But he is not without the honor due to martyrdom—is Peter, for Mrs. Sanborn had him stuffed, and presented him to "Fanny," who took him to California, where he survived the great San Francisco earthquake.
"He must have been our mascot," said Lloyd Osbourne to me long after, "for the fire that followed the earthquake came just as far as the gate and no farther."
Since the cup that cheers is not customary in Quaker homes our hostess proposed an egg-nog by way of afternoon collation and all entered with zest into the mixing of the decoction. One brought the eggs, another the sugar-bowl, while our host went to the cellar for that brand of John Barleycorn that transmutes every beverage to a toast.
Now, while Stevenson came to regard new-laid eggs as the natural manna of the desert, he had his doubts as to the feasibility of egg-nog, seeing that milk is a necessary constituent. He did not know, you see, that a little White Alderney cow was chewing the end of salt-meadow grasses in the woods nearby, and, even as he doubted, Mrs. Sanborn and her Ganymedes had brought in a jug of the white fluid, topped with a froth like sea-foam.
"It's nectar for the gods on Olympus," said I—meaning the milk.
"True Ambrosia of the meadows," agreed Mrs. Sanborn.
"Well, this is Elysium, and we are the gods to-day."
Elysium-on-Manasquan.
"To be more exact," said Stevenson, "it should be Argos; it was there they celebrated the cow, as we are now celebrating——"
"Tidy," said Mrs. Sanborn.