46 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



There was a big brick oven built against the back 

 of the chimney, in the kitchen, in pioneer days, and 

 there were baked the many loaves of bread, and mince 

 and pumpkin pies; and it was no common baking, for 

 a family of twelve. They had a long wooden paddle, 

 broadly flattened at one end, with which they would 

 reach in at the door and lift and draw out the pies. 



Things broiled or roasted before an open fireplace, 

 or even cooked on a wood stove, are the sweetest in 

 the world. I recollect serving an apprenticeship in the 

 art when deer hunting one autumn on Lookout Moun- 

 tain with some Georgia mountaineers ; and I remember 

 how at night we would build a big roaring fire in our 

 crude and faulty, but spacious and unceremonious, 

 hearth (we slept in an old cabin), a veritable burning 

 pyre of pine bark piercing the stars, and would then 

 broil bacon over the coals, when the fire had died down. 

 We twisted the bacon onto the peeled and sharpened 

 ends of long, slim branches of beech, broken from the 

 trees near at hand, and thus kept at a distance from the 

 heat; and we sometimes broiled two or more pieces on 

 one stick. Now, after this introduction to, and ac- 

 quaintance with, that primitive and time-honored 

 method of cookery, I have never followed any other 

 when alone in the woods (except to roast things in the 

 ashes, such as potatoes, or ears of sweet corn with the 

 shucks still on them, or a quail rolled in mud) , and I 

 find that it serves well for squirrel, rabbit, or venison, 

 the only disadvantage being that the meat, if not cooked 

 aright, becomes rather dry from the lack of basting 

 which roasting in an oven affords. But take a young 

 squirrel, in the fall of the year, after he has lived for a 



