Theres Pippins and Cheese to Come | Page 3

them for a reiterated admonishment towards the
governance of her kitchen--at the least, a hint of my desires and
appetite for cheese and pippins.
"The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Opened" is a cook book. It is due you
to know this at once, otherwise your thoughts--if your nature be
vagrant--would drift towards family skeletons. Or maybe the domestic
traits prevail and you would think of dress-clothes hanging in
camphorated bags and a row of winter boots upon a shelf.
I am disqualified to pass upon the merits of a cook book, for the reason
that I have little discrimination in food. It is not that I am totally
indifferent to what lies on the platter. Indeed, I have more than a tribal
aversion to pork in general, while, on the other hand, I quicken joyfully
when noodles are interspersed with bacon. I have a tooth for sweets,

too, although I hold it unmanly and deny it as I can. I am told
also--although I resent it--that my eye lights up on the appearance of a
tray of French pastry. I admit gladly, however, my love of onions,
whether they come hissing from the skillet, or lie in their first tender
whiteness. They are at their best when they are placed on bread and are
eaten largely at midnight after society has done its worst.
A fine dinner is lost within me. A quail is but an inferior chicken--a
poor relation outside the exclusive hennery. Terrapin sits low in my
regard, even though it has wallowed in the most aristocratic marsh.
Through such dinners I hack and saw my way without even gaining a
memory of my progress. If asked the courses, I balk after the recital of
the soup. Indeed, I am so forgetful of food, even when I dine at home,
that I can well believe that Adam when he was questioned about the
apple was in real confusion. He had or he had not. It was mixed with
the pomegranate or the quince that Eve had sliced and cooked on the
day before.
A dinner at its best is brought to a single focus. There is one dish to
dominate the cloth, a single bulk to which all other dishes are
subordinate. If there be turkey, it should mount from a central platter.
Its protruding legs out-top the candles. All other foods are, as it were,
privates in Caesar's army. They do no more than flank the pageant. Nor
may the pantry hold too many secrets. Within reason, everything
should be set out at once, or at least a gossip of its coming should run
before. Otherwise, if the stew is savory, how shall one reserve a corner
for the custard? One must partition himself justly--else, by an
over-stowage at the end, he list and sink.
I am partial to picnics--the spreading of the cloth in the woods or
beside a stream--although I am not avid for sandwiches unless hunger
press me. Rather, let there be a skillet in the company and let a fire be
started! Nor need a picnic consume the day. In summer it requires but
the late afternoon, with such borrowing of the night as is necessary for
the journey home. You leave the street car, clanking with your bundles
like an itinerant tinman. You follow a stream, which on these lower
stretches, it is sad to say, is already infected with the vices of the city.

Like many a countryman who has come to town, it has fallen to
dissipation. It shows the marks of the bottle. Further up, its course is
cleaner. You cross it in the mud. Was it not Christian who fell into the
bog because of the burden on his back? Then you climb a villainously
long hill and pop out upon an open platform above the city.
The height commands a prospect to the west. Below is the smoke of a
thousand suppers. Up from the city there comes the hum of life, now
somewhat fallen with the traffic of the day--as though Nature already
practiced the tune for sending her creatures off to sleep. You light a fire.
The baskets disgorge their secrets. Ants and other leviathans think
evidently that a circus has come or that bears are in the town. The
chops and bacon achieve their appointed destiny. You throw the last
bone across your shoulder. It slips and rattles to the river. The sun sets.
Night like an ancient dame puts on her jewels:
And now that I have climbed and won this height, I must tread
downward through the sloping shade And travel the bewildered tracks
till night. Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed And see the gold
air and the silver fade And the last bird fly into the last