CABBAGE, 131 
butter are the children of the English working-man, that it has 
been well said this refection goes on daily upon ten thousand 
London doorsteps. A pithy old English proverb puts it: 
‘When the cook and the maid fall out, we shall know what has 
become of the butter!” It was Charles Lamb who pronounced 
about Munden, the Actor: ‘‘ His gusto antiquates, and ennobles 
what it touches ; his pots and his ladles are as grand and primal 
as the seething pots and hooks, seen in old prophetic vision. A 
tub of butter contemplated by him amounts to a Platonic idea. 
He understands a leg of mutton in its quiddity. He stands 
wondering amid the commonplace materials of life, like primeval 
man with the sun, and stars about him.” 
CABBAGE. 
“ THE time has come,” as said the Walrus (Alice and the Looking 
Glass) :— 
“To talk of many things ; 
Of shoes, and ships, and sealing wax ; of Cabbages, and kings.” 
Because apt to ferment, the whole tribe of Cabbages, or 
Coleworts, is named botanically Brassicacew, “ apo tou brassein.”’ 
They all contain much nitrogen, or vegetable albumin, with a 
considerable quantity of sulphur, which latter constituent makes 
them admirably antiseptic; nevertheless, they tend strongly 
to putrefaction, and when undergeing this process they give 
off very offensive odours. The white Cabbage is most putrescible, 
the red most emollient, and pectoral. All the Coleworts are 
called “Crambe,” from krambos, dry, because they - dispel 
drunkenness. A Greek proverb said, “‘ Dis crambee thanatos,” 
signifying the phrase, “‘ Death by twice Cabbage” ; “ the single 
portion is excellent, the double dish is death ;’’ or, as the Latin 
maxim of Juvenal renders it, “ Occedit miseros bis repetita.” 
Most probably the real intention of these warnings was, as old 
Fuller thought, ‘‘ Crambe bis cocta.” ‘‘ Colewort twice sodden ” 
(meaning likewise “ stale news ’’) conveys the fact that “ Crambe 
is a kind of Cabbage which, with vinegar, being raw, is good, 
boiled better, but twice boiled, noysome to the palate, and 
nauseous to the stomach.” Athenian doctors prescribed cabbage 
for young nursing mothers who wished to see their babes grow 
lusty, and strong. ‘“‘ Honest old Cato,” wrote Culpeper, (1650), 
