In the Haunts of Wild Fowl 117 



We are ready now for dinner at 6.30. 

 The saloon is bright and cheerful, and the 

 stove glows with a bed of red-hot coals. We 

 start the music box, and take our places at 

 the four sides of the table. There are four 

 of us — my wife, our two boys, aged fourteen 

 and ten, and myself, but we figure for the 

 needs of eight normal appetites. The first 

 course is fat oysters on the half-shell, picked 

 up by the bushel on the flats at low tide by 

 the cook. The oyster plates give way to 

 diamond-back terrapin stew. We catch our 

 own terrapin. They cost us nothing except 

 the fun of catching them. When I strike 

 terrapin at a banquet in New York I 

 generally have to ask what it is. After 

 the terrapin, the cook sends in the ducks — 

 four browned, juicy, smoking balls on a 

 big game platter! It takes a whole duck 

 for each ravenous appetite — meat so deli- 

 cious, so tender and toothsome it fairly 

 melts in your mouth ! We serve with grape 



