ic excellence, and it may be said appealed more strongly
to the nobler aspirations of humanity than its vulgar appetite.
Howbeit, everybody ate Mammy Downey's pies, and thought of his
childhood. "Take 'em, dear boys," the old lady would say; "it does me
good to see you eat 'em; reminds me kinder of my poor Sammy, that, ef
he'd lived, would hev been ez strong and beg ez you be, but was taken
down with lung fever, at Sweetwater. I kin see him yet; that's forty
year ago, dear! comin' out o' the lot to the bake-house, and smilin'
such a beautiful smile, like yours, dear boy, as I handed him a mince
or a lemming turnover. Dear, dear, how I do run on! and those days is
past! but I seems to live in you again!" The wife of the hotel-keeper,
actuated by a low jealousy, had suggested that she "seemed to live OFF
them;" but as that person tried to demonstrate the truth of her
statement by reference to the cost of the raw material used by the old
lady, it was considered by the camp as too practical and economical for
consideration. "Besides," added Cy Perkins, "ef old Mammy wants to
turn an honest penny in her old age, let her do it. How would you like
your old mother to make pies on grub wages? eh?" A suggestion that so
affected his hearer (who had no mother) that he bought three on the
spot. The quality of these pies had never been discussed but once. It
is related that a young lawyer from San Francisco, dining at the
Palmetto restaurant, pushed away one of Mammy Downey's pies with every
expression of disgust and dissatisfaction. At this juncture, Whisky
Dick, considerably affected by his favorite stimulant, approached the
stranger's table, and, drawing up a chair, sat uninvited before him.

"Mebbee, young man," he began gravely, "ye don't like Mammy Downey's
pies?"

The stranger replied curtly, and in some astonishment, that he did not,
as a rule, "eat pie."

"Young man," continued Dick, with drunken gravity, "mebbee you're
accustomed to Charlotte rusks and blue mange; mebbee ye can't eat
unless your grub is got up by one o' them French cooks'? Yet WE--us
boys yar in this camp--calls that pie--a good--a com-pe-tent pie!"

The stranger again disclaimed anything but a general dislike of that
form of pastry.

"Young man," continued Dick, utterly unheeding the explanation,--"young
man, mebbee you onst had an ole--a very ole mother, who, tottering down
the vale o' years, made pies. Mebbee, and it's like your blank
e