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Cooper, James Fenimore, 1789-1851

"Oak Openings"

One hears, and reads in those
elegant specimens of the polite literature of the day, the letters
from Washington, and from various travellers, who go up and down
this river in steamboats, or along that railway, gratis, much in
honor of the good things left behind the several writers, in the
"region of the kock"; but, woe betide the wight who is silly enough
to believe in all this poetical imagery, and who travels in that
direction, in the expectation of finding a good table! It is
extraordinary that such a marked difference does exist, on an
interest of this magnitude, among such near neighbors; but, of the
fact, we should think no intelligent and experienced man can doubt.
Believing as we do, that no small portion of the elements of
national character can be, and are, formed in the kitchen, the
circumstance may appear to us of more moment than to some of our
readers. The vacuum left in cookery, between Boston and Baltimore
for instance, is something like that which exists between Le
Verrier's new planet and the sun.
But Margery could even fry pork without causing it to swim in
grease, and at a venison steak, a professed cook was not her
superior.


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