intonation is beyond my power to reproduce.

We naturally wish to identify all the national dishes; so, "Is this
cockle soup, Susanna?" I ask her, as she passes me the plate at
dinner.

"I cudna say."

"This vegetable is new to me, Susanna; is it perhaps sea-kale?"

"I canna say, mam."

Then finally, in despair, as she handed me a boiled potato one day,
I fixed my searching Yankee brown eyes on her blue-Presbyterian,
non-committal ones, and asked, "What is this vegetable, Susanna?"

In an instant she withdrew herself, her soul, her ego, so utterly
that I felt myself gazing at an inscrutable stone image, as she
replied, "I cudna say, mam."

This was too much! Her mother may have been frightened, very badly
frightened, but this was more that I could endure without protest.
The plain boiled potato is practically universal. It is not only
common to all temperate climates, but it has permeated all classes
of society. I am confident that the plain boiled potato has been
one of the chief constituents in the building up of that frame in
which Susanna Crum conceals her opinions and emotions. I remarked,
therefore, as an, apparent afterthought, "Why, it is a potato, is it
not, Susanna?"