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- Herausgeber: Science & Technology Publishing
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Table Traits, with Something on Them is a delightful and insightful exploration of the customs, manners, and social rituals associated with dining in Victorian England. Authored by D. Jerrold, the book offers a witty and observant commentary on the habits and peculiarities of people at the table, blending humor with keen social observation. Through a series of essays and anecdotes, Jerrold examines the etiquette, conversation, and behaviors that define the dining experience, from the arrangement of the table and the serving of dishes to the art of toasting and the subtleties of table talk. The book delves into the roles of hosts and guests, the significance of various meals, and the unspoken rules that govern social interaction during feasts and gatherings. With its charming prose and sharp wit, Table Traits not only provides a fascinating glimpse into the dining culture of its time but also offers timeless reflections on human nature and the ways in which we connect over food. Whether discussing the foibles of gluttony, the virtues of moderation, or the pleasures of conviviality, Jerrold's observations remain relevant and entertaining, making this work a valuable resource for anyone interested in the history of manners, gastronomy, or social life.
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Cover
TABLE TRAITS,
WITH
SOMETHING ON THEM.
BY
DR. DORAN.
“Je suis aujourd’hui en train de conter; plaise à Dieu que cela ne soit pas une calamité publique.”—Brillat Savarin.
LONDON:
RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET;
OLIVER & BOYD, EDINBURGH; HODGES & SMITH, DUBLIN;
AND TO BE HAD OF ALL BOOKSELLERS, AND AT THE RAILWAY STATIONS.
1854.
LONDON: R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLEHENRY, EARL OF HAREWOOD, IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF BY-GONE HAPPY YEARS, THIS VOLUME IS INSCRIBED BY
THE AUTHOR.
BILL OF FARE.
PAGE
The Legend of Amphitryon—a Prologue
1
Diet and Digestion
9
Water
14
Breakfast
26
Materials for Breakfast
31
Corn, Bread, &c.
36
Tea
48
Coffee
57
Chocolate
64
The Old Coffee Houses
67
The French Cafés
80
The Ancient Cook and his Art
86
The Modern Cook and his Science
99
Pen and Ink Sketch of Carême
114
Dinner Traits
123
The Materials for Dining
136
A Light Dinner for two
169
Sauces
190
The Parasite
219
Table Traits of Utopia and the Golden Age
230
Table Traits of England in the Early Times
244
Table Traits of the Last Century
260
Wine and Water
282
The Birth of the Vine, and what has come of it
287
The Making and Marring of Wine
303
Imperial Drinkers and Incidents in Germany
312
An Incident of Travel
313
A few odd Glasses of Wine
324
The Tables of the Ancient and Modern Egyptians
341
The Diet of Saints of Old
353
The Bridal and Banquet of Ferques
372
The Support of Modern Saints
377
The Cæsars at Table
394
Their Majesties at Meat
412
English Kings at their Tables
442
Strange Banquets
467
The Castellan Von Coucy
473
Authors and their Dietetics
487
The Liquor-loving Laureates
508
Supper
513
TABLE TRAITS,
WITH SOMETHING ON THEM.
THE LEGEND OF AMPHITRYON. A PROLOGUE.
“Le véritable Amphitryon est l’Amphitryon où l’on dîne.”—Molière.
Among well-worn illustrations and similes, there are few that have been more hardly worked than the above line of Poquelin-Molière. It is a line which tells us pleasantly enough, that he who sits at the head of a table is among those “respectable” powers who find an alacrity of worship at the hands of man. I say, “at the hands;” for what is “adoration” but the act of putting the hand to the mouth (as expressed by its components ad and os, oris)? and what worship is so common as that which takes this form, especially when the Amphitryon is amiable, and his altar well supplied?
But such a solution of the question affords us, after all, no enlightenment as to the mystery of the reality of Amphitryon himself, whose name is now worn, and sometimes usurped, by those who preside at modern banquets. Was he real? is he a myth? was he ever in the body? or is his name that of a shadow only, employed for purposes of significance? If real, whence came he? What does classic story say of the abused husband of Alcmena?
Amphitryon was a Theban gentleman, who had two nephews, fast young men, who were slain by the Teleboans. This is a myth. They were extravagant individuals, of the class of those who count the chimes at midnight. Their father could not help them; and so the uncle, a bachelor, was expected to do his avuncular office, spend his substance for the benefit of his brother’s children, and get small thanks for his trouble. His brother, however, had an article of small value,—a daughter, named Alcmena; and this lady was given in marriage to her uncle, without any scruple about the laws of affinity. As soon as the ceremony of the betrothal was over, Amphitryon departed to punish the Teleboans; and he had not been long absent, when Jupiter presented himself in the likeness of the absent husband, set up a household with the readily-convinced Alcmena, and became the father of Hercules. When Amphitryon returned, his surprise was natural, and his ill-temper not to be wondered at. But Jupiter explained the imbroglio in a very cavalier way, as was his custom, and which they who are curious may see in the liveliest of the lively comedies of the miller’s man, Plautus.
An incident connected with the story shows us that Amphitryon, fond of good living generally, and of beef in particular, made a razzia among the Teleboan herds, and brought back all the cows and oxen he found amongst them. He was exhibiting the cattle to his brother Electryon, when one of the animals strayed from the herd; and Amphitryon, in order to bring it back, flung a stick at it, but with such violence, that the weapon, falling on the horns, rebounded as violently upon Electryon, who died upon the spot. But this, too, is a myth; and I have no doubt but that Electryon died of indigestion; for the Teleboan beef was famous for its toughness. Indeed, many of the Teleboës themselves were so disgusted with it, that they abandoned their Ætolian homes, and settled in the island of Capreæ.
The Egyptians claim Amphitryon for their own. They boast that his dinners at Memphis were divine, and that Hercules, his son, was among the last-born of the gods; for Hercules was more than a hero among the leek-worshippers of Egypt. But the truth is, that the story of Amphitryon, his strength, his good fare, and his hard fate, belongs to a more distant period and land. It is a Hindoo story, the actors are children of the sun, and Voltaire declares that the tale is to be found in Dow’s “Hindostan;” but that is as much of a fable as the legend itself of Amphitryon, whose name, by the way, may be as easily “Indicized” as that of Pythagoras.
