Various
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460
One of the most remarkable, and perhaps valuable recent introductions, in respect to preserved food, is the American meat—biscuit, prepared by Mr Borden. A biscuit-beef is prepared by a Frenchman, M. Du Liscoet, resembling an ordinary coarse ship-biscuit; but this is said to have 'an animal, salt, and not very agreeable taste.' The American meat-biscuit, however, is prepared in a way which renders its qualities easily intelligible. It contains in a concentrated form all the nutriment of meat, combined with flour. The best wheaten flour is employed, with the nutriment of the best beef, and the result is presented for use as food in the form of a dry, inodorous, flat, brittle cake, which will keep when dry for an unlimited period. When required for use, it is dissolved in hot water, boiled, and seasoned at pleasure, forming a soup about the consistence of sago. One pound of the biscuit contains the nutritive matter—fat excepted—of five pounds of prime beef, mixed with half a pound of wheaten flour. One ounce of the biscuit, grated and boiled in a pint of water, suffices to form the soup. It can also be used in puddings and sauces. The manufacture of the meat-biscuit is located at Galveston, in Texas, which abounds in excellent cattle at a very low price. It is said that the meat-biscuit is not liable to heating or moulding, like corn and flour, nor subject to be attacked by insects. The meat-biscuit was largely used by the United States' army during the Mexican campaign; the nutriment of 500 pounds of beef, with 70 pounds of flour, was packed in a twenty-two-gallon cask.
Dr Lindley, as one of the jurors for the Great Exhibition, and as a lecturer on the subject at the Society of Arts, commends the meat-biscuit in the very highest terms. 'I think I am justified in looking upon it,' he says, 'as one of the most important substances which this Exhibition has brought to our knowledge. When we consider that by this method, in such places as Buenos Ayres, animals which are there of little or no value, instead of being destroyed, as they often are, for their bones, may be boiled down and mixed with the flour which all such countries produce, and so converted into a substance of such durability that it may be preserved with the greatest ease, and sent to distant countries; it seems as if a new means of subsistence was actually offered to us. Take the Argentine Republic, take Australia, and consider what they do with their meat there in times of drought, when they cannot get rid of it while it is fresh; they may boil it down, and mix the essence with flour—and we know they have the finest in the world—and so prepare a substance that can be preserved for times when food is not so plentiful, or sent to countries where it is always more difficult to procure food. Is not this a very great gain?' A pertinent question, which intelligent emigrants would do well to bear in mind.
THE BUYER OF SOULS:
A Russian Story
All over the world, the essential elements of human nature are the same. And it is very fortunate for me that they are so, else I should find myself in considerable difficulty in endeavouring to place before my readers a correct picture of the little, out-of-the-way town of Nikolsk. Making due allowances for the differences in national manners and customs; for Nikolsk being under the dominion of his autocratic majesty the emperor of all the Russias, instead of the mild, constitutional government of Queen Victoria, there is no great discrepancy between Nikolsk and any equally out-of-the-way town in England. It has the same dearth of excitement, the same monotonous uniformity of life; it lives in the same profound ignorance of the great incidents that the drama of human existence is developing on the theatre of the world at large; it has its priest, its doctor, its lawyer, its post-office where a seal is not so sacred as it might be, or rather where the problem of getting at the news, without breaking the wax, has been successfully solved; it has the same thirst for scandal, the same intense interest for the most contemptible trivialities, the same constantly impending danger of suicide from ennui, did not human nature adapt itself to its environments, and sink into pettiness as naturally as though there were no such things as towns and cities, and enlarged views of man and nature in the world: all these it has the same as any British Little Pedlington. Then it has its circles of social intercourse, as rigidly defined and as intensely venerated as the rules of court precedence. The difference in the social scale between a landowner, a tenant, a member of the professions, a tradesman, a publican, a sweep, and a beggar, is accurately prescribed and religiously observed—with this addition, however, that in Nikolsk the owners of land are also owners of the serfs upon the land, and that the numerous representatives of that most centralised of all governments cut an important figure in the snobberies of the place. In fine, there is one little English word that describes Nikolsk completely, and that is—dull. It is dull—beyond comprehension dull. No town in the universe can be duller; because, from its quintessential dulness, there is but one step to total inanition.
