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DETROIT, JUNE 27, 1891.

 

 

THE HOUSEHOLD-"Supplement.

 

 

For the Household.
TOO LATE.

 

BY CLARA BELLE SOUTHWELL.
011. why should we keep all our kindness
Bo selﬁshly all our own.
As though we believed in our blindness
It should not to others be shown.
Or perhaps. duty not all neglected.
We listen the low plantive moan
Of strangers. grim sorrow’s elected.
But forget the deep heartache at home.

There are hearts that are broken with losses;
There are hearts which with sorrow must cope;
There are hearts that are bearing dark crosses.
And hearts that are barren of hope:
And all these kind words we are giving
To them are both honeful and true.
But those in our own homes are living
To whom our kind words are more due.

0! strangers we close watch are keeping.
And open our heart’s door so wide.

While by our own hearths friends are weeping
Whose tears might be easily dried.

But somehow. we all are forgetful
Of those to whom love should be given.

Till we ﬁnd with hearts deeply regretful
Their sorrow has borne them to heaven.

The secret death never discloses.
With heart that most earnestly mourns.
We cover their coﬂin with roses
When we scattered their lifepath with thorns.
Tho’ hearts must grieve. eyes must be tearful,
And life cannot be always may;
Show kindness to all and give cheerful,
A share of the roses to-day.

PINEAPPLES .

 

Pineapples are selling in the Detroit
market at three for aquarter. They
come up from Indian River and the
“Land-of Flowers” and as the adver-
tiser said of his soap, “' thev’re cheaper
than going without.” They join with
the yellow-jacketed banana in com-
peting with the strawberry of Michi-
gan and Northern Ohio, and really de-
serve to hold their own against such
“measley ” berries as were in the early
market. I bought a box of Sharpless
in the Central Market the other day,
paying ﬁfteen cents because the fruit
was so large and apparently ﬁne. Be-
fore I reached home the juice was leak-
ing all over my Sunday gloves, and the
berries, when I prepared to serve them
after the most approved fashion—with
the hulls on and a little dish of powder-
ed sugar to dip them in—proved to
have been skillfully “doctored.” The
topmost layer was of ﬁne large fruit;
the next below it of good berries though
not so large: below these layers every
berry was half decayed, the best side

 

having been skillfully placed upward so
that under a pretty critical inspection,
such as I gave, they seemed sound.
Those market women would cheat
Aristides the Just, and he’d never know
it till he got home. Every time I re-
solve that never, no never, will I buy
anything on the market again. and yet
1 do, “and the old, old story is told
again.”

But to return to the pineapple, which
is a healthful and digestible fruit when
properly prepared, Choose a nice
ripe one, and you may judge of its ripe-
ness by its russet golden-yellow hue,
and then attack it in the most approved
Floridian fashion, as follows: Peel the
apple, cutting inside the eyes, as each
eye contains a sharp spear, which, if
not cut out, penetrates the tongue or
lip and makes the mouth sore. Then
stand the pine on end on the table or
board and wring off the top or crown
(don’t cut it off), and then cut down
from the top to the bottom in thin
slices with a sharp knife, and keep
turning the pine around and slice to the
core. Put the slices in adish and sugar,
if you desire, but don’t put the sugar on
until served, as it draws out the juices
and injures the ﬂavor of the pine. Al-
most every one puts on the sugar when
the pine is sliced, but it toughens the
ﬁbre.

A pineapple makes as good a short-
cake as strawberries. Any recipe for
strawberry Shortcake will answer for

pineapple, but here is one which has

been tested and approved: Half a cup-
ful of butter, one cupful of sugar, half a
cupful of milk, two cups of ﬂour and
two teaspoonsful of baking powder.
Bake in two layers. and spread the
chopped pineapple between the layers
after the cake is cold The fruit may
require a little sugar.

For preserves, pare and slice the
apples and allow a pound of sugar to a
pound of fruit. Put a layer of fruit in a
deep dish, then a layer of sugar, then
more pineapple and soon; let stand over
night. With a coarse skimmer take
the fruit out of the syrup; boil the latter
till it thickens, put in the fruit and
cook twenty minutes, then put into cans
or jars and seal. A few pieces of ginger
root boiled in the syrup improve it to
most palates.

