v'^j^^i ''^^^f%j-Mf% ET1E> Sii Ismm WH W^ H\ XI Cornell University Library The original of this bool< is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924085804114 iO 1 00 iin = 00 |o !■* = CV1 ICO HOOSE - PKD - Ho/RF: coTv^PL-eTe HOUSEWIFE'S GUIDE Mariok Hari.and. "God help us on the Common Days, The level stretches, white with dust!" Margaret E. SA^■GSTER. \Ditb ©pigii?al ©r^gpavii^gg. L, A. SHAPER, WALTER SATTERLEE, RUE & IIOELFFLER, B. G. GOODLINE, WILL PHILLIP HOOPER a^d F. L. V. HOPPIN. UNION PUBUSHING HOUSE, NEW YORK, N. Y. Copyrighted by MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE, 1889. House and Home. CONTENTS. »AOE. The Houseiceeper'and the Home-Maker . . . ii Every House has a Keeper. — Exception. — Lowest Form of Human Living. — ^The Model Housekeeper. — Her Pour Utensils. — Supererogatory Works of Cleanliness. .—Is Her Life Worth Living ?— Keeping House not Wisely, but Too Well.— The " Nasty-Particular " Housewife. — " My House " and " Our Home." If not Straw — Stubble 17 The Esthetic Craze, and its Effects upon American Homes. — Respectable " Specimens' of Our Homes. — The Substantial Three-Story-Brick, and How it is Furnished. — Honest John's Views on the Subject. — Husbandly and Wifely Conferences, anent Changes. — ^The Quiet-Eyed Woman who Loves Beauty. — ^Modern Manuals. — " There is No Use Trying." — ^The Back- Parlor. — Mortuary Memorial Mantel. — Fire-Place. — Mantel Shelves. — Book Shelves. — Japanese Drapery and Family Portraits. — Reading-Table and Lamp. — ^Pillows, Cushions and afghan. — Resting^ Place. — Curtains, Easels, and Palm.— The Old Arm-Chair. — Thb Presence. — Reconciliation of Carpet and Wall-Paper. — " Strengthen the Things that Remain."— The Front-Room. — Hints Few and Feasible. — Live in Your Rooms. The Dining-Room, Meals and Serving . . . . 33 Ingenious Architect's Utopian Plan. — Why He Failed. — The Genteel Tank in which People Eat. — Disadvantage. — Make the Best of what is. — A Meal a Graceful Ceremony. — The Dumb Man's Visible Thought. — Hard and Homely Lives. — The Discouraged House-Mother. — Baron Trenck's Etched Pannikins. — Jane Welsh Carlyle. — " Waiting for a Rise. "—The Table.— Care of and Respect for Dainty Wares. — Living up to the Old Blue Teapot. — Decorous Serving and Waiting.— How " Father " Carves and Helps. — Major Trencher and Saucerlings. — College Sons 'and Society Girls. — "Feeds" versus Dining.— Mothers over Fifty Years Old.— Too Late to Rectify Little Matters which are Not Trifles.— Children as Waiters.— How to Wait and be Waited Upon.— Fear of Innovations.— John is— John ! i II HOUSE AND HOME. Cottage Furnishing 48 What is a " Cottage ? "—Barbarism of White Paint and Green Blinds.— Exscind. "Massive "and "Rich." — Hard- Wood Floors, and Painted Boards. — Sanitary Rugs and the Week's Work. — Carpets. — Farmeress and Her ' ' Taypestry Brus- sels." — Cheap Carpets a Blunder. — English Ingrain. — Mattings. — Styles and Prices. — Shades and Curtains.— Straw Chairs. — Sets and " Setts. "— YOURSELF, Your Mark. — Books are Aristocrats. — Bamboo Settee and Cushions. — Domestic Upholstery.— Trunk Lounges. — Cheese-Box. — Covered Bath-Tub. — How to take off the Edgesof the Strictly Useful.— Bed Coverings. — Table-Ware, Cheap and i Pretty. — Extremes of Scantiness and Crowding.— Jumble of Ornaments. — : Seasoning, to taste. Licensed Beggar, or Business Partner? ... 64 Loveless Marriage, Legalized Crime. — Thoughtless Marriage, Sinful Folly. — Truest- Happiness Found in Marriage. — The Ideal Marriage. — Nice Every-Day, Pretty Well-Satisfied Couples.— The Great Majority of Couples.— A Good Thing that Might be Made Better. — The Great Stumbling Block. The Family Income. — The Scorpion-Lash that Drives Wives Mad.— John Has His Say. — Why a Woman Minds Asking for Money. — Wives Should not Mind Being Treated as Paupers, But they do. — An lU-Favored Curling.— "Man the Bread Winner; Woman the Bread Eater."— The Old, Old, Hateful Story.—" Ole' Marster an' My Chillun." —Mrs. A. and Her Dividends. — Charley's Whim. — Mrs. B. and "the Sivinty- five Cints."— Mrs. C. and the Penciled Butcher's Bill.— Mrs. D. and How She Duped Her John.— Mrs. E- and Her Ethics.— A Forgetful Husband.— Mr. F's Story. — ^No Shoes to Wear. — A Guild of Privileged Paupers. — Ask Them how They Like It.— Representative John to the Front.—" Would You Have My Wifr Earn Her Own Living ? " Nine Times Over.— Flattening the Base of the Egg.— • Solomon Grundy and His Query. The Etiquette of Family Life 79 Another Fellow's Sister.— Grace Over the Whole Barrel. — Philemon Nemo and Bau- cis—Definition of Courtship — "Temporary Insanity. "—Breakfast in the Nemo Household.— The Scalded Hand.— Then and Now.— Sentiment Dies Hard in Women.— Cup and Tumbler.— " Brute " and " Boor. "—Sketches from Life.— A Savage in Every Man.— Not a Trial Effort.— Model Daughter and Gray-haired Father.— Company and Every-Day Manners.— The Inference is Patent— One of Two Things is Wrong.— The Responsibility of Wives in this Matter.—" Only My Wife."— Baucis a Cipher.— The Husband Has Gone Out of the Business — Taking the Boys Down.— Seed of an Ugly Plant— The Toss-and-Tumble Style of Home Life— Crockery Platters and Garnished Porcelain—' ' We Understand Each Other."— "Hallo, Old Girl ! "—Pet Hedgehogs.— Human Pig-nuts.— Sincere and Sweet, and Sincere and Sour.— Hearts Won are Not Hearts Kept. —A Simple Rule of Acdoa. — Rough Words and Smooth. CONTENTS. Ill FAGBt The Vexed Question.— Domestic Service in America . 91 English Journal and American Manual.— "Are there No Servants in the United States ? "—English " Servantgalism "—Continental Pikes and Butcher-knives.— Iron and Clay.— "/ m^m The Dining-Room, Meals and Serving. ^\ N ingenious architect, some dozen years ago, built a block of ^^\ city bouses on a plan wbich, he fondly assumed, would in f * time revolutionize the present order of homestead interiors. ^ Kitchen, laundry and store-room were in the topmost story ; next, came servants' dormitories ; then, those of the family — dining-room, parlors, library, etc., being on the first and second floors. There would be no effluvia of suds, no odor of cookery in the living and show apartments ; the refined colloquy of the draw- ing-room would not be broken in upon by Milesian jargoning, or the chant shrilled by Dinah, accompanied by the castanets of rattling dishes, the thump of pots and kettles. Scents and sounds would be borne in a direction in which the man in the moon was the householder's nearest neighbor. Provisions and laborers were to be hoisted to working-day precincts by an elevator. Below this torrid zone would reign the calm of a land where it is always after- noon. From an aesthetic standpoint, the theory was flawless. As a legislative experiment, it never passed the lower house. And, for once mistress and maid were of the same mind. The one protested against the climb of three stories whenever she wished to issue an order or to inspect the work in hand ; against the transportation of 33 34 HOUSE AND HOME. barrels of groceries and the passage of meddling Bridgets and thievisli Mikes through the heart of her castle on the pretext of calling upon their " frinds." The maid howled at the barbarity of forcing a " gurrel " to risk her life forty times a day in a " murder- ing dumb waiter," or to run down twice forty stairs whenever the door bell rang. But the fatal defect, it was agreed, was the diffi- culty of carrying coal by the dozen tons to a fourth-story bin. After half a year of ineffectual advertisement and exhibition, the benevolent theorist turned his houses upside down, and is still, for aught I know to the contrary, awaiting the millenium of exalted ideals, and the custom of cooking by cleanly gas and imponderable electricity. Until that day, the kitchen must remain, for conveni- ence sake, the lower prop of the household. It goes without saying, that when the size of the lot will permit, it should be a wing, or a rear extension of the main building, and never located in the cellar, it is as needless to state that in most city houses the kitchen is partly below the level of the street. I wish I were not obliged to add' — and the dining-room on a level with the kitchen. Three times a day, hundreds and thousands of families plunge down straight gangways into genteel tanks, more or less chill and dark, to go through — perfunctorily — the business of eating and drinking. Basket-beggars flatten their noses against the panes, one-armed women, and men with no legs to speak of, sue for alms between the area rails ; the soap-fat vender, the butcher's boy, the swill-barrow — form a goodly procession before the eyes of hosts and guests. When we are bent upon privacy or festivity, we bar the shutters and light the gas. There is no temptation to linger' in what we may designate as the hold of our domestic craft when we have met the stomach's demands. This duty done, we speed back to free air and sunlight, THB DINING-ROOM, MBALS AND SERVING. 35 glad to escape from the cave where steams exhale and smells cling almost as continuously as in the adjacent kitchen, and one is never free from the jar of culinary machinery. My heart smites me even as I write, and the remembrance of many among those to whom these friendly talks are dedicated — generous, beauty-loving souls — who are not likely to taste or to administer other than subterranean hospitality in the whole period of their natural (or unnatural) lives. I hasten to say that, still working along the vein uncovered in our second chapter, this chapter is /prepared with express reference to those who must make th.e best of what is. If your basement eating-room is an established fact, accept and ameliorate the position. In most of the dwellings of a most respect- able class of householders, it is not only the least pleasant for situation of all the chambers designed for human residents, but like- wise the dingiest. Close proximity to the kitchen may have some- thing to do with the degradation of what should be seemly and honorable. Our forefathers, who consumed their food within arm's length of the stove on which it was cooked, " ate to live " — thrust- ing their knives down their throats to effect the safe conveyance of their victuals. There was no pretence of regarding a meal as a graceful ceremony. Yet this is what it should be. " If I could but talk as you do ! " exclaimed an artist to a brilliant raconteur. " Ideas struggle weakly to my tongue and die in the birth. And, because I am dumb, I must resign myself to pass for a fool when compared with men who know no more than I ! " For answer, the friend drew a loose sheet of paper from under the dumb man's hand. While listening, the artist had sketched the story the telling of which had moved him to envy. Not a line was forceless, but there were in the rapid lining exquisite tenderness 36 HOUSE AND HOME. and delicacy wWcli were his rendering of tlie tale — ^not tlie nar- rator's. " This," said the generous critic, holding it up to the view of the company — " is visible thought ! Every rational being has some mode of expression, although many never find out what theirs is." Every woman who has won any measure, however slight, of public recognition of her talent as author or artist, is besieged by letters and personal applications, having for their burden one query : " Our lives are hard and homely," these say in effect ; " By the dissatisfaction we feel in these, we know ourselves to be capable of higher things. Tell us how to make life beautiful, and show each of us what is her mission." It is not dumb poets only who "feel like a seed in the cold earth, quickening at heart, and pining for the air." Others, besides mute, inglorious Miltons, * * * "never sing, But die with all their aiusic in them." These obscure women's lives are as much to them as was Elizabeth Tudor's to her. They are as truly given of God as was a de Stael's, or a Clotilda Tambroni's, — ^talents for which He will demand inter- est. Is it wiser for them to expend strength and time in piteous whines at the cruelty of fate or to glorify commonness, and make aids for the upward growth of the thorns in the hedges that seem to shut them in ? There is a lesson for the discouraged house-mother, — sick, she believes, unto intellectual death — in the infinite pains and skill with which Trenck, the most accomplished man of his day, — ^robbed of liberty, fortune and betrothed,— etched on the tin cups in which " water was served to him in prison, stories of his sorrow and of his love that made artistic gems of the mean pannikins. THB DINING-ROOM, MEAI^ AND SERVING. 39 Too many women (and men) mistake for repressed genius the vague unrest whicli is the soul's response to another's poem, essay, or novel. Your appreciation of a noble utterance is not a guarantee that you could, in the most favorable circumstances, say the same thing, or anything one-half so good. This is not didacticism, but practical philosophy. What has this preamble to do with basement dining-rooms ? With dining-rooms, much, — with basements, somewhat. Rebel as we may at the minuteness of the line-upon-line which is our appointed work, refuse as we often do, to see the significance of stitch after stitch, and one short step at a time, all these things are a parable unto us, and of the Master's giving. Suffer one more illustration — a pendant, if you like, to the picture of Trenck in the dungeon. Jane Welsh Carlyle, sitting up until three o'clock, A. m., await- ing the arising of her trial loaf of bread, and sobbing out her sense of " forlomness and degradation^'' suddenly remembers Benvenuto Cellini sitting up all night watching his statue of Perseus in the furnace, and asks herself: " After all, in the sight of the Upper Powers, what is the mighty difference between a statue of Perseus and a loaf of bread, so that each be the thing that one's hand has found to do ? The man's determined will, his patience, his energy, his resource, were the really admirable things of which his statue of Perseus was the mere chance expression. If he had been a woman living at Craigenputtock, with a dyspeptic husband, sixteen miles from a baker, all these same qualities would have come out more fully in a good loaf of bread." That which came to spirited Jane by fits and starts, do you, her trans-Atlantic sister, take as a rule of daily thinking and daily living. Assuming that our eating- room is the duty nearest your hand at present, let all the light that you can get flow into it, and in a double sense. Instead of deciding 40 HOUSE AND HOME. that tlie carpet condemned as too faded for back parlor or guest cham- ber is good enough for a basement, that out-of-date ornaments and discarded chromos and shabby furniture are here in place and keep- ing, do not esteem it beneath your dignity and above the occasion to make the apartment as attractive as is consonant with the means at your command. Especially, individualize it into some- thing better than such a sordid eating-place as may be found in a thousand second-rate boarding-houses. While it is not parlor or boudoir, in which to lounge away the intervening hours of the tri- daily meals, it should become a rendezvous to which the several members of the household shall anticipate return at appointed seasons with higher pleasure than that begotten by animal appetite. Of course, the central and handsomest article of furniture must be the table. If you cannot afford fine china, pretty glass and solid silver spoons and forks, because your parlor must be as elegant as your neighbor's, tone down the elegance of the quarters fitted up for the inspection of outsiders, in order to bring up the tone of that which, more than any other single feature of housekeeping tends to make the abode, HOME, for a majority of those to whom your most zealous service is due. Just taste decries glaring incongruity in velvet coverings and hangings in the showrooms, and tawdry plated ware, coarse crockery and napery on the family board. When the table, thus furnished, is surrounded by wife and daugh- ters expensively attired in the reigning mode, the contrast is yet more disagreeabie. If your servants handle breakfast and tea things rudely and cannot be taught better, take charge of them in person rather than vulgarize your children's manners and taste by accustoming them to the habitual use of things " that cannot be hurt." My observation and experience go to prove that dainty wares prized openly and even affectionately by a mistress, are almost sure to meet with delicate usage from hirelings. Let them THE DINING>ROOM, MBAIvS AND SERVING. 