poetical terms, and with an expedition still more
alarming.

Then Gracie, with tears not yet dried from the late conflict, lifted up
her voice in a rapture of miniature delight; "Dinnie says, 'gobble the
food'! Dinnie says, 'gobble the food!'"

"Didn't say 'gobble the food!'" exclaimed Dinslow, blacker than a little
thunder-cloud.

Madeline anticipated the rising storm, and stamped her foot and cried:
"_Will_ you be still?"

It was Grandma Keeler who quietly and adroitly restored peace to the
troubled waters.

The Wallencampers, including the Keeler family, were not accustomed to
speak of bread as a compact and staple article of food, but rather as one
of the hard means of sustaining existence represented by the term
"hunks." At the table, it was not "will you pass me the bread?" but--and
I shall never forget the sweet tunefulness of Madeline's tone in this
connection--"Will you hand me a hunk?"

The hunks were an unleavened mixture of flour and water, about the size
and consistency of an ordinary laborer's fist.

I was impressed, in first sitting down at the Keelers' table, with a
sense of my own ignorance as to the most familiar details of life, but
soon learned to speak confidently of "hunks," and "fortune stew," and
"slit herrin'," and "golden seal."

Fortune stew was a dish of small, round blue potatoes, served perfectly
whole in a milk gravy.

I cherish the memory of this dish as sacred, as well as that of all the
other dishes that ever appeared on the Wallencamp table. They were the
products of faithful and loving hands to which nature had given a
peculiar direction, perhaps, but which strove always to the best of their
ability.

Slit herrin' was a long-dried, deep-salted edition of the native alewife,
a fish in which Wallencamp abounded. They hung in massive tiers from the
roofs of the Wallencamp barns. The herrin' was cut open, and without
having been submitted to any mollifying process whatever, not one
assuaging touch of its native element, was laid flat in the spider, and
fried.

I saw the Keeler family, from the greatest to the least, partake of this
arid and rasping substance unblinkingly, and I partook also. The brine
rose to my eyes and coursed its way down my cheeks, and Grandma Keeler
said I was "homesick, poor thing!"

The golden seal, a "remedy for toothache, headache, sore-throat, sprains,
etc., etc.," was served in a diluted state with milk and sugar, and taken
as a beverage. The