
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DETROIT, JUNE 17, 1898.

 

 

'THE HOUSEHOLD-"Supplement.

 

 

BE I‘TE B SELF.

—

B! CLARA BELLE SOUTHWELL.

 

When the clouds hang dark above you and against
you seem combined

.111 of earth and hosts of heaven, strive your
Better Sell to ﬁnd;

Thereis one who will not fail you whatsoever

else betide.

Still your Better Self is faithful. standing patient
at your side.

When with darkest trials and sorrows you must
single-handed cope.

Though you still must toil and struggle, hoping
for the slightest hope.

Then your Better Self comes to you and perchance
shoWs something more

That awaits your future eﬁorts. which you had
not known before.

Here where foes are very many and where friends
are very few.

Always e‘er 'mid deepest shadow will your Better
Self be true.

human.

JUNE.

 

3's! “ BILL."

 

In all the year. of days to me.
None are so bright. so dreamy sweet
As J une’s. with ﬂowers’ perfume
And glo w. and birds‘ sweet minstrelsy.
And sunset beauty. All too soon
Th: days glide from us,

I one. sweet June !

—-—...—_

“museum."

 

I think most women, even those whqse
life’s romance is a page turned down,
with Ithe prints of Time’s dusty ﬁnger
upon it, can summon a memory of the
emotions of that happy hour when they
were ﬁrst “engaged.” Even a wither-
ed cheek takes on a tender ﬂush, and a
faded eye sparkles again as the scene is
recalled—it is perhaps the only romance
~ of an otherwise hard,matter of fact life.
Always the words “I love you, dearest;
will you be my own?” are sweeter than
honey of Hymettus to the girl who has
been half hoping, half fearing to hear
them; perhaps shyly keeping them un-
said by those pretty, coquettish ways
which so perplex and bewilder the more
straightforward man-nature, especial-
ly if he be not unduly self-conceited.

“All the world loves a lover,” they
say; and so old peOple live again in the
loves of their grandchildren. We look
with sympathetic eyes on the young
man’s evident preference for some fair
girl whose eyes brighten and cheeks
ﬂush at his coming; and when they
come to us “engaged,” how beautiful

=riage itself.

 

   

 

their dream! There is something very
holy and sacred in the thought that
these two have chosen each other from
the whale world, to stand together
while life continues; that each ﬁnds in
the other a soul’s complement, wanting
which the world is lonely and dark.
True love is ever humble; so the young
man feels himself not good enough to be
accepted guardian of the heart he has
chosen and won; and the timid girl feels
all too deeply that she has taken into
her keeping a man’s love and honor,
and that it is to be her duty and pleas-
ure to make his happiness and be his
comfort and companion whatever he-
tide. Beautiful dreams, proud dreams,
fond dreams; sometimes realized, some-
times not!

To the loving, womanly, pure girl,
being betrothed is as sacred as mar-
Marriage is the sanction
of the law and the church upon the
bond; but the bond itself was formed
when her whispered assent was given,
when they two were alone with only the
eternal, silent stars for witnesses. That
was the true marriage of soul, to be
legalized by customary ceremouy later.
But the avowal of love timidly spoken
in lover’s ears was to both as solemn
and binding a pledge as that made pub-
licly on the marriage day. A new world
opens. A freer companionship is per-
mitted; a host of new interests converge
upon the life they are to lead together;
the lover’s right to caresses, the fond
greetings and reluctant partings make
“being engaged” a period of ecstatic
joy, the woman’s most beatiﬁc time
Reverenced for her modesty, worshiped
as the dearest and best of women, her
purity holds passion in check; she is not
yet possessed, not quite his own, but the
fair fruit just eluding grasp, the shy
bud chary of unfolding its heart.

In strong contrast to the girl who has
modestly waited to be chosen, who has
stilled her heart-beats least they betray
her secret, and in whose soul love has
blossomed as a ﬂower, is she whose en-
gagement is simply the vulgar triumph
of a coquette’s art; she has angled and
“caught him.” There is no poetry or
enchantment about being engaged under
such circumstance. The pursuit has
been sordid and a matter of business.
The man is rich or otherwxse eligible;
some one else had betrayed a preference,
or she simply wishes to settle in life;

 

and so she laid seige to him and in her
0 vn words has “ brought him down!”
She may enjoy her success, the congra-
tulations and envy of her mates, but
what does she realize of the holiness and
sanctity of the tie formed through her
maneuvering, not born of that mutual
attraction, that magnetic drawing to-
gether which makes the real betroth-
al? Nothing. It is not in her. She
has none of the doubts, the hesitancy,
the sweet timidity; of the other; no
dreams but of her trousseau and estab-
lishment, no hopes beyond a liberal al-
lowance.

