He has paid
$4.50 for each mattress, as a special concession to what he understands
city prejudice to require. The cheap painted chamber-sets are holiday
adorning by the side of the cherry and pine in the bedrooms of his family.
He buys fresh meat every day for dinner; and nobody can understand the
importance of this fact who is not familiar with the habit of salt-pork
and codfish in our rural districts. That the meat is tough, pale, stringy
is not his fault; no other is to be bought. Stetson, himself, if he dealt
with this country butcher, could do no better. Vegetables? Yes, he has
planted them. If we look out of our windows, we can see them on their
winding way. They will be ripe by and by. He never tasted peas in his life
before the Fourth of July, or cucumbers before the middle of August. He
hears that there are such things; but he thinks they must be "dreadful
unhealthy, them things forced out of season,"--and, whether healthy or
not, he can't get them. We couldn't ourselves, if we were keeping house in
the same township.
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