I eat. occasionally, a sample of pine-
apple pie which is delicious though
very rich and dyspepsia-provoking,

 

 

When the new cook suﬂiciently relaxes
her dignity so that I dare invite her to
disclose a professional secret, I’m going
to ask her for the recipe. Then I’ll

tell the HOUSEHOLD. .
BEATRIX.

AT LAST.

The day dawned much as usual. The
east showed faintly pink, shaded into
rose and crimson, tinted the few ﬂeecy
clouds with violet and gold. The fair
crescent vanished from sight at the day
god’s coming. The faintest breeze
sprung up, stirring the limp and life-
less leaves on shrub and tree. There
was the glad refrain of the robin, the
whistle of the quail, pecans of praise
from a thousand feathered songsters,
the shrill tone of the chanticleer. the
bleating of ﬂocks, the lowng of kine-
all nature with one voice ushered in
another day. That there was some-
thing wrong on Farmer Goodspeed’s
premises. something out of the usual
order of things, was painfully apparent.
For the ﬁrst time in thirty years break-
fast was not smoking on the table
when the morning chores were com-
pleted. Everything about the house
was tidy and orderly; on the kitchen
table stood the bowl of coffee ground
the night before. a pan of potatoes
pared, ready for the kettle, meat sliced,
but there was no one moving about,
only a dreadful silence. Lying on the
bed, apparently lifeless, was the house-
wife and mother It was the work of a.
moment to dispatch amesseuger for the
family physician and a telegram for the
twins, Dorothy and Bernice, who were
at boarding school; but before medical
aid reached the farm house life had
ﬂed. It was called rheumatism of the
heart, or stagnation of the blood.

The twins were a triﬂe put out at the
imperative summons home, how could
they leave in Commencement week!
Probably it was a slight sickness, she
would be up and around when they
reached home; so alternately fretting
and crying they got a few things to-
gether and boarded the train for their
native town. The man who met them
at the depot never told them the sad
news, and it was when they drove up to
the step to alight that the bit of crape
ﬂuttering from the doorknob told them
mother was dead. The oldest son had
come home from college, and with

 


 
  

  
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
  
  
 
  
   
 
  
 
 
 
   
 
  
  
  
    
 
 
  
 
  
  
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
  
 
 
  
  
 
 
 
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
 
  
 
 
 
  
  
  
  
 
  
 
   
 

2 The Household.

 

Ted and Benny—the two boys who
helped on the farm, made up the
family. The good farmer was com—
pletely bowed down. Just ﬁnishing
haying, expecting to go into the wheat
next week, dear, dear, how unlucky!
He never knew mother to be sick be-
fore; well, she wasn’t sick now—stricken
down in apparently perfect health. She
got along so nicely with the housework,
never hiring a stroke of work done:
being alone, she could plan everything.
True, it was considerable for one pair
of hands to compass; often and often he
had felt a thrill of pride at her execu-
tive ability. Beginning with forty
acres and adding to it every few years,
they now had three hundred good,
fertile, productive acres, a comfortable
house and outbuildings. The last forty
that he bought lastsummer she had de-
murred at a bit. “Husband,” she says,
“ we’re getting old, we’re past ﬁfty; we
don’t want any more land. The chil-
dren will soon be through school, the
heavy expense ’ll be over and we can
live a little easier. Ned will be a
lawyer in a year, Bernice a music
teacher. Dorothy expects a position as
teacher of German and English in
the Seminary, that leaves Ted and Ben
to help you. I will not have anybody,
you see. The girls look down on house-
work, their hands are like lamb’s wool.
They make a sight of extra work when
they are home vacation, and call the
house an ‘ old rookery.’ I sometimes
mﬁer if we haven’t missed it educat-
i'ng them so; it’s turned them right
away; from us. I mind the time I
rocked and tended them, and thought
of the timeto come when I would have-
two girls to, share my labors. It seems
along while since they’ve thrown their
pound dimpled arms about my neck and
kissed me tender and true. They ﬁnd
fault with my clothes and old fashioned
talk. We done what we thought was
for the best, Josiah; it may not turn out
so. Seems as if we expect too much
nowdays, hoping and hoping, and sel-
dom realizing.”