To such a girl, to be engaged means
In more than any other engagement
which she may keep or not according
as it seems expedient. Indeed, she
sometimes admits to her conﬁdential
friend her purpose to “throw him over”
if she can “ do better.” The ring which
he places upon her ﬁnger is prized ac-
cording to its money value. I heard
once of a newly betrothed girl who cried
herself sick because her engagement
ring was not to her liking; she had set
her heart upon a diamond soltaire and
“hated” the circlet of pearls which was
her lover’s choice. Another society
girl had her doubts about the genuine-
ness of the stone in her ring and took it
to a jeweler to be valued. And I could
not sympathize with her in her indig-
nation when she found it was an imita-
tion; I felt that the young man had
after all “sized her up” about right,
with a paste jewel for aﬁcounterfeit girl.

I do not say an engagement should
never be broken. In the ﬁrst place,
such a compact should not be lightly
entered into. Recognizing it as scarce-
ly less important than its consummation,
it should be a matter of sincere affection
and solemn thought. Too many girls
allow themselves to be ﬂattered and im-
portuued into a pramise which later
they half regret but are not courageous
enough to break and perhaps face the
disapproval and comment of their little
world If, ‘ under more intimate ac-
quaintance, qualities which are repug-
nant, traits that are distasteful, opin-
ions that cannot be harmonized,or want
of principle are discovered in either,
better annul the engagement. But let

 

there be, always, a sincere purpose to

- redeem the pledge when the promise

is made. Neither girl or young man

- can measure the consequences of the

 

 


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2 The Household.

 

 

broken vow to the other. One may
give love’s pure gold, the other its
dross, and a life be lost in the weighing.

But what shall we say of the girl
whose nature is so coarse, so lacking in
delicate feeling,so wanting in sensitive-
ness and reﬁnement that her heart is
like a volume from the circulating lib.
rary\—not to be kept longer than three
weeks—and to whom a broken engage-
ment occasions actually no feeling but
one of pique or a sensation of relief?
Plenty of girls are “ engaged ” to every
new young man who comes along, and
plume themselves on being the heroine
of many “affairs.” They want the at-
tention and courtesies of “steady com-
pany ” and sentiment goes no further.
Such girls cannot comprehend what
Wolcott Balestier says in “ Beneﬁts
Forgot ”—the serial now running in
11w Century: “ If he would, no one
could venture to say what the desecra-
tion of a woman’s inmost life must be
through the intimacles; the familiari-
ties, the endearments of a betrothal that
comes to nought. The exchanged amen-
ities, so inﬁnitely right and sweet be-
cause marriage follows, become each a
separate indignity when it does not.”

Thus he pictures his noble-minded,
serious»hearted Margaret, after her
abandonment by her lover when the
very wedding hour was at hand, smart-
ing in soul at the remembrance of the
dead romance and her credulity and
faith; and it was very natural to such
a nature as hers that when she recall-
ed the endearments bestowed upon
her lover there should be a sense of in-
dignity and personal desecration that
should make her almost hate him.

But no girl who has yielded her lips to
half a dozen lovers in turn can com-
prehend this sense of desecration, of
having been robbed of something that
can never be restored.

And I notice that no young man who
is worth marrying and who will makc a
good husband, who is in himself reﬁned
and pure-minded. wants for his wife
the girl who has been passed from Tom
to Dick and then to Harry, “engaged”
being only a cloak for lovers’ libertifs
in caresses. He may be caught by
beauty, or wlt, or sparkle, but at heart
he prefers and usually he seeks and

wins the

“Lips that lover hath never kissed."
BEATBIX.

 

WOMAN NOT IN THE VAN.

 

In a recent issue of the HOUSEHOLD
J. saw an article by Brunefille touching
upon the possible future of woman and
her inﬂuence in the government. With
all deference for the prerogative of that
" basket,” I wish to speak my thought
and to ask a few questions upon matters
that seem dark to me.

