Chapter XIV - Page 2

bring them within the limits of a reasonably accurate and healthful taste. To be frank, Dorothy carried a somewhat heavy hand, in this respect; but pretty Margery was much her superior. How this difference in domestic discipline occurred, is more than we can say; but of its existence there can be no doubt There are two very respectable sections of the civilized world to which we should imagine no rational being would ever think of resorting in order to acquire the art of cookery, and these are Germany and the land of the Pilgrims. One hears, and reads in those elegant specimens of the polite literature of the day, the letters from Washington, and from various travellers, who go up and down this river in steamboats, or along that railway, gratis, much in honor of the good things left behind the several writers, in the "region of the kock"; but, woe betide the wight who is silly enough to believe in all this poetical imagery, and who travels in that direction, in the expectation of finding a good table! It is extraordinary that such a marked difference does exist, on an interest of this magnitude, among such near neighbors; but, of the fact, we should think no intelligent and experienced man can doubt. Believing as we do, that no small portion of the elements of national character can be, and are, formed in the kitchen, the circumstance may appear to us of more moment than to some of our readers. The vacuum left in cookery, between Boston and Baltimore for instance, is something like that which exists between Le Verrier's new planet and the sun.

But Margery could even fry pork without causing it to swim in grease, and at a venison steak, a professed cook was not her superior. She also understood various little mysteries, in the way of converting their berries and fruits of the wilderness into pleasant dishes; and Corporal Flint soon affirmed that it was a thousand pities she did not live in a garrison, which, agreeably to his view of things, was something like placing her at the comptoir of the Cafe de Paris, or of marrying her to some second Vatel.

With the eating and drinking, the building advanced pari passu. Pigeonswing brought in his venison, his ducks, his pigeons, and his game of different varieties, daily, keeping the larder quite as well supplied as comported with the warmth of the weather; while the others worked on the new chiente. In order to obtain materials for this building, one so much larger than his old abode, Ben went up the Kalamazoo about half a mile, where he felled a sufficient number of young pines, with trunks of about a foot in diameter, cutting them into lengths of twenty and thirty feet, respectively. These lengths, or trunks, were rolled into the river, down which they slowly floated, until they arrived abreast of Castle Meal, where they were met by Peter, in a canoe, who towed each stick, as it arrived, to the place of landing. In this way, at the end of two days' work, a sufficient