41 comprehend that while you hold these in esteem commensurate with their value, you give of your best to those you love best. Children are yet more easily trained into appreciation of the choice appointments of the table. The daily use of them is an object-lesson, inculcating the truth that, joined to the feminine passion for the fragile store is fonder devotion for those in whose service they are risked. In some subtle way the child respects himself the more, behaves the better, because his mother treats him as other fellows' mothers treat company. He is more apt to sip noiselessly from a cut-glass goblet or a china cup than from a vessel that recalls the witty traveler's complaint of a hotel coffee cup: " It is like trying to drink over the edge of a stone wall ! " To touch the fair array with unwashed hands soon stands with the boy as profanation. Eaugh though we do at Angelina's adjura- tion to Alphonso in displaying her purchase of an " old blue " tea- pot — " Oh, do let us try to live up to it ! " — there is a grain of reason in it. Avail yourself, without scruple, of every such crumb of refining leaven. So long as you can obtain flowers, never set the table without a bowl or vase of them in the middle of the cloth, or near John's plate. Your girls and boys will soon get the habit of seeking buds, grasses, autumn leaves, etc., as seasons change and serve, thus relieving you of serious thought on the subject, and reducing the expense to a minimum. In nothing express yourself with more distinctness than in the maintenance of a certain state in the serving and in the partaking of family meals. Drill servants patiently in decorous forms of supplying the wants of those who are seated. As patiently exact from each of the latter as much propriety of demeanor as if a duchess presided at the head of the table, instead of the hard-worked woman who has caught no glimpse of a higher mission than this 43 HOUSE AND HOME. stitcli-line-and-step existence. Magnify your office, and never fear lest you may not rise with it. Mucli of the slovenly serving and free-and-easy table manners conspicuous in houseliolds wliere we have a right to look for better things, is due to the circumstance that but one servant — perhaps none — ^was kept by the mother in the earlier years of her married life. By the time she could afford to hire " a girl," the domestic routine was established. Hence it is that " father " digs, if his carver be sharp, slashes, if it be dull, into the mountainous roast in front of him ; plunges a spoon into potato, or bean, or turnip dish to the right and left ; deposits a share of each edible on the recep- tacle he is loading, and when it is teeming to the uttermost edge, stretches his arm to its full length to thump the mess at the owner's place. He goes through the de-appetizing performance with grim dexterity acquired by long practice and the celerity of a ravenous man whose turn always comes last. Peas, beans, apple and cran- berry sauce, cabbage, tomatoes, green com — whatever is sweet or succulent — are dispensed in the saucerlings indigenous to provin- cial America, which environ the major trencher as moons attend a planet. Vulgar profusion, rapidly distributed, and disposed of with a certain " quick-or-you-will-miss-it " liveliness, are the only rules that govern such "feeds." Young childiren enjoy the license to satisfy hunger in animal fashion, and, it may be added, often carry through life the uncomely tricks thus contracted. As the girls grow into womanhood, and become conversant with the customs of polite society, they sigh that " we do not live as decent people do." College sons draw down the thunders of paternal ire by sneers at the " scramble for grub," and do not aflFect to conceal that they are ashamed of home and the parents to whom they are indebted for THE DINING-ROOM, MEALS AND SERVING. 43 the education that has revealed to themselves the blemishes in their early breeding. " Mothers over fifty years old are a nuisance and ought to be abated by law," I heard a worthy, and, not an illiterate woman say when it was forced upon her that her brood had grown away from her. " They have no right to live after their children are able to take care of themselves and to despise the ways in which they were brought up. Not that I would'nt alter things to suit them, even at my age, if I could. But Father is a hopeless subject. Somehow, men settle down harder than we do. He says ♦jiat he left school forty years ago, and is'nt going to enter again, now. I'm afraid " ^with a sort of weary wistfulness that went to my heart — " the mistake was mine. It did'nt seem worth while to be par- ticular about the little matters which I see now, when it is too late to correct mistakes, were not trifles." One simple and excellent measure towards the avoidance of stubborn " settling " in the matter of table etiquette is to train children to act as waiters when there is no servant to fulfill the duties of that office. The mother should keep herself informed as far as possible, as to the latest and best methods of setting and serving the table, and interest her assistants in carrying these into practice in her modest menage^ each of the juniors taking his or her turn, according to a system of rotation arranged by her. Little girls, in particular, take eager delight in such details and pride in acting their parts well, but you should not, on this account, excuse the boys from their apprenticeship. They will make more considerate sons, brothers, and husbands for this bit of experimental knowledge of housewifery. Such service and the amicable emulation growing out of it when the business is transacted with spirit, help educate children by overcoming the bashfulness arising from self-conscious- ness, and by engendering the habit of courteous attention to the 44 HOUSE AND HOME. wants of others. Your daughter will better conduct the aflfairs of the handsome establishment which may be hers, some day, for the practice she has had in a subordinate position. It will not derogate from your boy's manliness that he can pass a plate with- out emptying the contents into his neighbor's lap, fill a tumbler without slopping the water over the cloth, and even brandish a crumb-scraper with the address of a " professional." When your aids are amateurs, or when a maid of all work must be summoned by the call-bell from the kitchen or attic to shift the courses, it is advisable to set the dishes of vegetables as well as meat, bread-tray, butter and whatever else is needed for the course in progress, on the table. In these circumstances, let the person nearest a side dish do the honors of the same, " helping " it out neatly and judiciously. Most regularly trained waiters, in this day, prefer to pass entrees and, indeed nearly everything else, from the side-board. The method involves less reaching oveir and between those who are seated, and fewer circuits on the part of the ofi&cial on duty. As a rule of wide and general application, — do not be afraid of innovations. The world in which we live is learning new and easier ways of doing old things every day. If there is a better rule by which to order your labor than the one taught to you by your mother, you do not dishonor her memory in adopting it. People are as virtuous and healthy now as before telephones and potato-peelers were invented, and when four-tined forks were unknown except in the mansions of " the quality." Nevertheless, consider the reluct- ance of the mind masculine to receive an untried system, the slow- ness with which it — in common with other great natural forces — adjusts itself to change, and introduce improvements tactfully. For — John — ^let it never be forgotten, — ^is not only a vertebrate ani;iial and a fellow creature — but he is — JOHN 1 THK DINING-ROOM,. MBAI.S AND SBRVING. 47 Home, with its inmates, is your world — ^your canvas — your sculptor's clay. It may be only a tin cup in the eyes of strangers. Let the etching be clear, and the design an expression of yourself at your worthiest — ^what you would be, rather than what you are. W^^^WWi msmf^w BV^W^ ^riBi Thf^i^'""''^^^ ' "'^mpw^^^^^^'iSS^iwi't^r^^s 'tuft's ^*rm^^3 ^mmUf^^^m Cottage-Furnishing. To the word " cottage," in this connection, is to be applied the first definition set over against it in Webster : — "A small habitation." It does not, in our hands, mean a suburban villa, trebly-storied, with far-spreading roofs and towers flanked by conservatories, and stabling for twenty horses. Nor a Queen Anne mansion (pronounced by the mistress, as the supreme touch of aesthetic mincingness — " An-ne,") breaking up with hjrphen- like suddenness, the continuity of a city block, — a thing of buttresses and gables ; amazing comers and carving, painted windows and fabulous cost. Nor should the word necessarily suggest the Ameri- can rendering of the modem ornate in cottage-building for the million, as exhibited in town and hamlet and isolated farmstead. Homes where the Unexpected runs riot in staircases, bulging windows, balconies and audacious flights of color. It is easy to make the interior of such habitations pictjiresque. It is as frequently impossible to introduce real comfort into the irregularly-shaped cup- boards marked in the plan as chambers — sometimes, in sarcastic courtesy, as " living rooms." Our cottage may be rectangular in form, and the divisions of the interior commonplace to ugliness. I am afraid the inside walls are kalsomined, and it may even be that the exterior is painted white with green blinds. Why people who 48 COTTAGK-FURNISHING. 51 have eyes to be blinded, if not taste capable of taking oflFense, should have persisted during eight generations, in rearing these obtrusive ^ constructions under sapphire skies and amid groves of vividest verdure, is beyond the comprehension of the lover of true harmony. It is yet more strange that the white, glaring walls dotted with uns3anpathetic green should be chiefly affected in the regions where forests are leafless for half the year, and the heavens pale as from the reflection of the snow-shrouded earth. Let this pass for the present. We are learning and practising better things. One of the new lessons we will take as the starting point and controlling tint of our cottage furnishing. We are forgetting as fast as is consistent with the adhesive properties of prejudice, the tenet that, in the matter of upholstery, " heavy " and " handsome " are synonyms. Mahogany has refused to be driven from the field, although pressed hard by red cherry, but hair-cloth has for a season — ^we would fain hope, forever — ^bidden the world of fashion fare- well. The bedstead, uncompromising, yet indispensable obstacle to the graceful negligence with which we would like to dispose our furniture in upper rooms, is lighter every year, and ambles from wall to wall at the housewife's will, more readily than our gfrand- mother's arm-chair ever moved, even at the semi-annual house-clean- ing. Our cottager will practically exscind the adjectives " massive " and " rich " from her vocabulary. They throw everything out of joint, and become her modest plenishing as ill as a remnant of her mother's brown satin brocade would accord with the plump pretti- ness of the wearer were it made into a slip for the cottager's baby. To begin with the floors ; — respectable manuals of economy and sanitary tirades to the contrary notwithstanding — the practical housewife who keeps but one maid-of-all-work (and that one, as likely as not, herself) shakes her head doubtfully over the recom- 52 ^ HOUSE AND HOME. mendation of hard wood or painted floors all over the house. The former require careful treatment and much polishing to keep them in really excellent order. A scratch from a chair roughly pushed back is a blemish not easily removed ; the gradual grind and grime of passing feet into the grain of the wood are a defacement which, in time, involves the necessity of planing, or rubbing down with sandpaper. Unless properly treated from the first, they are a grievance to eye and spirit. But hard wood floors are seldom seen in cheap houses, built for sale or rent. The floors in your habitation are probably of pine, the boards of unequal length, the cracks between them wide. You can fill the fissures with putty, and by applying several coats of paint, obtain a smooth surface. Our sanitarian says, " Having done this, lay down rugs here and there, which may be shaken every day." Unquestionably, a carpet that is not swept and dusted several times a week is the least cleanly of floor coverings. There is as little question that painted floors must be dusted daily and washed weekly — oftener, if the apartment be in daily family use. In the kitchen a- painted floor is almost a necessity, and the stated scrub- bing is taken into consideration in the appointment of the week's work. When the sum of this task is multiplied by the number of rooms in your house, the outlook is disheartening. Before offer- ing a solution to the difficulty, let us have a word more together touching carpets. For many years the array of tawdry lengths of carpeting that hang with a sort of nightmare tapestry at the fronts of " bargain shops," was an inscrutable enigma to me. Somebody must buy them, or the display would not be perennial and the exhibitors still hopeful. " What manner of men and women deliberately select and pay current coin for the pendant horrors ? '' is a riddle that COTTAGE-FURNISHING. 53 may well nonplus a Grand Street or Bowery CEdipus. Much sur- vey of country taverns and third-rate city hotels helps one to account for a majority of these mysterious disappearances. " Smart" cottages, farm houses and flats are responsible for the rest. It is not many months since I was taken by a thrifty farmeress out of the " living room," where a small figured ingrain carpet of subdued colors harmonized with her and the well-saved furniture, across a hall to a locked door. Turning the key, the good woman threw it open with an air Mrs. Pullet could not have outdone when heading the procession bound upon the memorable pilgrimage to view the new bonnet kept in the locked drawer of the locked wardrobe of the best spare bedroom — also locked. " I wanted you should see our new parlor carpet," said my g^ide, hastening to unclose the shutters, then tip-toeing back to the thres- hold where she had left me. Her husband, married daughter, and three grandchildren joined us there, and all gazed at The Carpet. There were two large par- lors connected by folding-doors. It must have taken at least seventy-five yards to cover the floors. If the average bargain in pseudo-Brussels be a nightmare, this particular specimen was delirium tremens. As the light from the unbarred windows smote it, it seemed to leap up and strike me in the face, so aggressive were the chromes, vermilions, blues and greens, that fought for mastery in the tormented superficies of eighteen by forty feet. "And only fifty cents a yard!" the owner of this magnificence was saying when I could listen to her. "Real tay-pestry body Bmsse/s/ " " You see," explained the daughter, " it was an old pattern and clean out of style. That made it come so cheap. To my mind, it's cheerfuUer and more tasty than the fady things folks chase after now-a-days." 54 HOUSE AND HOME. Before I could do more tlian remind myself that such coarse incongruity had never been in style with people of just tastes, the father added his tribute : " It'l last for fifty years, seein' we never use the room to set in week days. It jes' dooz Mother's soul good to set in that 'ere big chair a-Sunday afternoons in her go-to-meetin' close, an' read her ' Saints' Rest.' I tell her she'll never get nearer heaven in this world." " Mother " was a good woman, and, I make no doubt, could meditate upon the glories of the New Jerusalem with her feet on that blasphemy of the loom, when my unsanctified imagination suggested The Inferno. Don't be persuaded into buying anything because it is cheap. What does not suit you is dear at any price. Cheap carpets are the most serious blunder a housekeeper can make, inasmuch as they last forever (in a " best room ") and are so obvious while they are here. Since you cannot afford to purchase expen- sive ones, get none unless you spread a figureless ingrain on your bedroom, or nursery, or wherever the baby is dressed and plays, and where you sit with him on winter days. Carpeting of this kind is a yard wide and the best costs from $i.oo to $1.25 per yard. An old. gold, with a border of scarlet and dull blue, is pretty and will wear well. If the hall is trodden by many feet it may be wise to put an English ingrain (unfigured) — ^what carpet-men call " filling " — on that floor also. In choosing colors, remember that dark shades show dusty foot-tracks more than lighfshades. Get mattings for the rest of the house. They are cheaper than any other floor covering, ranging from twenty-five to fifty cents a yard for the yardrwide pieces woven in different colors, less for the plain. Moreover, they are clean, easily kept neat, pretty, and just now, fashionable. Besides the yellowish and bluish-white, and that COTTAGE-FURNISHING. 