Evening Star Newspaper, December 24, 1922, Page 42

TR T IRGIIEETN S Ve RY STERLING HEILIG, PARIS, December 14, 1922. AT goose at Christmas, to im- press it on your mind. Eat goose at New Year, to begin the year right. East turkey for sen- timent. East goose for your life. Here are curious facts on the point of leing given out, more or less officially, sclence. All passes as if the holiday 4o0se habit of uld Europe were rooted in profound mystery. Because, when sections of America created Apple day, they knew well why they did it—to encourage the culture of a wholesome fruit that srows beside us, to refresh the peo- “le. But when old Europe, back in the mists of time, created Goose week, Jobody knew why they did it—they just ate goose In & strange re- ligious way at Christmas time. “\nd, now, some say that goose is = Here and there in European Cities where they Imitate America, there \ refined tendency to sidestep goose but the sturdy masses, who sel- 1l & doctor, yet live under handi- om caps that would drag down Americans, winter goose as-to a pan- acy of old experience. stick to the It is the le if yowre not above learning new from wisdom so old all but forgotten, make a s xift to the finest girl on her a goose. Take nt and feed her Purchase a bottle of ¢ and pour some of it something earth by buy her to the r pure Kouse Er in her «t. With her tea, give her a slice fole-gras. So shall she grow in uty, strength and grace and never Me. Look vou, sisty Parls children of the working ciasses ilved most of 1hetr waking hours in what is called . creche—a species of kindergarten where little ones are cared for In a thunch, while mamma earns a salary .1sewhere. Here the children get one 2o00d meal per day from the muniei- pality. * K K K \'ELL. when winter came, last \ year, half of the creche was fod on goose confit. which is not dear, two times per week—and half were not. The latter suffered usual coughs, colds, quinsies and bronchitls. But ‘he thirty children who atd goose confit were fresh, blithe, sturdy and| intact. What is this occult bird which Eu- rope eats, as by a pagan ceremony. which has lost its meaning in the ages? Truly. goose is fat. Goose warms up. As when Eskimos eat candles, so oose 1s fuel for your human furnace. Goose fat is peculiar fuel. In some unknown way it digests without heavimess. ose builds winter tis- sues in a richer manner. Goose in mer nowlse profits. But in anal- ther say, with divers vegeta- e and animal elements whose Whys .nd wherefores are still guesswork, secretions of pro-| und and sluggish glands, in win- ter time, as with 2 key—that is, they \uantity required is strangely small} compared with the results obtained. Half peasant France eats goose, all winter—and they dem't know why,! more than Paris. They might . because we have the geese. But| ¢ have they the geese” 1 In particular, the country people| from Strasbourg to Grenoble, all of Auvergne and the Bourbon district, A1 the Pyeenees, and In between. Sa- and Dauphiny; and, only less so, the Atlantic coast, eat gouse confit- canned goose—as staple winter food. ‘The peasants kill great gnantitles of geese in autumn. They sell the down for quiltings and pillows, secll the livers for foie-gras, sell the sreasts for smoking and. then they yot down the remainder of the car- :ass as confit—the only other excep- tion being to pot separately, at times, | the “second joints” which form an . ssential part of the famous Gascon sarbure. The confit is made by cutting the meat from the carcass, half cooking it and then piling it into an earthen- ware pot. along with melted goose grease, which fills up all empty nd seals the top with a thick white laver. All throush autumn, vinter and carly spring the peasants turn to the confit pot whea other meat is lacking. In the Kkitchen, zoose grease replaces butter. These people are exempt from colds. I never knew a countryman of the| ’yrences or around Grenoble way to bronchitis, congestion, pneumo- or even u cold in the head! TEE T is a goose land down there, more | l so. even, thap Alsace—whose <trasbourg pate de foie-gras in pas-| try in famous. Every Paris restay- | rant features it today, in part from| patriotic reasons, but' very much be- cause it Is of superior perfume and smavity. | But down there in the city of Tou-| i th of France ships more sose livers and live birds to the foie- ras establishments than all Alsace s. Phenomenally heavy goose livers are exhibited in shop windows. \round them rise piles of the oval carthen pots of the perfected pred- net. French foie-gras is sold all over the world. Say what you please about fole gras. v that it is full of ptomaine hich it isn't. Call it “rich” nd indigestible—which, again, is not ». Who cares, anvhow? When Ros- .»Jnl, the composer; Dumas, the nov- «list, and