It was a big funeral; such heaps and
heaps of ﬂowers—callas and big roses
and smilax—a costly coﬂin, a minister
who spoke so comforting about mother-
hood-and self denial—and a reunion
beyond the narrow river, and an in-
visible cord, and the sweet inﬂuence;
’twas just like the softest music, like
the most beautiful poetry; it- seemed as if
one were ﬂowing along on placid water
with never a ripple or wave. The good
farmer forgot his great aﬂliction; he
closed his eyes and imagined he stood
in those green pastures. He saw the
waving palms, he heard the praises to
the Lamb. Stricken down in apparent
health, so much better than a long
painful illness (with its attendant bills
and heavy expenses); just drOpped in
the harness, never had lost a day in
thirty odd years; truly the ways of
Erovidence are mysterious.

Elie. neighbors said if a few of those

nice ﬂowers had been strewn along her

pathway in life it would have eased the

burden wonderfully. They said she-
failed in judgment, giving the rest the
ripe rich kernels and keeping the husks
for herself. The path she walked never
felt the warm rays of the sun—the

broad full view—theirs felt the very
best she had to give. These were vain
regrets, sad reﬂections. If they had
only crossed the borderland, brought a
little of their fresh young lives into the
narrow conﬁnes of that monotonous,
humdrum, never ceasing round of
labor, if only heart had responded to
heart in affection and sympathy!

It is far better to love the mother
while she is here, better to share the
hard tasks so we may keep her longer.
The face may be furrowed with deep
lines, the hair silvered, the eyes dim,
the hands brown and calloused; the old
fashioned vernacular may jar on the
nerves, but there will never be another
breast like the one that cradled us in
infancy. No other heart that beats so
loyal to us. No patience so enduring.
No allegiance so loyal as that the dear
old mother gives us.

BATTLE Cam EVANGELINE.

 

BUTTER.

 

There was a bouquet of fresh onions
on the dinner table, and at tea time the
butter served us had an unmistakable
onion-y taste. It was so pronounced in
ﬂavor of Allium cepa that I decided to
emulate the example of the worthy
“Miss Dawson,” who “always ate drv
bread in strange houses, not having
conﬁdence in the butter.” A careless
servant had without doubt set the
onions in the refrigerator where the
butter was kept. “ Easy enough to get
feet and hands with bodies attached,” as
Mrs. M. C. H. once said, but not so
easy to ﬁnd somebody with what old
Bartle Massey called “a headpiece”
that can think and be heedful.
Butter of all things is most sensitive
to and quick to absorb odors. A but-
ter dealer condemned a package of nice
looking butter consigned him as of un-
usual excellence, because, on samplingr
it. it hada smoky ﬂavor. He had the
curiosity to trace the origin of the de-
feet, and learned the cream had been
warmed on the kitchen stove where
grcen wood was burned, and the ﬁre
smoked, and thus the smoky ﬂavor was
accounted for. Yet people will keep
milk and cream in a cellar with cab-
bage, onions and potatoes, codﬁsh, ham
and soft soap, and wonder why the re-
sultant butter will not sell for twenty—
ﬁve cents a pound the year round!
Even where the butter is made with
the utmost care and a ﬁne ﬂavor
secured, the consumer who does not
know how to handle it or is careless in
that respect, will spoil its quality by
leaving it where it will get soft and thus

 

soon become rancid, or will leave it ex~
. posed to the air, or will put it in a re-

