"Why how can anybody go to a circus without eating peanuts? And about three-fourths of all the peanuts are developed under ground by burying the blossoms."
"It's all very funny," said Jack. "But the funniest thing about it is the fetish worship of that word 'vegetable.' Patent medicines are often advertised as 'purely vegetable,' as if that settled the question of their harmlessness. Yet I know at least a dozen 'purely vegetable' plants that grow in these woods which are poisonous."
"Of course," answered the Doctor, "and for that matter the most virulent poisons known to man are 'purely vegetable.' There's strychnia for example, as purely vegetable in its origin as apple-butter itself is. And there are others, such as morphine, stramonium, and nux vomica and worst of all hydrocyanic acid, commonly called prussic acid. That is so deadly that it is almost never made or kept in its pure state, because a single whiff of its fumes in the nostrils would kill almost instantly. Yet it is an extract of peach pits or bitter almonds."
"Well now I say," broke in Tom, "let's return to the subject of foods, for I am hungry, and I'm going to declare war on the Doctor if he doesn't let me have some light thing to eat like a chop from that wild boar or something of an equally digestible sort."
"Well, we'll see about that," said the Doctor, going to Tom's bed and examining and redressing his wounds. After the inspection he said:
"You were entirely right, Tom, when you called yourself a perfectly healthy human animal a little while ago. I never yet saw wounds heal in the way they are doing on you. So you may sit up for dinner to-day, and you may have whatever you want to eat."
"All right!" cried Tom, hastily scrambling out of bed. "My clamor is for pork. How are you going to cook the pig boys?"
After a little consultation, it was decided to hang the shoat before the great fire in the new fire place, and roast it whole.
"After all, it doesn't weigh more than forty pounds, and that isn't much to divide between six of us," said Harry, laughingly.
"And besides," added Ed, "roast wild shoat is as good cold as hot, or rather better. So we'll roast the gentleman whole, and I for one volunteer to sit down before him and baste him so that all the juices that belong to him shall be found succulently pervading his muscular structure."