328 
The RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
February 26, 1921 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
■ — - — - - i 
U A Neic England Dinner 
As I glanced about the table that night 
I realized that I held a good hand. Three 
queens and two aces will do very well to 
start with, and I was prepared to back 
my hand to the limit. My near neighbor 
betrayed the fact that he felt sure of the 
other queen and one ace; the next man 
surely had two jacks! That woman over 
there feels sure of two kings But, here, 
someone will soon put me in an embar¬ 
rassing position by asking how this Hope 
Farm man comes to know so much about 
the cards, and the way they run ! Never 
give a suspicion a chance to absorb the 
vitamines needed for growth, or ‘‘the milk 
in the eocoanut” will turn sour! I has¬ 
ten to explain therefore that we were sit¬ 
ting in a fashionable dining-room in New 
York. My three queens were Mother, my 
daughter and little Rose; the aces were 
two of the boys. As I was the sixth card, 
perhaps you may call me the _ joker.” My 
neighbor’s “queen” was a big, red-faced 
woman, eating industriously through a 
big. raw beefsteak. She did not look the 
part to me. The “ace” was evidently 
their son. a pallid, pimply-faced youth, 
with cigarette marks on his fingers, and a 
cynical twist to his mouth. lie looked to 
me more like a two-spot. The “jacks” 
were a couple of well-dressed clowns who 
had brought in two over-dressed girls. All 
four were smoking cigarettes! The two 
kings were husband and father of a young 
woman, evidently newly married! Behind 
a screen of palms an orchestra was play¬ 
ing. Waiters with the dress and dignity 
of ambassadors were flitting about. Sure¬ 
ly the cards had been dealt in the game 
of life which permits the management to 
charge (*0 cents for two fried eggs and 
“get away with it” on the argument of 
“heavy overhead.” 
* * * * * 
After much study and discussion my 
queens and aces had selected a dinner 
which would eat up over three barrels of 
apples in our market. I did not know 
what to order. I used to take a chance on 
some of the foreign names until once I 
ordered some jaw-breaking thing in Rus¬ 
sian and received a piece of plain cake 
perhaps two inches square—for 50 cents. 
So now. when dining with the rich and 
great. I keep within my own rather scanty 
knowledge of English. Tucked away in 
one corner of the card I read i 
Xeic England Dinner , $1.25. 
Now for more than 50 long years I 
have posed as an expert on that kind of a 
dinner. There may be higher tests of 
character and skill on the part of cooks, 
but to my mind the supreme trial comes 
when they attempt to prepare a true 
“New England dinner.” such as we used 
to eat on the Yankee farms half a century 
and more ago. From Mobile as far north 
as Duluth, and from Denver to Cape Cod, 
in all my travels I have ordered “New 
England dinner” whenever I find it on the 
bill of fare. A' public restaurant is a 
very good index of the character and hab¬ 
its of its town. The local idea of what a 
true “New England dinner” ought to be 
gives the truest line on the local concep¬ 
tion of the beginning of American his¬ 
tory. Men search for the truth in various 
ways and divers places. I hunt for it by 
analyzing the cook’s idea of a true New 
England dinner. 
$ sje »J: sfc sje 
Tt has been a long and disappointing 
search. Most of our modern Americans 
evidently believe that the settlers of New 
England either had cast-iron stomachs, or 
else their famous “blue laws” resulted 
from dyspepsia. I lost track of my count 
years ago, but the following table fairly 
represents what has been brought to me 
as a “New England dinner”; 
Corned beef and cabbage. 00 
Beef stew. 12 
Baked beans. 15 
1 ish balls ... 
Chicken pie. 7 
Boiled pork and greens. 15 
Hulled corn and milk. 12 
“Succotash” . 10 
Clam chowder . 5 
You see I have been a patient investi¬ 
gator, and have been served with a great 
variety of food. Once I got in behind 
the kitchen screen in a big restaurant and 
saw the cook take a “New England din¬ 
ner.” beef and beans, beef sandwich, 
hash, and various other dishes from the 
same chunk of beef. I gave up the habit 
some years ago, but when I saw “New 
England dinner, $1.25,” it seemed worth 
while to try once more. Surely a cook 
earning $50,000 per year ought to know 
what the Yankees took their strength 
from. $o I ordered the dish and waited 
patiently for it to come. 
