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172 the greatest of luxuries. In the autumn we brought from St. Paul several cases, but five hundred miles of jostling made great havoc with them.

The receipt-books were exasperating. They invariably called for cream and fresh eggs, and made the cook furious. It seemed to me that some officer's servant on the frontier must have given the receipt for waffles, for it bears the indefinite tone of the darky: "Eggs just as you haz 'em, honey; a sprinklin' of flour as you can hold in your hand; milk! well, 'cordin' to what you has."

The crystallized eggs, put up in cans and being air-tight, kept a long time, and were of more use to us than any invention of the day. In drying the egg, the yolks and whites were mixed together, and nothing could be made of this preparation when the two parts were required to be used separately. It made very good batter-cakes, however, and at first it seemed that we could never get enough.

In the spring, when it was no longer safe to hunt, we had to return to beef, as we had no other kind of meat. My husband never seemed to tire of it, however, and suggested to one of our friends who had the hackneyed motto in his dining-room, that she change it to "Give us this day our daily beef."

Once only, in all those years of frontier life, I had strawberries. They were brought to me as a present from St. Paul. The day they came there were, as usual, a number of our friends on the piazza. I carefully counted noses first, and hastily went in before any one else should come, to divide the small supply into