XIX 



Yellow Bread 



1 SUPPOSE there are any number of men and women today 

 who, in all the span of their lives, have never eaten food 

 that has not come out of cardboard boxes, paper bags, or tin 

 cans from the grocer's shelves. So amazing or so appalling, 

 depending on the way you view it has been the development 

 of our ideas of food sanitation. 



They will not understand this chapter. Indeed, it is scarcely 

 to be expected that they could, since theirs is a cellophane 

 consciousness. 



Unless, on several occasions at least, you have gathered 

 your provender in a basket or bag from the earth in which it 

 grew, unless you. have aided, or at least stood hands-in-pockets 

 and watched the processes of shucking, paring, drying, salting, 

 butchering or grinding by which raw victuals are rendered ready 

 for the cook to practise her alchemy upon, you have eaten all 

 your meals at least one remove from reality. 



Under such circumstances, no one could expect you to 

 know, blindfolded, whether the ear of sweet corn which you 

 have buttered and salted and are about to bite into, is StoweH's 

 Evergreen or Country Gentleman. How can you possibly be 

 aware whether it was picked an hour before or, wantonly, that 

 morning and before the sun had struck through the dewy 

 husks? How can you tell, after the first mouthful, whether 

 the corn bread is made of milled or water-ground meal? Or if 

 the crisp, nut-sweet cracklings that enrich the pone come from 

 a corn-and-mast-fed, or a skimmed-milk-and-swill-fed hog? 



And yet these things are important. They figure as largely 



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