57 interspersed by cubes of red, wbicb were tbe only varieties known to our mothers, we are now oflFered deep red, olive, orange-and-black, blue, blue and gray, and many other combinations of hues. The " damask mattings," all of which are " jointless," that is without the protruding ends of twine-warp on the under side, — are more costly. Olive would look well in your parlor, red in the guest chamber. In your bedroom and the family living room, a mingled pattern in fine -lines will be most serviceable. Red-and-white will brighten a basement — or otherwise depressed — dining room. Whatever you have there, lay a large rug or drugget over it that the dragging of chairs over the woven straw may not fray it into holes. It is considered necessary to hang Holland shades at all front windows, but you need not have them at the back of the house if you prefer to use in some other way the money they would cost. Cream-colored, or ecru, is preferable to dead white. Blue and green are not to be thought of. Do not let a fashion that must be short- lived betray you into the purchase of the mustard-colored shades, ghastly without and within, which impart a jaundiced com- plexion to rows of city and village houses. For inner curtains, get scrim, or make those for the parlor of soft muslin trimmed with inserting and edge of antique lace. Plain cheese-cloth at six cents a yard, is less vulgar than Nottingham lace, associated as it is with steam-boat saloons and cheap flashiness^ of all kinds. Turkey-red curtains, hung from rods and rings, and banded with cretonne of good contrasting colors, will go well with the bright matting in your spare chamber. Drape every window with something. This done, and the- matting down, the cottage is half- fitted up. In choosing from the extensive variety of " cottage-sets " offered for sale, give preference to native woods above those coated with paint. White-wood (poplar) maple, cherry, ash and oak are all pretty. 58 HOUSB AND HOM^. and not expensive except as they are made so by carvings and other ornaments. The questions of stability and graceful shapes take precedence of showiness. See that bureau-drawers run smoothly, and that mirrors are clear and well set. For the chambers, select bedsteads, bureaus and wash stands, and do not take chairs which are almost invariably stiff and uncomfortable. A Shaker or rattan rocker, and two or three odd seats, including a couple of straw chairs (at $2.50 apiece) will serve your purpose better than four or six ugly affairs that " come with the sett." The technical affectation of the double / gives unintentional point to the rigidity of the idea. It is no longer needful, and it never was sensible to have every article of furniture in the room repeat the exact features of the rest of the family. Be heedful that your colors agree, the one with the other, and that no piece puts the rest to shame by a feint of splendor, then, in grouping and general effect, write YOURSELF — your mark — over and again. This do without slavish deference to the upholsterer, or dread of the criticism of your most particular friend, whose income being ten times larger than yours, authorizes her to cultivate a just taste. Bryant's " Death of the flowers " is as perfect in its way as " Thanatopsis." Have your " way," and do not mar it by ambitions. If you have but one parlor, let that be a library. Whatever else may go out, " books that are books " are always in. Aristocrats ingrain, they dignify whatever they touch. I marvel much that parvenus are so slow in discovering this, so crudely short-sighted in banishing the only patrician element in their houses from the rooms in which they dwell, and are seen of visitors. A book-case stocked with classics that have evidently been read, is a better patent of nobility to the eye of the initiated than a family coat-of-arms. Works of standard fiction, poetry, essays — scattered here and there, .on mantel or table, are a guarantee of refinement such as diamonds, laces and catch-words of art and society cannot offer. COTTaCE-FURNISHING. 6i Fill tlie recesses on eacli side of the mantel with breast-high book-shelves ; establish a reading corner within arm's length of one set of them ; supply it with the cosiest chair you own, a footstool, table — draped with a tasteful cloth — reading lamp, paper-cutter and ink-stand. A dictionary stand, also within reach, is convenient — and efiFective. Should the room be small, have furniture of corresponding dimensions. Bulky articles lessen the apparent size. A bamboo settee, heaped at one end with soft cushions covered with Turkey- red and pale blue, or olive, is more elegant because it is in keeping with the parlor and its appointments, than a big sofa, which is, perforce, a fixture between the windows, or at the far side of the apartment, there being no other space adequate to contain- it. If you have a knack for domestic upholstery — and this may be acquired — the convenience and beauty of your home can be greatly enhanced at little cost. I do not recommend the endeavor detailed and illustrated by so many writers in domestic journals, to furnish an entire cottage mthout other materials than a few packing-cases, sawed-down barrels, a hundred yards or thereabouts of chintz, a load of hay, and mother-wit at discretion. The results of obedience to the directions set forth by these economists look well — on paper. But trunk lounges are valuable, and may be pretty in a habita- tion where chambers are small and closets few. A stout dry goods box will do for a foundation if you can procure one of the right size. The top must be strongly hinged, and braced by nailing strips of wood transversely on the lower side. Make a bag of sacking or burlaps, one side half an inch wider and longer than the box-lid, after allowing for seams, the upper, two inches wider all around, the fullness being pleated in neatly at the comers. Leave one end open, fill loosely with " excelsior," or jute ; tack down through the seams on three sides of the outer edges of the lid, and finish the stufl&ng 62 HOUSE AND- HOME. through the open end, packing the jute in with a stick until it is smooth and compact. Nail down the open end of the bag and cover all with another piece of burlaps, tacked — except kt the hinged back, to the under side of the lid, the edges of the stuff being turned in neatly. Draw this tightly to leave no bulges or wrinkles in the cushion. Cover the outside of the box with the burlaps or other stout material. Finally, stretch and tack chintz, cretonne, or some momie cloth evenly over the top and the sides of the box. If the inside is not clean and smooth, line with wall paper pasted in neatly. A large trunk lounge, somewhat low and broad, is useful as a seat and a receptacle for blankets, linen, and thin dresses that lose crispness when hung in a closet. Smaller ones do duty as shoe boxes and catchalls for odds and ends. A cheese box, treated as above described, makes a nice' footstool and a lurking-place for " Papa's " and " the boys' " slippers. In the bath room, set a trunk lounge of fair size in which to keep soiled clothes. Have a strong top made by a carpenter for the bath tub, fitting securely on the wooden frame enclosing it. Tack upon this lid a cushion like that prepared for the lounge, cover with momie cloth or cretonne, and keep it on the tub when the latter is not in use. By this simple device the unsightly yawn of the interior is masked, and the tub is kept clean. The lid can easily be lifted on or off as occasion requires. This is but one of the many means by which feminine tact and dexterity may take off the rougher edges of the Strictly Useful, without descending to the inanities of decorated rolling-pins and flat-irons. For bed coverings, buy cheap white counterpanes^ and affect no finery in the direction of imitation lace spreads lined with colored cambric. . If you cannot afford fine china, get Japanese ware, choosing the prettiest quaintnesses your means will allow. It is by no means advisable to have all of the same pattern. In this COTTAGE-FURNISHING. 63 respect as in many other departments of house fumisHng, "Mot- ley's the only wear " approved by fashion. Lastly — shun the extremes of scantiness and crowding. " Clut- tering " is a fault too common with those who do their own plenish- ing, and are solicitous to make modest means go far. An incon- secutive jumble of useless ornament in drawing room or cottage parlor always reminds me of the man, who, hopeless of mastering the mysteries of punctuation, wrote his letters without stops, long or short, and added at the close, several lines of commas, semi- colons, periods, dashes, exclamation and interrogation points, bidding his correspondents " pepper and salt to suit themselves." Let your seasoning be well distributed, relishful, and your very own — ^not another's. Licensed Beggar, or Business Partner? ^\ LOVELESS marriage is legalized crime. Marriage entered ^^\ upon without just appreciation of mutual relations and I * obligations is folly so grave as to approximate sin. ^ Romance-makers and consumers have had their own way with respect to the second of these conditions so long that gen- erations of common-sense teaching will hardly suffice to set loving hearty and light heads right as to this most important of earthly alliances. People who see clearly both sides of other practical issues, descry here no neutral ground on which those who have known for themselves the mistakes of youth and the trials of maturity, may stand to parley with others who are emulously pres- sing forward to cross the frontier of the New World which is the Old. With the young, inability to reason where love and wedlock are involved, amounts to passionate intolerance of dissuasive counselors. It is not true that society is, on the point under discussion, divided into two classes — optimists who advocate and exalt married state, and pessimists who slander it. Allow me, as one of the much misunderstood middle-aged counselors aforesaid to make one thing clear at the outset of our talk. Speaking, not only for one woman, but many, and, as I believe, for many men, I strike deep as the first stake to which our measuring line is to be tied, the assertion 64 LICENSED BEGGAR, OR BUSINESS PARTNER? 65 that the truest happiness, the purest, most satisfying, as it is the most enduring, for both sexes, is to be found in marriage. Further- more, I venture the opinion that a larger proportion of such unions is happy than miserable. Now and then, one happens in his daily walk of life, upon what may be called an Ideal Marriage. One, in which perfect congruity of mind, heart, taste and sentiment exists and has its perfect work. Each of us sees perhaps half-a-dozen such in the course of a life-time of tolerable length — visions that keep alive within us, as arbutus buds hold the germs of bloom under northern snows, some sweet rem- nants of faith in that sublimest of philanthropist's dreams — the ultimate perfectibility of the human race. Many more couples rest content, with a nice, every-day satisfaction that prevents fancy from stra3dng into forbidden fields, in the belief that each of the twain is better suited to the other than he, or she could be to any one else. But the great majority, being mated, do not trouble their wits with bootless speculations as to the exactness of the match, and rub comfortably along together. Ups and downs there are, sometimes, not a few. Bruises thus received ache longer than they are com- plained of; an old sprain jiever gets over the trick of twinging in certain states of the weather ; there is even an old scar or two under lace 'kerchief or diamond-studded shirt front. On the whole, how- ever, husbands and wives are less dissatisfied and do not quarrel so often as would brothers and sisters, if obliged to live together all their lives with indissoluble community of interests. The Honor- able Estate is justified of her children, nor is the imprint of the Divine Founder eflFaced beyond recognition and interpretation. This chapter then, is not even a remote head of an " improvement " of Punch's famous text " for the consideration of persons contemplat- ing marriage " — "/?£>«'/." , It is because a good thing is so good that we who believe in it would make it better, if possible. Because 66 HOUSE AND HOME. the black spot of decay, is bitterest in exquisitely flavored fruit, we bemoan its appearance there. If I were asked — "What, to the best of your belief, is the most prolific and general source of heart burnings, contention, harsh judgment and secret unhappiness among respectable married people who keep up the show even to themselves, of reciprocal aflfection ? " my answer would not halt for an instant. It has been ready for thirty years. The crying need of a right mutual understandings with respect to the right ownership of the family income. It has drawn more women into shame than all the gallant, gay Lotharios ever bom ; driven more into their graves than drunken- ness and brutality. The sandals of the thought-reading Diogenes would be worn out and his lantern rusted into a tattered sheath before success would reward his quest in city mart and country high-ways for a wife who never smarted under the scorpion lash. "The smart is unreasonable?" To the last degree, my dear John, red with generous ire at the thought that my sweeping gener- alization may comprise her " who is to him a second soul," — " the custodian of the archives of his heart." Both phrases are borrowed for the occasion. One from the eloquent sermon of a widower who found far more comfort in speak- ing of his dead wife than to her while living. The second from an oration delivered by an eminent lawyer who occupied the same house as that which held the custodian of his archives, but presumably had no new deposits to make, since he allowed weeks to pass without see- ing her, except at meal time. But the John with whom we have to do is honest, and in very serious earnest. He loves his wife, believes in her, respects her most heartily. He trusts her with his honor, his children, his hopes of earthly happiness. For what has he to live except Mary and the babies ? " LICENSED BEGGAR, OR BUSINESS PARTNER? 