- end_line
- 6063
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.985Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 5997
- text
- ‘Very distinct, indeed.’
‘Ah! that is your way. Making sport of earnest. But never mind. We have
been talking of snow; but common rain-water--such as falls all the year
round--is still more kindly. Not to speak of its known fertilising
quality as to fields, consider it in one of its minor lights. Pray, did
you ever hear of a “Poor Man’s Egg”?’
‘Never. What is that, now?’
‘Why, in making some culinary preparations of meal and flour, where 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 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.
- title
- Chunk 7