Explore "Driven Back to Eden" by Edward Payson Roe on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On Christmas morning we all brought out our purchases and arranged them on a table. Merton was almost wild when he found a bright single-barreled gun with accoutrements standing in the corner. Even Mousie exclaimed with delight at the bright-colored papers of flower seeds on her plate. To Winnie were given half a dozen china eggs with which to lure the prospective biddies to lay in nests easily reached, and she tried to cackle over them in absurd imitation. Little Bobsey had to have some toys and candy, but they all presented to his eyes the natural inmates of the barnyard. In the number of domestic animals he swallowed that day he equalled the little boy in Hawthorne's story of "The House of the Seven Gables," who devoured a gingerbread caravan of camels and elephants purchased at Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon's shop.
Our Christmas dinner consisted almost wholly of such vegetables as we proposed to raise in the coming summer. Never before were such connoisseurs of carrots, beets, onions, parsnips, and so on through almost the entire list of such winter stock as was to be obtained at our nearest greengrocery. We celebrated the day by nearly a dozen dishes which the children aided my wife in preparing. Then I had Merton figure the cost of each, and we were surprised at the cheapness of much of country fare, even when retailed in very small quantities.