Short Fiction - Herman Melville (top 100 novels of all time .txt) 📗

arms, though I have carried her upstairs before now. But, as she says, the Squire’s man sometimes gives her a lift on the road; and for this cause it is that I speak of a horse I am going to have one of these fine sunny days. And already, before having it, I have christened it ‘Martha.’ But what am I about? Come, come, wife! The pudding! Help the gentleman, do! The Squire! the Squire!⁠—think of the Squire! and help round the pudding. There, one⁠—two⁠—three mouthfuls must do me. Goodbye, wife. Goodbye, sir, I’m off.”

And, snatching his soaked hat, the noble Poor Man hurriedly went out into the soak and the mire.

I suppose now, thinks I to myself, that Blandmour would poetically say, He goes to take a Poor Man’s saunter.

“You have a fine husband,” said I to the woman, as we were now left together.

“William loves me this day as on the wedding-day, sir. Some hasty words, but never a harsh one. I wish I were better and stronger for his sake. And, oh! sir, both for his sake and mine” (and the soft, blue, beautiful eyes turned into two wellsprings), “how I wish little William and Martha lived⁠—it is so lonely-like now. William named after him, and Martha for me.”

When a companion’s heart of itself overflows, the best one can do is to do nothing. I sat looking down on my as yet untasted pudding.

“You should have seen little William, sir. Such a bright, manly boy, only six years old⁠—cold, cold now!”

Plunging my spoon into the pudding, I forced some into my mouth to stop it.

“And little Martha⁠—Oh! sir, she was the beauty! Bitter, bitter! but needs must be borne!”

The mouthful of pudding now touched my palate, and touched it with a mouldy, briny taste. The rice, I knew, was of that damaged sort sold cheap; and the salt from the last year’s pork barrel.

“Ah, sir, if those little ones yet to enter the world were the same little ones which so sadly have left it; returning friends, not strangers, strangers, always strangers! Yet does a mother soon learn to love them; for certain, sir, they come from where the others have gone. Don’t you believe that, sir? Yes, I know all good people must. But, still, still⁠—and I fear it is wicked, and very black-hearted, too⁠—still, strive how I may to cheer me with thinking of little William and Martha in heaven, and with reading Dr. Doddridge there⁠—still, still does dark grief leak in, just like the rain through our roof. I am left so lonesome now; day after day, all the day long, dear William is gone; and all the damp day long grief drizzles and drizzles down on my soul. But I pray to God to forgive me for this; and for the rest, manage it as well as I may.”

Bitter and mouldy is the “Poor Man’s Pudding,” groaned I to myself, half choked with but one little mouthful of it, which would hardly go down.

I could stay no longer to hear of sorrows for which the sincerest sympathies could give no adequate relief; of a fond persuasion, to which there could be furnished no further proof than already was had⁠—a persuasion, too, of that sort which much speaking is sure more or less to mar; of causeless self-upbraidings, which no expostulations could have dispelled, I offered no pay for hospitalities gratuitous and honorable as those of a prince. I knew that such offerings would have been more than declined; charity resented.

The native American poor never lose their delicacy or pride; hence, though unreduced to the physical degradation of the European pauper, they yet suffer more in mind than the poor of any other people in the world. Those peculiar social sensibilities nourished by our peculiar political principles, while they enhance the true dignity of a prosperous American, do but minister to the added wretchedness of the unfortunate; first, by prohibiting their acceptance of what little random relief charity may offer; and, second, by furnishing them with the keenest appreciation of the smarting distinction between their ideal of universal equality and their grindstone experience of the practical misery and infamy of poverty⁠—a misery and infamy which is, ever has been, and ever will be, precisely the same in India, England, and America.

Under pretense that my journey called me forthwith, I bade the dame goodbye; shook her cold hand; looked my last into her blue, resigned eye, and went out into the wet. But cheerless as it was, and damp, damp, damp⁠—the heavy atmosphere charged with all sorts of incipiencies⁠—I yet became conscious by the suddenness of the contrast, that the house air I had quitted was laden down with that peculiar deleterious quality, the height of which⁠—insufferable to some visitants⁠—will be found in a poorhouse ward.

This ill-ventilation in winter of the rooms of the poor⁠—a thing, too, so stubbornly persisted in⁠—is usually charged upon them as their disgraceful neglect of the most simple means to health. But the instinct of the poor is wiser than we think. The air which ventilates, likewise cools. And to any shiverer, ill-ventilated warmth is better than well-ventilated cold. Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.

“Blandmour,” said I that evening, as after tea I sat on his comfortable sofa, before a blazing fire, with one of his two ruddy little children on my knee, “you are not what may rightly be called a rich man; you have a fair competence; no more. Is it not so? Well then, I do not include you, when I say, that if ever a rich man speaks prosperously to me of a Poor Man, I shall set it down as⁠—I won’t mention the word.”

Picture Second Rich Man’s Crumbs

In the year 1814, during the summer following my first taste of the “Poor Man’s Pudding,” a sea-voyage was recommended to me by my