Sje * sje ij: :> 
The orchestra was flooding the room 
with music, and there came to me the 
faint strains of an air that I had long 
forgotten. They were playing a medley 
of popular opera music, and one tune 
which they repeated over and over went 
searching through my brain like a haunt¬ 
ed spirit hunting for some imprisoned 
comrade. I tried to think of something 
far back in the years, when suddenly the 
prisoned brain cell .sprang into freedom 
—and I remembered. It must be 50 years 
ago that I waited in a very different place 
for another “New England dinner” which 
Aunt Ellen was cooking in the low kitch¬ 
en of that hillside farmhouse near the 
marsh. That opera tune brought it back, 
and I forgot the aces and queens and 
jacks as I went back into the years for 
my dinner. It had been one of those 
mean, “drizzly” days, when the south 
easters blew the ocean into foam and 
drove the spray and fog across the marsh 
up into the valleys. Unable to hoe corn, 
we boys had been gunning on the marsh 
and had come home with a string of fat 
little “peeps” and “yellowlegs.” We were 
picking and dressing them in the little 
shed just off the kitchen, so that the epi¬ 
cures at the Parker House in Boston 
might feast. Aunt Ellen had waited her 
preparations until we returned, and now 
she was walking about the great, dim 
kitchen, cooking a genuine New England 
dinner. Those old-time kitchens had too 
much floor space and too little light, and 
Aunt Ellen walked many a weary mile at 
her endless job of feeding the big family. 
***** 
I remember that as she walked about 
that day she was singing religious songs, 
as was the habit of those housewives in 
the lonely farmhouses. This singing 
lightened their labors, for it brought to 
their side invisible companions—men and 
women who in their own day had endured 
hardships and troubles and conquered 
them through faith in a better tomorrow. 
Aunt Ellen seemed to begin her work 
with a song then very popular—“I’m 
bound for the land of Canaan.” As her 
work went on she started another. The 
tune was the one that orchestra had been 
playing. Someone had taken it from the 
opera and fitted the words of a noble 
hymn to it: 
“Guide me. oh Thou great- .Tehovah, 
Pilgrim through this barren land, 
I am weak but Thou art mighty; 
Hold me with Thy powerful hand; 
Bread of Heaven ! Bread of Heaven ! 
Feed me till I want no more!” 
I must confess that on that cold and 
cheerless day the appetitite of the hungry 
boy overpowered any poetic imagination, 
and the last line of the song made the 
most powerful appeal to me. Now, amid 
all the luxury of this magnificent dining 
room I was waiting once more for a 
“New England dinner”—listening to the 
same tune. I remembered how years be¬ 
fore I had heard the tune amid all the 
splendor of operatic production—a golden¬ 
voiced singer and a world-renowned or¬ 
chestra. flow that wonderful voice rose 
above the wailing of the violins and the 
moaning of the viols. Yet it came to me 
that all this magnificence of art could 
not compare with the music which came 
from the untrained throat of the weary, 
toilworn woman trudging about in her 
dim kitchen on her homely labor of love, 
with the cricket’s «ong and the booming 
of the distant ocean for accompaniments. 
“Guide me, oh Thou great Jehovah .” 
That was it—the sublime faith that 
guidance would be given -to glorify the 
petty, simple duties of life. 
***** 
Uncle Charles had gone down into the 
dark cellar and cut a generous slice from 
the salted codfish which hung on a nail. 
He fished a piece of salt pork out of the 
barrel and cut off a chunk. Aunt Ellen 
put the salt fish into the big kettle and 
boiled it about half of one hour. Uncle 
Charles took a knife as keen as a razor 
and cut the pork into half-inch cubes. 
Aunt Ellen put these cubes into a frying 
pan, over a hot wood fire, and in some 
way fried out the fat and left crisp little 
cubes of pork. I do not know just how 
she did it. I have tried to show how it 
was done, but failed. With me the pork 
melts away or forms a sort of scrapple. 
The pork fat with a little flour made a 
thick gravy, and it was now time to at¬ 
tend to the fish. It was taken from tin 1 
boiling water, and with hie sharp knife 
Uncle Charles cut it into small pieces. 
With the frying pan on the back of the 
stove these pieces of boiled salt fish were 
slowly cooked in the gravy made from 
the pork fat. In another kettle a mix¬ 
ture of vegetables was boiling away. In 
the meantime Aunt Ellen brought out a 
great deep yellow dish. She covered the 
bottom with a thick flour crust and then 
filled in with thick slices or quarters of 
sour apples from the tree down beside the 
barn. Brown sugar, a great lump of but¬ 
ter (there were no substitutes in those 
days), and a little spice were put in. and 
a thick upper crust was fitted on. Then 
the yellow dish was popped into a hot 
oven. 
***** 
The big table was pulled out to the cen¬ 
ter of the room. Aunt Ellen dished out 
the salt fish to drain and poured the gravy 
•into a bowl. There were boiled potatoes, 
yellow turnips, onions and carrots, great 
slices of brown bread and butter, and a 
big pitcher of skim-milk. It was all 
there—protein, carbohydrates, fat, vita- 
mines, appetite and freedom from care. 
Then when it seemed as if no human be¬ 
ing could eat more, Aunt Ellen took that 
pan-dowdy out of the oven ! We boys 
went out and ran to the barn and back to 
settle our dinner and make room for the 
apple. And we succeeded in doing it. for 
the stomach <>f youth is as elastic as its 
hopes. It all came back—the joy and 
freedom and happiness of youth. Some¬ 
how, I felt a little sorry for my queens 
and aces with their chicken and salads 
and roast beef. I was to have my New 
England dinner. I hoped they would put 
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