Toast
In the days before the war, days famous for generous but unostentatious hospitality in the South, a brilliant party was assembled at dinner in a country homestead. Across the table wit flashed back and forth, and, when the merry party had adjourned to the broad veranda, the guests began to vie with one another in proposing conundrums.
Mr. Alexander H. Stephens offered one which puzzled the whole company. “What is it that we eat at breakfast and drink at dinner?”
For some time no answer came, and the bright eyes of the Southern orator began to sparkle with triumph, when Colonel Johnston, taking up the Commonplace Book of the hostess which lay conveniently by, wrote, impromptu, upon the fly-leaf the following answer:
“What is eaten for breakfast and drunken at dinner?
Is it coffee or eggs—or butter or meats?
Sure double the stomach of obdurate sinner
Who eats what he drinks and drinks what he eats.
But let us consider—’tis surely not butter,
Nor coffee, nor meats, whether broiled or roast,
Nor boiled eggs, nor poached, nor fried in a batter.
It must then be bread—ah, yes! when ’tis toast.”