67 " Home and Wife ! " He says it reverently as lie might quote holy words. When he uttered at the altar — " With all my worldly goods I thee endow," he meant it, down to the sincere bottom of his soul. In giving her himself, he gave everything. The greater includes the less. " Don't you see ? " The worthy fellow plants himself in front of the essa)dst. In his perplexed eyes there is no guile, his speech is seasoned with the salt of directness.' " Don't you see ? there is nothing a man enjoys more than mak- ing his family happy with the money he has earned. I keep my wife as lavishly supplied as my means will permit. I never grudged her a cent. She knows I like to give her all the cash I can spare. Why a woman in such circumstances should mind asking her hus- band for money when she needs it passes the masculine comprehen- sion." Every word of the declaration has the force of an affidavit. Some men say as much and more, but as they repeat their set prayers — ^because the form is decent and habitual. Representative John is above suspicion. Emulating his frankness, I reiterate that Mary is unreasonable. I add that in this infirmity she, too, represents her sex. It is a marvel that centuries of custom have not eradicated prejudice from our minds. It is more wonderful that so few of us have divined and broadly stated the cause of the gnawing discom- fort that makes the bravest and most loving wife sometimes drop her eyes and blush bumingly when her lord " supplies her lavish- ly " with money which, he reassuringly tells her, he has earned purposely that she might have the pleasure of spending it. It is most surprising that men — analytical, just, magnanimous, as thousands of them are — should not be taught by the very pleasure the best of them feel in thus bestowing largesse — the complement 68 HOUSE AJNiJ HOME. of which is gratitude-^vrhat is the root (and bitterness) of this unreason. Women ought not to object to being considered and treated as paupers. But they do! The youngest brother, always beloved of the fairies, who is the winning hero in the story of The White Cat, almost lost heart when having successively cracked walnut, hazel-nut, date, and cherry-seed and grain of whea^:, he came to the millet-seed in the center of all. " But," we read, " putting it to his ear, he heard a faint barking, and, gathering courage, he cracked the millet-seed carefully and there was the prettiest little dog ever beheld." Our millet-seed, when concentric outer-layers have been peeled away, gives up as black and ill-favored a cur-ling as the Prince of Darkness ever sent yelping through a sin-cursed earth. "/i^ Forma Pauperis, ^^ is not a tempting class motto ; hardly the legend a free bom immortal would select to bear upon his phylac- tery. Yet this is what nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every ten thousand women bind on brow and soul with the slipping on of the wedding-ring. Man, the Bread-winner ; Woman, the Bread-eater. Man, active and beneficent ; Woman, passive and grateful. So run the antitheses ; so ring the changes in the old, old hateful story. Having let escape from my (feminine) pen the easing blot of the italicised adjective, let me, in sober sadness, ask the reader's consideration of a few absolutely true illustrations of the working of the principle I have formulated as mildly as is con- sistent with the chronicler's duty. I premise that in not one of the instances narrated, all of ^hich have fallen under my personal observation, was complaint of the husband so much as hinted at. Herein, to my apprehension, is the most pathetic side of the history. The quiet statement of a fact outside the pale of criticism, the naive assumption of the necessity, that while the king can do no i^ICENSED BEGGAR, OR BUSINESS PARTNER? 69 wrong, his subjects must live in some fashion, remind me of what I once heard a slave woman say, when commended for her faithful care of her master's children and asked if. she had any of her own: " I done had six, but ole marster, he los' so much money ten year ago, he was obleeged fur to sell 'em all." The comparison is not flattering. Let us hope that the error of taste is in my imagination. Before dismissing our well-beloved John, and proceeding to the survey of a series of much less intetesting portraits, I offer a story of another husband of another type. Mrs. A., a rich and most Christian lady, in paying a delayed subscription to a charitable society, made this apology : " I had to wait until certain dividends of my own fell due. I wanted it to be my very own gift." The treasurer was an intimate friend and there was no one else present. Mrs. A. went on in feigned lightness : " You are saying to yourself that a woman whose father settled a neat fortune on her, and whose husband is said to be a millionaire, should not have such embarrassments. Literally, I have command of but five hundred dollars a year to which I feel I have undisputed claim. This comes to me from the stock I mentioned just now. The notice of the half-yearly dividend is served on me instead of on Charley, and I seize the opportunity to pay my charitable debts before he can inquire if the notification has arrived. I will not deny that a little scene is usually the result. Being masculine, my dear boy cannot see why I should, as he phrases it, ' split hairs o» this point.' " ' " Don't I give you all the money you want ? " he pleads. * " Yes," I answer, " and more." * " Then, my love, why not use it for benevolent purposes ? " * " That would be giving of your substance, not mine," I reason. 70 HOUSE AND HOME. " He stakes his head. " The distinction is too subtle and feminine for me. You know my desire that the property willed to you by your father may be allowed to accumulate for you and the children. It would be most useful should I become insolvent,'' etc., etc. " The darling old bat can't see that he is depriving me of the privilege he esteems so highly for himself — the blessedness of being liberal. So, I remain disobedient, and hide the sin when I can. We have Scriptural warrant for not letting the right hand know what the left hand does. Charley is my right hand." Mrs. B., Irish laundress, aged sixty, sober, diligent and honest, mystified me one day by asking that I would not " find it convay- nient to pay more nor sivinty-five cints a day for a matther of three months or so. Thin, mem, come the holidays ; I'll thrust ye to sthraighten the account. Jist now, wages is fell all over;. There'll be no questions asked." When she left the room the chambermaid explained that Mr. B. drank hard, and to this end demanded his wife's earnings. The old lady had in charge two orphan grandchildren to whom she wished to give shoes at Christmas. Hence the pious fraud. The case of Mrs. C. comes in here apropos to Christmas g^fts. Her husband is one of the richest young men in a flourishing New England town. She was the pretty daughter of a country clergy- man. Lest the novel delight of having money to handle should be too much for her, he put on the auditing brake. She might order whatever was used in the. elegant establishment of which she was nominally mistress, but he would look over all the bills before giving her money with which to pay them. At the end of the first year — ^they were married during the holidays — ^the poor child went home for a Christmas visit, empty-handed, Like many other rich men's wives, she had not a penny of pin-money. Even her street car fares were paid with tickets furnished by her lord. LICENSED BEGGAR, OR BUSINESS PARTNER? 73 At the dawn of tlie second twelvemonth, a happy inspiration visited her. Her butcher rendered his weekly account in pencil, on loose leaves torn from a memorandum-block. Each of these was ingeniously doctored before it was submitted to the auditor. A cent per pound was added here, half-a-cent there, delicacies were, taxed in proportion to season and rarity, and the sum total con- firmed the evidence of the items. She boasted gleefully to her sis- ter, who was her confidante, that she had several times pocketed $1.50, twice, $2.CMD a week by the ruse. Each member of the par- sonage family had a token at Christmas tide from the lucky daughter and sister who had drawn a prize in the matrimonial lottery. Mrs. D. sat so near me at a " Board meeting " one day that I overheard her voluble preference for giving " goods " towards fur- nishing the new hospital, rather than money. " You know," she said with a jolly, unctuous giggle to the sec- retary " my husband is the kindest creature in the world, but he does'nt believe in charities. He is as liberal as can be about the housekeeping and so forth, only he insists on paying the bills himself. He says that women are not fit to be trusted with more than fifty cents at a time. My husband will always have his joke. Now, he will never know that the piece of sheeting I shall send here is not used at our house. Nor the table-cloth and napkins." The good soul's relish of the two-fold pleasure of charity and of outwitting her close-fisted spouse was edifying — if the beholder chanced to like that sort of thing. Mrs. E., refined in sensibilities a la fond parent, submitted a case of ethics to a motherly friend. Her daughter has a passion for music and is already a brilliant 'p rformer. Her father thinks she knows enough of the art and dec lines to spend more money in tuition fees. The better educated wife, sympathizing with the girl's 74 HOUSE AND HOME. desire to be tliorougli, pays witliout his knowledge, for lessons from a distinguished professor, saving the money out of the allowance placed in her hands for marketing. " I hope it is not wrong," she faltered in making the confession. " It does seem as if nobody is defrauded. The allowance is very liberal and I am careful to keep a good table. The thing which >troubles my conscience is that my girl is privy to a deception practised by her mother on her father." Mrs. F.'s husband tells the following anecdote of his early mar- ried life as a lesson to other thoughtless Benedicts : " It never occurred to me that my wife might need to buy new clothes. Yet I knew that women went shopping, and might have reflected that even so bountiful a trousseau as hers could not last for- ever. Nor did the thought that she might want a few cents for carfares caramels, hair-pins and the like, present itself to my stupid mind. We boarded at a hotel, had nice rooms, excellent fare, pleasant society and went somewhere every evening. My little womanwas always well dressed, looked happy, and gave no indication of the impecuniosity that was playing Spartan fox at her vitals. One evening, more than two years after our wedding day, I came up town with tickets for the opera and a bouquet for her to carry, for which, I recollect, I paid three dollars. She made one excuse after another for declining to go and when all were overruled, burst into tears, and confessed that she had no shoes fit to wear out-of-doors. In proof of this she showed ^e her best boots bunglingly cobbled by her poor little fingers. "Why have'nt you bought new ones ?" asked I, naturally enough. I never shall forget the piteous, shame-faced look she gave me. " I had no money, dear. The fifty dollars mamma put into my purse when I left home went for little necessaries long ago. I tried, again and again, to ask you for more, but the words would not Jeave my tongue." IvICBNSED BEGGAR, OR BUSINESS PARTNER? 75 The reader will please note that in recounting these phases of matrimonial experience, I refrain from commendation or from censure of the feeling that moved the actors to diplomacy, deception and reserve. If necessary, I could give a hundred instances to prove how obstinate and universal is the aversion to the role of chronic bene- ficiary, how powerful the temptation to evade it by every device feminine cunning can bring to bear upon the situation. Let us look at the matter as if we had never thought of it before. Can that which consolidates the best women of the land into a gfuild of privileged paupers be anything but an evil that calls for redress ? This particular form of mendicancy may be honorable in all things, and alleviated in a multitude of cases by the tenderest assiduity of affection, but, in the estimation of their husbands and society — to their own shamed eyes — it is to wives dependence and vassalage. Ask them (when their lords are not by) one and all, leaving out the ten thousandth woman alluded to awhile ago — ^how they like it. Representative John comes gallantly to the front once more. '* Would you have MY WIFE earn her own living ? " Yes ! — emphatically. " How can she when she is already housekeeper, wife, mother, teacher, nurse, seamstress, companion — to say nothing of general inspiration, and supreme domestic headlight ? She is the cleverest, pluckiest woman in two hemispheres^ but the duties already bound upon her consume every waking hour. She has not a minute she can call her own. There isn't a man in town who works so hard and so well." The catechist — chivalrous afid loyal gentleman — ^has all unwit- tingly flattened the base of the Qgg until it stands upright. The woman who fills nine important offices, as you declare this one does, 76 HOUSE AND HOME. earns her living nine times over. Tlie trouble is that as M. Jour- dain had been talking prose all his life and never knew it, you and Mary have never appreciated the truth that she is more than self- supporting. Face the fact like a man, and henceforth keep it well before her.* Forego something of the complacent glow of conscious liberality, and accept, instead, the calm content of one who meets his notes when due. Or, consider that you two constitute a busi- ness firm, and pay over her share of equitable profits. The act is a just partition, not a gift. Don't remind her, when you throw money into her lap with the gesture of a sultan to a favorite dancing-girl, that, although compelled to maintain her, you are so fond of her that you do not grudge the expense. Break yourself of the habit of alluding to family expenses as if she were individually respon- sible for them, and for the family as well. Some excellent husbands fall into this tone. It is a trick of the trade easily caught, and about as fair as it would be to drag your wife into a morass and, when she is stuck last in the mud, to thrash her with briers, because your boots are soiled by the operation. To epitomize the volume that might be penned on the theme without exhausting it : — ^the wife who acts well her part is as truly independent as is the husband. She has a right to have, to hold, and to use as her own, a given share of the income. Her main- tenance, pin-money, etc., are debts due her, not benefactions you are to be praised for bestowing, and she grateful in receiving. Of these things she should be made aware when she enters the firm. A true woman will love and honor her partner the more for such frank uprightness. It is only she who is at heart a courtesan, who fawns upon her spouse for hire. But Solomon Grundy has a query : " What do women know of business principles and methods ? " As much — and as little — as their husbands choose to teach them The Etiquette of Family Life. DURING a recent journey by rail from Boston to New York, my attention was drawn to a couple whose seats in tlie drawing-room car were directly across tlie aisle from mine. One was a young girl, pretty, tastefully clad, and refined in tone and manner. Her escort was a few years lier senior, good- looking, well-behaved, and apparently on terms of friendly intimacy with his fair companion. They chatted together blithely and naturally, with no show, on one side of coyness, or on the other of love-making. Their bright faces were a pleasant resting-place for other eyes as well as mine, as I soon became aware from a low- toned dialogue going on just behind me. " Stunningly pretty girl," said ma-sculine accents. "And a lucky fellow," " He is apparently of the same opinion," answered