Paean to Pies

Today, I offer you yet another quote from A Modern Instance-- one that is straightforward yet still delightful in its humorously extended reference to savory pies. In an ode to a pastry that sounds suspiciously similiar to its twentieth century cousin, the Hot Pocket, the speaker posits pie as a rival to fish in its power to nourish the brain and feed the imagination.  Only a reference to pecan pie could improve this paean to pies. As the expression goes, The Pies Have It. 

     "He turned round, and cut out of a mighty mass of dough in a tin trough a portion, which he threw down on his table and attacked with a rolling pin.  'That means pie, Mr. Hubbard,' he explained, 'and pie means meat pie--or squash pie, at a pinch.  Today's pie-baking day.  But you needn't be troubled on that account.  So's tomorrow, and so was yesterday. Pie twenty-one times a week is the word and don't you forget it....they say old Agassiz recommended fish as the best food for the brain.  Well, I don't suppose but what it is.  But I don't know but what pie is more stimulating to the fancy.  I never saw anything like meat pie to make ye dream.'
     'Yes,' said Bartley, nodding gloomily, 'I've tried it.'
     Kinney laughed. 'Well, I guess folks of sedentary pursuits, like you and me, don't need it; but these fellows that stamp round in the snow all day, they want something to keep their imagination goin'.  And I guess pie does it.' "

---William Dean Howells, A Modern Instance (1882)