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Updated: June 8, 2025
Equity consists in getting your share from the Universal Swine-Trough, and part of another's. "Question. What is meant by 'your share'?" "Answer. My share is getting whatever I can contrive to seize without being made up into Side-Meat." I have slightly abridged this little extract and inserted it here to show the sympathy which Mr. Carlyle had for the dumb brute.
"I never yet see a hen that liked water," interrupted Phineas. "Er a turkey either. Don't you worry about 'em. You better worry about that side-meat you're fryin'. Ef my nose is what it ort to be, I'd say that piece o' meat was bein' burnt to death, an' that's a lot wuss than bein' drownded. They say drowndin' is the easiest death " "You men clear out o' this kitchen," snapped Eliza. "Out with ye!
I'll take the rest back to camp, and I must start at once, for it's getting late, and we didn't bring any rations with us. Do you suppose you can find enough around the house to keep you till morning?" "O, yes," said Si. "There's a sack of meal in there and some side-meat. We gave the old woman a lot of coffee. We'll make out all right."
A far more exacting woman than Eliza Striker would have forgiven this lack of dignity on his part. "You will find me ready for it, Mrs. Striker. The smell of side-meat goes straight to my heart, and nothing in all this world could be more wonderful than the coffee you are making." "Go 'long with you!" she cried, vastly pleased, and turned to her sizzling skillets.
It would not be right for me to deny that I have improved a great deal in the last couple of weeks. I am beginning to feel pretty fit, and I've put on four or five pounds. Still, I'm getting sick of fresh eggs and fresh milk and their everlasting bacon, they call it side-meat, and preserves. She simply stuffs me with them. The air is wonderful, even during that awful hot spell I wrote you about.
But he mischievously insisted that if side-meat did "stick to the ribs," as the Missourians declared, they did not eat much of it, for, as a rule, the people whom they met were a very lank and slab-sided lot. "Clay-eaters," their new acquaintance from Quindaro said they were. "Clay-eaters?" asked Charlie, with a puzzled look. "They are clayey-looking in the face.
Few thought of planting anything but corn; but the thrifty settlers from Illinois knew the value of fresh vegetables, and they were resolved to have "garden truck" just as soon as seeds could be planted and brought to maturity. "And side-meat?" asked Sandy, wonderingly, as he heard his father inquiring the price of that article of food.
"My dear infant," said his father, seriously, but with a twinkle in his eye, "game is not so plenty anywhere as that; and if it were, we should soon tire of it. Now side-meat 'sticks to the ribs, as the people hereabouts will tell you, and it is the best thing to fall back upon when fresh meat fails. We can't get along without it, and that is a fact; hey, Charlie?"
Woods, hills, running streams, the sawmill and the gristmill, the path across the meadow, the open road, the miracle of the seasons, the sugar-bush, the freshet that carried away the bridge, the first Spring flowers peeping from beneath the snow on the south side of rotting logs, the trees bursting into leaf, the hills white with blossoms of wild cherry and hawthorn, the Saturday afternoon when the boys could fish, the old swimming-hole, the bathing of the little ones in the creek, the growing crops in the bottom-land, bee-trees and wild honey, coon-hunts by moonlight, the tracks of deer down by the salt-lick, bears in the green corn, harvest-time, hog-killing days, frost upon the pumpkin and fodder in the shock, wild turkeys in the clearing, revival-meetings, spelling-bees, debates at the schoolhouse, school at the log schoolhouse in Stockbridge, barn-raisings, dances in the new barn, quilting-bees, steers to break, colts to ride, apple butter, soft soap, pickled pigs' feet, smoked hams, side-meat, shelled walnuts, coonskins on the barn-door, Winter and the first fall of snow, boots to grease, harness to mend, backlogs, hickory-nuts, cider, a few books and all the other wonderful and enchanting things that a country life, not too isolated, brings to the boys and girls born where the rain makes musical patter on the roof and the hand of a loving mother tucks you in at night!
Oscar had taken a few lessons in cooking from his mother, before leaving home, and the two men had had some experience in that line of duty when out on hunting expeditious in Illinois, years before. So they managed to make coffee, fry slices of side-meat, and bake a hoe-cake of Indian-corn meal. "Hog and hominy," said Sandy's father.
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