For various causes women are ad-,

vancing faster, in the latter part of this
nineteenth century, than they have at
any other period in the history of their
sex. This advancement I doubt not

.._._ _-.. -7. _. -‘

.x

 

every right thinking, broad-minded
man believes is in accordance with the
right working of things, and in his
heart hails with joy although he may
not say so. “But,” said awoman in my
presence the other day, “we are pro-
gressing faster than men are." Possi-
bly you are, my friend, but your prog—
ress is yet mainly along lines that
men have laid out and traveled before
you. Womzn are going to work in
factories built by men and equipped
with machinery invented by men. In
our colleges the text books used in
teaching both sexes are with very few
exceptions written and compiled by
men; the professors and instructors are
still nearly all men. I do not believe
that women are advancing beyond the
present boundary line of advancement
of both sexes faster than men are.
Possibly, as Bruneﬁlle suggests, we-
man will become the dominant power
in the administration of our govern-
ment; but have we sufficient reason to
expect that in case she should direct
the affairs of state they would be
administered much better? Was she
not as instrumental in the downfall of
that great Roman Empire as was her
brother man? Does not the history of
France show that women and men were
alike susceptible to those elevating in-
ﬂuences that raised France to her place
as one of the foremost powers of Europe?
Surrounded by the same climatic con-
ditions, fed on the same kind of food,
taught in the same schools from the
same books, why should she be so much
better or worse morally than one of the

opposite sex?

Mucous. F. C. G.

 

FARM POETRY.

 

Some scoff at and many ignore any
but the plodding, practical outsideof the
work every farm house stands for; a few
farm theoretically, “ not without honor
save in their own country;” but only
here and there is a man whose legiti-
mate ﬁelds are well cared for, or a wo-
man, whose assignel sphere has not
been invaded, who yet has made addi-
tions to the world of letters. When
such an one is found something valuable
ought to be expected, for the farmer’s
home stands within Nature’s labora-
tories and nurseries and, if its members
sire open to suggestiveness, the pushing,
crowded farm life is a spur to mental
activity, not a drag.

Emerson wrote:—

“I'ax not my sloth that I
Fold my hands beside the brook;
Eachploud that ﬂoated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.

"One harvest from thy ﬁeld
Homeward brought the oxen strong;
A second crop thy_ acres yield
Winch I gather in a song.”

A dainty white and silver bound book,
before me this morning, brings to mind
one who habitually brings two harvests,
not one, from his ﬁelds,—rich beautiful
ﬁelds they are, too, and such cool,
shadowy groves and wood lots as belong
with them!

Those who have grown “Hathaway’s

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Yellow Dent Corn.” or the “No. Five
Strawberry” or, years ago, sent or went
to the Little Prairie Ronde nursery and
orchard for choice trees and fruits,have
shared in the one harvest of this inde-
fatigable worker; while with those who-
have heeded the horticultural notes,
signed “B. H.,” in standard agricultur-
al and pomological papers or who have
occasionally seen a bit of verse from his
pen, he has divided the second harvest;
The patient delight in experimenting to
secure improved varieties of fruits and
grains, that have yielded so much of
beneﬁt to his neighbors and fellow farm-
ers, has been no doubt in Mr. Hathaway
but one expression of his ﬁner nature,
that, however, ﬁnds its keenest satis-
faction in poetical work. Both are his
ideals struggling for an abode in reality.

He every where seems to be conscious
of the perfect corraspondence between.
the' seeming real and the inner, hidden
actual. In his poetry he has oftenest
dealt with myths and legends handed
down from primitive days and sought to
draw from them their symbolic teach-
ing. One entire volume he devoted to
Indian legends. He holds that

“In every ag» the myth has been

The outward form of truth to men.
Its inner soul is truth divine.

The prophets old were they who saw

With clearer sight, 1n love and awe.

The spirit through the letter shine.

“As science sees. from error freed

With clearer eyes the truth in». cod.
Within the truth that only seems,

80 shall our deeper sight behold

In mythic lore a wealth untold

Of truth beyond our wildest dreams.”

