Poor benighted Northerner that I am, I had to ask what ash cake was. It is a kind of corn cake, Molly told me, the parent, so to speak, of the corn dodger, and the grandparent of hoecake. It has to be prepared carefully and then cooked in the hot ashes—cooked "jes so," as Molly said.

Having learned about ash cake, I demanded more Pike County culinary lore, whereupon I was told, partly by my host, and partly by Molly, about the oldtime wedding cooks.

Wedding cooks were the best cooks in the South, supercooks, with state-wide reputations. When there was a wedding a dinner was given at the home of the bride, for all the wedding guests, and it was in the preparation of this repast that the wedding cook of the bride's family showed what she could do. That dinner was on the day of the wedding. On the next day the entire company repaired to the home of the groom's family, where another dinner was served—a dinner in which the wedding cook belonging to this family tried to outdo that of the day before. This latter feast was known as the "infair." But all these old Southern customs seem to have departed now, along with the wedding cooks themselves. The latter very seldom came to sale, being regarded as the most valuable of all slaves. Once in a while when some leading family was in financial difficulties and was forced to sell its wedding cook she would bring as much as eight or ten times the price of an ordinary female slave.

After dinner, when we moved out to the living room, we found a large, green table all in place, with the chips arranged in little piles. But let me introduce you to the players.

First, there was Colonel Edgar Stark, our host, genial and warm-hearted over dinner; cold and inscrutable behind his spectacles when poker chips appeared.

Then Colonel Charlie Buffum, heavily built, but with a similar dual personality.

Then Colonel Frank Buffum, State Highway Commissioner; or, as some one called him later in the evening, when the chips began to gather at his place, State "highwayman."

Then Colonel Dick Goodman, banker, raconteur, and connoisseur of edibles and "essentials."

Then Colonel George S. Cake, who, when not a Colonel, is a Commodore: commander of the "Betsy," flagship of the Louisiana Yacht Club, and the most famous craft to ply the Mississippi since the "Prairie Belle." (Don't "call" Colonel Cake when he raises you and at the same time raises his right eyebrow.)