FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127  
128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   >>   >|  
f fare, and imagines them coming. I guess it's that way with all hungry men. They can't get their cogitations trained on anything but something to eat. It shows that the little table with the broken-legged caster and the imitation Worcester sauce and the napkin covering up the coffee stains is the paramount issue, after all, instead of the question of immortality or peace between nations. "I sat there, musing along, arguing with myself quite heated as to how I'd have my steak--with mushrooms, or /a la creole/. Mame was on the other seat, pensive, her head leaning on her hand. 'Let the potatoes come home-fried,' I states in my mind, 'and brown the hash in the pan, with nine poached eggs on the side.' I felt, careful, in my own pockets to see if I could find a peanut or a grain or two of popcorn. "Night came on again with the river still rising and the rain still falling. I looked at Mame and I noticed that desperate look on her face that a girl always wears when she passes an ice-cream lair. I knew that poor girl was hungry--maybe for the first time in her life. There was that anxious look in her eye that a woman has only when she has missed a meal or feels her skirt coming unfastened in the back. "It was about eleven o'clock or so on the second night when we sat, gloomy, in our shipwrecked cabin. I kept jerking my mind away from the subject of food, but it kept flopping back again before I could fasten it. I thought of everything good to eat I had ever heard of. I went away back to my kidhood and remembered the hot biscuit sopped in sorghum and bacon gravy with partiality and respect. Then I trailed along up the years, pausing at green apples and salt, flapjacks and maple, lye hominy, fried chicken Old Virginia style, corn on the cob, spareribs and sweet potato pie, and wound up with Georgia Brunswick stew, which is the top notch of good things to eat, because it comprises 'em all. "They say a drowning man sees a panorama of his whole life pass before him. Well, when a man's starving he sees the ghost of every meal he ever ate set out before him, and he invents new dishes that would make the fortune of a chef. If somebody would collect the last words of men who starved to death, they'd have to sift 'em mighty fine to discover the sentiment, but they'd compile into a cook book that would sell into the millions. "I guess I must have had my conscience pretty well inflicted with culinary meditations, for, without
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127  
128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

hungry

 

coming

 

conscience

 

pretty

 

sorghum

 

sopped

 

kidhood

 

remembered

 
biscuit
 

partiality


millions
 

apples

 

pausing

 
respect
 

trailed

 
culinary
 
meditations
 

subject

 

jerking

 

gloomy


shipwrecked

 

inflicted

 
flopping
 

dishes

 
invents
 

fasten

 

thought

 

flapjacks

 
panorama
 

mighty


comprises

 

discover

 

drowning

 

collect

 

starving

 

starved

 

things

 

spareribs

 
Virginia
 
fortune

hominy

 

chicken

 

potato

 

compile

 

sentiment

 

Georgia

 

Brunswick

 

arguing

 

musing

 

heated