In a recent collection of his poems the!
legendary have the ﬁrst place,the long-
est, entitled “ The Finished Creation,"
giving its name to the volume. Into
these is woven many a noble teaching
and beautiful disclosure of feeling; but
it is in some of his briefer efforts that
he is at his best, that his thought is
most ﬁnely crystallized. In this, for in-
stance, on “ Work ”:—

“Do thou thy work. then trust the gods’ decree.
That as thy work thy recompense shall be.”

01' this, from “ Life: ”

"The highest good is in the noblest use;

And he who gives embattled wrong no truce.—
Climbs, dauntless. up through duty's stee deﬁle.
Shall win erelong falr v1rtue's crown andp goal;
Thy highest heaven. 0 aspiring soul!

Man’s love for man and God’s approving smile.”

The best of our posts have rarely ex-
celled the rich, hazy picturing and the
ripened hush of fall days that are in the
Opening words of “ Thistle-Down ”:—

“ l‘he hills lie lapped in Autumn’s dreamy haze:
Hushed is the music of the minstrel throng
DThat ﬁlled the ﬂowery vale;
Where late the thrush poured his full heart of
song,

The oriole his ruptured roundelays.
Alone is heard through all the golden days

The piping of the quail.

“The sober woods. in grief for summer dead.
Down to the earth, and wrthered all too soon
Have cast their leafy cr wn:
While through the still October afternoon.
Like poetjthoughts with ﬁnest fancies fed.
0n airy wrng by aimless purpose led.
Floats by the thistle-down.”

Living in intimacy with Nature, Mr.
Hathaway has not squandered his op-
portunities for observation, as is shown
in the delicate accuracy of his portrayal
of "The Evening Primrose.” It has

often been my privilege to stand beside-

 

 

 


 

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The Household'.

 

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one of these plants that yearly grows in
the poet’s garden and there follow its
dainty blooming as he describes it in
this poem. “ Till sunset gold is dim”
no sign has been made, when comes the
humming bird, always found hovering
about the opening primrose. Then
transpires what every one who knows
the plant is so familiar with, but that
waited a poet heart to interpret:—

"I hear the whir of wings; _
see. meseems. a glad. aerial sprite;
Thy bud quick upward springs,
with a sound hke some unvorced delight.—
Sound like a lover’s kiss.
Thy perfect ﬂower bursts on my wondering sight
A miracle of full-orbed loveliness!”

Never seeking and rarely ﬁnding the
merely popular ear, Mr. Hathaway has
in this latest book a few selections that
even at a glance hold the readers.

“ The Best Gifts” is one of these, the
ﬁrst part of which is:

“I would be rich. but not in gold;

Not in the wealth. though all untold,

f mine and mill and merchant gain,
0f harvests mm on hill and plain,
.. would be rich.

"But in all gifts of mind and heart.
All treasures of ennobling art;
'I‘hou‘gh youth, health. fortune, friends depart,
In treasures that would yet remain,
I would be rich.

“I would be rich in God‘s design.

A life one with the life divine;

Howso ereft, forlorn. alone.

Who has himself still has his own;

If but th joy of_song be mine.

I Would be rich. ’

One bright bit of optimistic rhyme,
‘ IMy Ships,” an admirer has set to
music and it may some day attain the
wider hearing it merits.

Altogether, we may be pardonably
proud to say of the little book: “ This
is from a Michigan farm home and from
a practical Michigan farmer’s pen and

brain.”

Aim Anson. JENNIE BUELL.

———..*——

WHAT OF THE “WOMAN’S MOVE-
KENT?”

 

It seems to me sometimes that, if one
were to judge from what is written and
said of. woman, t y women, she should
be considered a newly discovered crea-
ture, of wonderful talent and super-
human possibilities. One might almost
believe the end of the century woman
was of an entirely new genus, and the
only type worth recognition.

The papers are full of the achieve-
ments of woman. 'No individual of the
s ex seems to be thought worth her
dinner unless she has done or is doing
something in a realm heretofore sacred
t 0 man. If she can do anything extra-
ordinary, anything unusual, whether it
be to make a speech or run a stock
ranche or a steam engine, she ﬁnds her-
self classed as “representative;” if she
goes on doing a woman’s ordinary duty
in an ordinary way, she “doesn’t
count.”

