1899 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER: 
The Minister’s Henhouse. 
Part II. 
He spoke of it to Deacon Abner Cur¬ 
tis the next Sunday, while they were 
waiting for the close of Sunday-school. 
It had been an immemorial custom for 
the older men to gather together on the 
church steps, and get rid of non-church- 
ly thoughts by talking them out before 
service began. 
“You know that Wallace wants to sell 
his henhouse, and it’s about time that 
we bought the parson a place for his 
chickens to roost in. He’s shown he’3 
the only man, woman or child in these 
parts that understands hens, and I don’t 
see why we couldn’t buy Wallace’s 
building and move it over to the par¬ 
son’s. Thanksgiving Day comes this 
week, and it would be a graceful thing 
to do.” 
“Haow fur )is it?” asked Deacon Cur¬ 
tis. 
“Half a mile.” 
“I think it’s a good projec’ fer the 
young people’s society. The church 
moved the chapel an’ paid fer the noo 
stove, and it’s time the young people 
did somethin’. What’s Wallace want fer 
it?” 
Mr. Upham bowed pleasantly to the 
minister, who was just entering the 
church. “Twenty dollars,” said lie. 
“Twenty dollars fer that hidjus bloo 
buildin’? Bis wants ain’t small.” 
“Well, what is it worth? Suppose you 
was sellin’ it.” 
“Oh, that’s different. I never sold no 
henhouses an’ I dunno what I’d ask, but 
I’d never pay $20 fer no henhouse. No 
hens ’d be wuth it. Why can’t the pas¬ 
tor knock one together himself?” 
“He ain’t got the gift of the hammer.” 
The bell, which had been tolling, now 
stopped, and the moaning of the melo- 
deon gave notice of the end of worldly 
discussions; but art; the prayer meeting 
in the evening it was proposed by the 
President of the Christian Endeavor So¬ 
ciety that Mr. Wallace be approached 
and sounded as to 'the least figure for 
which he would part with his henhouse. 
Monday morning a deputation waited 
on him just as he was starting out to fill 
a lecture engagement. He asked the 
spokesman to jump ‘into his buggy and 
drive with 'him to the station, and on 
the way there William Curtis, Abner’s 
son, asked him what was his rock-bot¬ 
tom price for selling the henhouse. 
“Well, I don’t sit under the parson’s 
preaching myself, and I haven’t any¬ 
thing against him. I wanted $20, but 
I’d sell it ‘to him, or to you for him, for 
$15, because he’s been able to do what I 
failed to do—make hens lay.” 
They had now arrived at the station, 
and a few minutes later Mr. Wallace 
went to Boston to read A Midsummer 
Night’s Dream, and Curtis reported the 
conversation to the treasurer of the so¬ 
ciety. 
It was the opinion of those Who had 
been so fortunate as to taste it, that 
there was no one in South Hanaford, or 
in Hanaford Center, for that matter, 
Who could make such orange cake as 
Mrs. Wallace. . The feathery sponge 
cake, the delicious orange filling and 
the orange frosting, so thick and sweet, 
would have been worthy of the great 
Savarin himself, if Savarin ever knew 
anything as delicious as orange layer 
cake. Mrs. Wallace was conscious of 
her genius in this particular line, and 
when her next-door neighbor, pretty 
Zoe Moulton, came and asked her if she 
would be willing to make one of her 
cakes for an ice-cream fei tival that was 
to be given at the Congregational 
Church Wednesday evening, she, being a 
most obliging woman, willingly con¬ 
sented, although She and her husband 
were Swedenborgians. Zoe hurried away, 
conscious that whoever else might make 
a cake, to her would belong the honor of 
securing the cake of cakes, the piece de 
resistance of the whole festival. 
Young people delight in committees. 
891 
and one committee never knows what 
another committee has done, which may 
account for the fact that upon Mr. Wal¬ 
lace’s return from his Boston trip he 
found the following letter awaiting him: 
“Dear Air. Wallace—You have always 
shown yourself to be public-spirited, and I 
have been asked on behalf of our young 
people to request you to give us a reading 
at a little jollification we intend holding 
next Wednesday. Anything you want to 
read will be listened to with delight. I 
have been requested to write this letter by 
the Young People’s Society of Christian 
Endeavor, of which, unfortunately, I am 
not a member, owing to age limitations. 
"Yours cordially, 
“SIGOURNEY HARDWICKE." 
This was not 'the first time that Mr. 
Wallace had been asked to recite—for 
his health. There are no people who are 
expected to give so much for nothing as 
entertainers in various lines—unless it 
be ministers. Perhaps it was a fellow- 
feeling that made the lecturer sit down 
and say that he would be delighted to 
accede to the request. He, whose date- 
book was full to repletion, and for whom 
bureaus fought, graciously consented to 
read for the young people, as it hap¬ 
pened to be an open date with him. The 
“jollification” was a great success, and 
not only was all South Hanaford there, 
but many people drove out from Sims¬ 
bury, glad to hear Wallace read fox- 
25 cents admission. In Hartford he 
charged a dollai-. He was in fine form, 
and responded to encores until his 
throat might well have been raw. 
After the litei-ary entertainment was 
concluded, the entertainer and his wife 
sought the tables where confections 
were to be dispensed—for a considera¬ 
tion. In order to make sure that the 
cake was good, Mr. Wallace chose that 
which his wife had made, and he cheer¬ 
fully paid 30 cents for that and the ice¬ 
cream, 15 cents a plate being the sum 
usually charged at suppers and festivals 
in the church. 