frigerator with beefsteak and cabbage
slaw and boiled hams-andonions. Then
of course they complain butter will not
keep, etc.
Nothing we eat should be kept more
carefully covered than the butter jar.
Lay a cloth wet in brine on the butter,
putting it on carefully to cover all the
Surface, and replace it as carefully every
time you have occasion to go the jar.
Over the jar spread a towel, over this
two or three thicknesses of clean paper,
on this a board or something which
will keep the paper in place and prevent
it from being accidentally removed.
Never let it get soft and hope to harden
it with ice, etc., it has lost in quality
and ﬂavor by softening.
If you keep butter in a refrigerator,
keep it in a stone jar and closely cover
it. Then do not put anything which
has a strong odor in the refrigerator if
you can help it. Onions, radishes,
cabbage, can be folded in a wet towel
and will keep fresh thus as long as they
are healthful. Steak or meats should
be covered. The refrigerator which is
built into the modern residence now-
days has two parts entirely disconnect-
ed at pleasure, one especially for milk,
cream and butter.
Butter can be kept cool by putting it
on a plate, the plate in a pan or bowl
turn water into the pan and invert a,
basin or smaller pan over the butter.
The water must not touch the butter.
As illustrating the truth of what has
been said about the proneness of butter
to absorb ﬂavors, the story is told of an
eastern butter-maker, one of the very
best in the State, who, sending a beauti-
ful sample of butter to a new customer,
placed upon it a few sprigs of parsley.
The golden product was very attractive,
and the parsley was artistically dis-
played, but upon' testing the butter, it
had absorbed the ﬂavor of the parsley,
and was to that extent damaged. The
“ embellishment ” of the butter was
abandoned thereafter. 8.
TRY Edna’s way of canning fruit. It
strikes us as calculated to give ex~
cellent results. It is the most like the
methods of commercial canners we have
ever seen given for domestic use. She
will forgive us for telling the HOUSE-
HOLD what she says about it in a private
note to the Editor: “ I have had so
many compliments since putting up
fruit by this method that I feel sure
those who have .never tried it will be
pleased. I have thoroughly tested and
proven to my own satisfaction that it is
the way to can fruit to have it look the
nicest and taste the freshest. It is cer-
tainly an easier way than stewing the
fruit, then ﬁlling the cans."

 

M. M. M., in a postal which was mis-
laid, says cold lye can be added to the
hot grease in her directions for making
soap, published in May, without harm
She says: “You will not ﬁnd the

 

splutter of consequence.”

 

   


 
    

 

 

 

The Household. 3

 

‘me DEATHS-,EARI, 41‘300’68 .TOIL-

, some, enema) 3:: HAPPY.

 

I have just been reading the paper
“Talking Up and not Down,” by Mrs.
L. B. Baker, published in the HOUSE-
HOLD, and I want to say that I am in
\full accord with the sentiments therein
expressed, and with the view taken of
'the farmer’s life and surroundings;
'and I want to emphasize, if I may, one

-.or more of the prominent thoughts

there expressed.

Yes, it is an unfortunate habit, with
-many, to speak of the farmer’s life as a
ceaseless and thankless round of toil and
privations—a life crowded with labor,
with little or no chance for rest or re-
creation, which labor supplies but the
bare necessities of physical life. This
condition may, to some small extent,
exist, but I’m sure it need not to a
large extent. So many have never
learned how to make the most and best
of what they have, or may have.

- I am surprised when I see people
in the prime of life, and in the full
possession of their faculties and powers,
looking anxiously forward to the time
when they will not “have to work.”
Why! Ifeel that if I live to see that day
it will be a sad day to me; for in honor-
able, useful and beneﬁcial activity is
our greatest and highest happiness
found; it has ever been thus since Adam
and Eve were placed in the Garden of
Eden, to ‘.‘ dress it and tend it.”

I am sure that farmers and their
families might enjoy much more than
they do, if more time and attention
were given to wise planning, and care-
ful forethought; but this seems to be
:the hardest work for some to do——to
plan and systematize—and, as I have
said. this is where many make their
greatest failure, and when I see how
at haphazard some men arrange (if it
.may be called arrangement) and per-
form their work, I only wonder that
more do not entirely fail in their seem-
ingly one and only object—making a
living—and among those who succeed

their success, at best, is buta meager
one.

As I ride by some houses, I can but
notice the lack of comforts which it
would seem might in most cases be
secured. The house looks dreary, a
cold place in winter and a hot one in
summer—no cozy porches or cool shade
trees—no ﬂowers (save dandelions and
thistles), and very little about it to cause
the children in after years to remember
it as “The dearest spot on earth,
my childhood’s happy home,” which
picture, hung on memory’s walls,
ought of right to be a beautiful heir-
loom‘ to every farmer’s son and
daughter.

But I’m glad to know that better times
are here for the farmer and his family;
the many labor-saving appliances for
the home and the farm give opportuni-
ties for reading, thinking, planning for
social good and for more culture of

  

mind and less of muscle; but here and
there we ﬁnd a man who either fails to
see or does not care to see, these open
doors to a better, broader life, and the
only hope for such is to induce him to
join and attend the Grange, Farmers’
Club or kindred organizations which
are doing so much to aid and advance,
and thus be swept along with the tide
of progress and ﬁnally anchored in the
harbor of agricultural prosperity and
home enjoyment. J. T. DANIELLS.
UNION HOME.

