We crossed the stream upon a shaking plank laid from bank to bank, and strolled down the slope to the scene of operations. An immense kettle was swung over a fire of logs that were so many living coals. The smell of Brunswick stew had been wafted to us while we leaned on the fence. A young man, who had the reputation of being an epicure, to the best of his knowledge and ability, superintended the manufacture of the famous delicacy.
“Two dozen chickens went into it!” he assured us. “They wanted to make me think it couldn’t be made without green corn and fresh tomatoes. I knew a trick worth two of that. I have worked it before with dried tomatoes and dried sweet corn soaked overnight.”
He smacked his lips and winked fatuously.
“I’ve great confidence in your culinary skill,” was the good-natured rejoinder.
I recollected that I had heard my father say of this very youth:
“I am never hard upon a fellow who is a fool because he can’t help it!” But I wondered at his gentleness when the epicure prattled on:
“Yes, sir! a stew like this is fit for Democrats to eat. I wouldn’t give a Whig so much as a smell of the pot!”
“You ought to have a tighter lid, then,” with the same good-humored intonation, and we passed on to see the roasts. Shallow pits, six or seven feet long and four feet wide, were half filled with clear coals of hard hickory billets. Iron bars were laid across these, gridiron-like, and half-bullocks and whole sheep were cooking over the scarlet embers. There were six pits, each with its roast. The spot for the speakers’ rostrum and the seats of the audience was well-selected. A deep spring welled up in a grove of maples. The fallen red blossoms carpeted the ground, and the young leaves supplied grateful shade. The meadows sloped gradually toward the spring; rude benches of what we called “puncheon logs”—that is, the trunks of trees hewed in half, and the flat sides laid uppermost—were ranged in the form of an amphitheatre.
“You have a fine day for the meeting,” observed my father to the master of ceremonies, a planter from the Genito neighborhood, who greeted the visitors cordially.