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Updated: May 6, 2025
But the sheep shearing came, and the hay season next, and then the harvest of small corn ... then the sweating of the apples, and the turning of the cider mill and the stacking of the firewood, and netting of the wood-cocks, and the springes to be mended in the garden and by the hedgerows, where the blackbirds hop to the molehills in the white October mornings and gray birds come to look for snails at the time when the sun is rising.
The humble log hut which whilom nestled this improving family snugly within its narrow but comfortable walls, stands hard by, in ignominious contrast, degraded into a cow-house or pig-sty; and the whole scene reminds one forcibly of a fable, which I am surprised has never been recorded, of an aspiring snail who abandoned his humble habitation, which he had long filled with great respectability, to crawl into the empty shell of a lobster, where he would no doubt have resided with great style and splendor, the envy and the hate of all the painstaking snails in the neighborhood, had he not perished with cold in one corner of his stupendous mansion.
They think nothing of tasting a caterpillar that birds will not touch, in order to discover whether it owes its immunity from attack to some nauseous, bitter, or pungent flavouring; and they even advise you calmly to discriminate between two closely similar species of snails by trying which of them when chewed has a delicate soupçon of oniony aroma.
Pipchin, "ogress and child queller," whose castle "was in a steep bye street.... where the small front gardens had the property of producing nothing but marigolds, whatever was sown in them; and where snails were constantly discovered holding on to the street doors.... In the winter time the air couldn't be got out of the Castle, and in the summer time it couldn't be got in.... It was not naturally a fresh smelling house; and in the window of the front parlour, which was never opened, Mrs.
"Nonsense, Denis; they eat beef and mutton just the same as we do. As to the frogs and snails, these are expensive luxuries, just as game is with us. There is nothing more nasty about snails after all than there is about oysters; and as to frogs they were regarded as great dainties by the Romans, who certainly knew what good eating was."
Many and many a pleasant stroll they had in Covent Garden Market; snuffing up the perfume of the fruits and flowers, wondering at the magnificence of the pineapples and melons; catching glimpses down side avenues, of rows and rows of old women, seated on inverted baskets, shelling peas; looking unutterable things at the fat bundles of asparagus with which the dainty shops were fortified as with a breastwork; and, at the herbalist's doors, gratefully inhaling scents as of veal-stuffing yet uncooked, dreamily mixed up with capsicums, brown-paper, seeds, even with hints of lusty snails and fine young curly leeches.
The snails were red-tanned. "Frenchmen!" shouted Dan. "No, 'tain't, neither. Da-ad!" "That's no French," said Disko. "Salters, your blame luck holds tighter'n a screw in a keg-head." "I've eyes. It's Uncle Abishai." "You can't nowise tell fer sure." "The head-king of all Jonahs," groaned Tom Platt. "Oh, Salters, Salters, why wasn't you abed an' asleep?"
In the center of the room was a table, made of clay and painted in bright colors; and seated at this table, with his spectacles on his nose, was the famous Doctor Prairiedog, engaged in eating a dish of stewed snails. "'Good morning, said the Doctor; 'will you have some breakfast?
Then taking a monstrous pin from out of the edge of his jacket, he picked up one of the snails with his left hand, used the pin cleverly, and dragged out one of the creatures from its shell, reduced to about half its original size, blew it, dipped it in the paper of salt, and, to my horror and disgust, ate it.
We are off again, but now the sun shines from a cloudless sky on a sea of sapphire, and the passengers are sunning themselves on deck like snails after a shower. I'm glad, after all, I didn't go back from Marseilles by train. We found a dilapidated fiacre driven by a still more dilapidated cocher, who, for the sum of six francs, drove us to the town.
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