pie, but not pudding; the rich, heavy
fruit-cake of weddings, good, honest gingerbread, the brisk, crispy heat
of the brittle ginger-snap, but not "plain cake,"--absurd viand! It is
of the essence of cake not to be plain. As well say, acid sweetness. Nor
did I like the hereditary election-cake of my ancient State and city.
Fat pork I could not swallow; nor onions nor cabbage,--gross, indelicate
vegetables! And even now, as well present upon my table that other
diabolic cabbage of the New England swamps,--in old legend said to have
been conjured up out of the ground by the Indian pow-wows, to beautify
and perfume the dank and gloomy resorts where Satan was wont to drill
them in their hellish exercises,--as its grandchild, the big booby of
the garden. For is it not deservedly, if disrespectfully, named a
cabbage-head? That is because it is the Vegetable Booby.

Naturally, I did not like that concoction so dear to the heart of good
old-fashioned Connecticut folks, a biled-dish (accent on _biled_). This,
O vast majority of ignoramuses, is corned beef and cabbage boiled
together. As for onions, if I could not escape them in any other way, I
would organize a party on the Great Wethersfield Question, and lead it,
a Connecticut Cato, with the motto, "Censeo Wethersfieldiam delendam
esse." Nor would I rest until that alliaceous metropolis was fairly
tipped over into Connecticut River, and sent drowning down to Long
Island Sound.

There is yet another cell in the cavern of memory,--a gloomy and horrid
one,--the torture-chamber. It is the remembrance of sickness and its
attendant pharmaceutic devils. O ye witch's oils, hell-broths
red and black, pills, and electuaries! the unsuccessful
experiments--instrumentalities of death too slow for the occasion, but
masterly in their kind--of the Pandemoniac host in those Miltonian,
infernal chemics which resulted in gunpowder and cannon-balls! What
agonies from horrific stench and flavor, in close, dreary rooms, under
hot, unwelcome blankets, do ye recall!

It is not that I complain of all those inexplicable diseases, _opprobria
medicinae_, so pusillanimously submitted to by civilized humanity and its
physicians,--chicken-pox, measles, whooping-cough, mumps. I complain,
indeed, of no diseases, but of their treatment. But let me not delay
longer than is needful amid such distressful recollections. Three
hateful decoctions were known to me by the phonetics, Lixipro,
Lixaslutis, and Lixusma