"What else have you got today, Mrs. Hummel?" (Grandmother never could
say "Frau" - and as if she didn't know what else was in the basket!)

"Vell, Mrs. Van, dere is meppe some eks, und a dook - und also dere is
left von fine stuffed geese."

So the cloth covering was rolled farther back - and the 3-dozen eggs
were gently taken out and put in the old tin eggbucket - and just then
grandfather came in and lifted tenderly out of the basket one of those
wonderful geese "stuffed" with good food in a dark cellar until fat
enough for market. . . . Ever have a toothful of that kind of
goose-breast or second joint? . . . No? . . . Your life is yet
incomplete - you have something to live for! . . . Goodness me! I can't
describe it! How can a fellow tell about such things! It's like - well,
it's like Frau Hummel's "stuffed" goose, that's all! . . .

And then it was weighed on the old balances, steels - (no, I don't mean
scales!) - steelyards, you know - a long-armed affair with a pear-shape of
iron at one end and a hook at the other and a handle somewhere in
between at the center-of-gravity, or some such place. . . . Anyway, they
gave an honest pound, which is perhaps another respect in which they
were different.

Then the ducks, too, were unwrapped from their white cloths and weighed -
usually a pair of them - and the old willow basket had nothing left
but its bundle of cloths when Frau Hummel started out again on her
10-mile walk to the farm.

Whenever I see a glassy-eyed, feather-headed, cold-storage chicken half
plucked and discolored hanging in a present-day butcher-shop