Having thus carried his point, Ben immediately engaged a poor old woman of the neighbourhood to become their cook; and gave her off hand, written receipts for three and forty dishes; not one of which contained a single atom of fish, flesh, or fowl. For their first day's breakfast on the _new regimen_, the old woman treated them with a terrene of oatmeal gruel. Keimer was particularly fond of his breakfast, at which a nice beef-stake with onion sauce was a standing dish. It was as good as a farce to Ben, to see with what an eye Keimer regarded the terrene, when entering the room, in place of his stake, hot, smoking, and savory, he beheld this pale, meagre-looking slop. "What have you got there?" said he, with a visage grum, and scowling eye. "A dish of hasty pudding," replied Ben, with the smile of an innocent youth who had a keen appetite, with something good to satisfy it--"a dish of nice hasty pudding, sir, made of oats." "Of OATS!" retorted Keimer, with a voice raised to a scream. "Yes, sir, _oats_," rejoined Ben,--"_oats_, that precious grain which gives such elegance and fire to our noblest of quadrupeds, the horse." Keimer growled out, that he was no horse to eat oats. "No matter for that," replied Ben, "'tis equally good for men." Keimer denied that any human being ever eat oats. "Aye!" said Ben, "and pray what's become of the Scotch? Don't they live on oats; and yet, where will you find a people so 'bonny, blythe, and gay;' a nation of such wits and warriors." As there was no answering this, Keimer sat down to the terrene, and swallowed a few spoonfuls, but not without making as many wry faces as if it had been so much jalap; while Ben, all smile and chat, breakfasted most deliciously. At dinner, by Ben's order, the old woman paraded a trencher piled up with potatoes. Keimer's grumbling fit came on him again. "He saw clear enough," he said, "that he was to be poisoned." "Poh, cheer up, man," replied Ben; "this is your right preacher's bread." "Bread the d----l!" replied Keimer, snarling. "Yes, bread, sir," continued Ben, pleasantly; "the bread of _life_, sir; for where do you find such health and spirits, such bloom and beauty, as among the honest-hearted IRISH, and yet for their breakfast, dinner, and supper, the potato is their tetotum; the _first_, _second_, and _third_ course." In this way, Ben and his old woman went on with Keimer; daily ringing the changes on oat-meal gruel, roasted potatoes, boiled rice, and so on, through the whole family of roots and grains in all their various genders, moods, and tenses.