ing-stick with
her own stout German arms. She had the butter all covered up with
fresh, sweet, white-linen cloths-and hand-moulded into big rolls--each
roll wrapped in its own immaculate cloth--and when that cloth was
slowly pulled away so that grandmother could stick the point of a knife
in the butter and test it on her tongue, you could see the white salt
all over the roll--and even the imprint of the cloth-threads ... Good?
... Why, you could eat it without bread!

"What else have you got today, Mrs. Hummel?" (Grandmother never could
say "Frau"--and as if she didn't know what else was in the basket!)

"Vell, Mrs. Van, dere is meppe some eks, und a dook--und also dere is
left von fine stuffed geese."

So the cloth covering was rolled farther back--and the 3-dozen eggs
were gently taken out and put in the old tin eggbucket--and just then
grandfather came in and lifted tenderly out of the basket one of those
wonderful geese "stuffed" with good food in a dark cellar until fat
enough for market.... Ever have a toothful of that kind of goose-breast
or second joint? ... No? ... Your life is yet incomplete--you have
something to live for! ... Goodness me! I can't describe it! How can a
fellow tell about such things! It's like--well, it's like Frau Hummel's
"stuffed" goose, that's all! ...

And then it was weighed on the old balances, steels--(no, I don't mean
scales!)--steelyards, you know--a long-armed affair with a pear-shape
of iron at one end and a hook at the other and a handle somewhere in
between at the center-of-gravity, or some such place.... Anyway, they
gave an honest pound, which is perhaps another respect in which they
were different.

Then the ducks, too, were unwrapped from their white cloths and
weighed--usually a pair of them--and the old willow basket had nothing
left but its bundle of cloths when Frau Hummel started out again on her
10-mile walk to the farm.

Whenever I see a glassy-eyed, feather-headed, cold-storage chicken half
plucked and discolored hanging in a present-day butcher-shop
accumulating dust--or a scrawny duck almost popping through its skin--I
think of Frau Hummel and her willow basket....

But Frau Hummel isn't here now--and they don't build ducks and geese
like hers any more--and her old willow basket is probably in some
collection while we use these machine-made things that fall to pieces
when you accidentally stub your toe against them in the cellar.... We
are hurrying along s