The balls given by this society are known as the Monday Germans, and at these balls, which are held in the Lyric Theater, the city's débutantes are presented to society. As in all southern cities, much is made of débutantes in Baltimore. On the occasion of their first Monday German all their friends send them flowers, and they appear flower-laden at the ball, followed by their relatives who are freighted down with their darlings' superfluous bouquets. The modern steps are danced at these balls, but there are usually a few cotillion figures, albeit without "favors." And perhaps the best part of it all is that the first ball of the season, and the Christmas ball, end at one o'clock, and that all the others end at midnight. That seems to me a humane arrangement, although the opinion may only signify that I am growing old.
Another very characteristic phase of Baltimore life, and of southern life—at least in many cities—is that, instead of dealing with the baker, and the grocer, and the fish-market man around the corner, all Baltimore women go to the great market-sheds and do their own selecting under what amounts to one great roof.
The Lexington Market, to which my companion and I had the good fortune to be taken by a Baltimore lady, is comparable, in its picturesqueness with Les Halles of Paris, or the fascinating market in Seattle, where the Japanese pile up their fresh vegetables with such charming show of taste. The great sheds cover three long blocks, and in the countless stall-like shops which they contain may be found everything for the table, including flowers to trim it and after-dinner sweets. I doubt that any northern housewife knows such a market or such a profusion of comestibles. In one stall may be purchased meat, in the next vegetables, in the next fish, in the next bread and cake, in the next butter and buttermilk, in the next fruit, or game, or flowers, or—at Christmas time—tree trimmings. These stalls, with their contents, are duplicated over and over again; and if your fair guide be shopping for a dinner party, at which two men from out of town are to be initiated into the delights of the Baltimore cuisine, she may order up the costly and aristocratic Malacoclemmys, the diamond-back terrapin, sacred in Baltimore as is the Sacred Cod himself in Boston.
If she is shopping for a dinner party, she may order the costly and aristocratic diamond-back terrapin, sacred in Baltimore as is the Sacred Cod in Boston
The admirable encyclopedia of Messrs. Funk & Wagnall's informs me that "the diamond-back salt-water terrapin ... is caught in salt marshes along the coast from New England to Texas, the finest being those of the Massachusetts and the northern coasts." The italics are mine; and upon the italicized passage I expect the mayor and town council of Baltimore, or even the Government of the State of Maryland, to proceed against Messrs. Funk & Wagnalls, whose valuable volumes should forthwith be placed upon the State's index expurgatorius.
Of a marketman I obtained the following lore concerning the tortoise of the terrapin species:
In the Baltimore markets four kinds of terrapin are sold—not counting muskrat, which is sometimes disguised with sauce and sherry and served as a substitute. The cheapest and toughest terrapin is known as the "slider." Slightly superior to the "slider" is the "fat-back," measuring, usually, about nine or ten inches in length, and costing, at retail, fifty cents to a dollar, according to season and demand. Somewhat better than the "fat-back," but of about the same size and cost, is the "golden-stripe" terrapin; but all these are the merest poor relations of the diamond-back. Some diamond-back terrapin are supplied for the Baltimore market from North Carolina, but these, my marketman assured me, are inferior to those of Chesapeake Bay. (Everything in, or from, North Carolina seems to be inferior, according to the people of the other Southern States.)
Although there is a closed season for terrapin, the value of the diamond-back causes him to be relentlessly hunted during the open season, with the result that, like the delectable lobster, he is passing. As the foolish lobster-fishermen of northern New England are killing the goose—or, rather, the crustacean—that lays the golden eggs, so are the terrapin hunters of the Chesapeake. Two or three decades ago, lobster and terrapin alike were eaten in the regions of their abundance as cheap food. One Baltimore lady told me that her father's slaves, on an Eastern Shore plantation, used to eat terrapin. Yet behold the cost of the precious diamond-back to-day! In his smaller sizes, according to my marketman, he is worth about a dollar an inch, while when grown to fair proportions he costs as much as a railroad ticket from Baltimore to Chicago. And for my part I would about as soon eat the ticket as the terrapin.