FullReads

Lute got into politics, and they elected him to the legislature. After the campaign, needing rest, he took it into his head to run down east to see his mother; he had not been back home for eight years. He took little Moses with him. They were gone about three weeks. Gran’ma Baker had made great preparations for them; had cooked up enough pies to last all winter, and four plump, beheaded, well-plucked, yellow-legged pullets hung stiff and solemn-like in the chill pantry off the kitchen, awaiting the last succulent scene of all.

Lute and the little boy got there late of an evening. The dear old lady was so glad to see them; the love that beamed from her kindly eyes well nigh melted the glass in her silver-bowed specks. The table was spread in the dining-room; the sheet-iron stove sighed till it seemed like to crack with the heat of that hardwood fire.

“Why, Lute, you ain’t eatin’ enough to keep a fly alive,” remonstrated old Miss Baker, when her son declined a second doughnut; “and what ails the child?” she continued; “ha’ n’t he got no appetite? Why, when you wuz his age, Lute, seemed as if I could n’t cook doughnuts fast enough for you!”

Lute explained that both he and his little boy had eaten pretty heartily on the train that day. But all the time of their visit there poor old Gran’ma Baker wondered and worried because they did n’t eat enough–seemed to her as if western folks had n’t the right kind of appetite. Even the plump pullets, served in a style that had made Miss Baker famed throughout those discriminating parts–even those pullets failed to awaken the expected and proper enthusiasm in the visitors.

Home again in Chicago, Lute drew his chair up to the table with an eloquent sigh of relief. As for little Moses, he clamored his delight.

“Chicken pie!” he cried, gleefully; and then he added a soulful “wow!” as his eager eyes fell upon a plateful of hot, exuberant, voluptuous doughnuts.

“Yes, we are both glad to get back,” said Lute.

“But I am afraid,” suggested Em, timidly, “that gran’ma’s cooking has spoiled you.”

Little Moses (bless him) howled an indignant, a wrathful remonstrance. “Gran’ma can’t cook worth a cent!” said he.

Em expected Lute to be dreadfully shocked, but he was n’t.

“I would n’t let her know it for all the world,” remarked Lute, confidentially, “but mother has lost her grip on cooking. At any rate, her cooking is n’t what it used to be; it has changed.”

Then Em came bravely to the rescue. “No, Lute,” says she, and she meant it, “your mother’s cooking has n’t changed, but you have. The man has grown away from the boy, and the tastes, the ways, and the delights of boyhood have no longer any fascination for the man.”

“May be you ‘re right,” said Lute. “At any rate, I ‘m free to say that your cooking beats the world.”

Good for Lute! Virtue triumphs and my true story ends. But first an explanation to concinnate my narrative.

I should never have known this true story if Lute himself had n’t told it to me at the last dinner of the Sons of New England–told it to me right before Em, that dear, patient little martyred wife of his. And I knew by the love light in Em’s eyes that she was glad that she had endured that martyrdom for Lute’s sake.