In Scotland, the crime of child-stealing is distinguished by the title of “plagiary;” and an instance of the latter is here before us. When Plautus sat in his master’s mill, and thought over the subject of his lively comedy, founded on the story of Amphitryon, he took for granted all that he had been told of his hero’s birth and parentage. But the classical Amphitryon is, as I have said, but a stolen child. His home is in the far East; and his history was calling up smiles upon the faces of listeners by the Indus long before the twin founders of Rome had been intrusted, by their nurse Lupa, to walk alone. The Hindoo Amphitryon was a fellow of some renown, and here is his story.
A Hindoo, whose name, indeed, has not descended to us,—but he was the individual whom the Greeks stole, and called Amphitryon,—lived many years ago. He was remarkable for his gigantic strength and stature; and he not only found the former a good thing to possess, but he used it like a giant. He had for the wife of his bosom a fair, but fragile, girl, who lay in his embrace, as she sang to him at sunset, “like Hebe in Hercules’ arms.” It was not often, however, that such passages of peace embellished the course of their daily life. The Hindoo was jealous, and his little wife was coquettish. The lady had smiles for flatterers; and her monster of a husband had a stick, which showered blows upon her when he detected her neglecting her household work. Cudgelling took its turn with caressing, as it did in the more modern, and consequently more vulgar, case of Captain Wattle and Miss Roe; and finally there was much more of the first than there was of the last. One summer eve, the husband, in a fit of frantic jealousy, assaulted his wife so ferociously, that he left her insensible on the threshold of their house, and threatened never again to keep up a ménage with so incorrigible a partner.
A Hindoo deity, of an inferior order,—not the King of gods and men, as in the Grecian legend,—had witnessed the whole proceeding from his abiding place in a neighbouring cloud. He smiled as the husband disappeared; and, gradually descending in his little palace to the ground, he lightly leaped on to the firm set earth, gave a hurried glance at the unconscious and thickly-bruised beauty, and then, in testimony of his ecstatic delight, he clapped his hands, and commenced revolving on one leg, as D’Egville used to do, when Venua’s violin led the orchestra, and gave him strength.
The spirit, having subsided into repose, thought for a while, and speedily arrived at a resolution. It infused itself into a human body, which was found without difficulty, and it clothed the whole under the counterfeit presentment of the errant husband. These feats of transmutation were common among the eastern deities; and I take for granted that my readers are aware that Pythagoras himself—who is connected with Table Traits, on the subject of beans—was no other than Buddha Goroos, who slipped into a vacant body, and taught the metempsychosis to wondering Europe.
The wife of the Hindoo giant was something astonished, on recovering herself, to find that she was seated, without any sense of pain, on a bench in the little garden, with her apparent husband at her feet, pouring out protestations of love and assurances of fidelity. She accepted all, without questioning; for it was all too pleasant to be refused. A new life commenced. The married pair became the admiring theme of the village; and when a son was born to them, there ensued such showers of felicitations and flowers as had never fallen upon married lovers since the Hindoo world first started on its career, on the back of the self-supporting elephant. Their moon never ceased to shed honey; and this was flowing, sweetly and copiously as ever, when, one sultry noon, the vagrant husband returned home, and, confronting the counterfeit at an inner door, bitterly satirized the vanity of women who indulged in capricious tempers and Psyche glasses. In an instant, however, he was conscious that his other self was not a reflection, but only the cause of many that began crowding into the brain of the true man. The cool complacency of the counterfeit irritated the bewildered and legitimate husband, and an affray ensued, in which the mortal got all the blows, and his rival all the advantage. The wife was herself perplexed, but manifested a leaning towards the irresistible divinity. In vain did the gigantic original roar forth the tale of his wrongs, and claim his undoubted rights; and it was only during a lull in the storm that he heeded a suggestion made, to the effect, that all the parties should submit their case to the judgment of an inspired Brahmin.
This eminent individual speedily perceived that, of the double-man that stood before him, one was a dupe, and the other a deity,—something, at all events, above humanity. The question was, how to discover the divinity. After much cogitation, this was the judgment pronounced by the dusky Solomon: “Madam,” said he to the perplexed lady, “your husband was known as being the most robust man ever made out of the red earth, of which was composed the father of us all. Now, let these two litigants salute you on the lips; and we pronounce him to be the true man who comes off with the loudest report.” The trial took place forthwith in presence of the assembled multitude. The Indian mortal first approached the up-raised lips of his wife; and he performed the required feat with an echo that was as half a hundred culverins to the “pistol-shot” kiss recorded of Petruchio. The Judge and the people looked curiously to the defendant, as wondering how, on the pretty instrument before him, he could strike a note higher than his rival. The Indian god addressed him to what seemed a rose-bud wet with dew; and therewith ensued a sound as though all the artillery of the skies were saluting, too, in honour of the achievement. The multitude and the Brahmin looked, for all the world, as if they had lost their hearing; and it was calculated that the astounding din might have been heard by the slumbering tortoise below the antipodes. At length, the assembly hailed the deity as the undoubted Simon Pure, and looked towards the Brahmin for confirmation of their award; but the Brahmin merely remarked to them, with urbanity, that they were the sons and fathers of asses, and were unable to distinguish between the almost invisible seed which diets the bird of Paradise, and the gigantic palm of the garden of the gods, each leaf of which is of such extent that an earthly courser, at his utmost speed, could not traverse it in fifty millions of mortal-measured years. “Here is the true husband,” added the Judge, putting his hand upon the shoulder of the Indian, “who has done all that human being, in the particular vocation required, could do; and here,” added he, turning reverentially to the other, “is some supreme being, who has been pleased to amuse himself at the expense of his servants.”
The god smiled, and confessed to the excellence of the Judge’s perspicuity by revealing himself in his true, and somewhat operatic, form. He ascended the cloud, which appeared in waiting for him like an aërial cab, and, looking from over its side, laughingly bade the edified multitude farewell, adding, that he was the deity appointed to preside at tables that were not ungraced by the fair;—and, “if these have a cause for complaint, it is my privilege to avenge them according to my good pleasure.” The ladies thereupon flung flowers to him as he rose, and the husbands saluted his departure with rather faint cheers; but throughout India, while orthodoxy lasted, there never was a table spread, but the master thereat, prince or peasant, invoked the Hindoo deity to cast the beams of the sun of his gaiety upon the board. Heresy, however, in this matter, has crept in; and, if Hindoo feasts lack real brilliancy, it is because the sunlight of the god no longer beams from the eyes of the fair, who are no longer present sharers in the banquet. It is otherwise in Europe, whither, perhaps, the god came, and aped Jupiter, as well as Amphitryon, when he perplexed the household of Alcmena. He sits presiding at our feast, ensconced within a rose; from thence his smiles urge to enjoyment, and the finger on his lip to discretion; and every docile guest whispers sub rosâ, and acknowledges the present god.
