I want to show you just what good livin' is.

You know my mother is just the best cook in all that section.

When she lays herself out to get up a meal all the other women in the neighborhood just stand back and admire!" Bill--"O, that's all right; but I'll bet she can't hold a candle to my mother, when it comes to good cooking." Jim--"No, nor to mine." John--( with patronizing contempt.) "O, shucks! None of you fellers were ever at our house, even when we had one of our common weekday dinners." Tom--( unheedful of the counter claims.) I hev teen studyin' up the dinner I'd like, and the bill-of-fare I'd set out for you fellers when you come over to see me.

First, of course, we'll lay the foundation like with a nice, juicy loin roast, and some mashed potatos.
Bill--( interrupting.) "Now, do you like mashed potatos with beef?
The way may mother does is to pare the potatos, and lay them in the pan along with the beef.

Then, you know, they come out just as nice and crisp, and brown; they have soaked up all the beef gravy, and they crinkle between your teeth--" Jim--"Now, I tell you, mashed Neshannocks with butter on 'em is plenty good enough for me." John--"If you'd et some of the new kind of peachblows that we raised in the old pasture lot the year before I enlisted, you'd never say another word about your Neshannocks." Tom--( taking breath and starting in fresh.) "Then we'll hev some fried Spring chickens, of our dominick breed.