"They are really delicious when properly treated,"--I wonder if that is so.
But I must pause here to tell you a bit about myself. I am not an old maid, but, at the time this occurs, I am unmarried, and I am thirty-four years old--not quite beyond the pale of hope. Men and women never do pass beyond that--not those of sanguine temperament at any rate. I am neither rich nor poor, but repose in a comfortable stratum betwixt and between. I keep house, or rather it keeps me, and a respectable woman who, with her husband, manages my domestic affairs, lends the odor of sanctity and propriety to my single existence. I am of medium height, between blond and brunette, and am said to have a modicum of both brains and good looks.
The recipe I read set me a-thinking. I was in my library, before a big log fire. The room was comfortable; glowing with rich, warm firelight at that moment, but it was lonesome, and I was lonely.
Supposing, I said to myself, I really had a husband; how should I cook him?
The words of an old lady came into my mind. She had listened to this particular recipe, and after a moment's silence had leaned over, and whispered in my ear: "First catch your fish."
But supposing he were now caught, and seated in that rocker across from me, before this blazing fire.
I walked to the window--to one side of me lives a little thrush, at least she is trim and comely, and always dresses in brown. Just now she is without her door, stooping over her baby, who is sitting like a tiny queen in her chariot, just returned from an airing.
It isn't the question of husband alone--he might be managed--roasted, stewed, or parboiled, but it's the whole family--a household. Take the children, for instance; if they could be set up on shelves in glass cases, as fast as they came, all might be well, but they will run around, and Heaven only knows what they will run into. Why, had I children, I should plug both ears with cotton, for fear I should hear the door-bell. I know it would ring constantly, and such messages as these would be hurled in: "Several of them have been arrested for blowing up the neighbors with dynamite firecrackers."
"Half a dozen of them have tumbled from off the roof of the house. They escaped injury, but have thrown a nervous lady, over the way, into spasms."
"One or two of them have just been dragged from beneath the electric cars. They seem to be as well as ever, but three of the passengers died of fright."