the invigorating mountain air seemed to get into her blood, and after
a few weeks with her friendly mountains she could climb the highest
with little apparent fatigue. At home, the country was flat, the roads
sandy, and even horseback riding uninteresting. She had never been
taught any strengthening form of daily home-exercise, and so she
suffered on. While the glasses brought comfort, they lessened, for but
a short time, the number and the intensity of her attacks. Several
physicians were consulted and several varying courses of treatment
undertaken, but no betterment came which lasted, and the headaches
remained a mystery, not only to her mother, but to others who
seriously tried to help. As we are behind the scenes, we need no
longer delay the mystery's solution. It was not eyes, they were
accurately corrected; it was not stomach, as much stomach treatment
proved; it was not anaemia, or the many excellent tonics that had been
prescribed would have cured; it was not displaced vertebrae nor
improperly acting nerves, or the manipulations and vibrations and deep
kneadings of the specialists in mechanical treatment would have
rescued her years before. It was, and here is the secret--her mother's
wonderful table!

The war had brought ruinous, financial losses to most Virginia
families. As a result, Ruth's mother had been taught, in minute
detail, the high art of the best cookery of the first families of
Virginia. And how she could cook, or make the colored cook cook! The
Rivers' table had, for years, been the standard of the county-seat.
Mrs. Rivers' spiced hams, fig preserves, brandied plum-pudding,
stuffed roast-duck, fruit salads, all made by recipes handed down
through several generations, could not be excelled in richness and
toothsomeness. No simple dishes were known at the Rivers' table;
these, for those poor mortals who knew not the inner art. Double