Parboil a piece of the middling of salt pork, and score the skin. Allow a pound to a quart of dried beans, which must be soaked over night in lukewarm water. Change this twice for more and warmer water, and in the morning put them on to boil in cold. When they are soft, drain off the liquor, put the beans in a deep dish, and half-bury the pork in the middle, adding a very little warm water. Bake a nice brown.
This is a favorite dish with New England farmers and many others. Although old-fashioned, it still makes its weekly appearance upon the tables of hundreds of well-to-do families.
Pork and Peas Pudding.
Soak the pork, which should not be a fat piece, over night in cold water; and in another pan a quart of dried split peas. In the morning put on the peas to boil slowly until tender. Drain and rub through a cullender; season with pepper and salt, and mix with them two tablespoonfuls of butter and two beaten eggs. Beat all well together. Have ready a floured pudding-cloth, and put the pudding into it. Tie it up, leaving room for swelling; put on in warm, not hot water, with the pork, and boil them together an hour. Lay the pork in the centre of the dish, turn out the pudding, slice and arrange about the meat.
COMPANY.
Laying to your conduct the line and plummet of the Golden Rule, never pay a visit (I use the word in contradistinction to “call”) without notifying your hostess-elect of your intention thus to favor her.
Perhaps once in ten thousand times, your friend—be she mother, sister, or intimate acquaintance—may be enraptured at your unexpected appearance, travelling-satchel in hand, at her door, to pass a day, a night, or a month; or may be pleasantly surprised when you take the baby, and run in to tea in a social way. But the chances are so greatly in favor of the probability that you will upset her household arrangements, abrade her temper, or put her to undue trouble or embarrassment, by this evidence of your wish to have her feel quite easy with you, to treat you as one of the family, that it is hardly worth your while to risk so much in order to gain so little.
Mrs. Partington has said more silly things than any other woman of her age in this country; but she spoke wisely in declaring her preference for those surprise-parties “when people sent word they were coming.” Do not be ashamed to say to your nearest kin, or the confidante of your school-days—“Always let me know when to look for you, that I may so order my time and engagements as to secure the greatest possible pleasure from your visit.” If you are the woman I take you to be—methodical, industrious, and ruling your household according to just and firm laws of order and punctuality, you need this notice. If you are likewise social and hospitable, your rules are made with reference to possible and desirable interruptions of this nature. It only requires a little closer packing of certain duties, an easy exchange of times and seasons, and leisure is obtained for the right enjoyment of your friend’s society. The additional place is set at table; your spare bed, which yesterday was tossed into a heap that both mattresses might be aired, and covered lightly with a thin spread, is made up with fresh sheets that have not gathered damp and must from lying packed beneath blankets and coverlets for may be a month, for fear somebody might happen in to pass the night, and catch you with the bed in disorder. Towels and water are ready; the room is bright and dustless; the dainty dish so far prepared for dinner or tea as to be like Mrs. Bagnet’s greens, “off your mind;” John knows whom he is to see at his home-coming; the children are clean, and on the qui vive—children’s instincts are always hospitable. The guest’s welcome is half given in the air of the house and the family group before you have time to utter a word. It may have appeared to her a useless formality to despatch the note or telegram you insisted upon. She knows you love her, and she would be wounded by the thought that she could ever “come amiss” to your home. Perhaps, as she lays aside her travelling-dress, she smiles at your “ceremonious, old-maidish ways,” and marvels that so good a manager should deem such forms necessary with an old friend.
If she had driven to your house at nightfall, to discover that you had gone with husband and children to pass several days with John’s mother, in a town fifty miles away, and that the servants were out “a-pleasuring” in the mistress’ absence; if she had found you at home, nursing three children through the measles, she having brought her youngest with her; if you were yourself the invalid, bound hand and foot to a Procrustean couch, and utterly unable even to see her—John, meanwhile, being incapacitated from playing the part of agreeable host by worry and anxiety; if, on the day before her arrival, your chambermaid had gone off in a “tiff,” leaving you to do her work and to nurse your cook, sick in the third story; if earlier comers than herself had filled every spare mattress in the house;—if any one of these, or a dozen other ills to which housekeepers are heirs, had impressed upon her the idea that her visit was inopportune, she might think better of your “punctilio.”