USES TO WHICH [Chap. 



The wife and the whole family are a reaping, 

 we will say. Knowing that there is no bread at 

 home for supper, she pops off home, turns some 

 of the flour into puddings of some sort, and there 

 they are for supper. In Norfolk, and par- 

 ticularly in Suffolk, the farmer's wife is never in 

 much distress about bread, the place of which 

 she supplies by dumplings ; and, perhaps there 

 is no way in which the flour yields more nutrition 

 than in this. To carry to the field, pudding 

 is not so good as bread ; but a hungry man gets 

 it down very v/ell, though it is apt to ^^ settle 

 the love'' of people of feeble digestion. 1 can 

 remember many a score days of my life, when I 

 had the honour to serve His Majesty, that I 

 called to mind, almost with tears in my eyes, the 

 hard dumplings and skimmer cakes, which I used 

 to eat when I was a boy ; for, it is to be observed, 

 that in those my military days, though our com- 

 manders were so nice that it nearly required a 

 certificate of good moral character, though they 

 used to make us sivear before they would accept 

 of our voluntary offers, that we were not, and 

 never had been, chimney-sweeps, colliers, or 

 mijiers ; that we were not papists, that we were 

 not Irishmen, and that we were not troubled 

 with fits, including love fits, for ought I know to 

 the contrary. Although they were so nice in 

 their choice, and would insist in having straight 



