Читать книгу The Library of Work and Play: Housekeeping - Elizabeth Hale Gilman - Страница 8

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Long ago, longer than you can even imagine, nobody in the world knew how to cook. People were not as dreadfully hungry on that account as you might think, because, you see, they ate their food uncooked. No one had ever cooked, and no one had ever thought of it; no one had ever eaten cooked food, and no one knew how pleasant it tasted.

This is the story of the way a little Chinese boy found out how to roast pig.

His name was Bo-bo and he had been left at home by his father, Ho-ti, to look after their hut, and their one big pig, and their nine little pigs. Bo-bo, was fond of playing with fire, and what did he do but set fire to some straw, and that set fire to the hut, and burned it down. A much more serious matter was that the one big pig and the nine little pigs were burned along with the hut.

Bo-bo was dreadfully frightened when he saw what he had done. He knew his father would beat him, and he began to cry. He also poked round among the ruins of the hut, though he did not hope to find anything. As he was turning over the embers, he found one of the little burnt pigs, and tried to pull it out. It was very hot, and burnt his hands, and he did just what you or I would have done—put his burnt fingers in his mouth.

The instant his hands reached his mouth, Bo-bo forgot all about being burned. He licked his fingers, but not because they hurt him. He did not know why he did lick them, but he kept on. Neither he nor any one else in the world had ever tasted such a wonderful taste.

Pretty soon, it came to him that it was the pig which tasted so delicious, and no sooner had he thought this, than he sat down in the ruins of the hut and began to eat great pieces of the little burnt pig. While he was making the best meal he had ever had in his life, his father came home, and when he saw that the hut was burnt down and that his son was eating some horrible food that no one else had ever eaten before, he began to beat Bo-bo with the stick he had in his hand. But Bo-bo did not seem to feel it. He hunted in the ashes for another pig and thrust it into his father's hands. Then the same thing happened which had happened to him. The pig burned Ho-ti's fingers and he put them in his mouth, and after that he had no time to think of beating any one, but sat down with his son in the ashes and made a good dinner.

From that time on, whenever they had little pigs, they burned down their hut to roast them. When the neighbours found it out, they thought it very wicked of Ho-ti and Bo-bo to eat burnt pig, but as soon as they were persuaded to taste it, they changed their minds, and then everybody was burning down his house in order to roast his pigs. After a long while, some one found out that one could cook without burning one's house down, which I am sure you will agree was a great discovery.

—Some day, when you go to school, you will have this story given to you to read—for a lesson!