54 
Tht RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
January 12, 1924 
Hope Farm Notes 
“Angel Food” 
Part I 
I understand you to say that it is pos¬ 
sible to prepare and cook fish balls so 
they will seem like angel food. Niw if 
that is so ‘T want to be an angel. - ’ Tell 
us how to do it. My folks can fix up 
prunes with lemon and other things so 
that they might suit a very hungry angel 
—but fish balls! Well, I doubt it! 
j. J. H. 
For the benefit of this doubting 
Thomas I will try to take him back to 
what I remember as the best fish balls I 
ever tasted. Of course, with him, it 
must be a sort of Barmecide’s feast; he 
cannot quite get the youth and the ap¬ 
petite which served as sauce for the meal. 
Since then I have eaten slowly through 
the full course at several banquets where 
the host loudly stated that the cost was 
$25 a plate, but for real enjoyment of 
memory I go back to that Autumn day in 
my aunt’s kitchen where I watched the 
development of angel food from the cod¬ 
fish hanging in the cellar to the sputter¬ 
ing brown balls in the frying pan ! I re¬ 
member that I sat beside the stove—a 
wounded veteran. It was at least the 
middle of November, and Winter comes 
early in New England. Our folks be¬ 
lieved in toughening boys, and so I went 
barefooted long after the leaves were dead 
and when of a morning, the grass was 
white and crisp with frost. The boys of 
that day had tough, hard little bodies— 
and they saved much shoe leather. The 
day before these fish balls that I am 
speaking of were cooked I ran through 
the frosted grass to warm my feet and 
stepped on a rusty nail. The famous 
Greek warrior Achilles was invulnerable 
in every part of his body except his heel. 
We boys seemed to be like that. You 
could scratch and cut us anywhere above 
our ankles and it was less a cause for 
worry than when you knocked the varn¬ 
ish off a chair—but when we cut our 
feet—well, a lockjawed boy was not much 
account for doing chores. 
* * * * * 
Well, my foot hurt. My uncle put on 
his spectacles and examined it—took a 
feather and applied some of his cele¬ 
brated “lotion.” He made it himself 
from a secret recipe which he kept hid¬ 
den in the clock. It was said to be a 
“painkiller,” but my memory is that the 
pain died very hard. None of us knew 
anything about the germs of tetanus in 
those days, but there was a general con¬ 
viction that lockjaw followed a wounded 
foot. Stepped on its heel—as you might 
say. By noon my foot still ached, and 
Cap’ll Iloxie, who owned a microscope, 
was called in. After much squinting and 
probing he decided that a piece of a rusty 
nail had broken off inside the foot, and 
after looking through the microscope my 
uncle and aunt confirmed this opinion. 
“Just wait till I run my knife over 
the grindstone,” said Cap’n Hoxie, “and 
I’ll cut it out and swab it with tar. I 
done that for a man on board ship once. 
He run a nail an inch long into his foot. 
It meant lockjaw sure if it wasn’t cut 
out. I got a razor edge on my knife and 
then we throwed him on the deck. The 
crew set on him and I cut the nail out 
and swabbed tar onto it. Saved his life 
and done him good. You hold the boy 
and I’ll do the same by him. Why, sir, 
I knew a feller that went out West and 
the Indians ketched him. He run away 
from them and they shot him in the 
foot. He crawled off into the mountains 
and after a day or two he saw his foot 
was turning black. He sharpened his 
knife on a stone and cut his own foot 
off and seared up them veins with a 
red-hot iron. He saved his leg and life 
and later on I saw him dance at a wed¬ 
ding! Now I'll go right out and sharp¬ 
en my knife.” 
But 1 had no idea of trying to emulate 
the heroism of Cap’n Iloxie’s friend. I 
did not care to have any such surgery 
practiced on me, and I will confess that 
1 set up a howl that shook even the 
stout nerves of Cap’n Hoxie. 
“Sho,” he said, “lie must be pretty bad. 
If I’se in your place I’d get. him up to 
Dr. Dean’s as quick as the Lord will let 
ye. He aint right. This feller I told on 
found that tobaker was the best poltice 
for such wounds. I’ve got a nice cud of 
tobaker all ready and will put it right on 
the place.” 
My aunt, a thrifty housewife, was de-. 
termined that all the products of her 
household should be inspected before go- 
ins on exhibition. So she made me pull 
off shoes and stockings to examine my 
feet. They were not very clean and she 
brought hot water and a bucket. 
“Now you just soak your feet before 
you go and show them to any doctor and 
you. Mr. Reed, don’t you let him pull his 
pants any more than so high or else I’ll 
have to give him a bath before he goes. 
I’ll wash his ears anyway.” 
