rm of government still endures, and surely real
sucking pigs are still being cooked and served whole somewhere this very
day. And in that same neighborhood, if it lies to the eastward, there
are cooks who know the art of planking a shad in season--not the
arrangement of the effete East, consisting of a greased skin wrapped
round a fine-tooth comb and reposing on a charred clapboard--but a real
shad; and if it lies to the southward one will surely find in the same
vicinity a possum of a prevalent dark brown tint, with sweet potatoes
baked under him and a certain inimitable, indescribable dark rich gravy
surrounding him, and on the side corn pones--without any sugar in them.
I think probably the reason why the possum doesn't flourish in the North
is that they insist on tacking an O on to his name, simply because some
misguided writer of dictionaries ordained it so. A possum is not Irish,
nor is he Scotch. His name is not Opossum, neither is it MacPossum. He
belongs to an old Southern family and his name is just possum.

Once I saw ostensible 'possum at a French restaurant in New York. It was
advertised as _Opossum, Southern style_, and it was chopped up fine and
cooked in a sort of casserole effect, with green peas and carrots and
various other things mixed in along with it. The quivering sensations
which were felt throughout the South on this occasion, and which at the
time were mistaken for earthquake tremors, were really caused by so many
Southern cooks turning over petulantly in their graves.

Still going on the assumption that the turkey and the sucking pig and
their kindred spirits are yet to be found among us or among some of us,
anyhow, it is only logical to assume that the food is not served in
courses at the ratio of a little of everything and not enough of
anything, but that it is brought on and spread before the company all
together and at once--the turkey or the pig or the ham or the chickens;
the mashed potatoes overflowing their receptacle like drifted snow; the
celery; the scalloped oysters in a dish like a crock; the jelly layer
cake, the fruit cake and Prince of Wales cake; and in addition,
scattered about hither and yon, all the different kinds of
preserves--pusserves, to use the proper title--including sweet peach
pickles dimpled with cloves and melting away in their own sweetness, and
watermelon-rind pickles cut into cubes just big enough to make one
bite--that is to say in cubes about three inches sq