To talk against pie and still eat it is
snobbish, of course; but snobbery, being an aspiring failing, is
sometimes the prophecy of better things. To affect dislike of pie is
something. We have no statistics on the subject, and cannot tell
whether it is gaining or losing in the country at large. Its
disappearance in select circles is no test. The amount of writing
against it is no more test of its desuetude, than the number of
religious tracts distributed in a given district is a criterion of
its piety. We are apt to assume that certain regions are
substantially free of it. Herbert and I, traveling north one summer,
fancied that we could draw in New England a sort of diet line, like
the sweeping curves on the isothermal charts, which should show at
least the leading pie sections. Journeying towards the White
Mountains, we concluded that a line passing through Bellows Falls,
and bending a little south on either side, would mark northward the
region of perpetual pie. In this region pie is to be found at all
hours and seasons, and at every meal. I am not sure, however, that
pie is not a matter of altitude rather than latitude, as I find that
all the hill and country towns of New England are full of those
excellent women, the very salt of the housekeeping earth, who would
feel ready to sink in mortification through their scoured kitchen
floors, if visitors should catch them without a pie in the house.
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