It strikes one that there is an awful
lot Of unmitigated gush and unwarrant-
ed sentiment over the so-called “eman-
cipated woman.” We might imagine
that’up to the close of the. nineteenth
century there had never been a woman
of worth, of brain, of talent; that she

 

had been despised and down-trodden,
instead of being esteemed, respected
and loved. if we inquire from—(“what
she has been “emancipated” we have
not far to seek for the answer. One of
the earliest apostles of the woman’s
movement says the great object of the
cause is “to show that wifehood and
motherhood are accidental to woman-
hood ;” that is, woman is to be ﬁrst
whatever she pleases to be; and a wife
and a mother afterward if it so chances.
And it is certain that whether the wo-
man’s movement has made it so or not,
maternity is out of fashion. To have
more than one or two children is "not
the proper thing.” The mother of four
or ﬁve children is regarded as a victim,
a martyr to her family; her friends
commiserate her; their pity makes her
pity herself. The old-fashioned family
of ten or a dozen children is extinct,
save for a rare instance or two in the
Upper Peninsula. And is it not a fact
that the entrance of woman into public
life is making maternity still more un-
popular? Many wives do not hesitate to
say openly that they " will not be both-
ered” with children. The little stranger
is unwelcome; the mother-instinct seems
dying out in woman’s heart. I heard
but yesterday of one whose friends
fear for her reason through her des-
pondency at the coming of her fourth
babe. Can we say the child whose birth
is undesired comes into the world with-
out that bias of heredity which indis-
poses it, in its turn, to welcome a new
life? In the old days a woman’s child-
ren were her crown of glory and honor;
but in the language of the modern wife,
“we have changed all that.” A writer—
herself a woman— says very truly: “No
woman who speaks in public or keeps
herself continually before it as a pro-
fessional advanced woman, ever did so
much for the world as the woman
who has given to it sons and daughters
of moral courage and enthusiasm for
truth and: worth. When woman has
succeeded in making of herself a crea-
ture fonder of publicity than of her hus-
band and her children, she has spoiled
one of the best gifts of God to man and
given him nothing better in its place.”

EIn the recent Congress of “the
World’s representative women” at Chi-
cago, _what class of women was most
thoroughly ignored? The home wo-
man, the domestic one. There was no
place even for that courageous soul Who
when the necessity arises takes upon
herself the support of her family and
bravely bears the burden of its mainten-
ance. She too, takes “aman’s place
and does a man’s work,” but it is for
duty’s, not glory’s sake, and there is no
talk of “ progressiveness ” in the case.
“Emancipated woman" has little use
for the humble, homely arts of house-
keeping. In reading the sketches of
the "careers” of “advanced” women
one ﬁnds they nearly alway‘srlive in
“apartments” or “a cosy ﬂat,” sugges-
tive of restaurant dinners and tea-cad

 

dies masquerading as hon-hon boxéh.
The feeling extends to the woman who
is not as yet mentally “advanced,” but
is “getting there.” She doesn’t prepose
“to slave in the kitchen for any man.”
A hoarding-house is the family refuge.
The wife excuses herself for not estab-
lishin g and maintaining a home by as-
serting it is impossible to get help, and
of course, not possible to keep house
without it. It is a well-established‘faot
that the girl who has to earn her own
living will do anything under heaven
but housework. She will work more
hours for less pay, under more intoler-
ant conditions, and tumble into bed in
her cheerless four story back hall bed-
room too tired to say her prayers, rath-
er than “lower” herself by handling
some other woman’s dainty china,swe ep-
ing some other woman’s carpets, and
incidentally, taking orders from that
other woman. We hear pathetic stories
of girls driven to shame by inadequate
wages which will not feed, clothe and
l‘ddge them; we are told of their deep
regret and grief at being compelled to
sTich a life by the injustice and in-
h‘ﬁmanity of employers, and the inﬁnite
sadness of their faces after they have
entered upon it—but they will accept
this alternative rather than do house-
work. That seems even a step below
shame.

,_ Woman is certainly fast becoming in-
dependent and self-supporting. The
value and excellence of her work is
everywhere acknowledged. Her right
to make the most and the best of her
talents is fully recognized. Granting
all this, the question comes: Is she any
happier than she was in the old days
when her hOpes, her joy s,her affections,
centered in her home and family? Is
her life really nobler, freer, grander, as
an emancipated woman than it was in
the loving bondage of home ties? She
might'be happier perhaps, but for the
instinct which sets apart and marks her
sex, the instinct that makes the birds
mate'jand nest, that pairs all living crea-
tures; the instinct which is divinely
implanted but which she is doing her
best to smother and eradicate. That it
yet lives vnquenched is proven by the
reproach cast upon her that as soon as
she is fairly ﬁtted for her “emancipat-
ed” sphere she will marry if she has a
chance, and cast the adventitious train-
ing behind her.

