When the mechanic, when the artist, collects a few friends to enjoy a relief which is the more grateful because it is the rarer; what is one of the dishes always put on the table? a turkey stuffed with Lyons sausage and with chestnuts of Lyons.
In the highest gastronomical circles, in the most select reunions, where politics yield to dissertations on the taste, for what do people wait? What do they wish for? a dinde truffe at the second course. My secret memoirs tell me that its flavor has more than once lighted up most diplomatic faces.
FINANCIAL INFLUENCE OF THE TURKEY.
The importation of turkeys became the cause of a great addition to the public fortune, and occasioned a very considerable commerce.
By raising turkeys the farmers were able the more surely to pay their rents. Young girls often acquired a very sufficient dowry, and towns-folk who wished to eat them had to pay round prices for them.
In a purely financial point of view turkeys demand much attention.
I have reason to believe, that between the first of November and the end of February, three hundred dindon truffees are consumed per diem. The sum total is 30,000 turkeys.
The price of every turkey in that condition is at least twenty francs, and the sum of the whole is not less than 720,000 francs— a very pretty sum of money. One must add a similar sum for the fowls, pheasants, pullets and partridges, suffered in the same way, and which are every day exhibited in the provision shops, as a punishment for beholders who are too poor to buy them.
EXPLOIT OF THE PROFESSOR.
While I was living at Hartford, in Connecticut, I was lucky enough to kill a wild turkey. This exploit deserves to be transmitted to posterity, and I tell it with especial complaisance as I am myself the hero.