fs at close range were
his portion, and curses pursued him in retreat.

Among the liveliest of my memories are those of eating and drinking;
and I would sooner give up some of my delightful remembered walks,
green trees, cool skies, and all, than to lose my images of suppers
eaten on Sabbath evenings at the end of those walks. I make no apology
to the spiritually minded, to whom this statement must be a revelation
of grossness. I am content to tell the truth as well as I am able. I
do not even need to console myself with the reflection that what is
dross to the dreamy ascetic may be gold to the psychologist. The fact
is that I ate, even as a delicate child, with considerable relish; and
I remember eating with a relish still keener. Why, I can dream away a
half-hour on the immortal flavor of those thick cheese cakes we used
to have on Saturday night. I am no cook, so I cannot tell you how to
make such cake. I might borrow the recipe from my mother, but I would
rather you should take my word for the excellence of Polotzk cheese
cakes. If you should attempt that pastry, I am certain, be you ever so
clever a cook, you would be disappointed by the result; and hence you
might be led to mistrust my reflections and conclusions. You have
nothing in your kitchen cupboard to give the pastry its notable
flavor. It takes history to make such a cake. First, you must eat it
as a ravenous child, in memorable twilights, before the lighting of
the week-day lamp. Then you must have yourself removed from the house
of your simple feast, across the oceans, to a land where your
cherished pastry is unknown even by name; and where daylight and
twilight, work day and fete day, for years rush by you in the unbroken
tide of a strange, new, overfull life. You must abstain from the
inimitable morsel for a period of years,--I think fifteen is the magic
number,--and then suddenly, one day, rub the Aladdin's lamp of memory,
and have the renowned tidbit whisked upon your platter, garnished with
a hundred sweet herbs of past association.

Do you think all your imported spices, all your scientific blending
and manipulating, could produce so fragrant a morsel as that which I
have on my tongue as I write? Glad am I that my mother, in her
assiduous imitation of everything American, has forgotten the secrets
of Polotzk cookery. At any rate, she does not practise it, and I am
the richer in memories for her omissions. Polotzk cheese cake, as I
now know it, ha