A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

All sorts of American pastry.

Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries,

which are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry,

but in a more liberal way.

Ice-water–not prepared in the ineffectual goblet,

but in the sincere and capable refrigerator.

Americans intending to spend a year or so in European hotels,

will do well to copy this bill and carry it along. They will

find it an excellent thing to get up an appetite with,

in the dispiriting presence of the squalid table d’ho^te.

Foreigners cannot enjoy our food, I suppose, any more than we

can enjoy theirs. It is not strange; for tastes are made,

not born. I might glorify my bill of fare until I was tired;

but after all, the Scotchman would shake his head and say,

“Where’s your haggis?” and the Fijian would sigh and say,

“Where’s your missionary?”

I have a neat talent in matters pertaining to nourishment.

This has met with professional recognition. I have often

furnished recipes for cook-books. Here are some designs

for pies and things, which I recently prepared for a

friend’s projected cook-book, but as I forgot to furnish

diagrams and perspectives, they had to be left out,

of course.

RECIPE FOR AN ASH-CAKE

Take a lot of water and add to it a lot of coarse

Indian-meal and about a quarter of a lot of salt.

Mix well together, knead into the form of a “pone,” and let

the pone stand awhile–not on its edge, but the other way.

Rake away a place among the embers, lay it there,

and cover it an inch deep with hot ashes. When it

is done, remove it; blow off all the ashes but one layer;

butter that one and eat.

N.B.–No household should ever be without this talisman.

It has been noticed that tramps never return for another

ash-cake.

———-

RECIPE FOR NEW ENGLISH PIE

To make this excellent breakfast dish, proceed as

follows: Take a sufficiency of water and a sufficiency

of flour, and construct a bullet-proof dough.

Work this into the form of a disk, with the edges turned

up some three-fourths of an inch. Toughen and kiln-dry

in a couple days in a mild but unvarying temperature.

Construct a cover for this redoubt in the same way and

of the same material. Fill with stewed dried apples;

aggravate with cloves, lemon-peel, and slabs of citron;

add two portions of New Orleans sugars, then solder

on the lid and set in a safe place till it petrifies.

Serve cold at breakfast and invite your enemy.

———-

RECIPE FOR GERMAN COFFEE

Take a barrel of water and bring it to a boil; rub a chicory

berry against a coffee berry, then convey the former

into the water. Continue the boiling and evaporation

until the intensity of the flavor and aroma of the coffee

and chicory has been diminished to a proper degree;

then set aside to cool. Now unharness the remains of a

once cow from the plow, insert them in a hydraulic press,

and when you shall have acquired a teaspoon of that

pale-blue juice which a German superstition regards

as milk, modify the malignity of its strength in a bucket

of tepid water and ring up the breakfast. Mix the

beverage in a cold cup, partake with moderation, and keep

a wet rag around your head to guard against over-excitement.

———-

TO CARVE FOWLS IN THE GERMAN FASHION

Use a club, and avoid the joints.

CHAPTER L

[Titian Bad and Titian Good]

I wonder why some things are? For instance, Art is allowed

as much indecent license today as in earlier times–

but the privileges of Literature in this respect have been

sharply curtailed within the past eighty or ninety years.

Fielding and Smollett could portray the beastliness

of their day in the beastliest language; we have plenty

of foul subjects to deal with in our day, but we are

not allowed to approach them very near, even with nice

and guarded forms of speech. But not so with Art.

The brush may still deal freely with any subject,

however revolting or indelicate. It makes a body ooze

sarcasm at every pore, to go about Rome and Florence and see