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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
of so extraordinary a thing as economy , the travellers might well have the preference to the wild hogs , or wilder vultures , condors , hawks , and eagles . But the travellers would have had some trouble in procuring bread from the peasants , either for love or money , if by any strange chance the peasants had possessed any . Bread in the Pampas is like a plum-cake in the poor-house of an English parish .
Yes , father . I remember when you drew the loaf from your wallet at the hut of the mare-hunters on the Indian frontier , to give it me to eat with the roasted beef , the children all came round me , and looked at it so eagerly , that I could not help giving- it to them , and they devoured it as rapidly as I did the water-melons at the ford of the Tercero river , the day the American traveller said it was so ' awful hot that the sun had gone clean out of the thermometer , * and you laug-bed for half an hour . While the children were eating the loaf , their mother thanked God ' that they had lived to taste bread /
Was there not another reason , boy , for giving away thy loaf ? Didst thou not prefer beef alone ? Thy colour mounts , boy ! I did but jest . I know well thou vvouldest have given beef and bread and all away , for the gratification of feeding those children . But when thou wert younger , scarce three years of age , thou didst live for months without other food than half-roasted beef and brackish water .
Of a surety thou wert half a savage in thy externals ; bare-headed , bare-footed , bare-armed , and thv skin sun-burned like to a tree ' s bark . Yet was thy voice of pleasing treble , while thy speech evinced all kindly thoughts . The Scripture says , ' Man shall not live by bread alone / After so long going even beyond the letter , abstaining altogether from bread , it seems to me marvellous strange that thou canst now he content to eat bread alone , and think it a cure for
hunger . Of a surety it would choke me , though I fall not under the anathema of Lavater : * Keep him at least three paces distant from you who hates bread , music , and the laugh of a child . ' But yonder stands a baker at his door in that wide street . Let us bend our steps thither . He is a Scot by his name ; ay , and his physiognomy confirms it .
How happens it that there are so many Scotch bakers m England ? Scotland , like other places , produces more people than food , and the surplus , who cannot procure a living at home , are forced to export themselves . These , with few exceptions , will mostly be found of two classes—those possessed of considerable intellect , and those of inferior intellect . The first go forth principally from a desire of bettering their condition in life , i . e . becoming rich . The last are moved by the
absolute necessity of procuring the means of bare existence , being principally mere labourers , with little skill . One of the coarse jests formerly in vogue was , that when Scotchmen came up to London from the north , they stopped on the top of Highgate-hill , and borrowed a halfpenny of the first passenger , to toss up heads or tails , ' thereby
to decide whether they should become bakers or gardeners , * . e . beaters of dough or diggers of ground , the amount of skill in either being very trifling . But how could they get from Scotland to London without a halfpenny in their pockets f
Untitled Article
Juvenile Lessons . 76 * 1
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1833, page 761, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2626/page/29/
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