She was as good as her word, and I 
certainly smelled of soft soap as we 
started. , , 
Dr. Dean was a superannuated doctor 
of a very old school who, after giving out 
barrels of powders and pills and bitters, 
had retired from practice, except on oc¬ 
casions when some friends with _ a great 
scorn for “them young fellers, with them 
newfangled germs and such” needed his 
help. Just the man he was to keep the 
key out of the lock which might fasten 
a pair of youthful jaws! So my uncle 
hitched old Hero, the red horse, to the 
old-fashioned chaise, and prepared to 
hurry me off to execution—or at least 
that is what it seemed to me. Cap’n 
Iloxie volunteered to go along, and I re¬ 
member that the old man picked me up 
very tenderly and carried me out to the 
chaise. From somewhere down in his 
clothing he pulled out a soiled and flat¬ 
tened gum drop and gave it to me to eat 
on the way. 
The other day in the grant city, I saw 
a little boy hurt on the street. A police¬ 
man picked him up, pulled an alarm at a 
street corner and within a few minutes 
a swift ambulance came rushing around 
the corner. They put the little fellow on 
a comfortable cot and off they dashed to 
the hospital, where gentle hands carried 
the little patient to his bed and kindly 
faces smiled at him. As I watched that 
the ragged scar at the bottom of my foot 
seemed to sting and burn as I recalled 
that journey to Dr. Dean’s house. There 
was no swift, smooth-running car to 
carry the patient. The road was rough, 
and one spring on (he chaise was loose 
or broken. Old Hero had some trotting 
blood in his veins. His mother once 
made a mile in four minutes hurrying 
for the doctor over a dark country road, 
and her spirit was no doubt urging old 
Hero on. But that was 30 years or more 
before, when Hero was a young colt, a lien 
he had seen his mother taken out of the 
warm stall and dashed off into the night. 
The spirit is willing, but when you have 
a spavin or a sprung knee and a touch 
of the heaves it is as hard to keep step 
with the spirit as it is to dance to the 
whims of a young wife. 
We finally got to Dr. Dean’s house, 
and there was the old gentleman himself 
digging potatoes out in his garden. I 
remember him as a tall thin man with a 
head entirely free from hair. He had 
left his wig inside, and his great specta¬ 
cles were at the end of his nose. He 
had speared a potato with his fork, and 
as he pulled away he called out in a 
thin piping voice: 
“What ye got there, deacon?” 
“The boy,” answered Cap’n Hoxie, 
“run a nail in his foot. Lockjaw cornin’ 
on. Got to cut it out” 
No doubt some of you have had the 
privilege of going to a modern hospital 
for treatment or operation. You remem¬ 
ber the clean, sunny operating room, the 
white-robed nurses, the uniformed doctors, 
and the kindly cheery air of it all. I 
knew a woman who went to such a hospi¬ 
tal for a serious operation. She was be¬ 
ing carried into the operating room for 
the anaesthetic, and no wonder she was 
worried and troubled. She spoke to one 
of the nurses: 
“You know, I have five children to be 
cared for. You must be careful.” 
“Why,” said one nurse, “I always 
wanted to raise a child—but never had 
time to have one of my own. I speak for 
one of yours.” 
“I speak for another.” said the second 
nurse. They knew the operation was 
safe, and with their joking and banter 
they sent this woman off into the deep, 
grateful sleep from which she was to 
come stronger and happier than before. 
No one cheered me in this way as Cap’n 
Hoxie carried me into Dr. Dean’s kitch¬ 
en, and few can reajize the terror I felt 
as I saw the old doctor open his case of 
instruments and select a shiny knife. It 
was quite unlike the cheery hospital. Dr. 
Dean washed his hands and put on his 
wig as preparation for the operation. My 
uncle and Cap’n Hoxie had their overalls 
and boots on. The doctor’s wife, a wo¬ 
man as fat as her husband was thin, 
brought a tin basin of hot water and 
stood by to help. 
“Land sakes—you goin’ ter cut him? 
was her cheering comment. 
' I sat in one chair with my little foot 
up in another. Cap’n Hoxie held my 
foot while my uncle held me. I remem¬ 
ber looking under the captain’s arm at 
my foot. There was a stain on it from 
that lotion. Suddenly there was a quick 
flash of steel, a little trickle of blood, and 
Dr. Dean held out his hand with a bit 
of iron on it. 
“Well, boy, here’s your friend,” he 
said. 
I confess that I howled. “Bellered like 
a calf.” was the way Cap’n Hoxie put it. 
and I think he was a fair judge. But at 
any rate the iron was out. I have the 
scar on my foot now to prove it. Dr. 
Dean put a piece of salt pork on the 
wound and bandaged .it.. The pork, he 
said, would “suck out the pizen.” Your 
modern scientific surgeon would have 
said: “destroy the bacteria,” and what 
difference does it make so long as the 
necessary work is done? 
* * X * * 
So, here I was, a wounded little veter¬ 
an sitting beside the kitchen stove, when 
under normal conditions I should have 
been out splitting wood. I had my 
wounded foot up in a chair, and the salt 
pork was “drawing like a yoke of cattle." 
Of course a Yankee boy could not be idle 
so long as his hands were sound, so I was 
braiding corn husks for a husk mat. 
There was a bushel basket full of corn 
husks near the wood box. and I had 
worked out a string of braid nearly 10 
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