[Illustration: “TRENCHERS OF STEAMING SAUSAGE.”] There came a season in the autumn when the Old Town resounded with the squealing of countless pigs. It was killing-time when the fat friend so fondly cherished throughout the year was to make return by furnishing forth the tables of his hosts. We boys heard it with joy, for we knew what was to come after all the woe. Toward evening of the great day trenchers of steaming sausage were carried around among the neighbors who had no pigs, that they also might taste of the good things of the earth. Blood sausage was there, big and round and red, and good to eat, fried with syrup; and liver sausage, pale but appealing; and sausage with rice in and sausage with spices in; and roll sausage, which sometimes I buy in delicatessen shops nowadays; but they must have lost the art of making them, for they don’t taste as they did then. The trencher must have been welcome in Mother’s larder, for with so many mouths to fill we were taught to look upon meat as a relish rather than the mainstay of the meal. Not that we did not have enough. We always had that, but dishes made of flour, of potatoes, of peas and other vegetables, played a greater rôle in the economic cookery of the day and country than nowadays. And we liked it. I defy any one to find a summer dish that compares with “Rödgröd med Flöde,” which was just currant juice and corn-starch with cream. Even the Saturday menu in our house was a favorite: fried herring and Öllebröd. For special occasions the herring were fried “in dressing-gowns,” each in a cornucopia of white paper that gave the dish quite a festive touch. Öllebröd is a dish I despair of making the American mind grasp. It was made of black bread boiled in beer till it made a thick broth, to which each one added cream and sugar to suit his taste. Boiled beer sounds funny, but it was the household beer, non-alcoholic, which was both cheap and good. The other kind we knew as Bavarian beer. Its use was not so common as it has become since.