It is said, in India, that this divinity was the one who gave men diet, but forgot digestion. It was like giving them philosophical lectures, without power to understand them; and the case is still common enough upon earth. These subjects demand brief notice, were it only by way of appendix to this prolegomenical chapter.
DIET AND DIGESTION.
“No digest of law’s like the law of digestion.”—Moore.
Our good neighbours the French, or rather, the philosophers among them, have asserted that the perfecting of man and his species depends upon attention to diet and digestion; and, in a material point of view, they are not far wrong; and, indeed, in a non-material point of view, it may be said that the spirit, without judgment, is very likely to be exposed to indigestion; and perhaps ignorance complete is to be preferred to an ill-digested erudition. With diet and patience, Walpole thought all the diseases of man might be easily cured. Montesquieu, on the other hand, held that health purchased by rigorously watching over diet, was but a tedious disease. But Walpole was nearly correct, while Montesquieu was not very distant from the truth. Dieting, like other things, must be undertaken on common-sense principles; for, though there be multitudes of mad people in the world, society generally is not to be put upon the régime of “Bedlam.”
We live, not by what we eat, but by what we digest; and what one man may digest, another would die of attempting. Rules on this subject are almost useless. Each man may soon learn the powers of his stomach, in health or disease, in this respect; and this ascertained, he has no more business to bring on indigestion than he has to get intoxicated or fall into debt. He who offends on these three points, deserves to forfeit stomach, head, and his electoral franchise!
Generally speaking, fat and spices resist the digestive power; and too much nutritious food is the next evil to too little. Good cookery, by developing flavour, increases the nutritiousness of food, which bad cookery would perhaps render indigestible. Hence a good cook rises to the dignity of “artist.” He may rank with the chemists, if not with the physicians.
Animal food, of mild quality, is more digestible than vegetable, and fresh meats are preferable to salted. In the latter the salt is a different composition from that which is taken at meals, and which is indispensable to health. Fish fills rather than feeds; but there are exceptions to this. Vegetables are accounted as doing little to maintain stamina; but there have been races and classes of men who have been heroes upon bread, fruit, and vegetables. The poor cannot live upon “curry,” it is true; but in England, with less drink and more vegetable food, they would be an improved race. Not that they could live like a Lazzaroni on maccaroni and the open air. Layard says the Bedouin owes his health and strength to his spare diet. But even a Bedouin swallows lumps of butter till he becomes bilious; and were he to live in England instead of the desert, he would not keep up his strength by living on the dishes which support him in Arabia Felix. The golden rule is “moderation and regularity.” He who transgresses the rule, will pay for it by present suffering and a “check” after Christmas.
A false hunger ought not to be soothed, nor a false thirst to be satisfied; for satisfaction here is only adding fuel to a fire that would otherwise go out. On the other hand, the bilious and sedentary man need not be afraid of beer; it is a better stomachic than wine. For him, and for all lords of that heritage of woe, a weak stomach, the common-sense system of cookery, as it is called, is most required. It is something between the hard crude system of the English, and the juice-extracting method of the French; with a leaning, however, towards the latter, (with whom it is common to reduce food to a condition of pulp,) but uniting with it so much of the English custom as allows the gelatinous matter to be retained, especially in the meats. “Festina lente,” is “Latin de cuisine,” for “Eat slowly,” and it is of first-rate value. He who does so, gives best chance for healthy chyle; and that wanting, I should like to know where the post-prandial enjoyment would be. Without it, digestion is not; and when digestion is away, Death is always peering about to profit by his absence. “See to it!” as the Chinese “chop” says.
There are upwards of seventeen hundred works extant on the subject of diet and digestion. Sufferers may study the question till they are driven mad by doubt and dyspepsia, and difference of opinions among the doctors. Fordyce saw no use in the saliva, and Paris maintains that without it digestion is not. “Quot homines, tot sententiæ,” is as applicable here as in every other vexed question. But Paris’s book on Diet is the safest guide I know for a man who, being dyspeptic, wants to cure himself, or simply to discover the definement of his degree of suffering. On the other hand, every man may find comfort in the reflection, that with early hours, abundant exercise, generous diet, but not too much of it, and occupation,—without which a worse devil than the former enters on possession of the victim,—dyspepsia cannot assume a chronic form. It may be a casual visitor, but it will be the easiest thing possible to get rid of him. But philosophy has said as much from the beginning, and yet dyspepsia prevails and physicians ride in carriages. Exactly! and why? Because philosophers themselves, like the Stoic gentleman in Marmontel, after praising simplicity of living, sink to sleep, on heavy suppers and beds of down, with the suicidal remark, that “Le Luxe est une jolie chose.”
We must neither act unreservedly on the dictum of books, nor copy slavishly the examples of others, if we would have the digestion in a healthy condition. There is a self-monitor that may safely be consulted. Of his existence there can be no doubt; for every man who wakes with a headache most ungratefully blames that same monitory “self.”
If any class may fairly complain of others in this respect, rather than of themselves, it is the “babies.” The Rajpoots do not slay half so many of their infants out of pride, as we do by indiscreet dieting; or, to speak plainly, over-feeding. The New Zealand mother is not more foolish, who thrusts stones down the throat of her babe, in order to make him a stern and fearless warrior, and only mars him for a healthy man. And Christian matrons have been quite as savage without intending it. Brantome’s uncle, Chastargnerage, was no sooner weaned than, by the advice of a Neapolitan physician, he took gold, steel, and iron, (in powders,) mixed up with all he ate and drank. This regimen he followed until he was twelve years old, by which time (we are asked to believe) it had so strengthened him that he could stop a wild bull in full course. This diet, however, seems little likely to have produced such an effect. As soon might one expect that the Bolton ass, which chewed tobacco and took snuff, was made swift as a race-horse by so doing. I think that it is of Dean Nowell it is said, that he grew strong by drinking ale. He was the accidental inventor of bottled ale. He was out fishing with a bottle of the freshly-drawn beverage at his side, when intelligence reached him touching the peril his life was in, under Mary, which made him fly, after flinging away his rod, and thrusting his bottle of ale under the grass. When he could again safely resort to the same spot, he looked for his bottle, which, on being disturbed, drove out the cork like a pellet from a gun, and contained so creamy a fluid, that the Dean, noting the fact, and rejoicing therein, took care to be well provided with the same thenceforward. As Henry II. was the first King who acted as sewer, and placed the boar’s head on the table of his young son, just crowned, so Dean Nowell was the first church dignitary who laid the foundation of red noses, by bringing bottled ale to the notice of the clergy. There is an old tradition, that what this ale used to do for churchmen, cider used to effect for Africans.