When Mr. Hardwicke came up to con¬ 
gratulate Mr. Wallace on the undeniable 
hit that he had made, the latter “blew 
him off” to cake, if one may be pardoned 
so worldly an expression as applied to so 
good a man as the parson. 
WMle the supper was in progress, 
William Curtis arose, and in the halting 
way, not peculiar to him alone, said: “I 
—er—take pleasux-e in announcing on 
behalf of the—er—Young People’s So¬ 
ciety of Christian Endeavor, that we 
have taken in this evening a—er—trifle 
over $20, and the sale of cake will bi-ing 
half as much again. I want to thank 
those who—er—who donated the cake, 
and I think—er—that we all think—er— 
that we ought to thank—er—Mr. Wal¬ 
lace for x-esponding so generously with 
his choice selections. We wondered how 
we could afford to do what we—er— 
wanted to do, and if it had not been for 
his kindness in reducing the price of his 
henhouse iin the first place, and then in 
—er—kindly consenting to give us his— 
er—more than valuable services this 
—er—evening, it would not have been 
possible for us to purchase his henhouse 
and present it as a—er—Thanksgiving 
offering to our—er—beloved and 
worthy pastor.” 
When he sat down with a moist fore¬ 
head and a sense of having done his 
duty, he was astonished to hear a hearty 
and genex-al guffaw follow a momentary 
silence. In the midst of it, and while 
he was wondering what had caused it, 
Mr. Wallace and the Rev. Mi\ Hard¬ 
wicke, moved by similar impulses, arose 
and walked toward each other and shook 
hands. 
Then Mr. Hardwicke said with unc¬ 
tion, “This Is undoubtedly good old New 
England.”—Saturday Evening Post. 
Some Old-Fashioned Desserts. 
I wonder if country housewives still 
preserve grapes according to a fashion I 
well knew a generation and more ago, 
says a writer in the American Kitchen 
Magazine. It was always called “laying 
down.” You would hear one neighbor 
say to another, “I’ve been laying down 
my grapes.” One or two good frosts were 
considered necessary to ripen the frag¬ 
rant clusters hanging from the wild 
vines that gracefully clamber over our 
Virginia rail fences or festooned tall tree 
trunks on the edge of the woods. A 
stone jar or milk crock was filled with 
fine bunches of the wild fruit, which was 
then almost covered with molasses and 
put away in some cool closet or down 
cellar. After some weeks, or even 
months both fi*uit and liquid had a 
sweet-sour, spicy tang that was very 
pleasant. The grapes with a little of 
the rich juice were served as a sweet 
pickle, or in some families the grapes 
were removed from the stems and cov¬ 
ered with the juice, used to make pies. 
Another dessert I remember in Ohio 
was vinegar pie. A pie pan was lined 
with crust as for custard pie. This was 
filled with a mixture of cold water, rich¬ 
ly sweetened, slightly thickened with 
flour, to which was added sufficient vine¬ 
gar to give a strongly acid flavoi-. A 
pinch of cinnamon was sprinkled over 
the liquid, after it was poured into the 
crust, then slender sti J ips of pie dough 
were fastened across. to make a tart. 
If baked in a properly heated oven the 
liquid as it cooked thickened into a 
sticky paste. 
The cream pies of my day, still sur¬ 
viving in the part of Ohio where I was 
reared, were very different from the 
cream cakes of the bakeries. The the 
pan was lined with crust, then it was 
filled with rich cream that had been well 
sweetened. Into this was sifted vex-y 
slowly from a dredging-box a little flour 
—perhaps a dessertspoonful to one pie. 
About a dessertspoonful of butter was 
cut up into small bits and scattered over 
the cream. A pinch of cinnamon was 
added. This made an indigestibly rich 
but delicious dessert. Another queer 
northern Ohio dish is known as cheese 
pie. A cup of the curd obtained from 
sour milk by drawing off its whey is 
beaten with two eggs, a little sweet 
milk and “sugar to taste.” Then flavor 
with cinnamon and bake in a crust in a 
deep pie plate. 
R. N.-Y.—This cheese pie seems to be 
a simple form of the English curd 
cheesecake. The English cook would 
not add any milk, the eggs being suffi¬ 
cient to bind the curd 'together, while 
some lemon juice would be added, in ad¬ 
dition to the cinnamon. Our English 
cousins make an infinite variety of 
cheesecakes, some of them exceeding 
rich, and a 'terror to the bilious. 
With the Procession. 
"She knew the power of bonded ill. 
But knew that love was stronger still, 
And organized for doing good, 
The world’s united womanhood.” 
—Whittier’s tribute to Frances E. Willard. 
_Temperance is l-eason’s girdle and 
passion’s bridle.—Jeremy Taylor. 
....Is there anything which i-eflects a 
greater luster upon a man’s person than 
a severe temperance, and a restraint of 
himself for Vicious pleasures?—South. 
....The neighbor, the one who comes 
into your life, has a very close claim 
upon you. You cannot, without wrong¬ 
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the same footing as the man who lives 
at such a distance as shuts him out from 
neighborly services. His nearness con¬ 
stitutes a claim, and opens a door of op¬ 
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neighbor—in want of help, of encour¬ 
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of life, ready to lose heart—you can give 
him of your superabundance of hope 
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for the gift. The sorest wants of the 
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neighboi-—Saturday Evening Post. 
Rouble 
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