upon their faces--leaving everything behind to make a new home in the western wilds.

Is was a land of promise that they came to. The virgin soil bore riotously. There were fruit-trees in the forest that Johnny Appleseed had planted on his journeyings. The young husband could stand in his dooryard and kill wild turkeys with his rifle. They fed to loathing on venison, and squirrels, and all manner of game, and once in a great while they had the luxury of salt pork. They were well-nourished, but sometimes they pined for that which was more than mere food. They hungered for that which should be to the meals' victuals what the flower is to the plant.

“I whoosh't--I woosh't was so we could hev pie,” sighed one such. (Let us call him Uriah Kinney). I think that sounds as if it were his name.

“Land's sakes!” snapped his wife, exasperated that he should be thinking of the same thing that she was. “Land's sakes! Haow d' ye s'pose I kin make a pie when I hain't got e'er a thing to make it aout o'? You gimme suthirnn to make it aout o', an' you see haow quick--”

“I ain't a-faultinn ye, Mary Ann,” interposed Uriah gently. “I know haow 't is. I was on'y tellin' ye. I git I git a kind o' hum'sick sometimes. 'Pears like as if I sh'd feel more resigned like.... Don't ye cry, Mary Ann. I know, I know. You feel julluk I do 'baout back home, an' all luk that.”

O woman! When the heft of thy intellect is thrown against a problem, something has got to give. Not long after, Uriah sits down to dinner, and can hardly ask a blessing, he has to swallow so. A pie is on the table!

“Gosh, Mary Ann, but this is good!” says he, holding out his hand for the third piece. “This is lickinn good!” And he celebrates her achievement far and wide.

“My Mary Ann med me a pie t' other day, was the all-firedest best pie I ever et.”

“Med you what?”

“Med me a pie.”

“Pie? Whutch talkinn' baout? Can't git nummore pies naow. Frot 's all gin aout.”

“I golly, she med it just the same. Smartest woman y' ever see.” The man dribbled at the mouth.

“What sh' make it aout o'?”

“Vinegar an' worter, I think she said. I d' know 's I ever et anythinn I relished julluk that. My Mary Ann, tell yew! She's 'baout's smart 's they make 'em.”

I wish I knew who she really was whom I have called Mary Ann Kinney, she that made the first vinegar-pie. I wish I knew where her grave is that I might lay upon it a bunch of flowers, such as she knew and liked--sweet-william, and phlox, and larkspur, and wild columbine. It couldn't make it up to her for all the hardships she underwent when she was bringing up a family in that wild, western country, and especially that fall when they all had the “fever 'n' ager” so bad, Uriah and the twins chilling one day, and Hiram and Sophronia Jane the next, and she just as miserable as any of them, but keeping up somehow, God only knows how. It couldn't make it up to her, but as I laid the pretty posies against the leaning headstone on which is written:

“A Loving Wife, a Mother Dear, Faithful Friend Lies Buried Here.”

I believe she 'd get word of it somehow, and understand what I was trying to say by it.

I'll ask to be let off the committee that judges the rest of the exhibits in the Fine Arts Hall, the quilts and the Battenberg, and the crocheting, and such. I know the Log Cabin pattern, and the Mexican Feather pattern, and I think I could make out to tell the Hen-and-Chickens pattern of quilts, but that's as much as ever. And as to the real, hand-painted views of fruit-cake, and grapes and apples on a red table-cloth, I am one of those that can't make allowances for the fact that she only took two terms. I call to mind one picture that Miss Alvalou Ashbaker made of her pap, old “Coonrod” Ashbaker. The Lord knows he was a “humbly critter,” but he wasn't as “humbly” as she made him out to be, with his eyes bulging out of his head as if he was choking on a fishbone. And, instead of her dressing him up in his Sunday clothes, I wish I may never see the back of my neck if that girl didn't paint him in a red-and-black barred flannel shirt, with porcelain buttons on it! And his hair looked as if the calf had been at it. Wouldn't you think somebody would have told her? And that isn't all. She got the premium!

Neither am I prepared to pass judgment on the fancy penmanship displayed by Professor Swope, framed elegantly in black walnut, and gilt, depicting a bounding deer, all made out of hair-line, shaded spirals, done with his facile pen. (No wonder a deer can jump so, with all those springs inside him.) Professor Swope writes visiting cards for you, wonderful birds done in flourishes and holding ribbons in their bills. He puts your name on the ribbon place. Neatest and tastiest thing you can imagine. I like to watch him do it, but it makes me feel unhappy, somehow. I never was much of a scribe, and it's too late for me to learn now.