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"Well, then, a half-peck," said she; "'pends a good deal on how many is living in a house." "Yes; but we only mean this for you, Aunt Matilda. We don't mean it for anybody else." "Well, then, I reckon a quarter of a peck would do, for jest me." "We will allow you a peck," said Harry, "and that will be twenty-five cents a week. Set that down, Kate." "All right," said Kate.
Not to speak o' potatas twenty-five cents the half-peck, an' every last one o' my fam'ly as fond of 'em as if they was fresh from Ireland, instead o' skippin' a generation on both sides." "But, my good woman!" exclaimed Mrs. Sherman, shocked, "what do you mean by talking of porterhouse steak and fresh vegetables this time of year? Oughtn't you to economize?
When the butcher's boy stopped at the house of my wife's father, he set down at the back-door a basket containing fish, a big joint of roast beef, and a generous load of fruit and vegetables, including some fine, fat oranges. At the other door he left a rather unpromising-looking lump of steak and a half-peck of potatoes, not of the first quality.
He lost his case in the justice's court; at least, he was awarded only a half-peck of yams, which he considered insufficient, and in the nature of a defeat. He appealed. The case lingered several years in an ascending grade of courts, and always resulted in decrees sustaining the original verdict; and finally the thing got into the supreme court, and there it stuck for twenty years.
We split the rations up into slips about the size of a carpenter's lead pencil, and used them parsimoniously, never building a fire so big that it could not be covered with a half-peck measure. We hovered closely over this covering it, in fact, with our hands and bodies, so that not a particle of heat was lost.
However, as my first crop was but small, I had no great difficulty to cut it down; in short, I reaped it in my way, for I cut nothing off but the ears, and carried it away in a great basket which I had made, and so rubbed it out with my hands; and at the end of all my harvesting, I found that out of my half-peck of seed I had near two bushels of rice, and about two bushels and a half of barley; that is to say, by my guess, for I had no measure at that time.
There is likewise a half-peck measure of cracked walnuts and two or three tin half-pints or gills filled with the nut-kernels, ready for purchasers. Such are the small commodities with which our old friend comes daily before the world, ministering to its petty needs and little freaks of appetite, and seeking thence the solid subsistence so far as he may subsist of his life.
One might, indeed, rest sufficiently satisfied with what, it is evident, must be, in general, the results of such a relation, without seeking farther to find whether they have followed in every instance. Indeed, those who stare at the half-peck of corn a week, and love to count the lashes on the slave's back, are seldom the "stuff" out of which reformers and abolitionists are to be made.
But night after night last winter I would climb the Hill to see the barn lighted, and in the shadowy stall two little human figures one squat on an upturned bucket milking, his milk-pail, too large to be held between his knees, lodged perilously under the cow upon a half-peck measure; the other little human figure quietly holding the cow's tail.
Its head was about as big as a half-peck measure. Its ears were pointed, with little black tassels at the ends. It had whiskers on its cheeks and smellers like a cat. The fur was gray, except that on the belly, which was white. Hector was looking at its claws, which were nearly two inches long. "McKinstry, what do these animals eat?"
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