a woman's voice. "Are they brother and sister — do you think ? " " He's too devoted by half for that. I've been watching them all the way. He has picked up her fan three times, and never told her once that she was careless to drop it. Twice, he has oflfered to bring her a glass of water ; four times has he put up the window at stations, without waiting to be asked to do it ; once, he inquired if the sun hurt her eyes, or was likely to g^ve her a headache. Not a sign of the fraternal in all this. Nor is she a whit more sisterly. ° 79 8o HOUSE AND HOME. Tlie smile tliat thanks him for his attentions settles the question beyond a doubt. She's another fellow's sister, you may be sure." " Perhaps they are married ? " "Not unless this is their wedding trip. That sort of thing does'nt flourish after the honeymoon." The question of relationship was not settled in my hearing. The incident is the text of my chapter on the amenities of everyday home-life. Is custom the parent of expectation, or does expectation beget the ill-favored custom of giving our second best, if not our worst things — to those we love most dearly and to whom we owe most ? Or — to put the query differently — do we satisfy ourselves with having deeded to them once for all, our choicest treasures of affect- ion, and, the oath of allegiance taken, hold that they should not exact further guaranty of the fact of possession ? Benjamin Eranklin's proposition that grace said over the barrel at paqking-time should do away with the tri-daily blessing of boiled or fried pork, forecast the passion for savings of all kinds which became his leading characteristic. In the matter of family polite- ness, tens of thousands of his fellow country people put the thrifty boy's suggestion into daily practice. Mr. Philemon Nemo courted his Baucis with conventional assid- uity of devotion. As suitor and betrothed, he fell short in none of the tender arts, supposed by each newly affianced pair to be indige- nous to the Elysian groves in which they will henceforward have their permanent abiding place — ^whereby the lover sets his image in the highest niche of his mistress' hearty and clamps it to the pedestal. His behavior in the various trying and delicate tests to which betrothal subjects the wooer who has won, earned the plaudits of relatives and neighbors. He lived, perfunctorily, yet eagerly, only in her smiles. ; watched every turn of the eye, studied each trick THE ETIQUETTE OP FAMILY LIFE. 8i of phrase and inflection, tliat lie might meet her lightest want half way in the expression thereof Pet names and caressing words distilled and flowed from his tongue as perfume from honeysuckle. When he stood with her at the altar, he heaped his earthly all — hopes, loves, life — a glad oblation — upon it. Courtship is defined by a social satirist " as a period, long or short, agreeably spent by two people in deceiving one another to the best of their ability." Mr. and Mrs. Ph. Nemo would have frowned down the bon mot as blasphemous on their marriage day. Fifteen years later, she smiles significantly — an arid, bitter meaning — at reading it, and he laughs, somewhat coarsely, in stumbling upon it in the " funny column " of the morning paper, " guesses that is just about the ticket," and inquires " what the women in the house have been about all the morning, that his breakfast is not ready ? " They have fallen by — to them — imperceptible degrees, into the matrimonal habit of speaking slightingly of . romance and love. Neither, to do them justice, means any real disrespect to the other. In this sort of cant — I would still be just — the husband usually takes the initiative. It sounds "knowing" to affect to despise former enslavement, to regret bachelor freedom, to allude to himself as the victim of a passing weakness. In very jocose moments he talks of his courtship as "temporary insanity." It is all fun, however he may word it. Baucis might, by this . time, be sure enough of his affection to understand his badinage. She ought to know, too, that when he objurgates the sloth- fulness of the " women in the house," he refers to the cook and waitress, and not to her flushed and nervous self, who, in pouring out his coffee spills the boiling liquid on her hand. " How can you be so careless ! " he ejaculates, in serious concern, disguised under pretended displeasure. 82 HOUSE AND HOME. He takes as much trouble to mask Hs softer emotions at this date as he did to exhibit them in that " insane " long ago. The lover would have bounded to his feet and rushed off for healing lotion and bandages. The husband resumes the study of his paper when she has said, coldly, that " it is a mere nothing," wound her handkerchief about the scalded member, and g^ven him another cup of coffee. The pretty foolishness of kissing the place to make it well is never thought of now by either. They " have got beyond all that." Baucis resigns and suffers more than Philemon in the exchange of sweet nonsense for matter-of-fact. Sometimes, she dreams over those vanished hours ; wonders, in that strange, awful constriction of heart women know so well, how her husband can ridicule the memory, as if it were an illusion. She could as soon make a jest of the loss of the little child that drew his first and last breath in one and the same day. Sentiment dies hard, even in commonplace women. If men knew how tender and warm the divine folly keeps their wives' hearts, how it glorifies the humblest home and refines menial labor, they might, sometimes, but of sheer pity, forbear to mock. There are other children now. They come pelting in to break- fast, jostling one another in their hurry. The father lowers his paper to command them to " stop their racket." The mother frets that they are " always late, and then impatient to be waited upon." Nobody says " good morning," or asks after the health of the rest. The elder girl calls her mother's notice to her small brother's plate where griddle-cakes swim in a lake of butter and syrup. " I'd be ashamed to be such a pig ! " sneers the juvenile monitor, and is ordered by him to "to hold her tongue ! Who asked for her opinion ? " The father gulps down his coffee and bolts his steak with both eyes on the columns of the morning journal which is his THE ETIQUETTE OF FAMILY LIFE. 83 substitute for cheerful table talk. Wben tbe bickerings or the teasing waxes loud, he throws in a sharp or heavy word, as he would shy a stone at quarrelsome hounds. His meal concluded, he kicks back his chair, remarks, not crossly, but as certainly not civilly, that he has no more time to waste, and takes himself off for the day without other farewell. The Nemo connection is extensive, and the branch we are describing highly respectable. It was my misfortune to be present when one of them asked his wife to bring a cup in which he could mix medicine for an ailing child. She brought a tumbler instead. " What did I ask you for ? " demanded her lord harshly. " I thought this would do as well, my dear,!' said the gentle spouse. " You ' thought ! ' That is the way with you all. You are always thinking^ instead of doing as you are told to do ! When I say cup, I mean c ^u ,^,/ Now, go and get it ! " It was my worse luck to be one of those seated about a family board when the head of the house inquired of his fair young daughter where an article which he named — a book, or penknife, or some such matter — had been put. On receiving her reply that she had not seen it, he broke into a turbulent torrent of abuse, in reprobation of her carelessness. " What do you suppose I keep you in clothes and victuals and lodge you for ? You and your sisters are as lazy and saucy a pack of bad rubbish as ever a man was cursed with," was a clause of the peroration. Do I hear a murmur of " brute " and " boor ? " Will the verdict be reconsidered when I aflSrm that the speaker was an officer in a prominent church, and bore the reputation of being an estimable, affectionate husband and father ? Let it be understood that I introduce here no fancy sketches, and draw my illustrations 84 HOUSE AND HOME. from " good society." Tlie worst happening of this evil complexion that ever befell me was was when " a perfect christian gentkman," high in public office, informed his wife in my hearing, that " any one who made the willful mistake" of which he had just adjudged her to be guilty " was an unmitigated and malicious fool." I know — few better — how intemperate expressions escape the tongue at the lash of anger, but these are invariably in the vernacular of the irate speaker. The man who has never uttered an oath will not let fly a volley of profane ejaculations, let the provocation be never so great. There is a wide world of difference between the fault-finding of the mistress in whose mouth the law of kindness has a familiar abiding place, and the loud tirade of her who has been elevated by sudden riches to " eat from the dish she late had washed." There may be, as one of the sex avers, " a savage in every man," but he is not bonT full-grown, war-paint on, and club in hand. It was obvious in each of the scenes I have outlined that this was not the first outbreak, by many, of the Nemo barbarian. His leap was too sure, his bellow too loud for a trial-effort. It is with shame and regret, that, in obedience to the law of stem impartiality I have laid down for my conduct in the present writing, I confess to having heard more than once, women of birth and breeding call their husbands " fools," not in sport, but in very determined earnest; that, now and then, a sweet-voiced girl, regardless of the presence of others besides " the family," refuses flatly to obey her parents, saying, " I won't ! " and " I shant ! " as tartly as if she had been bom in a ditcher's hovel and had her training in the slums. Most vividly do I recall the shock of a repoof administered by a model daughter to her gray-haired father whose version of a story differed from hers : " You only make yourself ridiculous by such absurd talk," she THE ETIQUETTE OF FAMILY LIFE. 87 said judicially. " At your time of life one ought to have some regard for the truth." She loved her father dearly ; was his nurse, amanuensis, housekeeper— his main stay, prop and anchor. But I doubt not that the vitriol of her rebuke burned as hotly as if she had been none of these. The number of times I have known sisters to bandy compliments on the eminent propriety of each minding her own business, is hardly surpassed by that of the " snubs " administered by sisters to brothers, and the interchange of the yet more spicy courtesies between brothers. Lack of room and strength, not to mention common decency, forbid the expose. Everybody is familiar with the truth and the superabundant examples of it. It is of a piece with the code which enjoins a distinction which is more than a difference between " company " and every day manners, and even keeps back gprammatical speech for such occasions as visits and visitors. " Not a sign of the fraternal in all this ! " said the astute railway critic, in summing up the civilities extended by the young man to his compagnon de voyage. The inference is patent. In the like circumstances, the brother would have sat in his revolving chair, his back to his sister, and jerked monosyllables over his shoulder in response to her queries ; have waited to be asked for the glass of ice water, then, brought it ungraciously. He would not have bethought himself of her possible desire to get a breath of fresh air at every station, or that the sun might be oppressive. The tokens of their common humanity would have been reserved for " another fellow's sister," We have not to deal now with the fact of natural affection, still less with the question of conjugal fidelity. These are presupposed in the assertion that we take too much for granted in our intercourse with those of our own blood and households. The seed of the ugly -88 HOUSE AND HOME. weed is planted wien the newly made husband remits, for the first time, a polite office to his wife which he would blush to remit were she his guest, or mere acquaintance. One of two things is wrong : — the painstaking devotion of the suitor, or the nonchalance of the married man. If it was Philemon's bounden duty and delight, before wedlock, to pick up the handkerchief of Baucis, to set a chair for her at her entrance into the room where he was sitting, to hand her in and out of carriages and up stairs, to spare her heavy lifting and needless steps, to be urbane in tone and language — in short, to testify in action to the world of his love and respect for the woman he has chosen to bear his name and share his fortunes — ^it is his duty (even without the flavoring of delight), to treat her in the same manner for the entire period of their united lives. Wives have a responsibility in this respect which they are too apt to ignore, or to shirk when it is admitted. There is much written now-a-days of the propriety of mothers " keeping themselves up" for the sake of their children. If wives do not keep their lords up in what are not the trivialities of courteous attention to themselves, they (the wives) will go without these in the end. There is something sadly demoralizing in the sudden or slow slip of the band on the wheel, when the bride and bridegroom days are accomplished, and the petted angel drops into, " only my wife." I have called this lapse the seed of the ugly plant which is of rapid gfrowth, and as ineradicable, if once rooted^ as pursley and rag-weed. Philemon saunters into his wife's boudoir, hands in pocket, hat on head, cigar in mouth, with never a thought of saying " By your leave," or " Excuse me." He pushes before her in passing out or entering a room ; sits down to the table in his shirt sleeves and cleans his nails in the parlor when nobody (Baucis counting as a cipher) is by. If Baucis wishes to attend theater, concert, or lecture, to drive, or walk, or sail, the proposition, in five THE ETIQUETTE OF FAMILY LIFE. 89 cases out of ten, comes from her, not him. With his ante-nuptial apprenticeship in what the French have named " less petits soins^'' he has gone out of the business. If it is kept up, it is the wife who continues it at the old stand. Children catch the tone of their elders. The sons caricature their blufi" sire, and are bullies or boors in their association with mother and sisters, suave courtiers in " society." The daughters refine upon their mother's self-defensiveness, and and become sar- castic adepts in the science of " taking the boys down." In many households, this order of things is considered altogether natural, and not reprehensible. " What a bore you people must find it to be always on your fs and q^s at home ! " said an outspoken woman to one who was not of the average Nemo clan. " You are never en dishabille, in behavior, to each other, mince your words and fine down your phrases in family talk as if you were afraid of your own flesh and blood. Now, we brothers and sisters speak right out whatever we think and feel, — quarrel all around and make friends every day of our lives." Many more men and woman, not belonging to the order of Pachydermata — suffer, first and last, with an intensity their associ- ates cannot appreciate from what may be termed the toss-and-tumble style of home life. Wives and sisters may not complain audibly when they are left to help themselves to daily bread from crockery platters while other fellows' sisters and wives are served on bended knee from garnished porcelain. But they see, and feel, and think. Husbands may appreciate the sterling worth of wives whose hands and brains toil unrestingly in the service of their families, and brothers repeat emphatically to themselves that sisters who appear to revel in opportrnities of taking the wind out of their sails, are thoroughly good girls, and would go through fire and water for the go HOUSE AND HOME. boys they rail at as " cubs " and " rowdies." " We understand each other," one and all would