"Gold has always been considered one of the ingredients of the elixir of life, and this pumpkin gold, taken in the form of pie will do as much toward giving one eternal life as anything on this unhappy old globe."
THERE is something good~natured and honest and wholesome about a pumpkin; something solid and hearty, and a placid rotundity that seems very restful in this lean, nervous, hurrying age of the world.
When will you see a pleasanter sight in all the sightly month of October than a community of them straggling about among the cornstooks, and turning up their comfortable, yellow faces to the sun. I always feel my face widening out with unwonted good humor when I look upon their contented countenances.
What good dispositions they seem to have; —too genial and amiable for this frosty, bovine, pie-loving world. How sociable they are among themselves. Sometimes when I come suddenly out of the woods, or over the hill-top, I catch little groups of them gossiping together, but when I arrive in the family circle every face is blandly blank. That always convinces me that they were talking about some of their human neighbors. Perhaps they are only making estimates of the corn crop for the crows’ Board of Trade, or discussing the probabilities of a frosty night. I have never caught a word of this gossip, although I have heard the murmur of it afar off; nor have I distinctly seen their lips move, or their eyes turn, but late one evening, as I was coming home across the field, I fancied I saw one wink solemnly at me; beneath a big leaf. It might have been the shadow of the wind-shaken leaf, or it might have been a rabbit or gopher that did the winking, but I preferred to believe in the pumpkin. I saved it for seed, in hopes of raising a new winking variety, but although the seed grew famously, the winks failed to develop.
When will you see a pleasanter sight in all the sightly month of October than a community of them straggling about among the cornstooks, and turning up their comfortable, yellow faces to the sun. I always feel my face widening out with unwonted good humor when I look upon their contented countenances.
What good dispositions they seem to have; —too genial and amiable for this frosty, bovine, pie-loving world. How sociable they are among themselves. Sometimes when I come suddenly out of the woods, or over the hill-top, I catch little groups of them gossiping together, but when I arrive in the family circle every face is blandly blank. That always convinces me that they were talking about some of their human neighbors. Perhaps they are only making estimates of the corn crop for the crows’ Board of Trade, or discussing the probabilities of a frosty night. I have never caught a word of this gossip, although I have heard the murmur of it afar off; nor have I distinctly seen their lips move, or their eyes turn, but late one evening, as I was coming home across the field, I fancied I saw one wink solemnly at me; beneath a big leaf. It might have been the shadow of the wind-shaken leaf, or it might have been a rabbit or gopher that did the winking, but I preferred to believe in the pumpkin. I saved it for seed, in hopes of raising a new winking variety, but although the seed grew famously, the winks failed to develop.
The pumpkin is an indispensable piece of furniture in the cornfield, as well as in the pantry. Was there ever a boy husking corn who did not have one of these golden thrones, thrones fit for kings and princes of the blood? I often rest on one while I wait for my dog to dig out a reluctant mouse from under a cornshock, or while I interview some lonely, frost-nipped husker who is delving pure gold from the brown stooks throwing it in heaps about the field. The pumpkins are gold too, red Australian gold, lying about in huge nuggets and to be had for the picking up. If Don Quixote were to see one of our Western cornfields, what a glorious victory he would have over the trembling cornstooks that guard those fields of gold, and what a mass of treasure he would carry away with him, after furnishing himself with a new helmet of pumpkin shell. How the cows and boys would run after him until he mistook them for buffaloes and savages and attacked them with that lance that so valiantly slew the wine-skins.
Gold has always been considered one of the ingredients of the elixir of life, and this pumpkin gold, taken in the form of pie will do as much toward giving one eternal life as anything on this unhappy old globe. Like all elixirs it must be made just right; the proper rites must be observed at the proper times, but when it is done it is something worth doing. and eating, and digesting with care. It fills one with satisfaction and peace,—-perhaps almost too much satisfaction for the number of pieces.
It is an honor to the woman who invented it, to the woman who makes it—right—and to the man who eats it. It is plain and honest, and worthy of the blessings that are asked over it, which is more than can be said of everything on our tables. I don’t know that one can find a pleasanter appetizer than coming into a warm kitchen on a biting fall day, and encountering a deck-load of pumpkin pies coming out of the oven. and taking flight into the pantry. Life ceases to be a blank. One’s faith in a divine Providence strengthens and grows tangible, and the world seems a good place to be in and stay in. While we are sure of such pies in this world, one hates to try another on uncertainties.
It is an honor to the woman who invented it, to the woman who makes it—right—and to the man who eats it. It is plain and honest, and worthy of the blessings that are asked over it, which is more than can be said of everything on our tables. I don’t know that one can find a pleasanter appetizer than coming into a warm kitchen on a biting fall day, and encountering a deck-load of pumpkin pies coming out of the oven. and taking flight into the pantry. Life ceases to be a blank. One’s faith in a divine Providence strengthens and grows tangible, and the world seems a good place to be in and stay in. While we are sure of such pies in this world, one hates to try another on uncertainties.
Perhaps our New England grandmothers might have invented a better pie than this, but doubtless they never did, although they came very near it in a certain kind well stuffed with Duchess apples. It is a monument to their memories. wherein their virtues are recorded in letters of pumpkin on tablets of crust, or vice versa.
Though the pumpkin in the field is gold, it is crude; this is the refined gold, stamped and coined in convenient sizes, and it will pass current with any man for what it is worth. The size may seem a little unwieldy for change, but put in the right pocket it incommodes no man or woman, and especially no boy. Where the pumpkin pie is there the boy is, and where the boy is there a goodly share of the pie is, world without end. That is also true of the girl, at least it was of the girl I knew.
If you have ever taught a country school during the months of October and November, and have been present at the mystic hour of midday when dinner-pails yawn and give up their contents, you have had a vision of pumpkin pie, and have seen it in all its varieties and conditions. I had that experience once,—-a pleasant one as I now recall it,--and I used to amuse myself counting the pieces that certain sturdy boys and girls managed to put away under their jackets and aprons. There was one poor, pinched, pieless boy whose parents were averse to pork and pie in all their forms. I shall never forget the hungry, disconsolate way in which he used to watch the other children gorging themselves on the forbidden sweets, like intelligent little anacondas. I longed to fill him up with pie and make him feel like other boys for once in his life, but I feared the curse of his swine hating mother.
To properly finish I ought to give my recipe for pumpkin pie, but alas! all I can say is, “ Make them as your grand-mother made them in the old farmhouse kitchen.” If you cannot do that I sympathize with you, for I cannot either. I do not suppose any one can now-a-days, although I sometimes come across one that has a faint, far-away hint of the old flavor.
We were young then, and the bloom was on the pie,—the bloom of a childish hunger, developed by romps in the haymow, the orchard or the corn-field,—and our paths were lined with pumpkin pies and peace. I like to fancy that some day I shall get just the right mixture of ingredients, and that the elixir will come out as good as it used to be when I was a child, but until I succeed I shall have no hope of living forever.
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