As we have said, “moderation” is the first principle of digestion; and as, according to the Latin proverb, “water gives moderation,” it behoves us to look for a few minutes into the much praised, and little appreciated, aqua pura.
WATER.
A Kentucky man, who was lately at one of the great tables in an hotel in the States, where the bill of fare was in French, after sorely puzzling himself with descriptions which he could not comprehend, “cotelettes à la Maintenon” and “œufs à la braise;” exclaimed, “I shall go back to first principles: give me some roast beef!” So, after speaking of the birth of him, whose putative father has lent a name to liberal hosts, let us also fall back upon first principles, and contemplate the uses of water.
There is nothing in nature more useful; but, commonly speaking, you can neither buy any thing with it, nor get any article for it in exchange. Adam Smith strikingly compares with it the uselessness and the value of a diamond: the latter has scarcely any value in use, but much that is valuable may be had in exchange for it. In the desert a cup full of water is worth one full of diamonds; that is, in certain emergencies. The diamond and the water illustrate the difference between value in use and value in exchange.
If water be not, according to Pindar and the legend over the Bath Pump-Room, the best of things, few things would attain to excellence without it. Greek philosophy was not wrong which made it the principle of life, and the popular belief scarcely erred in seeing in every stream, spring, and fountain a resident deity. Water was so reverenced by certain ancient nations, that they would never desecrate it by purifying themselves therewith! The ancient Persians and Cappadocians exemplified their devotion by personal dirtiness. In presence of the visible power of the stream, altars were raised, and adoration paid to the god whose existence was evidenced by such power. The Egyptians gave their divine river more than prayers, because their dependence on it was more absolute than that of other nations on their respective streams. The Nile, swelling beneficently, bestowed food, health, and therewith content on the Egyptians; and they, in return, flung gratefully into the stream corn, sugar, and fruit. When human sacrifices were made to rivers, it was probably because the river was recognised as giving life, and was worthy of being paid in kind. We may smile superciliously at this old reverence for the “liquid good,” but there was connected therewith much that we might profitably condescend to copy. Greece had her officers appointed to keep her streams pure. Had those officials exposed the people to drink such indescribable matter as we draw from the Thames, they would have been thrown into it by popular indignation. In Rome, Ancus Martius was long remembered, not for his victories, but for his care to supply the city with salubrious and sufficient water; and if people generally cursed Nero for his crimes, they acknowledged that he had at least not damaged the public aqueducts; and that in his reign ice-houses were first built, the contents of which enabled thousands to quaff the cool beverage which is so commendably spoken of by Aristotle.
The fountains were the ornaments of the public places, as the crystal ampulla, with its slender neck and its globular body, was of the sideboards of private houses in Rome. The common people drank to excess, both of hot water and cold: the former they drank in large measures;—this was in winter, and in taverns where they fed largely upon pork, and drank the water as a stimulant! The Emperor Claudius looked upon this regimen as an immoral indulgence, and he closed the taverns where proprietors injured the public stomach by such a diet. Some Romans were so particular as to boil the water they intended to drink, in vessels at their own table. They were like the epicures who never intrust the boiling of an egg to their own cooks. We may notice that Augustus employed it lavishly, both as a bather and drinker. The “faculty” were unanimous in recommending a similar use of it, and some of these gentlemen made considerable fortunes by the various methods of applying it. For instance, patients resorting to Charmis, to take cold baths in winter under his direction, were required to pay him a consulting fee of £800! He was the first “water-cure” Doctor that ever practised, and he realized a fortune such as his successors may aim at in vain.
Horace Walpole, forgetting what he had once before said, namely, that diet and patience formed the universal panacea, declared that his “great nostrum was the use of cold water, inwardly and outwardly, on all occasions, and that with disregard of precaution against catching cold. I have often,” he continues, “had the gout in my face and eyes, and instantly dip my head in a pail of cold water, which always cures it, and does not send it any where else.” And again, alluding to another use of water, he says sneeringly, “Whether Christianity will be laid aside I cannot say. As nothing of the spirit is left, the forms, I think, signify very little. Surely, it is not an age of morality and principle; does it import whether profligacy is baptized or not?”
With regard to the sanitary application of water, as noticed by Walpole, there can be no doubt but that diet and digestion proceed the more perfectly, as the ablution of the body is general and daily, and made with cold water. But discretion must be used; for there are conditions of the body which cannot endure cold bathing without palpitation of the heart following. In such case, tepid water should be used for a time, when the palpitations will soon cease, unless the heart be organically affected.
The same writer’s remarks on the Christian uses of water, remind me of what is said of some such uses in Weever’s “Funeral Monuments.” He cites the inscriptions that used to be placed over the holy water in ancient churches. Some deposed that the sprinkling of it drove away devils:—
Others promised a blessing, as, for example:—
Another implied, that six benefits arose from its use; namely,—
Homer, too, it will be recollected, speaks of the sound of water inspiring consolatory thoughts, in the passage where he describes one “suffering cruel wounds from a diseased heart, but he found a remedy; for, sitting down beneath a lofty rock, looking down upon the sea, he began to sing.”
The dormitories of many of the old convents were adorned with inscriptions recommendatory of personal cleanliness; but the inmates generally were more content with the theory than the practice: they were, in some degree, like the man at Bishop-Middleham, who died with the reputation of a water-drinker, but who really killed himself by secret drunkenness. He praised water in public, but drank brandy in private, though it was not till after death that his delinquency was discovered.
The use of water against the spells of witchcraft lingered longer in Scotland than elsewhere. The Strathdown Highlander even now, it is said, is not ashamed to drink “the water of the dead and living ford,” on New Year’s Day, as a charm to secure him from sorcery until the ensuing New Year.
St. Bernard, the Abbot, made application of water for another purpose. Butler says of him, that he once happened to fix his eyes on the face of a woman; but immediately reflecting that this was a temptation, he ran to a pond, and leaped up to the neck into the water, which was then as cold as ice, to punish himself, and to vanquish the enemy!
There is a second incident connected with water, that will bear to be told as an illustration, at least, of old times. When Patricius was Bishop of Prusa, the Proconsul Julius resorted thither to the famous baths, and was restored to such vigorous health thereby, that he not only made sacrifice of thanksgiving to Esculapius and Health, but required the Bishop to follow his example. The Prelate declined, and the Proconsul ordered him to be thrown into a caldron of boiling water, by which he was no more affected than if he had been enjoying a bath of tepid rose-water. Whereupon he was taken out and beheaded. The power that kept the water cool did not interfere to blunt the axe.