protest were an outsider to censure their language as unkind, or to intimate that the son who accosts his mother with, " Hallo," old girl ! " or the daughter who interrupts her father with, " You dont know what you are talking about ! " strains to snapping the commandment to honor parents. The toss-and-tumbler is fond of pleading " his way " in extenu- ation of boorish deportment and brusque speech. I know whole families whose " ways " are so many pet hedgehogs, pampered at home, and imperfectly leashed abroad. They jumble the boast of intrinsic excellence with the parade of external deformity, until weak minds confuse the two. The human pig-nut is, oftener than otherwise, like the vegetable product of the same name — bitter- hearted when one has dragged it out of the tough, thick shell. It is as easy to be sincere and sweet, as to be sincere and sour. Hearts are not won and kept so much by the exercise of the sterner virtues as by the constant practice of loving consideration for the feelings, gentlest patience with the foibles of those-with whom our daily lot is cast. Coramon-sense ought to have proved to us by this time that oil is a better lubricator of domestic machinery than vinegar. May I offer to the younger members of the home circle a simple rule of action that will reduce to a minimum the friction of daily living, even with those whose individuality is as pronounced, whose views are as independent as your own ? A caution that will spare you many a stormy scene, and, perchance, avert the heart- break of unavailing remorse ? Do not say a rough word when a smooth one will serve your purpose as well. Before indulging in retort, or sly thrust or deadly "crusher" — whatever the provocation — ask yourself: "Would I wish this unsaid if I were never to behold his living face again ? " The Vexed Question—Domestic Service in America. ^1 N Englisli journal remarks in the course of a review of an ^^ American manual of cookery: "One thing wiiicli im- I * presses the British reader as strange and even droll, is ^ that the presence of the mistress- in the kitchen and her active co-operation in the business of cookery are taken for granted. Yet there must be some servants in the United States." Making the marginal annotation of an interrogation point over the last sentence, I digress to observe that if the testimony of English books and papers be admitted, the ques- tion of what Punch styles " servantgalism," is a knotty one in the Mother Country, where social and caste-lines are sharply drawn, and the existence of a lower class is not disputed by those who belong to it. On the continent, the problem is not only knotty, but prickly. Two or three times in a century, it bristles with pikes and butcher-knives, a complication which, fortunately, does not enter into our discussion of our own puzzle of domestic service. " System," it cannot be called. Even as a dissected pattern, it is unsatisfactory. It is a construction of iron and clay, and the attrition of the parts must work confusion. To return to our interrogation-point ; — Have we, as a nation, any domestic servants ? 9' 92 HOUSED AND H0M:B. Every public functionary, from constable up to the Cbief Magis- trate of tbe Union, is proud to call Himself tbe servant of tbe people. " Ich dien " — " I serve " is tbe motto surmounted by the three white feathers in the crest of the heir to the British throne. *' Let the greatest among you be your servant," said the Prince* of princes, who took upon Himself the form of a servant. In our Christian land and age, we weakly evade the obvious truth that if some are to be served, there must be others whose part it is to render that service. Having yielded to a certain — or uncertain — class the names of " lady " and " gentleman," and taken up for ourselves and made honorable the titles of "man "and " woman," we carry amiable forbearance a step further in recog- nizing as " helps," and most frequently as " girls," inferiors in birth, station and culture, whom we hire and wheedle to do such daily tasks as will leave us free to discharge aright duties which they are incapable of performing. I wonder the real American girl does not protest passionately against her dispossession of a royal title. It is amusing, and pitiable, to hear a fond mother extricate herself from the mesh of misunderstanding induced by her mention of "my girls." Unless interpreted by the immediate context, the listeners cannot determine whether she has in mind the accomplished queens of the drawing-room, or the illiterate despots of the kitchen. In fact, our daughters have been doubly robbed. As " young ladies," they went out df being'more than a decade ago. " We girls," sug- gests, to all except the readers of the charming volume bearing that title, the conclave below-stairs, sitting in judgment upon the multifarious iniquities of the Anonyma everywhere known to the guild as " Her," and " She." For, if the daughter be shorn of her titles, the mother is beggared utterly — ^reduced to a pronoun, and a monosyllable. DOMESTIC SERVICE IN AMERICA. 93 Tiere are no more mistresses than there are servants. If tlie reader would verify the statement, let her use the brace of obnox- ious -words in the hearing of Bridget, Katrine, or the dusky-cheeked Victoria-Columbia-Celeste of the present generation. •(I . ,.* 107 Setting an argument whicli maybe called " a light weight," fore- most, we must acknowledge that the close proximity of the steam, strain, stress, and general " stew " of washing-day to the holy calm of Sunday's rest and worship offends the artistic sense. The linking • together of the two is a palpable misfit, and harshly inharmoniouSi i- Mother Goose's implication in regard to this discordant element of everyday prose is, as is often her way, more pregnant than hef actual assertion : " As Tommy Snooks and Betse;^ Brooks Were walking out one Sunday, Says Tommy Snooks to Betsey Brooks, ' To-morrow will be Monday.' " Poor Tommy! The revolt of the poetic nature under the encroachment of the barrenly-realistic upon exaltation of soulful imagination was never more succinctly uttered. Betsey, in her Sunday rig, a bonnet on her head, instead of a cap, a sprig of southernwood in her belt ; clean cotton gloves hiding the toil-marred hands, — ^is such a different befiig from Betsey in pattens, with apron rolled up to the waist, and sleeves pinned back to her shoulders, her face interlined with wotty, and blowsy with the vapor of hot suds, that the lover may i^ell recoil from the vision. His jeremiad may go on file with Moore's : tf- ' All that's bright must fade. The brightest still the fleetest" The a^pt change from Sunday to Monday is a putting-out, at a breath, of a holy flame, not a flicker or folding. Like the instanta- neous nightfall that comes in the tropics with the sinking of the sun, it is bad for eyes and spirit. Seriously, it is strange that physical economists have not long ago condemned this " customary" io8 HOUSE AND HOME. overloading of tlie second day of the week as a violation of a prime principle whicli declares tlie danger of sudden and violent extremes. In most families in this Christian land, Sunday is the happiest day of the seven — a period of serene relaxation, of home-comfort and religious enjoyment. In the time when imprisonment for debt was lawful and common, the creditor could not seize the body of his debtor between Saturday midnight and the same hour of Sunday night. A like immunity from business cares and solicitudes falls with the dawn of the Blessed Day upon weary head and eyes. For twenty-four hours, the wolf is out of sight of the door. The house- wife crosses her aching wrists, and has leisure to bethink herself of the eternal Sabbath in the land where she will get " rested out." The household machinery runs without creak or jar ; or, if there are faults she overlooks them, " because it is Sunday." Even our Puritan grandmothers thought it wrong to whip naughty children on Sunday — perhaps from some shadowy and unacknowledged asso- ciation with the threshing-floor — but the little sinners reaped the benefit of the scruple until the interest was compounded, according to the Puritan method of computation, on Black Monday. It must be as injurious to health as to temper to tighten every screw, and crowd on all steam while the soft languor of the rest- day still lingers in the soul and body. Monday morning bounds in upon us like a frosty snap in early autumn, or late spring. We are never ready for it. Saturday is the Peter robbed that the Paul of Monday may not actually suffer for the necessaries of existence. Marketing is done for three days, and cooking also, in many households where the cook is likewise the laundress. The remains of Sunday's dinner do coldly set forth the morrow's table. If there be a shadow of the chilly shade left over for Tuesday, the house-mother accounts it economy. WHY MONDAY? 109 The cliildreiL, spoiled for work by two days " oflf," recognize as an important element in the general hatefulness of Blue Monday, the hurried breakfast, at which the freshest bread is thirty-six hours old, and the hash of Saturday's inevitable corned beef is as sure to be at the foot of the board, as the pre-occupied face they hardly know for that of the genial father of yesterday. " Mother " is still more business-full than her partner. This is, for her, the field day of the week, and she has neither word nor caress to waste. Luncheon, or the early dinner, brings no respite. The father, if he be wise, takes his down town. The children miss the orderly waiting, the dainty desserts of other days ; the mother is too busy to know what she eats. Lessons go worse on Monday than at any other time. Tempers and nerves would be soothed by the reasonable anticipation of a bountiful repast in amends for the indifferent breakfast, but the dejected home-comers know better than to expect it. Warmed-overs, pick-ups, and make-shifts go as naturally with wash-day as the odor of yellow soap-suds and the steam-crumpled*hands of the sulky waitress. That was a wisely-sweet device of a mother whom I once knew, who made it a rule and practice to go into the kitchen herself on Monday, and prepare savory entrees or delicate desserts, selecting the favorite dishes of husband and children in turn. It was her opportunity for trying new recipes,- and there was a pretence of mystery about the bill-of-fare that brought the participants in the feast to it with eager, smiling faces and merry tongues. It was the only household I ever saw where Monday was heartily welcomed. The knowledge that the mamma's dainty surprises were the expression of her resolution to lift her charges above the reach of the soapy surf, lent sentiment and poetry to the material comforts of her providing. no HOUSE AND HOME. Wiser still is slie who dares on this question to think, decide and act for herself : to do all that one woman can to remove the odium from the luckless day by shifting the fardel, and dividing the weight. It seems so rationally expedient to attempt this, that we are astounded at our own slowness of apprehension and the narrowness of mind which indisposes us to a beneficent innovation. Little housework is done on Sunday, less than on any other day of the seven. If ever a room is dusted carelessly, a bed made up "with a lick and a promise," as our black mammies used to say, books and papers tossed aside to be put to rights by-and-by — this is the time. " Father and boys " spend the day at home. It is needless to enter into particulars of such occupation, or to sketch the house they leave behind them in their Monday morning flight. Nothing is where it was at nightfall on Saturday night ; but who is to restore order? Mamma's execution of " up-stairs work" is as if one hand were tied behind her. The maids have no time to think of anything but " getting out the clothes." With more to do in her special depart- ment than at any other season, the head of the establishment is crip- pled in power. Should she emulate my heroine, and supplement the typical wash-day dinner (with what groanings are the words uttered and heard !) by toothsome manufacture of her own devising, the menu is restricted by the pre-emption on the part of the boiler of the top of the range, and the moral and material disorganization of the lower regions — which then, if ever, deserve their name. The ovens are out of temper; dressers are .crowded with pans of starch; piles of wrung-out clothes in big baskets stand about on chairs ; the priestess of the abhorrent rites is damp and dangerous. Our " brave lady " of the future will apply the screw tactfully which is to bring herself and household up to washing-day ten- sion. Monday's breakfast will be excellent and nicely cooked, and not slurred over with loins girt for a start, and staff in hand. WHY MONDAY? iii The maids fresh from yesterday's surcease of labor, will be in spirits and bodily case for a tborougb sweeping, dusting and setting to rights of the whole house. Luncheon-time will find everything in place. That meal and dinner will be of materials bought and prepared, for this especial occasion, and of quality that will revive the hearts of lesson-learners in whose mind the trail of tasks, con- ned on Saturday, got cold over Sunday. The soiled linen will be brought down stairs in the afternoon, sorted, and if need be, mended, then the white things be put to soak. Supplies of soap, starch, bluing, etc., will be inspected and laid ready to hand ; bread baked and a custard or pudding or cream, or blanc-mange, prepared for the morrow ; and the servants, always up later on Sunday night than any other, because of outings and " company," be sent early to bed to be ready for Tuesday's wash. The whole system — mental, moral, and physical — ^will be brought tip naturally and gradually to the wrestle with the omnipresent, haunting demon of civilization — Dirt. " Lady." SOME words are inherently vulgar ; some are dragged into vulgarity by association ; some have vulgarity thrust upon them. To this latter class belongs the pretty dissylable which stands as the caption of this article. Kverybody knows where we got it. " Loaf-giver," or " loaf- server," in the Saxon, described the mistress of manor or castle, whose was the dispensing power and office. The title brings up ancient and gracious pictures to the mind. The rude, abundant hospitality of the Saxon "franklin" owed its every softening feature to the presence at the board of the stately woman whose rule in kitchen and bower-room was as strict, yet gentler than that of her lord in hall and court-yard. We dream, as we speak the words " hlaf'' and " digan" of the fair Lettice, wife of Prince Guy of Warwick, who for twenty, say some — others, forty years — superintended the feeding at her castle gate of all the poor who would come, none receiving less than a loaf apiece ; of Elizabeth of Hungary, and the apronful of loaves that became roses to her husband's scrutiny — a story we never tire of hearing ; of Katherine Parr's sweet, dark eyes glistening with tears at the thanks of her pensioners ; of our own New England ancestresses, in high heels, powder, hoop and farthingale, looking wisely after the ways of the households, yet receiving and holding, until within this century, :?^. 3*.'