They were the
products of faithful and loving hands to which nature had given a
peculiar direction, perhaps, but which strove always to the best of their
ability.
Slit herrin' was a long-dried, deep-salted edition of the native alewife,
a fish in which Wallencamp abounded. They hung in massive tiers from the
roofs of the Wallencamp barns. The herrin' was cut open, and without
having been submitted to any mollifying process whatever, not one
assuaging touch of its native element, was laid flat in the spider, and
fried.
I saw the Keeler family, from the greatest to the least, partake of this
arid and rasping substance unblinkingly, and I partook also. The brine
rose to my eyes and coursed its way down my cheeks, and Grandma Keeler
said I was "homesick, poor thing!"
The golden seal, a "remedy for toothache, headache, sore-throat, sprains,
etc., etc.," was served in a diluted state with milk and sugar, and taken
as a beverage. The herrin' had destroyed my sense of taste; anything in a
liquid state was alike delectable to me, and while I drank, I had a sense
of having become somehow mysteriously connected with the book of
revelations. "We used to think," Grandma proceeded mildly to elucidate,
"that it had ought to be took externally, but husband, he was painin'
around one time, and nothin' didn't seem to do him no good, and so we
ventured some of it inside of him, and he didn't complain no more for a
great while afterwards.
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