There are a great many factors that
enter into and are affected by this “wo-
man’s movement.” We judge most
things from our individual point of
view, ,which is necessarily a narrow,
limited one. It is good or not good for
us, true or not true according to our
knowledge; ergo, it must be so the world
over. We judge with out due knowledge
of the conditions and surroundings that
affect others. Among the interesting
sociological problems that come up in
connection with woman’s entrance into
all employments is one that sheets the
welfare alike of men and women. Wo-

 


    

J
‘

‘

man’s work and her willingness to work
for luv wage, her competition in ﬁelds
men hai‘re hitherto held to themselves,
haslowered men’s wages so that they
any, and with much show of reason, that
they cannot aﬁord to marry. The in-
come which is sufﬁcient for one and
aﬁords the luxuries to which they have
hen accustomed, is quite inadequate to
support a wife and establishment. We
have therefore the anomaly of women
in business compelling men to forego
the delights of home,wife and children,
which are a part of man’s instinctive
desires; and their remaining unmarried
forcing other women to self support be-
cause no man comes to marry them; and
still another element urged into pur-
suits which are perhaps distasteful to
them because by other women’s com-
petition the earnings of father or hus-
band are inadequate to their support.
And the burden of unending, never
ceasing drudgery lies as heavily upon
the women of the lower classes as it ever
did. There are three million unmarri-
ed men above thirty years of age in the
'United States. Bureaus of industrial
statistics show that a large percentage
of men in emp‘cyments which women
enter, do not receive incomes which
warrant them in marrying. With but
'Iour exceptions, every State and terri-
tory in our country shows a lower birth
rate for the last census year, compared
with the increase of population. In this
decrease two elements enter, the actual
decrease of marriages, and the avoid-
ance of maternity by women. One is
struck, in looking over the list of ii-
censes granted in this city,by the great
preponderance of names of decidedly
foreign character. It might be infer-
red that the major portion of the city’s
population was Polish, Hungarian and
Italian. These people marry whether
they can keep a wife or not; but theirs
is labor in which women do not compete.
Now where marriage does not obtain,
{Erwin forms of vice demoralizing to
both man and womanhood are sure to
ﬂourish, and the social tone is morally

vitiated. We have but to look at France '

and its social conditions to realize the
gravity of this part of the problem.
Always we see in the history of the
world that God’s way was the best way.
And He set men and women in families;
man the head and bread-winner, woman
the help-mate and counselor. The old-
est race in the world, the Hebrew -the
race that is not a nation and is scattered
to the four corners of the earth—owes
its existence to its families. Nowhere
will you ﬁnd a people so held together
by kinship. The nation where the
family ties have been closest and most
binding has lived longest. History does
not let us forget that 'the foundation of
a nation’s prOSperity, its strength and
glory, its perpetuity, begins, continues
and is eternally upheld in its homes.

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.1 -

The Household.

A DEFENSE OF SLLNG.

 

One HOUSEHOLD correspondent stat-
ed in a recent letter that slang is “has e-
1y vulgar.” Tne assertion as it stands
is too sw zeping. It might be accepted

without question it put in this way:

Some slang is basely vulgar. while other
so-called slang expressions are bright,

concise, and so expressive that to avoid

them is to show one’s self a prig.

In no other way is the “survival of

the ﬁttest” more clearly shown than in ‘
the transformation of the slang of to day

into the classical language of to~morro w.

Some people seem to think that slang is

distinctly ﬁn. de siecle, but in fact

Homer used it, Virgil and Cicero seem

to ﬁnd it indispensable; and i have not

a doubt that the phrase " down in the

mouth” originated in J onah’s remark-

able experiences in that line. To come

'down to more modern times, no student

of Shakespeare can fail to remark his

free use of and delight in slang. Dick-

ens is responsible for many expressions

even now in vogue; notably, “in it ” is
conspicuously used in “ Bleak House.”
He says that Mr. J arndyce was not “ in
it,” and several times that the partici-
pants of the famous Iarndyce vs J aru-
dyce case are “in it.” Thackeray is the
originator of “kid” in its present mean-
ing. Shall we then turn from such
eminent models and impoverish our
language by doing away with those terse
and pointed expressions which they so
well knew how to use?

