“On one occasion, a day or two before Easter Sunday, Brother John and two of the ladies of the tribe displayed their marketing to my neighbours at the turnpike-gate--a fine breast, loin, and leg of veal. ‘To-morrow’s Easter Sunday;’ said they, ‘and we always have a feast of veal on that day.’ (Singular! is it not?) ‘How can you contrive to roast it at your fires?’ inquired the woman who is now my servant. ‘Better _a deal_ than you can at your poor pinched in grates,’ was the answer; ‘and then we shall have rice-puddings, capital rice-puddings.’ ‘But you can’t _bake_, if you can roast?’ ‘Can’t we? come and taste if you ever knowed better baking in your life.’ (I should have accepted the invitation if it had been made to me). And then they described their culinary process. Having mixed their ingredients--all of the best--in a large brown pan of that sort of ware which is fireproof, they covered it with another of the same sort, set it deep in a bed of glowing peat-ashes, and heaped it over to a foot depth with the same. I have no doubt of the excellency of the method,--not very unlike that in use by many of the savage tribes. There were seven daughters of this particular family of the Stanleys, all splendid beauties;--one but too celebrated, ‘the beautiful Caroline Stanley.’ She fell into worse company than that of her own people, and on two or three occasions was absent from them for a year and more at a time, living in splendour as ‘maitresse en titre,’ to more than one officer of high rank; dashed about in elegant carriages, clothed in ‘silken sheen,’ and all sorts of bravery, and carried it with a high hand (poor Caroline!) through her seasons of ‘bad eminence.’ But all the while she was out of her element; the free creature of the woods pined to be _there_ again; and some fine morning she would be off without leave taking, and leaving behind her every atom of the dear-bought finery, that had become fetters to her. I knew her well by sight, and such a _Cleopatra_ of _regal beauty_ I never could have imaged to myself. “A short time before her first initiation in civilization and corruption, I saw her showing off in high style. I called to give some order to my milliner, but sat quietly down to await her leisure, finding her engaged in high disputation with the gipsy beauty, who was rating her in no measured terms for some deviation from orders in the making of a bonnet which Caroline was in the act of trying on before the glass. And such airs and graces she gave herself! I never was more diverted.