Seated before a roast or a fowl, Gant began a heavy clangor on his steel and carving knife, distributing thereafter Gargantuan portions to each plate. Eugene feasted from a high chair by his father’s side, filled his distending belly until it was drum-tight, and was permitted to stop eating by his watchful sire only when his stomach was impregnable to the heavy prod of Gant’s big finger.
“There’s a soft place there,” he would roar, and he would cover the scoured plate of his infant son with another heavy slab of beef. That their machinery withstood this hammer-handed treatment was a tribute to their vitality and Eliza’s cookery.
Gant ate ravenously and without caution. He was immoderately fond of fish, and he invariably choked upon a bone while eating it. This happened hundreds of times, but each time he would look up suddenly with a howl of agony and terror, groaning and crying out strongly while a half-dozen hands pounded violently on his back.
“Merciful God!” he would gasp finally, “I thought I was done for that time.”
“I’ll vow, Mr. Gant,” Eliza was vexed. “Why on earth don’t you watch what you’re doing? If you didn’t eat so fast you wouldn’t always get choked.”
The children, staring, but relieved, settled slowly back in their places.
He had a Dutch love of abundance: again and again he described the great stored barns, the groaning plenty of the Pennsylvanians.
On his journey to California, he had been charmed in New Orleans by the cheapness and profusion of tropical fruits: a peddler offered him a great bunch of bananas for twenty-five cents, and Gant had taken them at once, wondering desperately later, as they moved across the continent, why, and what he was going to do with them.