We have seen the reverence paid by certain “ancients of old” to the supposed divinities whose crystal thrones were veiled beneath the waves. Men under a better dispensation have shown, perhaps, a worse superstition. Bede makes mention of a Monk who thought he would purify his sin-stained spirit by actual ablution. He had, the church-historian tells us, a solitary place of residence assigned him in the monastery, adjacent to a river: into the latter he was accustomed to plunge, by way of penance to his body. He went manfully to the bottom, and his mouth was no sooner again in upper air, than it was opened to give utterance to lusty prayer and praise. He would sometimes thus stand for hours, up to the neck, and uttering his orisons aloud. He was in full dress when this penance was performed, and, on coming from the stream, he let his wet, and sometimes frozen, garments dry upon his person. A Friar, once seeing him break the ice, in order that he might make his penitential plunge, expressed shiveringly his wonder at the feat: “It must be so very cold,” said the Friar. “I have seen greater cold,” was the sole remark of the devotional diver. “Such austerity I never beheld,” exclaimed another spectator. “I have beheld far greater,” replied the Monk. “And thus,” adds the historian, as simply as any of them, “thus he forwarded the salvation of many by his words and example.”
Connected with a pious man of our own time, I may mention an incident touching water, which is rather remarkable:—the person to whom I allude is Bishop Gobat, of Jerusalem. He states, in his last Annual Letter, that he is building a school which will cost him about £600: the school is not yet finished; but the water used for mixing the mortar has already cost the enormous sum of £60. It is, in fact, a luxury which must be paid for. Where it is so dear, it were well if the people never were thirsty; and there were such people of old.
The late Vice-Chancellor of England, Sir Lancelot Shadwell, was as indefatigable a bather as the Monk noticed by Bede. Every morning throughout the year, during his residence at Barnes Elms, he might be seen wrestling joyously with the Thames. It is said that, on one occasion, a party, in urgent need of an injunction, after looking for the Judge in a hundred places where he was not to be found, at length took boat, and encountered him as he was swimming in the river. There he is said to have heard the case, listening to the details as the astonished applicants made them, and now and then performing a frolicsome “summersault,” when they paused for want of breath. The injunction was granted, it is said; after which the applicants left the Judge to continue his favourite aquatic sport by himself.
If the late amiable and able Vice-Chancellor was a water-lawyer, so was the late Archdeacon Singleton a water-divine. When tutor to the young Lords Percy, he, and the eldest of the sons of the then Duke of Northumberland,—Hugh, Earl Percy,—were expert swimmers, and often, by their achievements, excited the admiration of less daring venturers. The Archdeacon was accustomed to float away for miles from Sion, depending upon the tide to float him back again. At first, many a boatman looked inquiringly at the motionless body carrying on with the stream; but, when he was better known, his appearance thus excited no more surprise than if he had been in an outrigger, calmly taking a pull before the hour of dinner.
With respect to water-drinkers, they seem to have abounded among the good old Heathens, of whom so many stories are told that we are not called upon to believe.
Aristotle, who, like Dr. Macnish, wrote an “Anatomy of Drunkenness,” (Περὶ Mέθης,) states therein, that he knew, or had heard, of many people who never experienced what it was to be thirsty. Archonides, of Argos, is cited by him as a man who could eat salt beef for a week without caring to drink, therewith or thereafter. Mago, the Carthaginian, is famous for having twice crossed the Desert without having once tasted water, or any other beverage. The Iberians, wealthy and showy people as they were, were water-drinkers; and it was peculiar to some of the Sophists of Elis, that they lived upon nothing but water and dried figs. Their bodily strength, which was great, is said to have been the result of such diet; but, it is added, that the pores of their skin exuded any thing but a celestial ichor, and that, whenever they went to the baths, all the other bathers fled, holding their offended noses between their fingers! Matris, of Athens, lived all his life upon myrtle-berries and water; but, as nobody knows how long he did live, it would be rather rash to imitate him in hopes of obtaining extension of existence. Lamprus, the musician, was a water-drinker, as were Polemon, the Academician, and Diocles, of Peparethus; but, as they were never famous for any thing else, they are hardly worth citing. It is different when we contrast Demosthenes with Demades. Demosthenes states, in his second Philippic, that he was a water-drinker; and Pytheas was right, when he bade the Athenians remark, that the sober demagogue was, like Dr. Young, in fact, constantly engaged in solemn Night Thoughts. “Not so your other demagogue, Demades,” said Pytheas; “he is an unclean fellow, who is daily drunk, and who never comes into your assemblies but to exhibit his enormous paunch.” Such was the style of election speeches in Greece; and it has a smack of the hustings, and, indeed, of the market, too, in Covent Garden.
To turn from old to modern mythology, I may notice that water entered into the old sports of St. Distaff’s Day, or the morrow after Twelfth Day. It is thus alluded to by one whose “mind was jocund, but his life was chaste,”—the lyric Parson of Dean Priors:—
When Herrick wrote these lines, I do not know how it may have been at Dean Priors, but London was but indifferently supplied with water. But now London is supplied with water from eight different sources. Five of them are on the north, or Middlesex, side of London, three on the Southwark and Surrey side. The first comprise the New River, at Islington; the East London, at Old Ford, on the Lea; the West Middlesex, on the Thames, at Brentford and Hammersmith; and the Chelsea and Grand Junction, on the same river, at Chelsea. The south side is entirely supplied from the Thames, by the Southwark, Lambeth, and Vauxhall Waterworks, whose names are descriptive of their locality.
The daily supply amounts to about 35,000,000 of gallons, of which more than a third is supplied by the New River Company. The original projector of this Company was Sir Hugh Myddelton, who proposed to supply the London conduits from the wells about Amwell and Ware. The project was completed in 1613, to the benefit of posterity and the ruin of the projector. The old hundred-pound shares are now worth ten times their original cost.
