THE CLAM-BAKE.

JEREMY SHORT AMONG THE RHODE ISLANDERS.

Well, sirs, Robin is a gallant poney, but riding over these confounded hills has almost shaken me to pieces, and, at every stride, for the last ten minutes, I’ve heard my bones rattling like pennies in a beggar’s alms-box. My mouth’s as parched as if dried up by lightning—but be sociable, lads, and give us a drinking cup, if it’s no better than a clam shell. Ah! that’s divine, better than ambrosia, real Cogniac I declare. How are you, captain? doctor? general?—bless my soul! if yonder isn’t Providence. Egad! this is a delightful place—beats Rowseville all hollow—it only wants a few trees here, and a clump of woodland there, to make it as cool and shady as a Mussulman’s paradise. The bay is alive with craft, and yonder—just look at them—are two jaunty rascals racing. How the little fellow eats to windward—they are throwing ballast overboard from the larger craft—whizz, whizz, one can almost hear the water bubbling along the wash-board as she bends to the blast—and now, side by side, they go, the foam crackling over the bow, and drenching the crew all the way aft. Huzza! the little fellow has won, and dances into the wind as Taglioni when she springs on the stage, more like a spirit than a human being.

They’re opening the bake—are they? Then I’ll take a seat by the heap here, with your leave, sir, and go to work. Heaven bless the Indians for having taught us how to cook clams! Yes, there’s all the difference in the world between eating your clam at a table, and eating it hot and smoking from the heap. I’d as lief think of turning Grahamite, and going through a purgatory of bran bread and water, as give up a seat at the bake. It’s there you get a clam in all its glory; in its spirituality, I may say—egad! it’s as sweet as a kiss from a blushing angel of sixteen. The heap, sir! why it’s an earthly paradise—the το χχλον of existence—the all in all of the epicure. Ah! the perfume of that steam is delicious—just see how poetically the vapor curls away into the air, for all the world like the morning mists rolling upward in the Catskill valley—you’ve been at the mountain house, no doubt. And then the clams themselves! Clams! egad, they are food for immortals! Isn’t this a superb fellow?—how snowy his shell—how perfect his form—how savory his juice—how rich his color—how luscious his taste:—by the gods! if Apicius were here, he’d dance a saraband, or snap his fingers through a cachuca, in sheer ecstasy at having found a dish that would have made jubilee on Olympus. Hip, hip, hurrah! haven’t I caught a jewel of a fellow? None of your rascally quohogs, but the real Narragansett clam for me. The poor, deluded wretches on the Jersey shore, who think their round-shells are clams, and chew for half an hour at what isn’t better than sole leather, have no more idea of what a real clam is, than a Hottentot of Heaven, or—what is the same thing—a crusty old bachelor of matrimony. The man who never ate a Narragansett clam can’t expect to live long, or die happy; he may dwindle out a miserable existence, but—take my word for it—he is a poor devil after all, no better than the horse in the mill, going the same eternal round, and living on salt hay and stagnant water. Heaven have mercy on the souls of such wretches! Ah! that’s a good fellow, stir up the heap; and here’s as juicy a villain as ever roasted, tall and slender, “in linked sweetness long drawn out.” Another and another—I shall faint with ecstasy, and must really take a little to calm my transports. Chowder may be fine, turtle soup glorious, tautog a dish for kings, but clams! clams!! sirs, would almost raise the dead.

“Wi’ tippenny, we fear nae evil,