Thus, in Nikolsk, the ancient saying, that there is nothing new under the sun, was daily and hourly verified. Week after week, and year after year, the governor pillaged the people; the inspector of charities pillaged the charities; the inspector of nuisances sedulously avoided inspecting at all, lest, by removing them, the need for his services should cease; the landowner ground down the serfs; the tax-assessor ground the landowners; and everybody, in return for the favours a paternal government showered upon them through its immaculate representatives, cheated and defrauded that government with a persistency and perseverance approaching the sublime. Mothers of daughters were in despair, for in Nikolsk there were no 'nice young men,' no eligible matches; fathers of sons despaired in their turn, for as everybody robbed everybody, and the government robbed the robbers, there were no heiresses; ladies wore the fashions of 1820 in 1840, under the impression that they were the newest from Paris; the reading portion of the community were just beginning to hear of Voltaire as a promising writer; and the general public laboured under the fixed idea, that somewhere or other Napoleon was still prosecuting his leviathan campaigns, happily not in Russia. The only thing that ever broke the monotony of existence was the prevalence of cholera, or the governor essaying some loftier flight of tyranny than usual by hanging up a score of defaulters to the revenue, or knouting a bevy of ladies whose tongues outran their prudence.
Such being the state of affairs in Nikolsk, it will be easily imagined, that when mine host of the Black Eagle, in a very important and mysterious manner, announced to a select few that a singular and eccentric stranger, rolling in money, had arrived at his hostelry, with the intention of staying some time in Nikolsk, the news flew like a telegraphic message, or a piece of scandal among a community of old maids, through the place; and that in a few hours after his arrival, nobody, from governor to serf, thought or spoke of anything or anybody else than the mysterious stranger, who, under the name of Tchitchikof, occupied the best suite of apartments in the Black Eagle, and, as the landlord affirmed on oath, was eccentric to a degree, and revelled in untold gold.
Now, whatever had been the station in society of M. Tchitchikof, his means or his idiosyncrasy, the mere fact of his being a stranger had been enough to make the good people of Nikolsk pounce down upon him like a hawk on its quarry, and morally tear him to pieces with rapacious analysis to satiate their ravenous curiosity. But as to the fact of his being a stranger, was added the piquancy of a reputation for eccentricity, and the irresistible recommendation of wealth, the Tchitchikof mania spread over all ranks of society, and raged with the fury of a tornado by the evening of the very day upon which the host of the Eagle first delighted them with the news. In fact, so intense was the rage regarding him, that the landlord of that hostelry reaped a fortune from the constant drain upon his potables by inquisitive callers, and would have assuredly ceased to dispense strong drinks for evermore, had not the governor, in his vexation at the sequel of Tchitchikof's visit, found some pretext to despoil him of his gains, and a good round sum to boot. Various were the speculations as to the occupations and antecedents of Tchitchikof, and the business that had called him to Nikolsk. Enterprising mothers of families hoped that he was a Cossack Cœlebs in search of a wife, and began, on the strength of the surmise, to lay plots for ensnaring him, justly considering that a fool with money is preferable to a sage without; landowners trembled at the idea of his being a government assessor, come to examine into the state of the properties, and assess accordingly; while government employés, knowing too well that a paternal government does not tolerate plundering in subordinates, shuddered, conscience-stricken, at the idea that he must be a St Petersburg inspector, come to Nikolsk with powers of scrutiny, and equally unlimited powers of knouting. Every class, therefore, received with joy the assurance, that, he was simply a private gentleman of fortune, travelling over Russia at his own sweet will. This mine host positively stated that he had heard Tchitchikof say with his own lips. This announcement delighted the officials and landowners, by removing their fears of the knout and taxes, and equally delighted the enterprising mammas, by increasing the probability of his visit being intimately connected with matrimonial intentions. It being thus definitely settled that there was nothing to be feared from Tchitchikof, the good folks of Nikolsk naturally took up the next position—that, being a stranger, and rich and eccentric, there was something to be gained from him. The leading passions of the Nikolskians being curiosity and avarice, their dealings with strangers were generally twofold—to scatter their ennui for a few days, by discovering their histories and affairs, and, where facts failed, calling in the aid of fancy; and when there was nothing more to be discovered or invented, to lighten their money-chests by all the tyranny that power dare venture on, or the effrontery that cunning could devise and execute. Their curiosity regarding Tchitchikof was soon baffled, by discovering, like Socrates, that all they knew was, that nothing could be known. In vain did mine host essay to pump him: with a show of the most voluble confidence, Tchitchikof contrived always virtually to tell nothing. In vain the postmaster looked among the letters with a lynx eye; not one word of writing ever came to Tchitchikof through the medium of the post. Their knowledge of him speedily resolved itself into this: that he was a dashing, handsome young man, of most refined and polished manners, eminently gifted with that self-possession which is the never-failing accompaniment of good-breeding and intercourse with what is termed good society, elegant in dress, and, as the host of the Eagle announced, decidedly eccentric. This eccentricity manifested itself in one way, and one only, and that altogether incomprehensible to the greedy Nikolskians—namely, a morbid desire to part with his money. If Tchitchikof met a serf on the highway, he would offer him a ruble for a stick, a cap, or any other article he wore, intrinsically not worth a handful of corn; and when the bewildered serf hesitated, would manifest the utmost anger and impatience until he had gained possession of the coveted article. With possession, his value for it ceased, and the dear purchase was generally consigned to the fire a few minutes after it was bought. However varied his freaks might be in detail, in spirit they were ever essentially the same; they ever consisted in making some worthless piece of lumber an excuse for lightening his purse of a ruble or two.
