- end_line
- 5761
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:56.336Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 5687
- text
- eggs 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 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 pretense 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 apologizing 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 toadstooled 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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