w not how to express it otherwise,--as if her
own heart were on the gridiron, and her immortal happiness were
involved in its being done precisely to a turn!

Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly arranged
and well-provisioned breakfast-table. We come to it freshly, in the
dewy youth of the day, and when our spiritual and sensual elements are
in better accord than at a later period; so that the material delights
of the morning meal are capable of being fully enjoyed, without any
very grievous reproaches, whether gastric or conscientious, for
yielding even a trifle overmuch to the animal department of our nature.
The thoughts, too, that run around the ring of familiar guests have a
piquancy and mirthfulness, and oftentimes a vivid truth, which more
rarely find their way into the elaborate intercourse of dinner.
Hepzibah's small and ancient table, supported on its slender and
graceful legs, and covered with a cloth of the richest damask, looked
worthy to be the scene and centre of one of the cheerfullest of
parties. The vapor of the broiled fish arose like incense from the
shrine of a barbarian idol, while the fragrance of the Mocha might have
gratified the nostrils of a tutelary Lar, or whatever power has scope
over a modern breakfast-table. Phoebe's Indian cakes were the sweetest
offering of all,--in their hue befitting the rustic altars of the
innocent and golden age,--or, so brightly yellow were they, resembling
some of the bread which was changed to glistening gold when Midas tried
to eat it. The butter must not be forgotten,--butter which Phoebe
herself had churned, in her own rural home, and brought it to her
cousin as a propitiatory gift,--smelling of clover-blossoms, and
diffusing the charm of pastoral scenery through the dark-panelled
parlor. All this, with the quaint gorgeousness of the old china cups
and saucers, and the crested spoons, and a silver cream-jug (Hepzibah's
only other article of plate, and shaped like the rudest porringer), set
out a board at which the stateliest of old Colonel Pyncheon's guests
need not have scorned to take his place. But the Puritan's face
scowled down out of the picture, as if nothing on the table pleased his
appetite.

By way of contributing what grace she could, Phoebe gathered some roses
and a few other flowers, possessing either scent or beauty, and
arranged them in a glass pitcher, which, having long ago lost its
handle, was so much the fi