>i,i'^» X ^"IBECN HEAF? DAT'^'WASH -LADY NAMED MRS. JOHNSINGHAD SOME CLONES TO BRING HOME FOR A' OMAN NAMED S----- ^ "LADY." 115 the unsolicited title of " Lady " from parisHoners and neighbors. Who does not acknowledge the right of Mrs. Stowe's "Lady Lothrop" to her dignities? And how many can recollect our grandmother's mention of "Old Lady" This or That, as a presiding figure in the narrator's early life ? Philology and tradition clearly define a lady as one who has more to give than her neighbors, and whose province it is to dispense to the less fortunate. Viewed thus, the application is meaningful. To support it aright, there must be superiority to the commonalty, largeness of heart, and liberality of hand. Against this picture, bracing ourselves for the nervous shock, let us set an authentic anecdote, date of this year of our Lord, 1889. General S , than whom no warrior is more beloved and honored of his country, met at the door of a hotel at which he was sojourn- ing, during a tour of travel in company with his wife, a colored man, who thus accosted him : " General S , I believe, suh ? Ken you tell me ef dere's a wash-lady ob de name o' Johnsing at present engaged in dis house ? " " I know nothing of the employees here. I am only a traveler and guest in the hotel." "Yes, suh. I know dat, of co'se, suh. But I fought you might 'a' met dis partickler wash-lady, 'cause she done tole me she had some clo'es to bring home for a 'oman named S ." There is a degree less of absurdity in another anecdote as true, and also of recent date. In one of the largest cities in America, a "boarding-home" for working-girls received a present of a handsome sewing-machine from the manufacturer, for the use of the inmates. On a small silver plate, let into the table, was engraved, " To the Working-women's Home, from ." The name of the firm followed. ii6 HOUSE AND HOME. The gift was joyfully received, and, for some weeks, was in almost constant use, the boarders being only too glad of this assistance in doing their own sewing in the evenings and off-hours. In an unlucky moment some one descried the modestly-obscure inscription, and proclaimed the tenor thereof. A " strike " was the result. Not one of the forty girls who composed the family would touch the machine with hand or foot. So excited and bitter was the run of feeling against it that the matron found it necessary to lay the matter before the Board of Managers. Even in this body, sympathizers with the malcontents were not wanting. One of these energetically condemned the wording of the inscription as a covert insult to the class the donor pretended to benefit. " These are young ladies^'' she affirmed, " with sensibilities as acute as ours, and they cannot, without violence to self-respect, overlook the wrong done them personally, and as a class." After a lively debate, a woman of high social standing and intellectual endowments offered a resolution which, being carried unanimously, stands on the minutes of the society to this day : " Resolved^ That the Women composing the Board of Managers of the accept the sewing machine presented by- & Co., as a gift to themselves, and that the matron be instructed to convey to the young Ladies now resident in the Boarding Home, the information that the word ' working-women ' on the machine applies to the Board of Management, and not to the boarders." The refinement of the sarcasm did not tell perhaps where it should. The lesson conveyed by the incident is unmistakable. The illustration of the trend of vulgar prejudice against what Sarah Josepha Hale used to call " the royal name of woman," even outruns, if possible, the arrogant claim of silly illiteracy to a title they deserve in no one respect. "LADY." 117 One must, in mental and spiritual stature, get her head well above the dust of conceit and the fogs of ignorance before she can appreciate the dignity of true womanhood. Her business in life may be that of selling " notions " over a counter. In the calm con- sciousness that she is as respectable in her station as the wife of a millionaire in hers, she will not throw up her place because the floor-walker inadvertently alludes in her hearing to " saleswomen," instead of " salesladies," As the honest and capable superintendent of a mill, she is royally careless whether or not she be mentioned as a " forelady." Ruskin's oft-quoted deliverance on this subject is apt here : " It is now long since the women of England arrogated, univer- sally, a title which once belonged to nobility only ; and having once been in the habit of accepting the title of gentlewoman, as correspondent to that of gentleman, insisted on the privilege of assuming the title of * Lady,' which properly corresponds only to the title of * Lord'." The correspondent title to " Lady " being " Lord," our feminine sticklers for the appellation should allude to fellow-workers of the other gender as, "saleslords," " forelords," and to John Chinaman, as " washlord." Or, to be a trifle more moderate and less ridicu- lous in stating the necessity of the case, the least that their brothers can ask is that they be registered as " foregentlemen " and " sales- gentlemen." If all this sounds like trifling, be it remembered at what door the folly lies. High life below-stairs is a favorite theme with the satirist, mainly because it offers so many salient points of attack. It may be said that in a Republic there should be no "below-stairs," In one, and the best sense, there is none. Strictly speaking, nothing is vulgar except groundless pretension. ii8 HOUSE AND HOMB. " Honor and shame from no condition rise ; Act well your part. There all the honor lies. " An Englishman said it, and may have been sincere in the enunciation of the dogma. In America, it is so true that it should be lettered in public places, be embroidered and hung up, instead of pious sampler-mottoes, in our homes. Action, and not condition, makes the noble man and the noble woman. The more stanch one's self-respect, the more careless is he or she of the frippery of a title. The broader the platform of dignity, the more room he who stands thereon has for ease of movement. Such fierce assumption of the scanty rag of a name, such touchiness of resentment at imaginary imputations, and the incessant uneasiness lest the aforesaid tatters be torn way — are like the movements of the captain's harum-scarum son (familiar to us all in the days of "Angell's Reader"), when having climbed to the main-truck, he suddenly appreciated the narrowness of his foothold, and the height of the mast. To continue the familiar quotation from Ruskin : " I do not blame them for this ; but only for their narrow motive in this. I would have them desire and claim the title of Lady, pro- vided they claim, not merely the title, but the ofl&ce and duty signified by it." The author of " Five Talents of Woman " also gives this quota- tion, and yet, a few chapters later, we come upon this : ' " Lady-help wanted as housemaid in small family where cook and nurse are ladies." " We have just read the above advertisement, and hope that we may take it as an indication that the 'lady-help' system is not altogether a failure. When real 'ladies' become cooks and nurses, it will be a grand success. A real lady knows that she is just as much a lady when she sweeps a room as when she plays upon a piano, or sits on a sofa doing crewel-work." "LADY." 119 Without staying to comment upon the certainty that the above advertisement in an American paper would be an exaggerated form of the evil we deprecate, I remark that American ladies — ^bom and bred — do cook, nurse, and sweep rooms, usually in their own houses, occasionally in other people's, and for wages. But these are not the clamorers for the name of " lady" in contradistinction to that of " woman." She upon whom are laid " the ofl&ce and the duty signi- fied by the title," and who honorably fills one and discharges the other, is content to await others' award of the honor due her. Mouse or Rat? POPULAR anecdotes, like meteoric showers, have periodical returns. After forty years or so, we elderly people are surprised if the threadbare saying or joke is not returned upon us unchanged, or fitted out .with a spick-and-span application to suit the present day. Our fathers called them "old soldiers," our children brand them as " chestnuts." A story that has taken half a century to describe its orbit was told in my hearing the other day to illustrate a political Squabble. The Honorable Somebody has used it with telling effect in a cam- paign speech. We smiled and sighed, a generation ago, over the even-then ancient incident of the pattern married couple who were divorced because they could not agree whether the rodent that ran across the hearth was a mouse or a rat. After a fierce fight of tongues for two hours, hysterics attacked the wife, and manly compunction the husband. They made up, " And kissed again with tears." " How could we be so wicked ? " sobbed Madame. "And so irrational ? " chimed in Monsieur. "And all on account of an insignificant mouse ! " MOUSE OR RAT? 121 "A mouse ! A rat, you mean, my love ! " cried Madame, briskly, raising tlie face, wet with, penitent tears, from her husband's breast. " My darling ! how absurd ! It was a niouse, I tell you. It was nearer to me than to you, and I saw it distinctly." *' And I vow there was never so big a mouse made ! Haven't I eyes as well as you ? " Etcetera, etcetera, until the breach was incurable. The student of human nature, who has plied his trade for above a score of years, finds it hard to laugh at the satire on his kind, even at the first hearing. The keen little scalpel goes too near the bone, and mangles too many nerves. The stubborn determination to set people right, at whatever sacrifice of time, temper and cellular tissue. Has wrought its wicked will to a woful worst among the children of men since the day in wbich. our common motber insisted upon modifying her husband's opinion of tbe forbidden fruit. Then, if never since, it was the man who had intuition on his side, and the woman with whom rested the burden of argument and demonstration. Friends of years become deadly enemies, ' children forswear parents, and parents disinherit children ; political partisans cut one another's throats ; churches are riven to the comer-stone, and nation declares war against nation, from age to age, for no better reason than the inability of the individual man to allow his brother to be mistaken. Religion and her preferred handmaiden. Courtesy, pre- scribe no more arduous task for those who would obey both. " Mouse or rat ? " sets society by the ears. In the home — the woman's world — it does more mischief than bad temper and greediness. It is here that the mother's work of running. down and exterminating the little foxes that will, in their early maturity, waste the vineyard, begins. The course of treat- ment is indicated by the nursery-rule : " It is not polite to 122 HOUSE AND HOME. contradict." Contradiction — ^verbal — ^being the outcome of the moral inability aforesaid, tbis dogma strikes tbe evil directly on the head. The pity of it is that the rule so generally goes to the wall when the nursery doors are cleared. Shrewd Jacob Abbott in the unsurpassable " RoUo Book," tells of a foolish fellow who mistook the moon-rise for a fire, and was greatly exercised by the apprehension. While he stood gaping at the red sky, " a vulgar fellow " came riding by in his own carriage, and was accosted by the clown with the tidings of the conflagration. The vulgarian disputed the assertion. * " It is the moon, you fool ! Can't you see that ? " Argument and dogged reiteration ran high for awhile, and the owner of the equipage drove off, furious with the other's stupidity. Presently along came a gentleman driving a wagon. " lyook at the big fire over yonder ! " called the clown. " Ah ! " said the gentleman, pleasantly, "I hope they will be able to put it out," and drove on his way. The pith and power of a volume upon breeding, good sense, and forbearance with what cannot be cured, are condensed into the little episode so quaintly narrated. Inherent vulgarity in high places contradict and wrangles over an unpractical trifling difference of belief Inherent courtesy does not challenge another's assertion causelessly. To allow other people to remain in what we consider error, requires strength of mind, true dignity, and a fine sense of perspective. A sprightly girl once gave a graceful illustration of this point. In conversation with a conceited ignoramus, she chanced to say : — " I thought it was heP Her superior in sex instantly corrected her, in an undertone, to spare her feelings : MOUSE OR RAT? 123 " Beg pardon, you know ! But you meant to say, * I thought it was him? Make it a point of honor, you know, to call my friends' attention to lapses of this sort, you know. It's true kindness, don't you see ? No offence, I hope ? " The girl's face was a merry dance of dimple and gleam. " None, I assure you ! " she replied. On the contrary, I am your debtor." As she was — for a good story. The conscientious desire to amend the ways and notions of one's friends is the specious excuse offered by wiser people than our coxcomb for what is, when analyzed, the unlovely weakness we are trying to depict in this paper. What is it to me that my neighbor holds opinions diverse to mine with regard to pie-making and predestination? Or, to her that I prefer George Eliot to Miss Braddon? You may think your sister's new Moquette carpet a nuisance because the broom gathers fluff in double-handfuls during the first six months of wear, and she, that the pattern of your Axmin- ster is stiff or trite — and neither be the wiser (and worse) for the other's opinion. If you would have sisterly love continue, reserve on many points is a grace you do well to cultivate. " I must tell the dear girl that she hurries the accompaniment in that song," I heard a musician say. " It is one of my especial favorites, and her style of rendering it excruciates my nerves. It would be a real kindness to drop her a hint. Nobody but a true friend would do it." There was the unconscious offense of the performer. His ear was pained, his sense of fitness outraged. In like selfish regard for our own sentiments, tastes, whims and ways, is rooted nine-tenths of the officious setting-to-rights going on in homes and communities. The inability to look on, resignedly and indulgently, while others make blunders (according to our code) 124 HOUSE AND HOME. is seen, under tlie microscope of impartial scrutiny, to be egotism of a pronounced type. The man wlio is always right, and bent upon dragging his associates up to his level of observation, is, a pest always and everywhere. His conceit, obstinacy, and intolerance are the animus of his zeal. The blatant reformer is most restive under criticism of himself. It is the really profound and temperate thinker who does not resent being sometimes in the wrong. Why should we object to saying in effect ? "I am wiser now than I was at the time I made the statement you quote against me. I thought and said such a thing last year, or last month. I have learned better since." The mind and character of such an one will never be pruned, as were the peacock box-trees of a hundred and fifty years ago, along set and rigid lines. While he exists, he will be a living creature that grows and betters himself, not a mummy done up in cerements and drugs. The world over, the supreme duty of minding one's own busi- ness presupposes wholesome neglect of other people's. Violation of this principle begets gossip, scandal, slander — ^the three hang together as naturally in evil sequence as self, sin, and suffering. All enlarge and multiply with the using. It is the converse of philanthropy that impels us to try to pull straight a web that is not of our weaving, and was never intended for our wearing. Let the mistaken thinker cry " mouse " all day long unchallenged, even though you may have caught, killed and made an autopsy of the rat. In minor details of belief and shades of opinion, none of us is his brother's keeper. Considered as a domestic and social evil, this is outranked by few. From infancy, the boy disputes with yells and blows abstract tenets, knowing them to be trivial and impersonal in character. The per- MOUSE OR RAT? 125 centage of vital interests whicli are the theme of excited discussion, is pitiably small. Tlie heiglit of a monument in one of the ruined cities of Cen- tral America ; the color of an absent friend's hair or eyes ; the age of a reigning belle ; the number of a second cousin's grandmother's children ; the question of leaving the spoon in saucer or cup — are not concrete concerns to this generation, or the one following. Let other people — even our nearest of blood — ^be mistaken once in a great while ! The effort to accomplish this miracle of magna- nimity is recommended as wholesome discipline for the temper. In attempting it, you will learn enough of your hitherto unsuspected weaknesses to help you hold your tongue.the next time you hearken to a political heresy, or, what is to your way of thinking, an unten- able religious or literary dogma. Untenable to one of your mental and moral build, but the holder enjoys the possession thereof If he flaunts it in your eyes, shut them. If he springs his hypothesis like a watchman's rattle in your ears, get away from the din. By the unholy frenzy which urges you to rob him of his toy, or, failing this, to throttle the praise of it in his windpipe, you may be awakened to a sad and salutary truth that may quench the proselyting ardor within you, and make you willing to leave him unconverted. Household Worries. 