Cape Cod Pork. 
273 
away altogether to papists and heathen. It formed so large an 
element in the Massachusetts food supply that it long ago had 
the sobriquet of Cape Cod pork. The Puritan would not touch 
it on Friday lest he should become like his customers Catholic 
or pagan. But on Saturday he fed upon it with a zest that was 
all the sharper for his Friday fast, and gathering up the frag¬ 
ments that nothing be lost, ate the remnant on Sunday with 
double appetite, since he knew he was not breaking the Sabbath 
by non-necessary cookery. 
Surveying the past and present of codfish one easily believes 
that the greatest is behind. Let no man say that blessings as 
yet unhoped for and undreamed of are not hidden within the 
multitudinous depositors in our national fishing banks, blessings 
that shall be revealed to us or to our children till the Puritan’s 
thanksgiving that God had vouchsafed him to suck of the 
abundance of the seas * shall have a tenfold fullness of meaning. 
* Dent. 33, 19. 
Madison , Wis. 
18 
