In America, even your menus have the gift of language.... The Chef's own Vienna Roast. A hearty, rich meat loaf, gently seasoned to perfection and served in a creamy nest of mashed farm potatoes and strictly fresh garden vegetables. Of course, what you get is cole slaw and a slab of meat, but that doesn't matter because the menu has already started your juices going. Oh, those menus. In America, they are poetry.

For the first time I was learning how much easier it was to leave than to stay behind and love.

I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.

What she did was to open our eyes to details of country life such as teaching us names of wild flowers and getting us to draw and paint and learn poetry.

Effie M. was a monster. Six foot high and as strong as a farm horse.No sooner had she decided that she wanted UncleTom than she knocked him off his bicycle and told him.

Bees blew like cake-crumbs through the golden air, white butterflies like sugared wafers, and when it wasn't raining a diamond dust took over which veiled and yet magnified all things

But our waking life, and our growing years, were for the most part spent in the kitchen, and until we married, or ran away, it was the common room we shared.