charge. We should not do any such thing.
We should do just as he does, make the best of "plum sauce," or even dried
apples. We should not make our sauce with molasses, probably; but he does
not know that sugar is better; he honestly likes molasses best. As for
saleratus in the bread, as for fried meat, and fried doughnuts, and
ubiquitous pickles,--all those things have he, and his fathers before him,
eaten, and, he thinks, thriven on from time immemorial. He will listen
incredulously to all we say about the effects of alkalies, the change of
fats to injurious oils by frying, the indigestibility of pickles, &c.;
for, after all, the unanswerable fact remains on his side, though he may
be too polite or too slow to make use of it in the argument, that, having
fed on these poisons all his life, he can easily thrash us to-day, and his
wife and daughters can and do work from morning till night, while ours
must lie down and rest by noon. In spite of all this, he will do what he
can to humor our whims. Never yet have we seen the country boarding-house
where kindly and persistent remonstrance would not introduce the gridiron
and banish the frying-pan, and obtain at least an attempt at yeast-bread.
Good, patient, long-suffering country people! The only wonder to us is
that they tolerate so pleasantly, make such effort to gratify, the
preferences and prejudices of city men and women, who come and who remain
strangers among them; and who, in so many instances, behave from first to
last as if they were of a different race, and knew nothing of any common
bonds of humanity and Christianity.

The Good Staff of Pleasure.

In an inn in Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, where I dined every day for three
weeks, one summer, I made the acquaintance of a little maid called
Gretchen. She stood all day long washing dishes, in a dark passageway
which communicated in some mysterious fashion with cellar, kitchen,
dining-room, and main hall of the inn. From one or other of these quarters
Gretchen was sharply called so often that it was a puzzle to know how she
contrived to wash so much as a cup or a plate in the course of the day.
Poor child! I am afraid she did most of her work after dark; for I
sometimes left her standing there at ten o'clock at night. She was
blanched and shrunken from fatigue and lack of sunlight. I doubt if ever,
unless perhaps on some exceptional Sunday, she knew the sensation of a
full breath of pure air or a warm sunbeam on