Milkwoman

“ Surely the woman’s hand is best for the process. A woman instinctively knows how to milk. All men cannot acquire the art, and cows are well aware as to which are skilful milkers and which are not. A man may be a good milker, a woman always is one. That is the difference. What a charming sketch that is of Caldecott’s of the “maid who milked the cow with the crumpled horn,” in his illustrated story of the House that Jack Built! When our children nowadays recite that nursery doggerel, the words concerning that maid who milked the cow are not understood by them. ”

“ Miss Featheredge.—And here comes the milkmaid. Oh, I am so glad she is a milkmaid and not a milkman!
Farmer Curtis.—She couldn't very well be that.
Miss Featheredge.—I feel positively grateful to you, Mr. Curtis. It is all so delightfully rural and effective—the gentle cows, the fresh, young milkmaid—oh, if she will only carry the milk-pails on her head, it will simply be a picture!
Farmer Curtis.—H'm, Elmiry'll hardly do that.
Miss Featheredge.—I am so sorry. There is something very calm and soothing about a cow, I think; don't you, Mr. Curtis? ”

“ Before supper we all went down to the barn to see the milking. Pomona, who knew all about such things, having been on a farm in her first youth, was to be the milkmaid. But when she began operations, she did no more than begin. Milk as industriously as she might, she got no milk.
“This is a queer cow,” said Pomona.
“Are you sure that you know how to milk?” asked Euphemia anxiously.
“Can I milk?” said Pomona. “Why, of course, ma'am. I've seen 'em milk hundreds of times.” ”

“ The Milkman at the Door.—This affords a capital opportunity of introducing a beggar, watercress or milkman, and may be varied accordingly. We will take Skyblue, the milkman; and we would impress on the student, that, although we give these simple dialogues, they are merely intended as illustrations for the modest tyro, not to be implicitly followed when greater confidence and proficiency are attained.
Voice: Milk below!
Student: Is it not provoking that a milkman always comes when he is not wanted, and is absent when we are waiting for the cream? ”

“ One evening—it was just between the lights—that’s when girls is like kittens, terr’ble full of capers and mischievousness—Nelly rigged up her kopie—that’s her milking-stool—agen mine, so that we sat back to back, her milking Brownie and me milking Whitie. ‘What she agate of now?’ thinks I, but she was looking as innocent as the bas’es themselves, with their ould solem faces when they were twisting round. Then we started, and there wasn’t no noise in the cow-house, but just the cows chewing constant, and, maybe, the rope running on their necks at whiles and the rattle of the milk in the pails. ”

“ It is in the barn that we gather the milk, and a man who has not got a cow of his own came the way one day and he looked on the milk in the barn, and we were making out that it was he who had done the harm. The friends were advising me not to be allowing people to see the milk, but that I should remember that every person is not like myself. Well, from that time we are taking care that nobody will get an opportunity to go where the milk is, and now we are getting as much butter as we ought to get on every churning. ”

“ The latter is a banana, the former an apple.
“Where are you going, my pretty maid?
I’m going a-milking, sir, she said.”
No maids now go a-milking, that is why there are no true milk-maids. The old order changeth. Nowadays in the country it is the men who milk. Women cannot be found to do it. They object to the trudge through the dirt, and the planting of the three-legged peggy-stool, and their feet in the oozy substance that forms the cushion enveloping the floor of the cow stall. I do not blame them. It is a dirty place.
But the milking of the cows in the byre was itself a novelty. ”

“ A calf brought up on a milk-pail would learn to take its food at stated intervals, escape indigestion, heaves and hollow horn, and grow up into a gentle, courteous and productive adult; while the mother, segregated from an otherwise guzzling, irrational, worrying offspring, would chew her cud in the placid beatitude most essential to the production of the largest quantity of rich milk.
Marion listened silently, with a knowing smile, but when I had finished she remarked that I knew perfectly well that I was talking rubbish, and that the natural way of feeding anything was the right way. ”

“ Sir Thomas Overbury in his “Character of a milk-maid,” in the reign of James I., says, “She dares go alone, and unfold her sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none: yet, to say truth, she is never alone, she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts, and prayers, but short ones.”
There is still a reminiscence of the milk-maid that comes to us every spring, in the fresh flickering cuckoo-flower of the delicate lilac, like the pale cotton, of which the dresses of the girls were made. ”

“ I have frequently visited my aunt’s dairy; and the operations there are so new to one just fresh from a country where cows and dairy are but little attended to, that I take constant interest in them. “And the milkmaid singeth blithe” is now a familiar image to me; formerly it was only from your description I understood it. How is it that such a precious gift as milk can be overlooked in any part of the world, particularly in one that abounds with cattle as Brazil does ”

“ But about twenty minutes to seven, as I knew from bitter experience, the milkman turned up with a great clatter of cans, and deposited my share outside my door. I had seen that milkman sometimes when I had gone out for an early ride. He was a young man about my own height, with an ill-nourished moustache, and he wore a white overall. On him I staked all my chances.
I went into the darkened smoking-room where the rays of morning light were beginning to creep through the shutters. There I breakfasted off a whisky-and-soda and some biscuits from the cupboard. ”

“ An' so it was.
"I remember Mis' Photographer Sturgis: 'There!' she says, 'most cryin'. 'If ever I take only a pint o' milk, I'm sure as sure to want more before the day's out. None of us is on good terms with each other's milkman. Where we goin' to get the milk,' she says, 'for them poor little things?'
"'Where?' says Mis' Toplady—you know how big an' comfortable an' settled she is—'Where? Well, you needn't to think o' where. I expect the Jersey won't be milked till I go an' milk her,' she says, 'but she gives six quarts, nights, right along now, an' sometimes seven. ”