de Musset, the poet, went down into the kitchen of the Maison loree and did better work than any chef, in those brave days when men were men, they messed up fole gras slices In Port wine sauce—and ate it hot! Tt 1s a wonderful bird. -The Tou- louse goose. Where the ordinary do- mestic goose averages from seven to wight pounds, the Toulouse and Strass- Lurg varietics vary between thir- steen and twenty-three pounds, nor- mal, and from twenty-six to thirty- twa pounds after scientific fattening for their livers' sake. Only thosé who have motored across France from north to south and east 10 west can form any idea of its vast ose population. The goose is re-l puted to be silly. But I have never secn one come to grief beneath an uuto’s wheels. They love to loiter in the high road, and in one French de- partment there are 1,860 of them do- ing it this minute. The census of the Haute Garonne | is 1,670,000 Toulouse geese, but as|like verbs. the roads are full of geess from Strass- burg to Grenoble and from Car- 1p, before she goes skating. | when the fattening is flnished. The Anoint her nose with the same bestj taj] spreads like a fan, its feathers no cassonne to Mont-de-Marsan, the to- tal goose population of the south of France alone is set at 8,740,500 birds, mostly high-grade, having an average agricultural value of $3.60 apiece and a merchantable value, after fattening, up to $8. Which represents a total . Boose asset, for a single section, of, say, $39,000,000. The meat of these geese, commonly Is not particularly -perfumed or tender; it is only valuable as a pe- cullar, special food. For lack of tenderness, the Toulouse goose is vietim of its liver—poor, big, grave bird! Ah, from loitering in the, gossipy high road it is haled one day to a close pen, not big enough to stretch in, strewn so deep with straw that it sinks in up to the neck. There all is warm, dark, silent, fit for medita- tion and digestion only. Thrice 2 day the farmer comes and stuffs Mr. Goose with corn—with the use of funnel and ramrod. No foolish po- liteness! A goose can digest a quart of corn per day duriig five weeks. and may, in truth, absorb profitab fitty-five quarts in thirty-five day The corn is not soaked, but, to facili- tate, a little water Is given the bird in course of stuffing. Often salt and cornmeal are added. Some farmers give soup, others milk. The object is to enlarge the goose's liver. * x ¥ % T the critical moment they sell for killing. Every child knows longer touching each other. Then the liver Is ready. Birds welghing up to thirty-five pounds often develop enormous livers. Specimens weighing from four and a half pounds to five and a half pounds are not rare, and the potting concerns pay up to $2 per pound, for the best quality even dearer. The remainder of the goose meat from such birds 1s goose-confit, cx- cept, perhaps, the breasts for smok- ing. Here is that vast supply of win- ter health food for the people, not dear. It comes, even, to Paris. All the rare qualities are present in it—only lacking tenderness and perfume. It is not the true Christmas goose, ah non! The true Christmas goose of Paris is of a very different breed, 200 years and more acclimated around Mans— let us say Mans, as they say Arge- teull for best asparagus. It is tendgr, delicate, not overlarge and of a faintly wild game flavor, due to far east ancestry not really remote —whereas the Toulouse bird has been evolved on the spot, time out of mind. In the days of the French East India Company, a cholce breed of orlen(all -3 AT LR LAl 2 A 2R A2 A0 £ AT LA LA LA LA 2 a8 S el S Al Sk sl LAl L all LA Sl Tl 2 A U 2 AT AT T3 St LAl Al 23] geese was brought to France. The Mans goose {s from it—weighing from six pounds to thirteen pounds, and deemed, without doubt, the most suc- culent. and meritorious of Christmas fowl. Why, those old East Indians themselves knew its queer qualitics. It is roasted on a turning spit, if possible. > So, in the memory of thousands of successful men in Paris, grandmother roasted the Christmas bird over hot wood embers in the primitive fire- place of the old farmhouse. Looking b: to that grand feast, when they were always hungry peasant kids, the aroma of roast goose brings tears of worthy sentiment to eyes of real tough business men—and a conviction that no other fowl can take its'place. ‘When the European (at home in Eu- rope) has made fortune, large or modest, it's the same thing, he just orders up roast goose for wlm»rl feasts, as a matter of course. It must be done just so. In citles, where folks cook so much with gas, they send the goose to that picturesque relic of old times, the public roaster. The public roaster still exists even in modern Paris. At Tours the A. E. F boys used to take friends to that “corner of the old