The priest of the place was the first to find a solution of Tchitchikof's conduct. He asserted that Tchitchikof, in his love for money, had committed some fraud or some misdeed to obtain it, and that his conscience smiting him, he had sought ghostly solace from some minister, by whom he had been ordered, as adequate penance, to get off a certain portion per annum in bad bargains—thus at once doing good to the sellers and torturing the avaricious spirit of the penitential purchaser. To this the governor objected, with much force, that, money being the end of human existence, the gaining of it, by any means short of murder, must be laudable, and could sit heavily on no sane man's conscience; but being warned by the priest, that such arguments bordered on heresy, he shifted his ground, and maintained that Tchitchikof was much too young and too far from death to dream of penitence, even if he had committed such a crime; though he was evidently too reckless and devil-may-care to leave any dash of the miser in his composition. But the inspector of highways effectually knocked the clerical argument on the head, by saying, that had any priest thought it necessary, for the good of Tchitchikof's soul, that he should part with his money, he would have taken due care that, instead of it being squandered in Nikolsk, it had all gone to swell the revenues of Mother Church. The inspector of the hospital finally settled it to the satisfaction of all parties, by shewing, from attentive observation of Tchitchikof's conduct at the hospital, that he must be a monomaniac, whose particular insanity took the form of philanthropy; but that, believing that a gift debases the recipient, he dexterously contrived to give his assistance under the cloak of a purchase. Although his companions could not see how any man could be so insane as to fancy a serf could be debased, this opinion was unanimously adopted, and the whole community set their wits to work to make themselves objects of charity for the nonce, and so obtain a share in the plunder.
Space will not permit, neither would the end of our story be advanced by, a detail of the numerous and adroit dodges the Nikolskians invented in order to work upon Tchitchikof's supposed philanthropy. Suffice it to say, that they were not in the least degree successful. It seemed as though you had only to appeal directly to Tchitchikof's charity to close up his bowels of compassion, and render him at once callous and niggardly. Perhaps, too, as some thought, he was as acute as he was eccentric, and could distinguish between real and feigned distress. However it might be, it was soon remarkably clear that Tchitchikof, madman though he was, was not to be done; and the baffled conspirators did not hesitate to say, that, after all, he was no such remarkable friend of his species; that he kept a keen eye on the main chance; and if it were his gratification to do good, he made a little go as far as it could, and was singularly blind to meritorious poverty. Accordingly, Tchitchikof having now been a fortnight in Nikolsk, was fast ceasing to be an object of interest, when his eccentricity broke out in a fresh place, and there seemed some likelihood of the children of Nikolsk, in the end, spoiling that Egyptian.
