“My wife and I took much delight in visiting and feeding them, and it was a fine diversion also to my boys; but at the end of summer, when all the other birds took their annual flight, away went every one of my new-raised brood with them, and one of my old cocks, the rest of the old set remaining very quiet with me all the winter. The next summer, when my chicks of that year grew up a little, I cut their wings, and by that means preserved all but one, which I suppose was either not cut so close as the rest, or his wings had grown again. From this time I found, by long experience, that not two out of a hundred that had once wintered with me would ever go away, though I did not cut their wings; but all of the same season would certainly go off with the wild ones, if they could any ways make a shift to fly. I afterwards got a breed of blacknecks, which was a name I gave them from the peculiar blackness of their necks, let the rest of their bodies be of what colour they would, as they are, indeed, of all colours. These birds were as big, or bigger, than a turkey, of a delicious flavour, and were bred from turkey eggs hatched under my own wood-hens in great plenty. I was forced to clip these as I did the other young fowl, to keep them, and at length they grew very tame, and would return every night during the dark season. The greatest difficulty now was to get meat for all these animals in the winter, when they would sit on the roost two days together if I did not call and feed them, which I was sometimes forced to do by lamp-light, or they would have starved in cloudy weather. But I overcame that want of food by an accidental discovery; for I observed my blacknecks in the woods jump many times together at a sort of little round heads, or pods, very dry, which hung plentifully upon a shrub that grew in great abundance there. I cut several of these heads, and carrying them home with me, broke them, and took out a spoonful or more from each head of small yellow seeds, which giving to my poultry, and finding they greedily devoured them, I soon laid in a stock for twice my number of mouths, so that they never after wanted. I tried several times to raise a breed of water-fowl by hatching their eggs under my hens; but not one in ten of the sorts, when hatched, were fit to eat; and those that were would never live and thrive with me, but go away to the lake, I having no sort of water nearer me; so I dropped my design of water-fowl as impracticable. But by breeding and feeding my land-fowl so constantly in my farmyard, I never wanted of that sort at my table, where we eat abundance of them; for my whole side of the lake in a few years was like a farmyard, so full of poultry that I never knew my stock; and upon the usual whistle they would flock round me from all quarters. I had everything now but cattle, not only for the support, but convenience and pleasure of life; and so happily should I have fared here, if I had had but a cow and bull, a ram and sheep, that I would not have changed my dominions for the crown of England.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
COFFEE. CHOCOLATE. TEA. PICKLES. BEER. GENERAL MAXIMS FOR HEALTH. HINTS TO PERSONS OF MODERATE FORTUNE [FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE MASSACHUSETTS JOURNAL.] FURNITURE. EDUCATION OF DAUGHTERS. TRAVELLING AND PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. PHILOSOPHY AND CONSISTENCY. REASONS FOR HARD TIMES. HOW TO ENDURE POVERTY. APPENDIX TO THE AMERICAN FRUGAL HOUSEWIFE. CARVING. INDEX. APPENDIX.
Sources: The passage is from Robert Paltock, The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, Volume 1, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Child, The American Frugal Housewife of 1829, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — teal cloth, amphora stamp.