houses,” where the carved-wood front of a_ - public roaster of the time of Christopher Co- lumbus still shows the old counter- window on the street, where roast- ing pans were handed In and out by families. _ Here In 'Parls all such fronts are gone. The public roaster combines with a game-and-poultry dealer. In the back shop a vast chim- ney, full of red-hot embers,. sports three ranks of spits, all turning, turning, while the luselous julces drip, and all the birds are basted, basted, basted, wWwith 2 vast long- handled spoon. fine old A Limited Language. I¥ Don Quixots, Dona Rodriquez says of her husband: “He is as well born a king, because he comes from the mountains;” and when San- cho Panza, as governor of Barataria. seeks a secretary, one of his attend- ants exclaims: “I, sir, am the man, for I can read and write, and, moreover, 1 am a Basque.” “With that addi- tion,” says Sancho, “you are fit to be secretary 1 an emperdr.” The Basque people are pleasantly described by an American who has visited their Ilittle known country. They have, it appears, the natural, active politeness of the Irish, with- out servility; the sagacity of the Scotch, without “dourness”; - the steady self-respect of the upper classes of Emgland, without Saxon stupidity. The first impression of this people, as one settles among them, is of extraordinary force, no- bility and intelligence. Dignity is! stamped on their faces and an air of high-minded, simple sincerity in- spires absolute confidence. Though the Basque is the most difficult of all languages to acquire, the smallest child, conscious of his own thoughts, can express himself perfectly in it. e ¢ Each word depends on the thought alone of the person who speaks it. One word translates will, desire, fancy, thought. There is no expres- slon for abstract ideas and few ex- pressions that imply collectivity or! T 2R L e Ay T A S A e LAy R S A e S IR A T LA 2 e T Ty T (LA 2 generalization. There is no single word for God. He Is the “Master on | High." There is no word for law, | king, animal. - They cannot say “a: sister,” but only “the sister of a man—a woman.” It is said that in vigor, word-paint- | ing and locutions this is the ricHest of all languages. -This may be partly ! due to the fact that nouns, pronouns and adjectives change into verbs at will, and verbs may be transformed into nouns and adjectives. Every part of speech, and even the letters of the alphabet, are declined like nouns, and adjectives are conjugated As might be inferred, the literature is scant and poor in works of imagination. M ] Sts. N.W. The HUB Wishes You a MERRY CHRISTMAS! Closed Monday—These Furniture Sales for Tuesday HE most convenient article of furniture for the home—a bed by night, a davenport by day —either way it's comfortable and practical. Covered in a good grade of imitation leather....... 3-Pec. use, and rocker. out the usual outlay of cash. Cash or Credit at This Low Price $28.75 Living Room Suite A DURABLY made and most at- tractive suite for year round Consists of settee, armchair Made of fiber reed— baronial brown finish. 33 Use your credit and furnish your hfie with new and dependable furnishings with- 9x12-it. Mottled Axminster. .. 9x12-ft. Velvet Rugs......... 8.3x106 ft., 9x12 ft. Clearance of tht better grades of Vel- vet and Axminster Rugs.... Ox12-ft. Seamless, Wool-faced Brussels Rugs............. 27x54-in. Axminster \ 1$28.95 6x9-ft. Velvet Rugs....$17.95 e 1005 '$32.45 1$22.95 Choice 1$3.98 .American Walnut-Finish 4-Piece | WASHINGIONS GREATEST FURNITURE STORE, CASHe= CREDIT N.w Cash or Credit at This Low Price UY this pretty suite and have it in your home for the new year. It must be seen to be appreciated. As shown, artis- tic .semi-vanity dresser with triplicate mirrors, chifforobe, bed anddresser withmirror.......... ..., TR sty Three-Piece Overstuffed Living Room Suite HIS luxurious Suite consists of an Overstuffed Daven- port, 6 feet in length; Armchair and Rocker to match; made with Marshall loose spring cushion seat, spring bot- tom, pillew arms and deep up- holstered back. Covered in tapestry. Cash or credit....... these useful granite-ware outfits Graniteware Kitchen Set Special! With some of your Christmas money buy one of 10-Pc. Dining Room Suite DELIGHTFULLY styled Suite, in a popular period design— si of table, FRE china Bedroom Suite $1()0.75 a new oblong cabinet, set with every $100 purchase, cash or charge account. .Congole Red Seal Rugs, 415%9 ft... Red Seal Rugs, » Red Seal Rugs, Art Squares, 9x12 ff. (no borders).. Gold Seal Rugs, 749 ft. .. Gold Seal Rugs, $14.15 um ' $2.79 } $5.69 1$10.95 } $6.95 1$10.10 i1 < e enclosed server, buffet with mirror, and six genuine leather seat dining cha: 1395 '—a 42-piece dinner set or a 26- piece Rogers silver-plated ware SRR 1Y WS'; E‘E‘@&@fl top