Help me, Will

[stencil]

Jason
>*exactly* *what* *kind* *of* *pie* is being made here?
and  deedle
>"Pie-Spices, peel'd Fruits, Suet, heated Sugar"  MINCE PIE!!!!!  Yummmm.
>An X-mas opening?
savor the fragrance of Sentence One as uncorked by dkipen;
 
but if it were pie it would be Lard;  only the poor would need to
strain rendered suet for crust and these are wealthy folk, many rooms
and an indoor kitchen besides.  The times are early,
sled/sledge?/sleigh runners greased rather than iron-shod, and
impersonal Nouns capitalized.  
The winter wind, westerly, blows off the Schuykill onto Philadelphia
and "off Delaware" onto the Jersey bank of the river (near
Masonville?), if TRP persists in dropping articles (all through GR
Slothrop refers to The Berkshires as "Berkshire"), or else from the
Bay and Colony onto the Pine Barrens.  It would seem to be too late
for Christmas : "each afternoon all this snowy  Winter;"  carries the
weight of a full season's experience.
So.  Not pie-baking Germanic Pennsylvania Christmastime but a
boiler-equipped  New Jersey colonial kitchen.  Fruit, suet, batter.
"Pie-Spices,"  cinnamon, clove, coriander,  taken to be generic, like
'curry powder'.  Sounds like plum duff or indian pudding.  Or was it
really Lard after all?