Nature and Human Nature

by Thomas Chandler Haliburton

The only article of food that I saw was a barrel of eggs, most probably accumulated for the Halifax market, and a few small fish on rods, undergoing the process of smoking in the chimney corner.

The old woman was knitting and enjoying her pipe, and the girl was dressing wool, and handling a pair of cards with a rapidity and ease that would have surprised a Lancashire weaver. The moment she rose to sweep up the hearth I saw she was an heiress. When an Acadian girl has but her outer and under garment on, it is a clear sign, if she marries, there will be a heavy demand on the fleeces of her husband’s sheep; but if she wears four or more thick woollen petticoats, it is equally certain her portion of worldly goods is not very small.

“Doctor,” sais I, “it tante every darnin’ needle would reach her through them petticoats, is it?”

“Oh!” said he, “Mr Slick—oh!” and he rose as usual, stooped forward, pressed his hands on his ribs, and ran round the room, if not at the imminent risk of his life, certainly to the great danger of the spinning wheel and the goslings. Both the females regarded him with great surprise, and not without some alarm.

“He has the stomach-ache,” sais I, in French, “he is subject to it.”

“Oh! oh!” said he, when he heard that, “oh, Mr Slick, you will be the death of me.”

“Have you got any peppermint?” sais I.

“No,” said she, talking in her own patois; and she scraped a spoonful of soot from the chimney, and putting it into a cup, was about pouring hot water on it for an emetic, when he could stand it no longer, but rushing out of the door, put to flight a flock of geese that were awaiting their usual meal, and stumbling over a pig, fell at full length on the ground, nearly crushing the dog, who went off yelling as if another such blow would be the death of him, and hid himself under the barn. The idea of the soot-emetic relieved the old lady, though it nearly fixed the doctor’s flint for him. She extolled its virtues to the skies; she saved her daughter’s life, she said, with it once, who had been to Halifax, and was taken by an officer into a pastrycook’s shop and treated. He told her if she would eat as much as she could at once, he would pay for it all.

Well, she did her best. She eat one loaf of plumcake, three trays of jellies, a whole counter of little tarts, figs, raisins, and oranges, and all sorts of things without number. Oh! it was a grand chance, she said, and the way she eat was a caution to a cormorant; but at last she gave out she couldn’t do no more. The foolish officer, the old lady observed, if he had let her fetch all them things home, you know we could have helped her to eat them, and if we couldn’t have eat ’em all in one day, surely we could in one week; but he didn’t think of that I suppose. But her daughter liked to have died; too much of a good thing is good for nothing. Well, the soot-emetic cured her, and then she told me all its effects; and it’s very surprising, it didn’t sound bad in French, but it don’t do to write it in English at all; it’s the same thing, but it tells better in French. It must be a very nice language that for a doctor, when it makes emetics sound so pretty; you might hear of ’em while you was at dinner and not disturb you.

You may depend it made the old lady wake snakes and walk chalks talking of physic. She told me if a man was dying or a child was born in all that settlement, she was always sent for, and related to me some capital stories; but somehow no English or Yankee woman could tell them to a man, and a man can’t tell them in English. How is this, Squire, do you know? Ah! here is the doctor, I will ask him by and by.