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Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and G

by Walt Whitman

COMPLETE PROSE WORKS: SPECWALT WHITMAN
Our binding, not the publisher's

“One of my choice amusements during my stay in New Orleans was going down to the old French Market, especially of a Sunday morning. The show was a varied and curious one; among the rest, the Indian and negro hucksters with their wares. For there were always fine specimens of Indians, both men and women, young and old. I remember I nearly always on these occasions got a large cup of delicious coffee with a biscuit, for my breakfast, from the immense shining copper kettle of a great Creole mulatto woman (I believe she weigh'd 230 pounds.) I never have had such coffee since. About nice drinks, anyhow, my recollection of the "cobblers" (with strawberries and snow on top of the large tumblers,) and also the exquisite wines, and the perfect and mild French brandy, help the regretful reminiscence of my New Orleans experiences of those days. And what splendid and roomy and leisurely bar-rooms! particularly the grand ones of the St. Charles and St. Louis. Bargains, auctions, appointments, business conferences, &c., were generally held in the spaces or recesses of these bar-rooms.”

From a cookbook of 1893

A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.

1893  ·  Parloa
Coffee, Tea, and Wine Stains on Table Linen

If treated at once such stains seldom give much trouble. Place the stained part over a large bowl and pour boiling water upon it until the stain disappears. If, however, the stains be of long standing, and have been washed with soap, it will be difficult to get rid of them. Javelle water (which can be made at home or bought of a druggist) will do it. Put about half a pint of Javelle water and a quart of clear water into an earthen bowl; let the stained article soak in this for several hours; then rinse thoroughly in three waters. It is only white goods that can be treated in this manner, as the Javelle water bleaches out the color. Another way to do is to put a little of the Javelle water in a saucer or small bowl, and soak the spot in this until it disappears. Rinse thoroughly.

Sources: The passage is from Walt Whitman, Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and G, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Parloa, Miss Parloa's Young Housekeeper of 1893, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — forest cloth, grapes stamp.

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