It was otherwise, and profanely called by its votaries a camp-meeting; it would be hard to tell why, unless it was that some of the insiders grew very happy before it was over.

For an egg-supper at Mandluff's store was to Brayville what an oyster-supper at Delmonico's is to New York.

It was one tenth hard eggs and nine tenths that beverage which bears the name of an old royal house of France.
How were the eggs cooked?
I knew somebody would ask that impertinent question.

Well, they were not fried, they were not boiled, they were not poached, they were not scrambled, they were not omeletted, they were not roasted on the half-shell, they were not stuffed with garlic and served with cranberries, they were not boiled and served with anchovy sauce, they were not "_en salmi_." I think I had better stop there, lest I betray my knowledge of cookery.

It is sufficient to say that they were not cooked in any of the above-named fashions, nor in any other way mentioned in Catharine Beecher's or Marion Harland's cookbooks.