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- 6081
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.883Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 6008
- text
- are recommended in the receipt-book, a substitute for the eggs may be
had in a cup of cold rain-water, which acts as leaven. And so a cup of
cold rain-water thus used is called by housewives a “Poor Man’s Egg.”
And many rich men’s housekeepers sometimes use it.’
‘But only when they are out of hen’s eggs, I presume, dear Blandmour.
But your talk is--I sincerely say it--most agreeable to me. Talk on.’
‘Then there’s “Poor Man’s Plaster” for wounds and other bodily harms; an
alleviative and curative, compounded of simple, natural things; and so,
being very cheap, is accessible to the poorest of sufferers. Rich men
often use “Poor Man’s Plaster.”’
‘But not without the judicious advice of a fee’d physician, dear
Blandmour.’
‘Doubtless, they first consult the physician; but that may be an
unnecessary precaution.’
‘Perhaps so. I do not gainsay it. Go on.’
‘Well, then, did you ever eat of a “Poor Man’s Pudding”?’
‘I never so much as heard of it before.’
‘Indeed! Well, now you shall eat of one; and you shall eat it, too, as
made, unprompted, by a poor man’s wife, and you shall eat it at a poor
man’s table, and in a poor man’s house. Come now, and if after this
eating, you do not say that a “Poor Man’s Pudding” is as relishable as a
rich man’s, I will give up the point altogether; which briefly is: that,
through kind Nature, the poor, out of their very poverty, extract
comfort.’
Not to narrate any more of our conversations upon this subject (for we
had several--I being at that time the guest of Blandmour in the country,
for the benefit of my health), suffice it that, acting upon Blandmour’s
hint, I introduced myself into Coulter’s house on a wet Monday noon (for
the snow had thawed), under the innocent pretence of craving a
pedestrian’s rest and refreshment for an hour or two.
I was greeted, not without much embarrassment--owing, I suppose, to my
dress--but still with unaffected and honest kindness. Dame Coulter was
just leaving the wash-tub to get ready her one o’clock meal against her
good man’s return from a deep wood about a mile distant among the hills,
where he was chopping by day’s-work--seventy-five cents per day and
found himself. The washing being done outside the main building, under
an infirm-looking old shed, the dame stood upon a half-rotten, soaked
board to protect her feet, as well as might be, from the penetrating
damp of the bare ground; hence she looked pale and chill. But her
paleness had still another and more secret cause--the paleness of a
mother-to-be. A quiet, fathomless heart-trouble, too, couched beneath
the mild, resigned blue of her soft and wife-like eye. But she smiled
upon me, as apologising for the unavoidable disorder of a Monday and a
washing-day, and, conducting me into the kitchen, set me down in the
best seat it had--an old-fashioned chair of an enfeebled constitution.
I thanked her; and sat rubbing my hands before the ineffectual low fire,
and--unobservantly as I could--glancing now and then about the room,
while the good woman, throwing on more sticks, said she was sorry the
room was no warmer. Something more she said, too--not repiningly,
however--of the fuel, as old and damp; picked-up sticks in Squire
Teamster’s forest, where her husband was chopping the sappy logs of the
living tree for the Squire’s fires. It needed not her remark, whatever
it was, to convince me of the inferior quality of the sticks; some being
quite mossy and toad-stooled with long lying bedded among the
accumulated dead leaves of many autumns. They made a sad hissing, and
vain spluttering enough.
‘You must rest yourself here till dinner-time, at least,’ said the dame;
‘what I have you are heartily welcome to.’
I thanked her again, and begged her not to heed my presence in the
least, but go on with her usual affairs.
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