We are going to get our meats from Basswood City by express twice a week or as needed, and our fresh fish from Whitefish Bay the same way. There are some fishes in Uintah Lake, but they will not come out when wanted, so we have to send further. When I was at Basswood I found the steward of the new Memphremagog House at that place was buying selected round of beef instead of loin for steaks. Not the common round steaks which the butchers cut straight along good and bad together, but the tender side only, cut off the bone as neat and trim as a ham. I had previously written up and advocated the use of the tender side of the round instead of the most expensive short loins, but had in view the case of such hotels as Black's, the other rival house here at the depot, where they have ninety summer boarders, at $10 a week, and still buy their beef by the entire side at a time, hind-quarter, fore-quarter, neck, shanks and everything. But the getting the butcher to cut out the best piece of round for a house every day was new to me. The tough side of the round, of which there is a portion in every whole round steak, is about one third of it. How the butcher disposed of that does not concern us, but he charged the steward for the other 13 cents a pound. The choice cut of the loin at the same time was costing 15 cents and one-fourth of it was bone. Twenty pounds of loin at 15 cents comes to $3. Take out the bone and you have fifteen pounds of meat that has cost 20 cents, a clear difference of $7 on every hundred pounds of beef bought. This meat is not as good as the best parts of the loin but it ranks second best, and is better than the flank part which every loin cut carries. The draw back is a piece of the sinewy end of the round, about three or four pounds that become tough and dry and as to be cut off to make either corned beef or soup.

There are plenty of people to whom one beefsteak seems as good as another, they are so hungry it makes no difference; but, at the same time there are others whom we like to pamper with choice bits, and besides, we are loth to lose the rich loin bone for soup, so I called on the butcher and arranged that he shall send a round and a loin alternately, and that promises to be good enough. While that is on the way we shall have to pick up something at 'The Glen," where the village butcher kills something once or twice a week, or whenever he has nothing else to do.