第48章 THE COUNTY FAIR(4)

I suppose, however, when all is said and done, that there is no pie that can quite come up to an apple-pie. You take nice, short crust that's been worked up with ice-water, and line the tin with it, and fill it heaping with sliced, tart apples -not sauce. Mercy, no! - and sweeten them just right, and put on a lump of butter, and some allspice, and perhaps a clove, and a little lemon peel, and then put on the cover, and trim off the edge, and pinch it up in scallops, and draw a couple of leaves in the top with a sharp knife, and have the oven just right, and set it in there, and I tell you that when ma opens the oven-door to see how the pie is coming on, there distils through the house such a perfume that you cry out in a choking voice: "Say! Ain't dinner 'most ready?"But I fully recognize the fact that very often our judgment is warped by feeling, and I am inclined to believe that even the undoubted merit of the apple-pie would not prevail against a vinegar-pie, if such should be presented to me for my decision.

A vinegar-pie? Well, it has a top and bottom crust, the same as any other pie, but its filling is made of vinegar, diluted with water to the proper degree of sub-acidity, sweetened with molasses, thickened with flour, and all baked as any other pie. You smile at its crude simplicity, and wonder why I should favor it. To you it doesn't tell the story that it does to me. It doesn't take you back in imagination to "the airly days," when folks came over the mountains in covered wagons, and settled in the Western Reserve, leaving behind them all the civilization of their day, and its comforts, parting from relatives and friends, knowing full well that in this life they never more should look upon their faces - leaving everything behind to make a new home in the western wilds.

Is was a land of promise that they came to. The virgin soil bore riotously. There were fruit-trees in the forest that Johnny Appleseed had planted on his journeyings. The young husband could stand in his dooryard and kill wild turkeys with his rifle.

They fed to loathing on venison, and squirrels, and all manner of game, and once in a great while they had the luxury of salt pork.

They were well-nourished, but sometimes they pined for that which was more than mere food. They hungered for that which should be to the meals' victuals what the flower is to the plant.

"I whoosh't - I woosh't was so we could hev pie," sighed one such.

(Let us call him Uriah Kinney. I think that sounds as if it were his name.

"Land's sakes!" snapped his wife, exasperated that he should be thinking of the same thing that she was. "Land's sakes! Haow d'

ye s'pose I kin make a pie when I hain't got e'er a thing to make it aout o'? You gimme suthirnn to make it aout o', an' you see haow quick - ""I ain't a-faultinn ye, Mary Ann," interposed Uriah gently. "Iknow haow 't is. I was on'y tellin' ye. I git I git a kind o'

hum'sick sometimes. 'Pears like as if I sh'd feel more resigned like . . . . Don't ye cry, Mary Ann. I know, I know. You feel julluk I do 'baout back home, an' all luk that."O woman! When the heft of thy intellect is thrown against a problem, something has got to give. Not long after, Uriah sits down to dinner, and can hardly ask a blessing, he has to swallow so. A pie is on the table!

"Gosh, Mary Ann, but this is good!" says he, holding out his hand for the third piece. "This is lickinn good!" And he celebrates her achievement far and wide.

"My Mary Ann med me a pie t' other day, was the all-firedest best pie I ever et.""Med you what?"

"Med me a pie."

"Pie? Whutch talkinn' baout? Can't git nummore pies naow. Frot 's all gin aout.""I golly, she med it just the same. Smartest woman y' ever see."The man dribbled at the mouth.

"What sh' make it aout o'?"

"Vinegar an' worter, I think she said. I d' know 's I ever et anythinn I relished julluk that. My Mary Ann, tell yew! She's 'baout's smart 's they make 'em."I wish I knew who she really was whom I have called Mary Ann Kinney, she that made the first vinegar-pie. I wish I knew where her grave is that I might lay upon it a bunch of flowers, such as she knew and liked - sweet-william, and phlox, and larkspur, and wild columbine. It couldn't make it up to her for all the hardships she underwent when she was bringing up a family in that wild, western country, and especially that fall when they all had the "fever 'n'

ager" so bad, Uriah and the twins chilling one day, and Hiram and Sophronia Jane the next, and she just as miserable as any of them, but keeping up somehow, God only knows how. It couldn't make it up to her, but as I laid the pretty posies against the leaning headstone on which is written:

"A Loving Wife , a Mother Dear, Faithful Friend Lies Buried Here."I believe she 'd get word of it somehow, and understand what I was trying to say by it.

I'll ask to be let off the committee that judges the rest of the exhibits in the Fine Arts Hall, the quilts and the Battenberg, and the crocheting, and such. I know the Log Cabin pattern, and the Mexican Feather pattern, and I think I could make out to tell the Hen-and-Chickens pattern of quilts, but that's as much as ever.

And as to the real, hand-painted views of fruit-cake, and grapes and apples on a red table-cloth, I am one of those that can't make allowances for the fact that she only took two terms. I call to mind one picture that Miss Alvalou Ashbaker made of her pap, old "Coonrod" Ashbaker. The Lord knows he was a "humbly critter," but he wasn't as "humbly" as she made him out to be, with his eyes bulging out of his head as if he was choking on a fishbone. And, instead of her dressing him up in his Sunday clothes, I wish I may never see the back of my neck if that girl didn't paint him in a red-and-black barred flannel shirt, with porcelain buttons on it!

And his hair looked as if the calf had been at it. Wouldn't you think somebody would have told her? And that isn't all. She got the premium!