Them dominicks of ours have the nicest, tenderest meat, better'n quail, a darned sight, and the way my mother can fry Spring chickens----" Bill--( aside to Jim.) "Every durned woman in the country thinks she can 'spry ching frickens;' but my mother---" John--"You fellers all know that there's nobody knows half as much about chicken doin's as these 'tinerant Methodis' preachers.

They give 'em chicken wherever they go, and folks do say that out in the new settlements they can't get no preachin', no gospel, nor nothin', until the chickens become so plenty that a preacher is reasonably sure of havin' one for his dinner wherever he may go.

Now, there's old Peter Cartwright, who has traveled over Illinoy and Indianny since the Year One, and preached more good sermons than any other man who ever set on saddle-bags, and has et more chickens than there are birds in a big pigeon roost.

Well, he took dinner at our house when he came up to dedicate the big, white church at Simpkin's Corners, and when he passed up his plate the third time for more chicken, he sez, sez he:--I've et at a great many hundred tables in the fifty years I have labored in the vineyard of the Redeemer, but I must say, Mrs.Kiggins, that your way of frying chickens is a leetle the nicest that I ever knew.

I only wish that the sisters generally would get your reseet.' Yes, that's what he said,--'a leetle the nicest.'" Tom--"An' then, we'll hev biscuits an' butter.