The Lexington Market, to which my companion and I had the good fortune
to be taken by a Baltimore lady, is comparable, in its picturesqueness
with _Les Halles_ of Paris, or the fascinating market in Seattle, where
the Japanese pile up their fresh vegetables with such charming show of
taste. The great sheds cover three long blocks, and in the countless
stall-like shops which they contain may be found everything for the
table, including flowers to trim it and after-dinner sweets. I doubt
that any northern housewife knows such a market or such a profusion of
comestibles. In one stall may be purchased meat, in the next vegetables,
in the next fish, in the next bread and cake, in the next butter and
buttermilk, in the next fruit, or game, or flowers, or--at Christmas
time--tree trimmings. These stalls, with their contents, are duplicated
over and over again; and if your fair guide be shopping for a dinner
party, at which two men from out of town are to be initiated into the
delights of the Baltimore cuisine, she may order up the costly and
aristocratic _Malacoclemmys_, the diamond-back terrapin, sacred in
Baltimore as is the Sacred Cod himself in Boston.
The admirable encyclopedia of Messrs. Funk & Wagnall's informs me that
"the diamond-back salt-water terrapin ... is caught in salt marshes
along the coast from New England to Texas, _the finest being those of
the Massachusetts and the northern coasts_.
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