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Carcasses of bullocks and fat porkers are placed upright against the huge trunks of the trees; fowls hang from the lower branches, bobbing against the heads of those beneath; butter-firkins, great cheeses, and brown loaves of household bread, baked in distant ovens, are collected under temporary shelters or pine-boughs, with gingerbread, and pumpkin-pies, perhaps, and other toothsome dainties.
The mystery of the brawn and muscle of New England is no less wrapped up in pies. But don't hesitate. Pitch in. There's something about this air that turns a nightly mixture of mince-pies, pumpkin-pies, custard-pies, lemon-pies, and apple-pies, with cheese, into a substance as heavenly light as fresh-fallen manna.
But I'd save myself for the pies. I can tell a rich, short, flaky crust, and I can tell the kind that is as brown as a dried apple, and tough as the same on the top, and sad and livery on the bottom. And I know about fillings, how thick they ought to be, and how they ought to be seasoned, and all. Particularly pumpkin-pies, because I had early advantages that way that very few other boys had.
The boy is not always slow to take what he considers his rights. Speaking of those thin pumpkin-pies kept in the cellar cupboard.
If ever I get back to Hilton Grange again, I shall have tales to tell of my baking and brewing, of my pumpkin-pies, and bread made of the flour of the Indian corn; yea, more, of gathering of the wild fruit in the woods, and cranberries in the meadows, milking the cows, and looking after the pigs and barnyard fowls.
Perhaps this is saying enough to enable the reader to fill out the picture, for he will be sure to guess that pumpkin-pies were not forgotten; for what would a down-east thanksgiving dinner be without this national dish? The dinner was a charm in itself, while the attendant circumstances gave it a double relish.
Rob's crop was four small squashes and one immense pumpkin. It really was a "bouncer," as every one said; and I assure you that two small persons could sit on it side by side. It seemed to have absorbed all the goodness of the little garden, and all the sunshine that shone down on it, and lay there a great round, golden ball, full of rich suggestions of pumpkin-pies for weeks to come.
I mind me I made a great baking that week; and I put brandy into the mince for once, instead of vinegar and dried-apple juice, and there were the fowls stuffed and trussed on the shelf, and the pumpkin-pies like slices of split gold, and the cranberry-tarts, plats of crimson and puffs of snow, and I was brewing in my mind a right-royal red Indian-pudding to come out of the oven smoking hot and be soused with thick clots of yellow cream, when one of the boys ran in and told us the fleet'd got back, but no Dan with it, he'd changed over to a fore-and-after, and wouldn't be home at all, but was to stay down in the Georges all winter, and he'd sent us word.
But I am sure that no boy of his age could put out of sight, in the same space of time, so many dough-nuts, ginger-snaps, tea-cakes, apple-dumplings, pumpkin-pies, jelly-tarts, puddings, ice-creams, raisins, nuts, and other things of the sort. Other people stared at him in wonder.
From what I heard, I fear duelling must have become very common in the West, and no wonder, from the number of lawless spirits who congregate where they can be comparatively unfettered. The second course consisted exclusively of pumpkin-pies; but when the waiters changed the plates, their way of cleaning the knives and forks was so peculiarly disgusting, that I did not attempt to eat anything.
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