Life is tau short totalk in Addisonian
periods all the time; and besides people
would wonder at our prolixity and ver-
biage. When the executive committee
of a popular temperance organization
assigns the topic " Where are we at?”
to a well-known lecturer as subject for
an address, who can say slang is not re-
cognized as a part of our language? It
is so easy to say of a defeated candidate
that he is not " in it,” while his success-
fui opponent is “dead in it;” and the
one who is neither successful oi' defeat-
ed is “ on the fence”-—the whole case in
a nutshell.

How should we do without the word
"swell?” As applied to a gown it is
far more descriptive and surely not so
inane as the schoolgirlish “perfectly
lovely.” In a few years “ swell ” will
be as much a part of our language as
stylish now is. Even the purists will
use it withOut a thought; just as they
now use “quiz” without stopping to re-
member that the latter word was un-
heard of at the beginning of the present
century and was the result of a bet
made one night at a London club. One
of the members wagered that he could
coin a word which in twenty-four hours
would be in everybody’s mouth. The
bet was taken and the next morning on
every bill-board, every post, in fact in
every conceivable position were posted

bills bearing the single word “Quiz?”

 

And it is always the woman who
makes the home."

BEATBIX.

    
   
 

Of course everybody “quizzed” his
‘ neighbor for an explanation, and thus
‘ the bet was won.

243

A great element in the success of
Wolcott Bilestier’s novels is the in-
imitable way in which he introduces
slang which never fails to be apropos;
and every American must appreciate
the couplet which was evidently a favo-
rite of his as it occurs in two of his

11 wels:

“it isnot wealth. nor rank. nor state,
But git up and git that makes men area "

Some people “get there,” others “get
left.” Both classes are thus brieﬂy but
accurately described. Why waste more
words? If people or things “make us
tired” why may we not say so? It is
often literally true.

Finally, any one who has never ex-
pressed scorn, contempt, incredulity,
disgust, and various other emotions by
the monosvllabic ejaculation " Ratsl”
does not know what a relief for one’s
feelings lies in slang.
Poa'r Honor.

————.O.—-—

E.C.

FROSTING FOR CAKE.

I often wonder that more house~
keepers do not use confectioners’ sugar
for frosting. It is so very convenient,
easily and quickly prepared. For years
I have used nothing else. A few months
ago I visited a friend who had a large
family, was a superior cook and enter.
tained many guests, and who felt that
cake for company was never complete
without icing, but always made it in
the old way and never heard of con-
fectioners’ sugar. It costs no more
than the pulverized, but is prepared so
as to require no eggs.

For a medium sized cake take one
cup of ﬁne confectioners’ sugar (there
13 a coarse kind used for candies), re-
move all lumps by rolling; add cream,
milk or water—only a few drops at a
time as it dissolves very quickly; when
of the required consistency add a very
little ﬂavoring. This never hardens
and cracks like ordinary frosting.

For chocolate frosting prepare in
same way and add grated chocolate and

vanilla ﬂavor. DELL‘A E.
Umou.

 

MRS. G. U. PELL has a washing ma--
chine she has used six months and can-
siders a great help. though there are
many worthless machines on the mar-
ket. A. F. also commends her “Busy
Bee” washer. If these machines are of
so much aid, why do not their makers
advertise them in papers like the
FARMER, which reach those who would
be most beneﬁted and make most use of
them?

——-9..-———
Useful Recipes.

 

Pon'ro Sauna-One quart of cold boiled
potato, cut in small slices; add to this one
ﬁnely minced onion or one fresh cucumber
For the dressing: Yolks of two eggs, one
teaspoonful each of sugar, ﬂour, salt and
mustard. two.thirds cup of vinegar; cook on
the stove; when removing add a lump of
butter and when cold add two tablespoon-

fuls thick sweet cream. Garnish with lettuce
leaves. This is a locally famous recipe, fur-

 

nished by Mrs. D. H. Goldsmith, of the
South Jackson Farmers’ Club.

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