A Preface.
At the request of the ladies of a church in Marion, Alabama, Trotwood wrote the following Preface, a few weeks ago for a cook-book which the ladies are publishing with a view of paying off a church debt:
The climate, the soil, the very air play their part in the art of good recipes. The cooking of the North and West is very different from that of the South, for Southern recipes are the products of sunshine and Southlands, of culture, of rest, of the Old South.
And nowhere has the Old South flowered to sweeter perfume than in my native town of Marion. Macaulay’s New Zealander, if placed in Delmonico’s would straightway beckon for cold clam, and good King Edward, if stranded in New Zealand, would soon fish an oyster cocktail out of some unruffled kiss of the sea.
Recipes, indeed, are a test of one’s civilization—one’s religion—one’s mentality. They are the products of the centuries beginning with the primitive clam and ending with the thousand glories of the oyster. They are the literature of the laughter which comes with good eating, the bon mots of jolly stomachs, the sparkle of centuries of good cheer, the morals of mucous membranes, the religion of healthy livers.
Charles Lamb tells us that roast pig, for instance, was accidentally discovered by the primitive man in the burning of his crude stable in which was a litter of pigs. After that, fires were frequent and log stables few. And I doubt not if the history of every good recipe in this splendid collection were traced to its birth, it would show an unbroken line of progress as clearly defined as Magna Charta.
Think not lightly, then, of the book, for you have in your hand the concentrated perfection of the culinary ages. The dash of Caesar into Briton, the strength of the Dane, the brilliancy of the Norman, the excellency of Angle and Saxon, the glory of the English and the old Scotch. It is history, religion, progress. It is a novel more interesting than all novels, a poem which made Tennyson possible.
I have not read these recipes. I speak from higher authority. I have tasted them. From my infancy up I have known them. They are part of my life and this article returned to them is a feeble result of their cause. They are interwoven with the memory of my home, in the song of the pine tree, in the opal gleam of the old red hills, in the sweetness, the culture, the religion of Marion. And to-night, should Abou Ben Adhem’s Angel come to me and ask for the name of one blessed beyond his dues, I would answer: “It is I, O Angel, blessed beyond words in the mother I had, in the father; blessed in my birthplace, in the people among whom I grew up, in the moral sweetness of their schools and churches, blessed that I was born in
MARION.
An opal sky and a sea of green,
Marion.
And ruby-red the hills between,
Marion.
Twilight tints that blend and shine
Through sinking clouds and sighing pine—
Dear native land—sweet mother mine—
Marion.
Rest and peace and sweet release,
Marion.
Home and the loves that never cease,
Marion.
O, cradling stars from out the glen—
O, sweet moon-mother, come again—
O, Peace that passeth human ken—
Marion.