It was quite full of thick, hard-looking biscuits, or crackers. She
laid them in a pile beside the other things; then she took up the
basket and opened that. There was another kind of a cracker in that,
and two large papers of something. When everything was taken out she
pointed at the piles of eatables on the table, and addressed us:
"Ladies, attention!" rapping slightly with a spoon at the same time.
Her voice was very sweet, with a curious kind of forced sweetness:
"Ladies, attention! I wish you to carefully observe the food upon
the table before us. I wish you to consider it from the standpoint
of wives and mothers of families. There is the food which you have
brought, unwholesome, indigestible; there is mine, approved of by the
foremost physicians and men of science of the day. For ten years I
have had serious trouble with the alimentary canal, and this food
has kept me in strength and vigor. Had I attempted to live upon your
fresh biscuits, your frosted cakes, your rich pastry, I should be in
my grave. One of those biscuits which you see there before you is
equal in nourishment to six of your indigestible pies, or every cake
upon the table. The great cause of the insanity and dyspepsia so
prevalent among the rural classes is rich pie and cake. I feel it my
duty to warn you. I hope, ladies, that you will consider carefully
what I have said."

With that, Mrs. Jameson withdrew herself a little way and sat down
under a tree on a cushion which had been brought in the carryall. We
looked at one another, but we did not say anything for a few minutes.

Finally, Mrs. White, who is very good-natured, remarked that she
supposed that she meant well, and she had better put her pies back in
the basket or they would dry up. We all began putting back the things
which Mrs. Jameson had taken out, except the broken jumbles, and