W

A. REAPSODY.

 

It was always a mystery to me who
ﬁrst put fruit between two layers of
dough, baked it, and baptized it pie.
Now I’m perplexed by another conun-
drum of the same nature: Who ﬁrst
dropped a lump of ice-cream into a
glass of soda water and ate it out witha
long-handled spoon? There is a hand-
some block of houses in this city built
of ice-cream soda—the proﬁts of it, I
mean; and the man who built the block
is selling this particular delicacy at the
rate of hundreds of glasses per day. In-
deed, he claims to have sold 9,000
glasses one sultry Saturday in May. At
ﬁve cents a glass his weekly receipts
aggregate hundreds of dollars, and
though the business is not all proﬁt, by
any means, he is making money in spite
of the fact that every drugstore and
candy bazar deals in the same wares.
You see it happens to be just the thing
that strikes the tired and thirsty mor-
tal, especially of the feminine per-
suasion. It is both “meat and drink.”
It is refreshingly cool, and while you
eat and drink, you have a few precious
moments’ rest and rise with fresh
courage and decidedly lower in tem-
perature. Women are perhaps the
most faithful patrons, with men a good
second. I’ve seen women partaking of
it when the thermometer was painfully
low. Men indulge in the festive ﬁzz,
but generally express a preference for
ginger ale, especially since the W. C.
T U. said it was naughty. It is sur-
prising how nice things do get just as
soon as somebody “resolves” that they
are “pernicious.”

They tell me there are places in our
lovely State where the ﬁzz of the ice-
cream fountain is never heard, and ice-
cream soda, like plovers’ eggs and,
aspic jelly, something the people hear
about but never know. How I pity
them! I would not forego the delight of
spending my ﬁve centses and standing
trea “just like a man,” for a great big
bunch of rural delights. You say
“What’s yours?” you know; and your
friend says pineapple or chocolate or
strawberry or sar saparilla, and instead
of saying “Two beers” you say “Two
coffees,” and you throw down your
quarter as if you were going to say
“Keep the change!” to the b— waiter
girl, but you think better of it and

 

don’t; and you sit and chat and com‘

ment on other women’s clothes and

feel that you don’t care if they do look

at your new China silk—it’s just as

stylish as anybody’s, and you feel benev-

olently inclined toward everybody,

from the silk-shirted dude with his hat

on the back of his head to the errand
boy with a bundle who sprawls over

two chairs and looks as if he‘d like to
lick the glass but daren’t. And you

think you’d really like another round,

it’s so cool and comfortable. but you
know it’s not quite correct, so you go
away hoping you’ll meet somebody who
will steer your all too willing feet toward
another point of joy and cream and
say “Have a glass?” In short, in a
mild and feminine way we dissipate
with this harmless beverage as do men
with their stronger ﬂuids. I suppose
it is evidence of our “emancipation”
and “advancement” that we take so
kindly to this aping of masculine ways,
isn’t it? BRUNEFILLE.

Damon.
—————...————

A GOOD WAY TO CAN FRUIT.

 

Clean and wash fruit as for stewing,
but instead of putting into a kettle, ﬁll
the cans as full of the fresh fruit as
possible, jarring the can to pack it in;
place the cans in a steamer overakettle
of boiling water, cover closely and let
steam till the fruit pricks easily with a
straw. I have found that berries will
cook enough in from twenty to thirty
minutes; peaches and pears take from
forty-ﬁve minutes to an hour, and
cherries about forty-ﬁve minutes. Have
a thick syrup boiling hot to pour in as
soon as the fruit is cooked through;
make it by allowing one cup sugar and
half a cup hot water for each quart
can. Let stand two or three minutes
before screwing on the top, then turn
the cans bottom side up and leave them
till cool. I have canned fruit this way
for three years and have never lost a
single can.

It is well to have some extra fruit
steaming at the same time as that in
the cans, for it shrinks enough in
cooking usually to allow of putting in
more fruit before ﬁlling with syrup.
For instance. I ﬁll four quart cans full,

then another two~thirds full, and use
that to ﬁll up the other cans. I wish
every lady who is at all sceptical about
this method would do as I did, try
three or four quarts this year and——
I was going to say mark them—but it
won’t be necessary, for you can certainly
tell them from the stewed fruit by looks
and ﬂavor. EDNA.

