Sharp County record., 1878-01-25

ed that he board at q nOJel. Anu you
mioht have heard his snOrts of contempt
clear over to Sagetown. He boarded at
no place, not he. No hotel cooking in
Mr.. Rubelkins's dish, if you please. He
intended to keep house. He had plenty
oftime. He wasn't a woman, he wasn't.
/ 1t didn't take him an hour to get break
fast. He didn't have to fly around an
hour and a half or more to cook a din
ner. He had thousand and one con-
/ triyances of Robinson CrusOe-ish in
cenuity (Rubelkins believes that Il. g..
was a saint, who suffered martyrdom)
that woman never dreamed OF. He
could get up the best dinner ever eaten
/ in that house, in an hour lie wasn't
going to incur the dyspepsia by board
| inc, not if he knew it. And having
quite overwhelmed his wife and daugh-
! ter by a torrent of boasting, he gracious
/ ly made an arrangement to get up, all
4 by himself, grand dinner, three courses
/ and dessert, on the occasion OF their
return.
/ They boiled over with gratitude, de-
claring it was too bad to permit him to
90 to so much trouble, but, such is the
/ deceitfulness of woman, they immedi-
ately went into the other room and re-
solved to get dinner somewhere before
| they came home "upOn that occasion" "
| The morning after their departure,
Mr.. Rublekins az once set about putting
| in operation that culinary genius which
/ is the soul of every mans married life
! His confidence was not so great as on
the previous evening. There was avis
ible hesitancy in his manner, but that he
explained by saying he didn't know
where "the things were. 1t did not
take him long to find them, however.
He filled every water-tight vessel he
could find and set the whole of the stove
to boil, and in the course of 20 minutes
the kitchen looked like the inside of a
steam-drum. He found a tin thing with
the bottom punched full of little holes,
which he gazed at vacantly for few
moments, and finally gave it up, re-
signedly declaring that his mother
never had such thing in her kitchen and
he never saw any such cOntraptiOns
| in the army, and then he went
/ on with the breakfast. He ground
a tin cup full Of coffee and poured it all
in, breaking three or four eggs in it to
/ clear it, for he was a little undecided
about the quantity, and wanted enough.
! He filled skillet as full of sausage-meat
as it would hold, and set that on. He
wanted to brOil bit Of steak, but could
not find any thing to brOil it on. He
, found a big iron ring, crossed with q
network of wire, which he Indignantly
threw out into the yard under the i'm
preston that it was piece OF rat
trap, and then he sharpened q stick and
thrust it through the steak, intending to
broil it as he used to when ne was boy,
and when he was in the army. Then he
found tin pan with handle to it, and
broke it full of eggs and set it on the
stove, which was by this time red not
down to the legs. Every thing was
boiling, or sputtering, or sizzling furi-
Ously, and the confusion was exciting,
and very discOncerting to Mr. Rubel-
kins. The end of his brOiling-stick
burned off, and dropped the steak into
the fire and ashes so many times that
he could hardly distinguish the smoking
mass from the charred Jumps in the
Goals which had been potatoes when
he put them in there to "bake." "
He had burned his knuckles
against the stove nine times, twice he
had barked his shins over the edge of
the wood-boX, and in stirring up
crockful of buckwheat flour and water
(''fOr what, " said Mr. Rubelkins, sis
breakfast without buckwheat cakes1O,
he had decorated his coat and vest with
a spatterwork of very irregular pattern
of batter, which, it struck him, didn't
somehow look 50 much like the buck
wheat batter he usually observed in
that kitchen as it did like the kind the
man hung the diEing-rOOm paper with.
He arose and went up stairs to bathe
his blstering face, carrying with him,
in an absent-minded way, a teacupful
of flour, big iron spoon and a strip of
bacOn-rind, all of which he deposited
on the bed, When he went down stairs
he took cake of tOilet-soap and tidy,
which he laid on the wood-bOX in some
haste, for a conhagration had broken
out IN the sausage and the kitchen was
redolent of burning trichina and black
with smoke. Pouring a hand-basin
iall of water on the devouring ele-
ment did not seem to mend matters,
and the penetrating odor of burning
eggs added to the excitement of the
scene. With the energy which is born
of despair, Mr. Rubelkins tore down
window-curtain, wrapped it around the
skillet-handle, and threw the sausage,
or so much of it as did not spill out on
his feet, out of the door into the yard,
where it smoked and sputterdd the rest
of the morning. The tin thing which
,o,4,;,oI tb,, oor1., had ,,oolto6 into ire