68 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
mother. It is not yielded by the maternal animals unless the 
foals are allowed to be with their mothers in the donkeys’ dairy, 
each foal having a smaller pen beside that of its mother. This 
article of nursery requirement fetches six shillings a quart, being 
sold in specially protected sealed bottles. The she-asses are 
milked twice a day, and afford severally from half a pint to a pint 
at each milking. For persons at a distance a milch donkey 
may be hired at the cost of one guinea a week, plus expenses of 
transport. The amusing fact may be remembered, but none 
the less will bear repetition, that Thomas Hood, in his famous 
Ode to Rae Wilson (1843), has drawn a most suggestive moral 
from the story of a consumptive girl for whom ass’s milk was 
prescribed :— 
“ Once on a time a certain English lass 
Was seized with symptoms of such deep decline, 
Cough, hectic flushes, ev’ry evil sign, 
That,—as their wont is at such desperate pass, 
The doctors gave her over—to an ass. 
Accordingly, the grisly shade to bilk, 
Each morn the patient quaff’d a frothy bowl 
Of asinine new milk, 
Robbing a shaggy suckling of a foal, 
Which got proportionately spare, and skinny : 
Meanwhile the neighbours cried, ‘ poor Mary Ann ! 
She can’t get over it! she never can!’ 
When lo,—to prove each prophet was a ninny— 
The one that died was the poor wet nurse Jenny. 
To aggravate the case, 
There were but two grown donkeys in the place, 
And most unluckily for Eve’s sick daughter 
The other long-ear’d creature was a male, 
Who never in his life had given a pail ; 
Of milk, or even chalk and water. 
No matter; at the usual hour of eight 
Down trots a donkey to the wicket gate, 
With Mister Simon Gubbins on his back. 
* Your sarvint, Miss—a werry spring-like day ;— 
Bad time for hasses, tho’! good lack! good lack ! 
Jenny be dead, Miss ; but I’ve brought *ye Jack ; 
He does’nt give no milk,—but he can bray!’ ” 
“So runs the s : 
And, in vain cell. gory 
Some Saints would sneer at Gubbins for his blindness ; 
But what the better are their pious saws 
To ailing souls than dry hee-haws 
Without the milk of human kindness ?” 
It is a significant fact bearing on this subject, that asses are : 
