IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 



their craws are filled in a minute. It is very 

 well known that, in order to have a fat turkey y 

 or even a really fat fowl, we are compelled to 

 resort to cramming. If the farmer's wife have 

 a dozen of these, there she sits (for she can trust 

 nobody else to do it), with a leathern apron before 

 her, or rather upon her, with balls of barley meal, 

 rolled into an oblong form, and with a bowl of 

 warm milk, or with some greasy water, taking 

 one turkey out of the coop at a time, upon her 

 lap, forcing its mouth open with her left hand, 

 putting in the balls with her right, and stroking 

 with her fingers the outside of the neck to make 

 them descend into the craw, every now-and- then 

 pouring down a spoonful of the warm liquid, 

 upon the principle that good victuals deserves 

 good drink : there she sits, if she have two dozen 

 of these animals to cram, two good hours at 

 the least. Sometimes they reject the food, 

 and flutter about, and splash the woman 

 with the contents of the bowl. It is always a 

 disagreeable, troublesome, and nasty job; it 

 takes up a great deal of time ; and yet these 

 things cannot be made sufficiently fat, v/ithout 

 this operation, in which, I dare say, twenty thou- 

 sand women are at this very moment (eight 

 o'clock in the morning) engaged, in the counties 

 of Norfolk and Suifolk. If all these women could 

 be brought together, and were to hear me say. 