It so happened, that at that time the landowners, or rather serf-owners, constituted the most depressed 'interest' in that portion of the Russian Empire. Not that they were suffering from free-trade of any kind, or clamouring for open or disguised protection: the cause of their depression was the prevalence of a deadly epidemic, which reduced the number of their serfs with remorseless vigour—combined with the tax which a paternal government levied on them, as a consideration for its maintaining them in their humane and Christian property. One of the principles of Russian taxation is this: that as every individual in the empire, European or Asiatic, is the child of the czar, owes him fealty and obedience, and receives protection, light, and glory from him, as from a central sun, so every individual owes in return a direct contribution to the fund by which the czar-father supports that light and glory. This is the theory of Russian taxation; but against its actual carrying out in fact, is opposed the old difficulty, that from him who has nothing, nothing can possibly be extracted; and as the poor serfs have no more means of paying taxes than the hogs and cattle their fellow-slaves, a considerate paternal government drops its theory, and makes the landowner pay the poll-tax for the slaves he possesses, much as an English gentleman pays taxes for his horses and dogs, horses and dogs being as little able to pay tax themselves as the Russian serf. Now, in a kind of deep irony, a serf is called a soul. M. K– or M. T– owns so many souls, Miss L–'s marriage-portion was so many souls, Madame B–'s dowry was a hundred souls; and this word soul only applies to the male serfs—women and children being given in, or there being only one soul per family among serfs. Well, a landowner paying so much per soul to the government, and it being a work of much time and trouble to take a census of souls every year, an estimate is made at long intervals—say ten or twenty years—and the landowner is compelled to pay accordingly till the period expires, whether the number of his serfs increase or diminish. It is therefore self-evident, that if the former occur—that if his serfs propagate their species with due rapidity—the serf-owner is a clear gainer during the interval between the soul-censuses, as he will be paying tax for a given number, while he is actually reaping the profit of the labour of treble or quadruple that number; while, if cholera, fever, or any other of the ills that flesh, and especially serf-flesh, is heir to, come and slay their thousands, the exact converse obtains, and he will be paying tax for a certain number, while he only reaps the profit of a third. In the latter case were the landowners of Nikolsk. Cholera had more than decimated the serfs; the impoverished owners regarded their unreaped fields and untilled lands and impoverished exchequers with a sigh—a sigh which deepened into a shudder, when they reflected how soon the collector would arrive with his inexorable demand for soul-tax. The landed interest is in no country, we believe, celebrated for bearing reverses with dignified composure; and the depressed condition of the serf-owning interest was as much noised abroad in that district, as a certain professedly depressed interest connected with the soil has been, and is, in another country we know of much nearer home.
About a dozen miles from Nikolsk there dwelt a widow, Madame Korobotchka by name, who lived on her late husband's estate, and had suffered more than her neighbours by the prevalent serf mortality. Late one evening, when a violent storm was raging without, a stranger, who had been surprised in the storm, demanded the shelter of Madame Korobotchka's château till the morning; and as hospitality is a sacred duty in Russia, his demand was not only granted, but in a few minutes the stranger was seated as her vis-à-vis at the best repast her impoverished condition could afford.
'You appear to have a nice property here, matouchka,' said the stranger, by way of opening a conversation. 'How many peasants have you?'
'Peasants, batiouchka! At present, about eighty; but these are awful times. This year, we have had a frightful loss of them. Providence have pity on us!'
'Nevertheless, your men look well enough, and–But, pardon me—allow me to inquire to whom I am indebted for this hospitality? I am quite confused—arrived so suddenly and so late—I'–
'My name is Korobotchka—my paternal name Nastasie Petrovna.'
'Nastasie Petrovna! Beautiful name.'
'And you, sir?' inquired Nastasie. And then added, palpitating with terror: 'Are you—surely not—are you—an assessor?'
'O no!' was the reply. 'My name is Tchitchikof. I am no assessor; I travel on purely private business.'
'I see: you have come to buy. How annoying! I've just sold all my honey to those thieves of merchants.'
'It is of no consequence. I do not buy honey.'
'Indeed! hemp, then? Dear me, and I have next to none.'
'Never mind, matouchka,' said Tchitchikof. 'My business in these parts is different. You were mentioning that you have had many deaths here?'
'Alas, yes! eighteen souls,' said Nastasie, sighing; 'and such fine fellows: and the worst is, I shall have to pay for them. The assessor arrives, you must pay what he demands—pay to a soul. Eighteen die—it is all one—you pay the same. They are frightful, they are ruinous, these deaths!'
'Ah, Nastasie,' said Tchitchikof, 'it is the will of God: we must not murmur against Providence! But tell me—will you let me have them?'
'Let you have what?'
'Your dead souls.'
'How can I let you have them?'
'Nothing easier. Sell them to me: I will give you money for them.'
'How! what! Do you want to disinter them?'
'Disinter them! what nonsense; no!' cried Tchitchikof. 'You hand them over to me by a regular conveyance, and I pay you whatever we agree upon for them.'
'And what will you do with them?' asked Nastasie in great surprise.
'That is my business,' said Tchitchikof.
'But you see they are dead.'
'And who, in the name of goodness, said they were living?' cried he. 'It's a misfortune for you that they are dead, isn't it? You pay the tax for them, don't you?—and that'll half-ruin you, you say. Well, I clear you of the tax for these eighteen dead ones—do you understand?—not only clear you of the tax, but give fifteen rubles into the bargain. Is that clear, or is it not?'
'No—yes—I can't tell what to say. You see, I have never sold dead peasants before, and'–