the things were cooked was perhaps the
main splendor--particularly a certain few of the dishes. For instance,
the corn bread, the hot biscuits and wheat bread, and the fried chicken.
These things have never been properly cooked in the North--in fact, no
one there is able to learn the art, so far as my experience goes. The
North thinks it knows how to make corn bread, but this is gross
superstition. Perhaps no bread in the world is quite as good as Southern
corn bread, and perhaps no bread in the world is quite so bad as the
Northern imitation of it. The North seldom tries to fry chicken, and
this is well; the art cannot be learned north of the line of Mason and
Dixon, nor anywhere in Europe. This is not hearsay; it is experience
that is speaking. In Europe it is imagined that the custom of serving
various kinds of bread blazing hot is "American," but that is too broad
a spread; it is custom in the South, but is much less than that in the
North. In the North and in Europe hot bread is considered unhealthy.
This is probably another fussy superstition, like the European
superstition that ice-water is unhealthy. Europe does not need
ice-water, and does not drink it; and yet, notwithstanding this, its
word for it is better than ours, because it describes it, whereas ours
doesn't. Europe calls it "iced" water. Our word describes water made
from melted ice--a drink which we have but little acquaintance with.

It seem a pity that the world should throw away so many good things
merely because they are unwholesome. I doubt if God has given us any
refreshment which, taken in moderation, is unwholesome, except microbes.
Yet there are people who strictly deprive themselves of each and every
eatable, drinkable and smokable which has in any way acquired a shady
reputation. They pay this price for health. And health is all they get
for it. How strange it is; it is like paying out your whole fortune for
a cow that has gone dry.

The farmhouse stood in the middle of a very large yard, and the yard was
fenced on three sides with rails and on the rear side with high palings;
against these stood the smokehouse; beyond the palings was the orchard;
beyond the orchard were the negro quarter and the tobacco-fields. The
front yard was entered over a stile, made of sawed-off logs of graduated
heights; I do not remember any gate. In a corner of the front yard were
a dozen lofty hickory-trees and a dozen black-walnuts, and in the
nutting season r