Cottage Dinners. 135 plentiful and hot meal, for half the sum that I could keep them, if I gave them a piece of bread whenever they wanted it. I get a little Scotch barley, and boil it well, and it swells out wonderfully. put a little bit of salt pork with it into the pot, to give it a flavour; and then a little salt and pepper, or spice of some sort. I can add some vegetables and herbs out of my own garden,-turnips, carrots, celery, a little parsley, thyme, or mint; or, in winter, I have dried herbs to put in, and these herbs and vegetables cost me nothing; só that I feed my family with a capital meal every day; they have as much as they want, and all is done at an easy and cheap rate. I could not afford to keep them on bread alone." Now I hear a Cottager say, "This is very fine talking; but I have got no pork to go to; and I have got no pepper and salt in the house; and I have no garden for herbs and vegetables; and I have no pan to cook this good dish in; and, if I had, fuel is very short with me,-think of the expense of making up a fire for this cookery. Then it would take me an hour or two to go after all these herbs and roots, and peppers, and spices, and salts; and when I had bought a penn'orth of one, and a penn'orth of the other, I should make a dear dish of it; so I can cut the boys a lump off the loaf, and let them go off with it, and take their chance." A Cottager is often obliged to do this, for want of the means of doing better. There is a great difference between a family where all needful things are at hand, and one where there is nothing ready, nothing to cook with, and where, if the wife had a piece of meat, she would not know how to dress it, but would only frizzle it at the fire, so as to make hardly a meal for one, when, with a little help, it might have made a dish for half a dozen. However, if my neighbour could feed his family cheaper on his dish, than he could have done with bread, it certainly is well worth while for every cottage family to try to imitate him. But good habits should be begun early. I must repeat this again and again. The young couple should not marry, before they have something to furnish the house with, that they may have pans and dishes, and all things of this sort which they know will be wanted. And let there be no idle waste of money, either in drinking by the husband, or fine dressing by the wife. In winter, there should be a fire always kept for comfort, and this will cook the dinner; and, in summer, a good housewife will contrive to manage about her fire, so as to make it answer; though it is in winter that a hot dinner is most needed. Then there should be a piece of bacon always in the house, and there should be always salt, and pepper, and spices, a little store to go to, locked up in your corner cupboard. But you say, "All these things are beyond us, we cannot afford to buy them." I say, get a little money together; have always something in the saving-bank. If it will cost you money to lay these things in, it will not cost you so much as to buy them by little and little as you want them. And what a waste of time it is to go from shop to shop after these things, when you might have been earning as much money the while as these things would cost. And try to get a cottage with a garden to it, and work in your garden, and get a good supply of things; you have time in an evening, and you are there saving money, and earning it too. I am quite sure, that a great improvement may be made in the comforts of cottagers, if they will exert themselves, if the husband will keep away from the alehouse, and the wife learn how to make things as they should be, at home. I write of these things over and over again; and some of my readers, I know, think I say too much about them. They would rather see all my papers devoted to religious and moral instruction, deeming these to be of far higher importance, than the mere supply of the wants of the body. I know they are Cottage Dinners. 137 of higher consequence, very far higher; but still neither religion nor morals are promoted by the discomforts of home, by dirty, miserable, and unwholesome habits. But some one will say "Teach a man to be religious; and you will then make him fond of his home and his family; he will then abhor the alehouse, and will shun all the bad company that would lead him into sin; he will make it his great desire to instruct his children in what is right, and he will be careful to set them a good example; he will know that it is his duty to feed his children properly, to clothe them well; he will try to add to the comfort of his wife, by keeping at home, and by giving her the benefit of his conversation and his advice. And, if the wife is a religious woman, she will rejoice to make home the most comfortable place that her husband can go to; and by her diligence in house affairs, and by the proper regulation of her own disposition, she will shew her husband that she is never so happy, as when she is with him, and with her children. In such a family, there will be no disputes or quarrels; for the right principle is at the bottom, and right practice will spring from it." Now, all this is true, perfectly true; but it is an easier thing to shew that religion is the best guide to happiness, than to persuade men to follow it. There are, however, some persons, who would attend more to a lesson of worldly prudence, than to a lesson of religion; and by leaving off some bad habits, and adopting some good ones, they may be brought, in time, to see what is altogether the best course. And even those, who have already chosen that better part, will not despise the advice which may supply some hints even to them, as to the regulation of their house, in such a way, as shall make it a comfort to all who belong to them. A true Christian will delight to shew that his religion not only makes him better, but that it makes him, and all his family, happier. V. THE HOUR OF PRAYER. CHILD, amidst the flowers at play, TRAVELLER, in the stranger's land, WARRIOR, that from battle won, Heaven's first star alike ye see LIFT THE HEART AND BEND THE KNEE! MRS. HEMANS. EXTRACT FROM PALEY. THE following extract from Paley's Natural Theology has been sent us by a correspondent. It is a delightful employment of the mind to think how the goodness of our Creator is so constantly exerted in our behalf. "The ejaculation can never be too often repeated, How many things must go right for us to be an hour at ease! How many more for us to be vigorous and active! Yet vigour and activity are, in a vast plurality of instances, preserved in human bodies, notwithstanding that they depend on so great a number of instruments of motion, and that the defect or dis Extract from Paley. 139 order of a very small instrument, of a single pair, for instance, out of the four hundred and forty-six muscles which are employed, may be attended with grievous inconvenience. Dr. Nieuentyt reckons up a hundred muscles that are employed every time we breathe; yet we take in, or let out, our breath, without reflecting what a work is thereby performed, what an apparatus is laid in, of instruments for the service, and how many such contribute their assistance to the effect! Breathing with ease is a blessing of every moment; yet, of all others, it is that which we possess with the least consciousness. A man in an asthma is the only man who knows how to estimate it: and, in general, we may remark in how small a degree those, who enjoy the perfect use of their organs, know the comprehensiveness of the blessing, the variety of the obligation. We should also consider with gratitude, how happy it is that our vital motions are involuntary. We should have enough to do, if we had to keep our hearts beating, and our stomachs at work. Did these things depend upon our bidding, our care, or our attention, they would leave us leisure for nothing else. We must have been continually upon the watch, and continually in fear; nor would this constitution have allowed of sleep. In considering our joints, there is nothing, perhaps, which ought to move our gratitude more than the reflection, how well they wear. A limb shall swing upon its hinge, or play in its socket, many hundred times in an hour, for sixty years together, without diminution of its agility, which is a long time for any thing to last; for any thing so much worked and exercised as the joints In considering these things, one is tempted to exclaim, "O Lord how manifold are thy works; in wisdom hast thou made them all." are." |