nd-turnip-greens
period, and the voice of the turtle was heard in the land.

Figuratively, I was swept off my feet when a noble example of Southern
womanhood put before my famished eyes the following items, to wit: About
half a bushel of newly picked turnip greens, rearing islandwise above a
sloshing sea of pot licker and supporting upon their fronded crests the
boiled but impressive countenance of a hickory-cured shote, the whole
being garnished with paired-off poached eggs like the topaz eyes of
beauteous blond virgins turned soulfully heavenward; and set off by
flankings of small piping-hot corn pones made with meal and water and salt
and shortening, as Providence intended a proper corn pone should be made.

Then the years rolled away like a scroll and once again was I back in the
Kentucky foothills, a lean and lathy sprout of a kid, a limber six-foot
length of perpendicular appetite; and it was twelve o'clock for some
people, but it was dinner time for me!

My glad low gurgle of anticipatory joy smothered the small inner voice of
caution as I leaped, as it were, headlong into that bosky dell of young
turnip greens. So, having set my feet on the downward path I backslode
some more--for behold, what should come along then but an old-fashioned
shortcake, fashioned of crisp biscuit dough, with more fresh strawberries
bedded down between its multiplied and mounting layers than you could buy
at the Fritz-Charlton for a hundred and ninety dollars.

Right then and there was when and where I lost all I had gained in a
fortnight of stalwart self-disciplining; rather it was where I regained
all I haply had lost. When, gorged and comatose, I staggered from that
fair matron's depleted table I should never have dared to trundle over a
wooden culvert at faster than four miles an hour. Either I should have
slowed down or waited until they could put in some re-enforced-concrete
underpinnings.

I was right back where I had started, and for the moment didn't care a
darn either. Sin is glorious when you sin gloriously.

But I rallied. I retrieved myself. However, I do not take all the credit
to myself for this; circumstances favored me. Shortly I quitted the land
of temptation where I had been born, and was back again up North living on
dining cars and in hotels, with nothing more seductive to resist than
processed pastry and machine-made shortcakes and Thousand Islands
dressing; which made the fight all the easier to win, especia