H AMBUBG.
“—

THE ﬁne “gilt-edged” butter which
is taken to the Boston market from the
large dairy farms in the adjacent
country, is wrapped in cheese cloth
rather than the paraﬁne paper. The
small prints command the highest
prices. Here is a hint for butter-mak-

ers. Where butter is packed in tubs,
they must be thoroughl soaked in

brine before being packe- , otherwise
the butter will stick to the tub aul its

 

removal is a matter of difficulty.


 

 

4:

The Household.

 

HOW I 'TAUGET NUMBERS.

 

The day that I called up the primary
class for a ﬁrst lesson in numbers, I
wondered how in the world I should go
at it. When I began the study of
mathematics, I had to learn a certain
number of combinations or separations
daily and recite them by rote without
missing a word, in precisely the man-
ner that ten years later I learned to
conjugate irregular French verbs.
Consequently, I hated arithmetic, and
do to this day.

But perhaps my own instruction
helped me in teaching by showing what
to avoid. Certainly the number class
soon became my favorite, and all the
children liked it as much as I did. In-
deed, it was rather difﬁcult to keep the
older pupils from acting the part of
audience during that recitation.

My apparata were very simple; strings
of buttons, wooden toothpicks, pieces of
bright colored paper, several rulers of
various lengths, and a pack of ordinary
playing cards constituted my whole out-
ﬁt. The last mentioned article did not
fail to excite profound horror in the
minds of some of the good people in the
district, although I considerately re-
moved the kings, queens and jacks, hop-
ing thereby to lessen the shock. How-
ever, the cards were very useful in as-
sisting a ready perception of differen
numbers. Holding several cards. in
my hand, I would show them one by
one, changing them as quickly as pos-
sible, and asking, “ How many spots?”
nearly always calling on a particular
pupil to answer. I do not believe in
simultaneous recitation. Then from
recognizing the number of spots on one
card, they learned to tell how many on
two, three, or four cards; how many
three spots they could ﬁnd in nine
spots, and how many two spots would
make eight spots. Of course this was
only an occasional exercise, a resource
when the class was not quite up to the
mark in attention and interest.

Number stories were a part of each
recitation, and very funny some of them
were. The vague idea children have in
regard to value were often illustrated,
as in this: “ If I buy a gold watch for
ﬁve cents, two gold watches will cost
ten cents.” They soon learned to tell
stories readily, and were always very
eager about it.

After they had learned about inches,
feet and yards, it wasa favorite exercise
to measure different objects in the room.
Sometimes I showed them a book, box,
stick, or any other convenient article,
and allowed each one in turn to guess
the dimensions. When all had guessed,
I would measure the article, or as a
special favor allow one of them to do so;
and how anxiously they awaited the re-
sult! After a few trials they became
quite expert in judging. In fact, I was
careful not to express my own Opinion
about it, for it would have been very
mortifying to have the little dots of six

 

and seven come two or three inches
nearer the exact measurement than
myself. From little things we went to
larger, and before school closed we had
measured the blackboards, windows,
maps, and even found the length and
breadth of the room. With all this
there was constant drill in changing
from one denomination to another.

After teaching them the table for
time I tried to give them a practical
idea of the duration of seconds and
minutes. The ﬁrst pupil whom Isent
out of the room to stay a minute was
back in just twenty seconds.

Numbers can be made an excellent
test of a child’s powers of observation.
In trying to illustrate the fact that ten
times nothing are nothing, I asked
the class—made up entirely of country
children—how many teeth a hen has.
The answers were startling. Some
said a dozen, others twenty, and still
others, mindful of their lessons in oral
physiology and evidently believing all
bipeds to have the same characteristics,
decided on thirty-two. They promised
to ﬁnd out for themselves before the
next day, and doubtless there was great
commotion in the poultry yards that
night; but the result was highly satis-
factory. One of their home tasks was to
ﬁnd out how many toes a cat has, and I
am inclined to think from the appear-
ance of the hands and faces, that Madam
Puss objected to these investigations
in the pursuit of knowledge.

