{"id":"01KG8AKCKGCHVZAY7FTREE1VAJ","cid":"bafkreih3owe4vczcjxi7rqnourg2e46yjjywgqomzfw4nnidld4svglnp4","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":5761,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:47:56.336Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 2","source_file":"01KG89J1C1N72JCD0ZBGTBX0EX","start_line":5687,"text":"eggs are recommended in the receipt-book, a substitute for the eggs\r\nmay be had in a cup of cold rain-water, which acts as leaven. And so a\r\ncup of cold rain-water thus used is called by housewives a 'Poor Man's\r\nEgg.' And many rich men's housekeepers sometimes use it.\"\r\n\r\n\"But only when they are out of hen's eggs, I presume, dear Blandmour.\r\nBut your talk is--I sincerely say it--most agreeable to me. Talk on.\"\r\n\r\n\"Then there's 'Poor Man's Plaster' for wounds and other bodily harms;\r\nan alleviative and curative, compounded of simple, natural things; and\r\nso, being very cheap, is accessible to the poorest sufferers. Rich men\r\noften use 'Poor Man's Plaster'.\"\r\n\r\n\"But not without the judicious advice of a fee'd physician, dear\r\nBlandmour.\"\r\n\r\n\"Doubtless, they first consult the physician; but that may be an\r\nunnecessary precaution.\"\r\n\r\n\"Perhaps so. I do not gainsay it. Go on.\"\r\n\r\n\"Well, then, did you ever eat of a 'Poor Man's Pudding'?\"\r\n\r\n\"I never so much as heard of it before.\"\r\n\r\n\"Indeed! Well, now you shall eat of one; and you shall eat it, too, as\r\nmade, unprompted, by a poor man's wife, and you shall eat it at a poor\r\nman's table, and in a poor man's house. Come now, and if after this\r\neating, you do not say that a 'Poor Man's Pudding' is as relishable as\r\na rich man's, I will give up the point altogether; which briefly is:\r\nthat, through kind Nature, the poor, out of their very poverty, extract\r\ncomfort.\"\r\n\r\nNot to narrate any more of our conversations upon this subject (for\r\nwe had several--I being at that time the guest of Blandmour in the\r\ncountry, for the benefit of my health), suffice it that acting upon\r\nBlandmour's hint, I introduced myself into Coulter's house on a wet\r\nMonday noon (for the snow had thawed), under the innocent pretense of\r\ncraving a pedestrian's rest and refreshment for an hour or two.\r\n\r\nI was greeted, not without much embarrassment--owing, I suppose to my\r\ndress--but still with unaffected and honest kindness. Dame Coulter was\r\njust leaving the wash-tub to get ready her one o'clock meal against\r\nher good man's return from a deep wood about a mile distant among the\r\nhills, where he was chopping by day's work--seventy-five cents per day\r\nand found himself. The washing being done outside the main building,\r\nunder an infirm-looking old shed, the dame stood upon a half-rotten\r\nsoaked board to protect her feet, as well as might be, from the\r\npenetrating damp of the bare ground; hence she looked pale and chill.\r\nBut her paleness had still another and more secret cause--the paleness\r\nof a mother to be. A quiet, fathomless heart-trouble, too, couched\r\nbeneath the mild, resigned blue of her soft and wife-like eye. But\r\nshe smiled upon me, as apologizing for the unavoidable disorder of a\r\nMonday and a washing-day, and, conducting me into the kitchen, set me\r\ndown in the best seat it had--an old-fashioned chair of an enfeebled\r\nconstitution.\r\n\r\nI thanked her; and sat rubbing my hands before the ineffectual low\r\nfire, and--unobservantly as I could--glancing now and then about the\r\nroom, while the good woman, throwing on more sticks said she was sorry\r\nthe room was no warmer. Something more she said, too--not repiningly,\r\nhowever--of the fuel, as old and damp; picked-up sticks in Squire\r\nTeamster's forest, where her husband was chopping the sappy logs of the\r\nliving tree for the Squire's fires. It needed not her remark, whatever\r\nit was, to convince me of the inferior quality of the sticks; some\r\nbeing quite mossy and toadstooled with long lying bedded among the\r\naccumulated dead leaves of many autumns. They made a sad hissing, and\r\nvain spluttering enough.\r\n\r\n\"You must rest yourself here till dinner-time, at least,\" said the\r\ndame; \"what I have you are heartily welcome to.\"\r\n\r\nI thanked her again, and begged her not to heed my presence in the\r\nleast, but go on with her usual affairs.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 2"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJZVNHJ252YX52GVGD86G","peer_type":"section","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1C1N72JCD0ZBGTBX0EX","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKCKEJ9QKS43AC4807XMR","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AKCKEG1VKCXRTP71256EB","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:02.672Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:09.895Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}