“ Among our dairymen the thing of special sanctity was milk. A man in our neighborhood might almost better be accused of forgery or bigamy outright, than to fall under the dreadful suspicion of putting water into his cans.
Whether it was mere stupid prejudice or malignant invention I know not—who started the story was never to be learned—but of a sudden everybody seemed to have heard that Abner Beech's milk had been refused at the cheese-factory. ”

“ Stale ballad news, cashiered the city, must now ride fast for the country, where it is no less admired than a giant in a pageant: till at last it grows so common there, too, as every poor milkmaid can chant and chirp it under her cow, which she useth as a harmless charm to make her let down her milk. ”

“ She retained her milk-yielding power all the year through, and kept in good condition, even in winter, when other cattle on better food were reduced to skin and bone. Rosy would yield all her morning's milk, but every evening when much—and that the richest—still remained in her udder, she would stop chewing her cud, cock her ears, low gently as if calling a calf, and the "shower" of milk would cease. If the maid attempted to renew her milking Molly would kick the bucket and gallop away to a remote part of the field. ”

“ She never looked out of a window without due caution. Her greatest terror was that she should be caught stealing the milk. She used so much art in milking from one cow and another, that she hardly thought the diminution in quantity would betray her, for a while anyway. ”

“ But see, the milkmaid is ready, and now, Cousin Frederick William, now I must go to the milkroom and measure the milk into the pans, and I will tell you, but nobody else shall know, I secretly take a quart cup full of milk, and take it to the calves' stable to the calf, from my Hulda. It ought not, indeed, to drink milk any longer, but be an independent creature, eating hay and chewing the cud, but it will just feel that the milk comes from its own mother, and be glad. ”

“ If all the Mamas who don't buy City Dairy Milk would come and see how much care we take in clarifying, pasteurizing, and putting the Milk in "bottles air tight" and then keeping it cold until delivered, we are sure they would want to give their little girls and boys City Dairy Milk, no matter how much it cost.
Another thing Mamas should remember is that Milk contains just the nourishment that "Our Little Patrons" need, in just the proper proportions to "build up, to stay up, both body and brain," and this nourishment in Milk is in a form more readily digestible than in any other food. ”

“ The farmer with whom we have talked said he was about determined to send his milk to the creamery, since butter-making made it so hard for the women. Surely woman is less a drudge than she used to be. If, after being relieved from the labor of churning, the remaining working of the butter is considered too hard for the farmer's wife, the day of a woman's redemption must be near at hand. ”

“ Women that take milk about in buckets to sell, have a cow of their own, and feed her on swill from the distillery, and slops from kitchens. The milk they sell is not healthy. Some of them buy a little good milk and mix with theirs. If a dairy woman's time is not entirely occupied with her business, she might in some places find it profitable to have an ice house, and send ice around with the same horse, wagon, and driver used for the sale of milk. Borden's condensed milk is boiled at a temperature of 112°, I think, and prepared in Connecticut. ”

“ She then washes her right breast and squeezes out some milk from it. The father or the priest then sprinkles a little water over the infant, reciting an incantation, the mother or the nurse keeping her hand on the right breast all the time. The incantation is to this effect :— "O Child, let the Sea of Milk * [2] fill the Mammae with milk for thee, and be thou strong and happy for ever. lovely-faced lady, let thy child live long by drinking the nectar-like milk, just as the gods are able to live for very many years by drinking the beverage of immortality." ”

“ She may even be saying to her: "The only thing it can swallow, poor little dear, is a little milk and arrowroot, and the doctor says unless it can have this it must die." A great deal of the London milk is adulterated, and, perhaps, this honest-looking milk-woman knows that water has been added to hers. May be, she has babies of her own, and then her heart must be sore when she realizes that the little sick one upstairs may perish through her employer's greed for undue profits. ”

“ Very few human beings have such fragrance of good-will as milk. The farmer knew that he had gone too far in speaking coarsely of the cow, whose children first forego their food for the benefit of ours, and then become veal to please us. “My little maid is gone,” said the lord of many cows, and who had robbed some thousand of their dear calves. “I trow I must make up my mind to see my little maid no more.” ”

“ She drank a little milk as temporary refreshment—to the surprise—indeed, slight contempt—of Dairyman Crick, to whose mind it had apparently never occurred that milk was good as a beverage.
“Oh, if ye can swaller that, be it so,” he said indifferently, while holding up the pail that she sipped from. “’Tis what I hain’t touched for years—not I. Rot the stuff; it would lie in my innerds like lead. You can try your hand upon she,” he pursued, nodding to the nearest cow. “Not but what she do milk rather hard. We’ve hard ones and we’ve easy ones, like other folks. ”

“ For even in the very food that we take, so far is there from being any contrariety between milk and solid food, that the latter itself becomes milk, in order to make it suitable to babes, whom it reaches through the medium of the mother’s or the nurse’s body; so did also mother Wisdom herself, who is solid food in the lofty sphere of angels, condescend in a manner to become milk for babes, when the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us. ”

“ As to the [149] modern milk-maid, it suffices to look at her feet—like those described by Sir John Suckling,
“Her feet beneath her petticoat,
Like little mice, steal in and out
As if they feared the light,”— to be quite satisfied that she is not descended from, nor is a true variant of the milk-maid of olden time. ”

“ Our ancestors’ mythology has passed into our own superstitions, and so witches of modern days draw milk from the handle of an axe stuck in a doorpost. We find a close parallel to the history of the wife of Deloraine at Caseburg, in North Germany, where a farmer who got no milk from his dairy put the affair in the hands of a Wise-man, and the Wiseman detected the culprit in the person of a neighbour’s wife. This woman had stuck a broom-handle into the wall of her own cow-house which was nearest to the farmer’s dairy. ”