Cooking is a high art. A wise Egyptian said, long ago: "The degree of taste and skill manifested by a nation in the preparation of food may be regarded as to a very considerable extent proportioned to its culture and refinement." In early times men, only, were deemed capable of handling fire, whether at the altar or the hearthstone. We read in the Scriptures that Abraham prepared cakes of fine meal and a calf tender and good, which, with butter and milk, he set before the three angels in the plains of Mamre. We are told, too, of the chief butler and chief baker as officers in the household of King Pharaoh. I would like to call the attention of my readers to the dignity of this profession, which some young women affect to despise. The fact that angels eat, shows that we may be called upon in the next sphere to cook even for cherubim and seraphim. How important, then, to cultivate one's gifts in that direction!
With such facts before us, we stirred and pounded, whipped and ground, coaxed the delicate meats from crabs and lobsters and the succulent peas from the pods, and grated corn and cocoanut with the same cheerfulness and devotion that we played Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words" on the piano, the Spanish Fandango on our guitars, or danced the minuet, polka, lancers, or Virginia reel.
During the day of the wedding, every stage coach was crowded with guests from the North, South, East, and West, and, as the twilight deepened, carriages began to roll in with neighbors and friends living at short distances, until the house and grounds were full. A son of Bishop Coxe, who married the tall and stately sister of Roscoe Conkling, performed the ceremony. The beautiful young bride was given away by her Uncle Gerrit. The congratulations, the feast, and all went off with fitting decorum in the usual way. The best proof of the excellence of our viands was that they were all speedily swept from mortal view, and every housewife wanted a recipe for something.
As the grand dinner was to come off the next day, our thoughts now turned in that direction. The responsibility rested heavily on the heads of the chief actors, and they reported troubled dreams and unduly early rising. Dear Belle Swift was up in season and her white soup stood serenely in a tin pan, on an upper shelf, before the town clock struck seven. If it had not taken that position so early, it might have been incorporated with higher forms of life than that into which it eventually fell. Another artist was also on the wing early, and in pursuit of a tin pan in which to hide her precious compound, she unwittingly seized this one, and the rich white soup rolled down her raven locks like the oil on Aaron's beard, and enveloped her in a veil of filmy whiteness. I heard the splash and the exclamation of surprise and entered the butler's pantry just in time to see the heiress of the Smith estate standing like a statue, tin pan in hand, soup in her curls, her eyebrows and eyelashes,—collar, cuffs, and morning dress saturated,—and Belle, at a little distance, looking at her and the soup on the floor with surprise and disgust depicted on every feature. The tableau was inexpressibly comical, and I could not help laughing outright; whereupon Belle turned on me, and, with indignant tones, said, "If you had been up since four o'clock making that soup you would not stand there like a laughing monkey, without the least feeling of pity!" Poor Lizzie was very sorry, and would have shed tears, but they could not penetrate that film of soup. I tried to apologize, but could only laugh the more when I saw Belle crying and Lizzie standing as if hoping that the soup might be scraped off her and gathered from the floor and made to do duty on the occasion.
After breakfast, ladies and gentlemen, alike in white aprons, crowded into the dining room and kitchen, each to perform the allotted task. George Biddle of Philadelphia and John B. Miller of Utica, in holiday spirits, were irrepressible—everywhere at the same moment, helping or hindering as the case might be. Dear Belle, having only partially recovered from the white-soup catastrophe, called Mr. Biddle to hold the ice-cream freezer while she poured in the luscious compound she had just prepared. He held it up without resting it on anything, while Belle slowly poured in the cream. As the freezer had no indentations round the top or rim to brace the thumbs and fingers, when it grew suddenly heavier his hands slipped and down went the whole thing, spattering poor Belle and spoiling a beautiful pair of gaiters in which, as she had very pretty feet, she took a laudable pride. In another corner sat Wealthea Backus, grating some cocoanut. While struggling in that operation, John Miller, feeling hilarious, was annoying her in divers ways; at length she drew the grater across his nose, gently, as she intended, but alas! she took the skin off, and John's beauty, for the remainder of the festivities, was marred with a black patch on that prominent feature. One can readily imagine the fun that must have transpired where so many amateur cooks were at work round one table, with all manner of culinary tools and ingredients.
As assistant-at-large I was summoned to the cellar, where Mrs. Cornelia Barclay of New York was evolving from a pan of flour and water that miracle in the pie department called puff paste. This, it seems, can only be accomplished where the thermometer is below forty, and near a refrigerator where the compound can be kept cold until ready to be popped into the oven. No jokes or nonsense here. With queenly dignity the flour and water were gently compressed. Here one hand must not know what the other doeth. Bits of butter must be so deftly introduced that even the rolling pin may be unconscious of its work. As the artist gave the last touch to an exquisite lemon pie, with a mingled expression of pride and satisfaction on her classic features, she ordered me to bear it to the oven. In the transit I met Madam Belle. "Don't let that fall," she said sneeringly. Fortunately I did not, and returned in triumph to transport another. I was then summoned to a consultation with the committee on toasts, consisting of James Cochrane, John Miller, and myself. Mr. Miller had one for each guest already written, all of which we accepted and pronounced very good.
Strange to say, a most excellent dinner emerged from all this uproar and confusion. The table, with its silver, china, flowers, and rich viands, the guests in satins, velvets, jewels, soft laces, and bright cravats, together reflecting all the colors of the prism, looked as beautiful as the rainbow after a thunderstorm.
Twenty years ago I made my last sad visit to that spot so rich with pleasant memories of bygone days. A few relatives and family friends gathered there to pay the last tokens of respect to our noble cousin. It was on one of the coldest days of gray December that we laid him in the frozen earth, to be seen no more. He died from a stroke of apoplexy in New York city, at the home of his niece, Mrs. Ellen Cochrane Walter, whose mother was Mr. Smith's only sister. The journey from New York to Peterboro was cold and dreary, and climbing the hills from Canastota in an open sleigh, nine hundred feet above the valley, with the thermometer below zero, before sunrise, made all nature look as sombre as the sad errand on which we came.
Outside the mansion everything in its wintry garb was cold and still, and all within was silent as the grave. The central figure, the light and joy of that home, had vanished forever. He who had welcomed us on that threshold for half a century would welcome us no more. We did what we could to dissipate the gloom that settled on us all. We did not intensify our grief by darkening the house and covering ourselves with black crape, but wore our accustomed dresses of chastened colors and opened all the blinds that the glad sunshine might stream in. We hung the apartment where the casket stood with wreaths of evergreens, and overhead we wove his favorite mottoes in living letters, "Equal rights for all!" "Rescue Cuba now!" The religious services were short and simple; the Unitarian clergyman from Syracuse made a few remarks, the children from the orphan asylum, in which he was deeply interested, sang an appropriate hymn, and around the grave stood representatives of the Biddles, the Dixwells, the Sedgwicks, the Barclays, and Stantons, and three generations of his immediate family. With a few appropriate words from General John Cochrane we left our beloved kinsman alone in his last resting place. Two months later, on his birthday, his wife, Ann Carroll Fitzhugh, passed away and was laid by his side. Theirs was a remarkably happy union of over half a century, and they were soon reunited in the life eternal.
Chapter V.
Our Wedding Journey.