Breakfast is my best meal, and I reckon it's always been Ever since I was old enough to know what breakfast could mean. I mind when we lived in the cabin out on the Illinoy, Where father had took up a quarter-section when I was a boy, I used to go for the cows as soon as it was light; And when I started back home, before I come in sight, I come in _smell_ of the cabin, where mother was frying the ham, And boiling the coffee, that reached through the air like a mile o' ba'm, 'N' I bet you I didn't wait to see what it was that the dog Thought he'd got under the stump or inside o' the hollow log! But I made the old cows canter till their hoof-joints cracked--you know That dry, funny kind of a noise that the cows make when they go-- And I never stopped to wash when I got to the cabin door; I pulled up my chair and e't like I never had e't before. And mother she set there and watched me eat, and eat, and eat, Like as if she couldn't give her old eyes enough of the treat; And she split the shortened biscuit, and spread the butter between, And let it lay there and melt, and soak and soak itself in; And she piled up my plate with potato and ham and eggs, Till I couldn't hold any more, or hardly stand on my legs; And she filled me up with coffee that would float an iron wedge, And never give way a mite, or spill a drop at the edge. II What? Well, yes, this is good coffee, too. If they don't know much, They do know how to make coffee, I _will_ say that for these Dutch. But my--oh, my! It ain't the kind of coffee my mother made, And the coffee my wife used to make would throw it clear in the shade; And the brand of sugar-cured, canvased ham that she always used-- Well, this Westphalia stuff would simply have made her amused! That so, heigh? I saw that you was United States as soon As ever I heard you talk; I reckon I know the tune! Pick it out anywhere; and _you_ understand how I feel About these here foreign breakfasts: breakfast is my best meal. III My! but my wife was a cook; and the breakfasts she used to get The first years we was married, I can smell 'em and taste 'em yet: Corn cake light as a feather, and buckwheat thin as lace And crisp as cracklin'; and steak that you couldn't have the face To compare any steak over here to; and chicken fried Maryland style--I couldn't get through the bill if I tried. And then, her waffles! My! She'd kind of slip in a few Between the ham and the chicken--you know how women'll do-- For a sort of little surprise, and, if I was running light, To take my fancy and give an edge to my appetite. Done it all herself as long as we was poor, and I tell _you_ _She_ liked to see me eat as well as mother used to do; I reckon she went ahead of mother some, if the truth was known, And everything she touched she give a taste of her own.