In 1682 the private houses of the metropolis were only supplied with fresh water twice a week. Mr. Cunningham, in his “Handbook of London,” informs us that the old sources of supply were the Wells, or Fleet River, Wallbrook and Langbourne Waters, Clement’s, Clerk’s, and Holy Well, Tyburn, and the River Lea. Tyburn first supplied the City in the year 1285, the Thames not being pressed into the service of the City conduits till 1568, when it supplied the conduit at Dowgate. There were people who stole water from the pipes then, as there are who steal gas now. “This yere,” (1479,) writes an old chronicler of London, quoted by Mr. Cunningham, “a wax-charndler in Flete Strete had bi craft perced a pipe of the condite withynne the ground, and so conveied the water into his selar; wherefore he was judged to ride thurgh the Citee with a condite upon his hedde.” The first engine which conveyed water into private houses, by leaden pipes, was erected at London Bridge, in 1582. The pipes were laid over the steeple of St. Magnus; and the engineer was Maurice, a Dutchman. Bulmer, an Englishman, erected a second engine, at Broken Wharf. Previous to 1656, the Strand and Covent Garden, though so near to the river, were only supplied by water-tankards, which were carried by those who sold the water, or by the apprentice, if there were one in the house, whose duty it was to fill the house-tankard at the conduit, or in the river. In the middle of the seventeenth century, Ford erected water-works on the Thames, in front of Somerset House; but the Queen of Charles II.—like the Princess Borghese, who pulled down a church next to her palace, because the incense turned her sick, and the organ made her head ache—ordered the works to be demolished, because they obstructed a clear view on the river. The inhabitants of the district depended upon their tankards and water-carriers, until the reign of William III., when the York-buildings Waterworks were erected. The frequently-occurring name of Conduit-street, or Conduit-court, indicates the whereabout of many of the old sources whence our forefathers drew their scanty supplies.
Water is not necessarily unhealthy, because of a little earthy matter in it; mineral, or animal, or vegetable matter held in it, by solution, or otherwise, renders it decidedly unwholesome. Rain water is the purest water, when it is to be had by its natural distillation in the open fields. When collected near towns, it should never be used without being previously boiled and strained.
The hardness of water is generally caused by the presence of sulphate of lime. Horses commonly refuse to drink hard water,—a water that can make neither good tea, nor good beer, and which frequently contains many salts. Soft water, which is a powerful solvent of all vegetable matters, is to be preferred for all domestic purposes. River water is seldom pure enough for drinking. Where purest, it has lost its carbonic acid from long exposure; and in the neighbourhood of cities it is often a slow poison, and nothing more, scarcely to be rescued from the name by the process of filtration. London is still supplied, at a very costly price, with water which is “offensive to the sight, disgusting to the imagination, and destructive to the health.” Thames water, as at present flowing into our houses, is at once the jackal and aide-de-camp of cholera. People are apt to praise it, as being the water from which is made the purest porter in the world; but it is a well-known fact, that the great London brewers never employ it for that purpose.
The more a spring is drawn from, the softer the water will become; hence old wells furnish a purer water than those which are more recent; but a well of soft water is sensibly hardened by a coating of bricks. To obviate this, the bricks should be coated with cement. Snow water deserves a better reputation than it has acquired. Lake water is fitted only for the commonest household detergent purposes. But the salubrity of water is converted into poison by the conveyances which bring it almost to our lips; and we have not yet adopted in full the recommendation of Vitruvius and Columella to use pipes of earthenware, as being not only cheaper, but more durable and more wholesome, than lead. We still convey away refuse water in earthenware, and bring fresh water into our houses in lead! The noted choleraic colic of Amsterdam, in the last century, was entirely caused by the action of vegetable matter in the water-pipes.
Filtration produces no good effect upon hard water. The sulphate of lime, and still more the super-carbonate of lime, are only to be destroyed by boiling. Boiled water, cooled, and agitated in contact with the atmosphere, before use, is a safe and not an unpleasant beverage. It is essential that the water be boiling when “toast and water” is the beverage to be taken.
Water, doubtless, is the natural drink of man—in a natural state. It is the only liquid which truly appeases thirst; and a small quantity is sufficient for that effect. The other liquids are, for the most part, palliatives merely. If man had kept to water, the saying would not be applicable to him, that “he is the only animal privileged to drink without being thirsty.” But, then, where would the medical profession have been?
But he does well who, at all events, commences the day with water and prayer. With such an one we go hand in hand, not only in that service, but, as now, to Breakfast.
BREAKFAST.
Swift lent dignity to this repast, and to laundresses partaking of it, when he said, in illustration of modern Epicureanism, that “the world must be encompassed before a washerwoman can sit down to breakfast.”
Franklin, who made a “morality” of every sentiment, and put opinions into dramatical action, has a passage in some one of his Essays, in which he says, that “Disorder breakfasts with Plenty, dines with Poverty, sups with Misery, and sleeps with Death.” It is an unpleasant division of the day, but it is truly described, as far as it goes. On the other hand, it is not to be concluded that Disorder is the favourite guest of Abundance; and I do not know any one who has described a plentiful breakfast, with regularity presiding, better than another essayist, though one of a less matter-of-fact quality than Franklin,—I mean Leigh Hunt. In the “Indicator” he invites us to a “Breakfast in Cold Weather.” “Here it is,” he says, “ready laid. Imprimis, tea and coffee; secondly, dry toast; thirdly, butter; fourthly, eggs; fifthly, ham; sixthly, something potted; seventhly, bread, salt, mustard, knives, forks, &c. One of the first things that belong to a breakfast, is a good fire. There is a delightful mixture of the lively and the snug, in coming down to one’s breakfast-room of a cold morning, and seeing every thing prepared for us,—a blazing grate, a clean table-cloth and tea-things; the newly-washed faces and combed heads of a set of good-humoured urchins; and the sole empty chair, at its accustomed corner, ready for occupation. When we lived alone,” he adds, “we could not help reading at meals; and it is certainly a delicious thing to resume an entertaining book, at a particularly interesting passage, with a hot cup of tea at one’s elbow, and a piece of buttered toast in one’s hand. The first look at the page, accompanied by a co-existent bite of the toast, comes under the head of ‘intensities.’” Under the head of “&c.” in the above list, I should be disposed to include “sunshine;” for sunshine in a breakfast-room in winter, is almost as glorious a thing as the fire itself. It is a positive tonic; it cheers the spirits, strengthens the body, and promotes digestion. As for breakfast in hot weather, all well-disposed persons who have gardens take that meal, of course, in “the arbour,” and amid flowers. Breakfasts al-fresco are all the more intensely enjoyed, because so few may be discussed in the open air in a country whose summer consists of “three hot days and a thunder-storm;” and in a climate wherein, according to Boerhaave, people should not leave off their winter clothing till Midsummer-Day, resuming the same the next morning when they are dressing for breakfast! Walpole and Boerhaave are right; our summers do sometimes set in with extraordinary severity.
