. . .ake is a species of corn bread, consisting of corn meal mixed up with cold water and a little salt, and baked hard in a bed of hot ashes and hotter coals, and if any reader of this story has ever eaten ash cake, properly prepared, I need not tell him that there is no better kind of bread made anywhere—no, not even in Paris, a city that prides itself about equally upon its "pain"—bread,—and its paintings, of which it has the finest collections in all the world. Finally, there was the sauce—traditionally, the best in the world,—namely, hunger. Half a dozen young fellows high up on a mountain side, who had breakfasted before daylight and swung axes and lifted logs till midday, needed no highly-spiced flavoring to give savor to their meat. They ate like the healthy, hard working fellows that they were, and they had no fear of indigestions to follow their eating.

After dinner the work of building went on apace. The main crib of the house . . . Read More