In the spring I utilized the dande-
lions which the children brought me
by distributing them among the pupils
of the class, and having the children
give to each other; always telling about
it. Like this: “I had three dande~
lions; Annie gave me two, Emma gave
me one and Frank gave me four. Now
I have ten dandelions.” Almost any-
thing would serve the same purpose,
but the dandelions were novel and
therefore interesting.

Many other forms of drills and ex-
ercises came in use during the year;
and I found that it always paid to study
up a new “ number game.”

PORT HURON. E. C.

 

CANNING- MAPLE SYRUP.

 

The making of ﬁne maple syrup,
eleven pounds to the gallon, is a pro-
ﬁtable business at $1 or $1.25 per gallon,
and the “ sugar-bush ” is often the most
proﬁtable acre on the farm. An
abundant supply for home consumption
is usually well appreciated, and may
be canned and kept indeﬁnitely by the
following method, given by W. J.
Chamberlain in one of our exchanges.
He says: “The best syrup-makers now
seal cold in self-sealing tin gallon cans.
The cap is cork-lined, and. as it screws
down it draws this cork snugly down
against the top rim of the ﬁlling-hole
and makes it air-tight. The can is ﬁrst
ﬁlled full while it stands on a table, and
then is held up by its handle with your
left hand, so that the weight of the

 

syrup will “bag out ” the bottom :ofthe »

can to full capacity. Then, with your
right hand, you ﬁll the ﬁlling neck or
hole even full, and while the left hand
still holds the can 'up, the right hand
screws on the cap tight. Thus all the
air is excluded, and as the syrup is cool,
it never shrinks or leaves a vacuum in
the can, or makes it cave in. Then the
can is set down. and the cap screwed as
tight as possible with a pair of large
pliers.
have tried both hot and cold sealing
that the latter keeps the ﬂavor as well
(if done as described), and gives less
risk of the souring or fermentation of
an occasional can.”

The syrup should be strained through
ﬂannel to take out the grit—which is
carbonate of lime and silica—and which
is arrested by the nap of the ﬂannel.

It is the judgment of those who '

Try putting up a few cans for summer ‘

use with warm biscuit.

-IN connection with the Waseca
Chautauqua Assembly, to be held at
Waseca, Minn, July lst to 22nd, Mrs.
W. M. Hays will establish a cooking
school, and give a series of six lectures,
to be selected from a list of twenty.
Mrs. Hays assisted Mrs. E. P. Ewing
in her cooking school at Chautauqua,

N. Y., last season; and is one of the two ,

women who hold a college degree in

domestic economy, and is authorized to -

place the letters M. D. E. after her
name. It is one of the evidences of
progress that more attention is every
year being paid to the best methods of
preparing food, and that our dependence
upon good food to furnish active brains

and robust bodies is being recognized
by courses of instruction under skilled
teachers. If such instruction could
reach the rank and ﬁle, the wives of the
laboring classes, and teach them the
importance 0f and how to prepare
cheap, palatable and healthy food, we

believe the result would be not only a .

great savingkof valuable food materials
but also a pe ceptible reduction in the
ranks of the intemperate.

Useful Recipes.

 

chm—Excellent jam may be made from
the small fruits in from twenty. ﬁve to thirty-

ﬁve minutes from the time it begins to boil, .

according to whether the fruit was picked in

dry or wet weather. This jam will not slice, .

but forms a jelly—like mass. rich in fruity
ﬂavor. The following is the recipe: Take
half as much sugar by measure as there is of
the fruit after it is thoroughly crushed ; put
the sugar in the stove oven where it will get
hot, but not discolored. Put the fruit

over a moderate ﬁre, and stir it from the -

bottom. When it has boiled ﬁ fteen or twenty

minutes, if very juicy. add the hot sugar,.

continue to stir until. the .whole has boiled
ten minutes. |when 1t Wlll be done, and
should be put in jars and sealed at once.

 

PIE-PLANT IN Simon—Peel and cut in two-
inch lengths fresh rhubarb; place in a porce-

lain saucepan with enough sugar to sweeten. .

Put the saucepan in the steamer, cover close
and steam until the juice is extracted, then
lift the rhubarb out with a skimmer; place
the syrup over the ﬁre and boil until thick ;
return the pieces of rhubarb, boil for a min-
ute and set away to cool.

 

 