The breakfast of a Greek soldier, taken at dawn of day, required a strong head to bear it. It consisted of bread soaked in wine. If Princes were in the habit of so breaking their fast, we hardly need wonder at the denunciation in Ecclesiastes against those who eat in the morning. The Greek patricians sat daily down to but one solid meal. Soldiers and plebeians had less controllable appetites, and these could not be appeased with less than two meals a day. They were accounted peculiarly coarse people who consumed three. The Romans were, in this respect, similar to the Greeks. Fashionable people ate little or nothing before the hour when they compensated for a long fast by a daily meal, where they fed hugely. A simple breakfast, as soon as they awoke, of “bread and cheese,” has a very unclassical sound; but good authority assures us, that it was a custom duly honoured with much observance. Not of such light fare, however, was the breakfast of Galba. Suetonius says that the old Emperor used to cry for his morning repast long before day-break. This was in winter time. He took the meal in bed, and was probably induced to do so by indisposition; for he was a huge, ogre-like supper-eater,—eating much, leaving more, and ordering the remains to be divided among the attendants, who duly, rather than dignifiedly, scrambled for the same.
Modern epicures would hardly approve of some of the dishes half-consumed by the hungry Galba at breakfast; but potentates of our own days have made their first meal upon very questionable matter.
When Clapperton, the African traveller, breakfasted with the Sultan of Baussa, which is a collection of straggling villages on the banks of the Quorra, among the delicacies presented were a large grilled water-rat, and alligators’ eggs, fried or stewed. The company were much amazed at the singularity of taste which prompted the stranger to choose fish and rice in preference to those savoury viands. The Prince, who gave this public breakfast in honour of a foreign commoner, was disgusted at the fastidious super-delicacy of his guest. In the last century, our commoners used to give similar entertainments in honour of Princes.
“Ælia Lælia” Chudleigh, as Walpole calls the famous lady who was still more famous as Duchess of Kingston, gave splendidly untidy entertainments of this sort in a splendidly untidy mansion. Her suppers will be found noticed in another page. In 1763, she gave a concert and vast cold collation, or “breakfast,” in honour of Prince Edward’s birthday. The scene is admirably painted by Walpole. “The house is not fine, nor in good taste, but loaded with finery. Execrable varnished pictures, chests, cabinets, commodes, tables, stands, boxes, riding on one another’s backs, and loaded with terrenes, figures, filligrees, and every thing upon earth! Every favour she has bestowed is registered by a bit of Dresden China. There is a large case full of enamels, eggs, ambers, lapis-lazuli, cameos, tooth-pick cases, and all kinds of trinkets, things that she told me were her playthings. Another cupboard full of the finest japan, and candlesticks, and vases of rock-crystal, ready to be thrown down in every corner. But of all curiosities are the conveniencies in every bed-chamber; great mahogany projections, with brass handles, cocks, &c. I could not help saying it was the loosest family I ever saw.”
There was a philosopher of the same century, at whom even Walpole dared not have sneered. I allude to Dr. Black, whom Lavoisier called “the Nestor of the Chemical Revolution.” Dr. Black was famous for the frugality of his breakfasts, and for the singularity of his death, when seated at that repast. His usual fare was a little bread, a few prunes, and a measured quantity of milk and water. One morning in November, 1799, he was seated at this modest meal. His cup was in his hand, when the Inevitable Angel beckoned to him, and the Christian philosopher calmly obeyed. He placed the cup on his knees, “which were joined together, and kept it steady with his hand, in the manner of a person perfectly at his ease; and in this attitude he expired, without a drop being spilt, or a feature in his countenance changed, as if an experiment had been required, to show to his friends the facility with which he departed.” There was neither convulsion, shock, nor stupor, we are told, to announce or retard the approach of death. This was a more becoming end than that of another chemist, the younger Berthollet,—although in the latter there was something heroical, too. He had taken his last breakfast, when he calmly proceeded to a sacrifice which he made to the interests of science. He destroyed his life by enclosing himself in an atmosphere of carbonic acid. There he began registering all the successive feelings he experienced, which were such as would have been occasioned by a narcotic;—“a pause, and then an almost illegible word occurred. It is presumed that the pen dropped from his hand, and he was no more.”
I have spoken of winter and of summer breakfasts. I must have recourse to Mr. Forrester’s “Norway in 1848 and 1849,” to show what a breakfast for a traveller should be; namely, oatmeal porridge, or stir-about, with a slice of rye or wheaten bread. Such a breakfast, he says, will not only fortify the traveller for a lengthened period, but to the sedentary, the bilious, and the dyspeptic, its adoption will afford more relief than the best prescription of a physician. But this breakfast must be prepared with due care, and this is the fashion of it: “Take two or three handsfull of oatmeal; I prefer it of mixed coarse and fine meal, in the proportion of one third of the latter to two of the former. Mingle the meal in a basin of cold water, and pour it into a saucepan containing about a quart of boiling water; add a small portion of salt. Set the saucepan over the fire, and keep stirring it, sprinkling, from time to time, small quantities of the meal, till the composition boils, and has acquired the proper consistency. That may be known by its glutinous state as it drops from the spoon. Let it simmer for ten minutes, and then pour it, not into a deep dish, but into common dinner plates, and it will form a soft, thin, jellied cake; spoon out portions of this, and float it in new milk, adding moist sugar, to your taste.” For the benefit of others, I may add my testimony touching this recipe. I have strictly followed the instruction given, and I certainly never tasted any thing to equal the dish. It was execrable! But it has the double recommendation of being easy to digest, and of keeping off the sensation of hunger for a very long time. Use alone is needed to make it a popular breakfast, and he is a hero who uses it till he likes it. But it is time to consider the various
MATERIALS FOR BREAKFAST.
And first of milk. If Britons really have, what they so much boast of,—a birth-right,—the least disputable article of that class, is their undoubted right to that lacteal treasure which their mother holds from Nature, on trust, for their use and advantage.
It is a curious fact, that aristocratic infants are those who are most ordinarily deprived of this first right of their citizenship, and are sent to slake their thirst and fortify their thews and sinews at ochlocratic breasts. Jean Jacques Rousseau was not often right, but he was triumphantly so when he denounced the young and healthy mother, let her rank be what it might, who made surrender of what should be one of the purest of a young mother’s pleasures, and flung her child to the bosom of a stranger. Who can say what bad principles may not have been drawn in with these “early breakfasts?” Certainly this vicarious exercise of the office of maternity is an abomination; and the abomination of having one’s child suckled by a mercenary stranger can only be next in intensity to that of having him——but let us keep to “Table Traits.”
