Short Fiction, Herman Melville [read out loud books TXT] 📗

“Why, do you not remember the words of the Psalmist?⁠—‘The Lord giveth snow like wool’; meaning not only that snow is white as wool, but warm, too, as wool. For the only reason, as I take it, that wool is comfortable, is because air is entangled, and therefore warmed among its fibres. Just so, then, take the temperature of a December field when covered with this snow-fleece, and you will no doubt find it several degrees above that of the air. So, you see, the winter’s snow itself is beneficent; under the pretense of frost⁠—a sort of gruff philanthropist⁠—actually warming the earth, which afterward is to be fertilizingly moistened by these gentle flakes of March.”

“I like to hear you talk, dear Blandmour; and, guided by your benevolent heart, can only wish to poor Coulter plenty of this ‘Poor Man’s Manure.’ ”

“But that is not all,” said Blandmour, eagerly. “Did you never hear of the ‘Poor Man’s Eye-water’?”

“Never.”

“Take this soft March snow, melt it, and bottle it. It keeps pure as alcohol. The very best thing in the world for weak eyes. I have a whole demijohn of it myself. But the poorest man, afflicted in his eyes, can freely help himself to this same all-bountiful remedy. Now, what a kind provision is that!”

“Then ‘Poor Man’s Manure’ is ‘Poor Man’s Eye-water’ too?”

“Exactly. And what could be more economically contrived? One thing answering two ends⁠—ends so very distinct.”

“Very distinct, indeed.”

“Ah! that is your way. Making sport of earnest. But never mind. We have been talking of snow; but common rainwater⁠—such as falls all the year round⁠—is still more kindly. Not to speak of its known fertilizing 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 rainwater, which acts as leaven. And so a cup of cold rainwater 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 washtub 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 dinnertime, 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.

I was struck by the aspect of the room. The house was old, and constitutionally damp. The windowsills had beads of exuded dampness upon them. The shriveled sashes shook in their frames, and