Milk is too popularly known to need description; but it is not all that is sold under that name that comes from the cow. The cow with one arm, that produces what fresh medical students call the aqua pumpaginis, has very much to do with the dairies of London. Metropolitan milk-maids are not as unsophisticated as the milk-maids of the olden time; if, indeed, maids or milk were particularly pure even then; for milk was a propitiatory offering to Mercury, and if ever there was a deity who loved mischief, why, Dan Mercury was the one.
In Rome milk was used as a cosmetic, and for baths as well as beverage. Five hundred asses supplied the bath and toilette-vases of the Empress Poppæa; and some dozen or two were kept to maintain the decaying strength of Francis I. Of course, asses’ milk became fashionable in Paris immediately, just as bolster cravats did with us, when the Regent took to them in order to conceal a temporary disease in the neck.
“Oil of milk” and “cow-cheese” were classical names for butter,—a substance which was not known in either Greece or Rome until comparatively late periods. Greece received it from Asia, and Rome knew it not as an article of food until the legionaries saw the use to which it was applied by the German matrons. The Scythians, like the modern Bedouins, were great butter-consumers. Their churners were slaves, captured in war, and blinded before they were chained to the sticks beside the tub, at which, with sightless orbs, they were set to work.
There have been seasons when, as now in Abyssinia, butter has been burned in the lamps in churches, instead of oil. The “butter-tower” of the cathedral at Rouen owes its distinctive appellation to its having been built from the proceeds of a tax levied in return for permissions to eat butter at uncanonical times; so that the tower is a monument of the violation of the ecclesiastical canons. But there is great licence in these matters; and chapels in Ireland have been constructed with money raised by putting up Moore’s erotic works to be raffled for, at half-a-crown a ticket!
Goats, cows, sheep, asses, and mares have all contributed their milk towards the making of cheese; and national prejudice has run so high on the question of superiority, that as many broken heads have been the result, as there have been rivulets of blood spilt at Dinant on the question of copper kettles. The Phrygian cheese is said to have owed its excellence to the fact, that it was made of asses’ and mares’ milk mixed together. I doubt, however, if the strong-smelling Phrygian cheese was equal to our Stilton,—which, by the way, is not made at Stilton,—and whose ripeness has been judiciously assisted by the addition of a pint of Madeira. Delicate persons at Rome breakfasted on bread and cheese,—principally goat cheese. It was administered, on the same principle that we prescribe rump-steak, as strengthening. People in rude health flourished in spite of it, and therefore ailing people must, it was thought, be invigorated because of it. However, our own system is less open to objection than that of the ancient faculty.
I do not know whether mothers will consider it complimentary or not; but it is a fact, that the milk of asses more nearly resembles human milk than any other. Like the human milk, it contains more saccharine matter than that of the cow, and deposits a large proportion of curd by mere repose.
Milk is easily assimilated, nourishes quickly, and but slightly excites to vascular action. It is stringent, however, and has a tendency to create acidity; but an addition of oatmeal gruel will correct both these matters. Suet, inserted in a muslin bag, and simmered with the milk, is of highly nourishing quality; but it is sometimes more than weak stomachs can bear. Lime-water with milk is recommended as sovereign against the acidity which milk alone is apt to create in feeble stomachs.
Eggs have been as violently eulogized as they have been condemned, and both in extremes. In some parts of Africa, where they are very scarce, and the Priests are very fond of them, it has been revealed to the people, that it is sacrilege for any but clerical gentlemen to eat eggs! The lay scruple, if I may so speak, is quieted by the assurance, that, though the sacred hens produce only for the servants at the altar, the latter never address themselves to the food in question, without the whole body of the laity profiting thereby! I suppose that Dissenters naturally abound in this part of Africa. There is nothing so unsatisfactory as vicarious feeding. Feeding is a duty which every man is disposed to perform for himself, whether it be expected of him or not. All the eggs in Africa, passing the œsophagus of a Priest, could hardly nourish a layman, even though the eggs were as gigantic as those which an old author says are presented by ladies in the moon to their profoundly delighted husbands, and from which spring young babies, six feet high, and men at all points.
If the matrons in the moon were thus remarkable in this respect, the Egyptian shepherds on earth were not less so in another: they had a singular method of cooking eggs, without the aid of fire. They laid them in a sling, and then applied so violent a rotatory motion thereto, that they were heated and cooked by the very friction of the air through which they passed!
Diviners and dreamers dealt largely in eggs. Livia was told, just before the birth of Tiberius, to hatch one in her bosom, and that the sex of the chick would foretell that of the expected little stranger. In Rome and Greece eggs were among the introductory portions of every banquet. But Rome knew only of twenty different manners of cooking them. What an advance in civilization has been made in Paris, which, according to Mr. Robert Fudge, boasts of six hundred and eighty-five ways to dress eggs!
Eggs, filled with salt, used to be eaten by curious maidens, after a whole day’s fasting, on St. Agnes’ Eve: the profit of such a meal was, that she who partook of it had information, in her after-dreams, of that very interesting personage, her future husband!
There is a story narrated of a Welsh weaver, that he could tell, by the look of the egg, whether the bird would be worth any thing or not. He reminds me of an old Monk I heard of, when in Prague, who, on a man passing him, could tell whether he were an honest man, or a knave, by the smell! But the Welsh weaver was even more clever than this. He could not only judge of eggs, but hatch them. A badger once carried off his sitting-hen, and no plumed nurse was near to supply her place. The weaver, thereupon, took the eggs (there were six of them) to bed with him, and in about two days hatched them all! Of this brood he only reared a cock and a hen. The cock was a gallant bird, that used to win flitches of bacon for his master at cock-fights; and the hen was as prolific as Mrs. Partlett could have desired. The result was, that they kept their step-mother, the weaver, in bacon and eggs for many a month; and the two days spent in bed were not so entirely thrown away as might, at first sight, appear.
Let it be understood that eggs may lose their nourishment by cooking. The yolk, raw or very slightly boiled, is exceedingly nutritious. It is, moreover, the only food for those afflicted with jaundice. When an egg has been exposed to a long continuance of culinary heat, its nature is entirely changed. A slightly-boiled egg, however, is more easy of digestion than a raw one. The best accompaniment for a hard egg is vinegar. Raw eggs have a laxative effect; hard-boiled, the contrary. There is an idiosyncrasy in some persons, which shows itself in the utter disgust which they experience, not only against the egg itself, but also against any preparation of which it forms an ingredient, however slight. Eggs should always be liberally accompanied by bread;—of which I will now say a few words, and first of