5 HE round of a woman's daily life may be characterized as one part work, three-parts worry. Her husband's day-by-day labor is usually one-part worry, and three-parts work. The weight, strain and rub of her duties fall upon the heart and nerves. The heavy pull of his is upon muscle and mind. There are many reasons why this should be so, and why the disposition of life's work will always be thus apportioned. Men have strength — ^women, endurance. Men are courageous — women, patient. Let the fault lie where it may, it is undeniable that the machinery with which wives keep homes in running order, providing for phys- ical and ministering to moral needs, would not be tolerated by their spouses in their places of business for a day. The mechanic who does not understand his trade ; the indolent and inattentive clerk ; the book-keeper who cannot make out a correct balance-sheet — ^lose their several positions as a direct consequence of inefficiency. Bach man, on taking the place, comprehends this fully. The employer's " That's not my way of doing business, young man 1 " is trial, conviction and sentence, all in one formula. The »6 HOUSEHOLD WORRIES. 127 laws of commerce are inexorable, Tlie comfort of customers, the reputation of the firm, and the future income are periled when " a poor job " is turned out of the factory. " The boss's " standard of excellence may not be high in the estimation of his neighbors. That is his affair, and his the responsi- bility of obedience to orders. Wherever he sets his mark, his employees must work up to it, or quit ! Nobody disputes his right to audit accounts ; to visit every nook of his establishment whenever he pleases ; to order strict investigation and make merciless exposures should he decide that such are for the interest of the " concern." Over confidence in subordinates is reckoned by his knowing com- peers as lax management, and affects his status as a competent manager. So much for the masculine head of the house. He can take care of himself, and of a business which runs, much of the way, in worn and oiled grooves. In the thickest and darkest part of the " woods," he is guided, to some extent, by the " blaze " of precedent. Turn we, now, to the woman to whom is committed the duty of expending judiciously the money her husband makes. At the out- set of the practice of a profession (for which, by-the-by, she may have had little or no training), she is confronted by the terrific discovery that there are no stable general rules for the conduct of her household. Beyond the fixed and unsatisfactory points that meals must be prepared, and the house kept in some sort of order, the novice's nebulous notions of ways and means get little help toward steadiness and substance from oral or written laws. Veteran housekeepers are officious with wisdom learned from experience, and the tale of each differs from the rest. Of printed manuals, there is a superfluity. She who heeds all, or one-tenth of them, will be beaten prone and breathless. 128 HOUSE AND HOME. Those who have read the delightful sketch of " Mrs. Mtidlaw's Potato Pudding," will recall the despairing dismay with which the inquirer put up paper and pencil at the end of half an hour's boot- less catechism of the cook, and moved the latter to voiceful ire by remarking : " So you have no particular rule for making it ? " In such, calm desperation does our young wife make up her mind, early in the domestic novitiate, that everybody keeps house according to a rule of her own, each doing what seems good (or practicable) in her own eyes, under her husband's vine and fig-tree, with many to molest and make her afraid. She must formulate creed and by-laws for herself, and try the eflfect of the code upon untried and heterogenous material. The story of blunders, failures, mortifications, and distresses would wring the heart of narrator and auditor. She may have a full corps of nominal helpers at her back, who ought to be account- able for waste and wreck, but when the day of reckoning comes, she finds herself set in the forefront of the array, with nobody to share the blame with her. Men are often most unfair to us in this respect. The merchant does not consider himself obliged to stand by a clerk who comes to him well recommended, and watch him by the hour and day, to see that he gives good measure, and is civil and obliging. It is a rule of trade that the administration and execution are different branches of business. The Southern negroes have a saying which expresses the popular judgment on this head. They say of one who pays others to do work he is, after all, obliged, by reason of their incompetency, to perform himself, that " he keeps a dog, and then does his own barking." Yet the business man, with a full appreciation of what his " hands " are expected to achieve, recognizes but one culprit when the stairs are dusty in his dwelling, and the soup oversalted. It is not enough for him to be assured HOUSEHOLD WORRIES. 129 that his wife has given explicit orders in each department ; that the housemaid professes to understand her business, and the cook to be skilled in her craft — moreover, that the sensibilities of our domestic crews will not brook espionage and overstrict inquiry. The mistress who " follows up " her assistants zealously will shortly be spared further trouble in that line by having no helpers, in name or in deed, to supervise. Our domestic potentate reasons out none of these merciful con- clusions. " In his establishment, the work is properly done, or he knows the reason why. A man has a right to expect, when he has been slaving for his family all day, that some regard should be paid to his comfort at home." Happy she who is not familiar with this, and much more of the same sort of talk — who has not cowered like a slave under the knout, in the agony of self-upbraidings, joined to the stinging rebuke of him who feeds, clothes and lodges her, and who adjudges her to be a faithless steward. This is one of the ways by which our American women grow up to be a proverb for premature decrepi- tude. The husband looks on with impatient wonder as the pretty, lively girl sinks into the careworn wife — a condition hardly ameliorated by the increase of worldly wealth. The more conscientious she is, the more anxious she becomes rightly to administer the affairs of her viceroyalty. With the enlargement of her establishment, cares thicken. The more servants she employs, the more she has to oversee and regulate, the further the fulcrum and weight are removed from the power. The kitchens of many rich people are overrun by a predatory gang, that come and go like grasshoppers. While there are neither laws, nor a pretense of system in our domestic service, the best and wisest of us are not exempt from change and spoliation, American housewives are the most defenseless class of workers in the community. 130 HOUSE AND HOMB. Here let us pause, as on tlie brink of an uneasy ocean forever casting up mire and dirt. It is not tlie object of this chapter to propose remedial measures for the national evil. Thus far, pro- posed checks have been like the whips with which, at the silly- monarch's command, his creatures scourged the waves, and the fetters the sea tossed back to his feet. A thoughtful sketch written by Helen Bvertson -Smith, treats as a womanly defect a want of the sens« of proportion, in considering and handling a subject. Here lies the secret of the wear and tear that grind the housewife to dust-and-ashes before she has told out half her days. She can hardly overmagnify the office of wife and house-mother. She does, in attempting to fill it, exaggerate thorn- pricks into stabs, and dignify vexation into affliction. The surest way to spoil a subordinate, and to unsettle her ideas of proportion is to let her see that she has the power to wound her mistress and affect the happiness of the family she serves for hire. The ruler steps from her platform to a lower level than her subordinate, when she condescends to plead and supplicate, where the right to command is also a duty. Household-worries should never reach below the surface. In proportion to real sorrow, they are gnats and and mosquitoes. Nobody ever died frord their bite. The wife's inner life, and the steady equipoise of the mother, are too high in value to be sacrificed to ignoble things. " The whole world is not worth an oath ! " said the finest prince of the Stuart name, when one of his courtiers said of a misadven- ture which befell the royal hunting-party — " Your father, — Prince Henry, — would, were he in your place, swear that no man could stand it ! " The whole world of minute annoyances that beset our pains- taking housekeeper in the effort to bring the work of hirelings up to her standard of faithful service, is not worth a tear — hardly a HOUSEHOI.D WORRIES. 131 sigh. The philosophic manager, whose sense of proportion and fit- ness is above the average of her sex, takes up ashes (figuratively) with a long-handled fire-shovel. Our anxious and troubled (" cum- bered " in the original) Martha goes down upon her knees on the hearth, and plunges her tender hands into the heap. The saddest, and one of the most significant things I ever saw, was a woman in an insane asylum, who did nothing all day long but wash and polish one window-pane. Nothing diverted her from the task. With puckered forehead and folded lips, her anxious eyes set on the glass, she breathed upon it, scrubbed it with her apron, and went over and over each inch of the shining surface until the heart of the beholder ached wearily. She had been doing that one thing, and nothing else, for four years. Since then, she has stood with me as the type of thousands whose vision is narrowing hourly through absorption in work, which is not degrading in itself — which is excellent in its time, and respectable in its place — ^but was never meant to fill the horizon of any human being's mental or spiritual sight. If " Little things, on little wings, Bear little souls to heaven," a multitude of little things, whose wings have been dropped or nib- bled away, may swarm like ants upon the tortured soul, and drag it into the earth. ^^ ' '^■^^^^^■^^Bm?^ 1 Visited. Is hospitality a duty ? Let us pull to pieces this one of the dear old " taken-for-granteds," and examine it, section by section. Holy Writ so abounds with commendation and re-commenda- tion of it, that we must put the canon, with numberless lesser authorities, into the background, and turn our eyes steadfastly from beholding them while reconstructing our basis. Thus stands our syllogism : i. A man's most valuable earthly possession is his Home — the term including the satisfaction he has in the enjoyment of the comforts, pleasures, and sweet, wholesome affections which make up domestic life. 2. The obligation to love his neighbor as himself, to do good, and to communicate of what has been freely given to him, is second only to the duty of love to Cod. The conclusion is foregone. " Use hospitality without grudging," wrote the fisherman Apos- tle, mindful, it may be, of certain unrecorded passages in his itiner- ant ministry. The revisers have weakened the injunction in rendering the last word, " unmurmuring." The heart-giving, frank and free, makes the ungracious dole of hand and lip impossible. The fact has ugly significance that, with the increase of beauty and luxury in our homes, the practice of the generous virtue has declined into a Crusoeish disposition to draw in our doorsteps after us when VISITED. 133 •we enter our abodes. The latch-string that always hung on the outside has been superseded by spring-bolt and patent key. This is not pessimistic platitude. The era of machinery throws adjustable bands about hearts, reels off, marks and delivers sympathies and courtesies to order, each package bearing the stamp, " R. S. V. P." Should payment be withheld, it is understood that no more goods will be delivered to that address. We " receive " and " entertain " on a debit and credit system ; invite our friends to accept our hospitality because it is expected of us, less than because we want to see them, or they would like to meet us. Sometimes this is sheer selfishness ; oftener, indolent indiffer- ence ; oftenest, because our lives are so full and fast that the cozy nooks once sacred to social intercourse are done away with. This is as it should be, if the chief end of man be to make himself comfort- able. The nobler living, rounded into perfection, grows to be thus spending and being spent for others. From this platform, hospitality becomes both duty and privilege. I cannot aflford, in justice to myself, not to ask my friends to my house, and make them happy while there. The general principle cannot be contro- verted. How and when to do these things is a question to be answered differently in various latitudes, but a few rules hold good everywhere. To begin with, dismiss as a silly fallacy, however embrowned it may be with age, the idea of treating a visitor " quite as one of the family." As the countryman said when offered bread- and-butter at a Delmonico lunch, — they " can get tkai at home." Abroad, they look for a change of diet. When a young girl, and one of a gay party at an old Virginia country house, I was invited to pass some days at another a few miles away. The invitation was given in person by the planter and his wife, and included two other girls, visitors with myself at the hospitable mansion. 134 HOUSE AND HOMH. " Come and spend a week — two weeks — a month, if you can ! " we were bidden. " The longer you stay the happier we shall be. We never make strangers of our friends, but consider them a part of the family." Our engagements allowed us to promise but three days, and with this understanding, we went at the appointed time. The chatelaine met us at the door, was " delighted to see " us, directed a maid to show us up to our rooms, and told us to " feel entirely at home." We wished ourselves there, in very truth, fifty times before nightfall. Our hostess and her three daughters sat on the vine-shaded piazza with their needle-work, and, after we had found chairs for ourselves, chatted gayly together, of people we did not know, and places we had never heard of, but chiefly of personal and family afifairs. They were vivacious, sometimes witty, but lacking the key, we were more bored than amused by their persiflage. A couple of children varied the performances by rush- ing against us in their romps, tumbling over our feet and wiping fruit-stained fingers on our gowns. At meals, which were abundant and elegant, we were served in order of age, the mother and two elder daughters before us, and the table-talk ran on brightly without reference, near or remote, to the new-comers. The after- dinner siesta of the whole party was alluded to, incidentally, as a household habit before we were left to find our way to our chambers, and we saw nothing more of our entertainers until supper time. The gardens were fine, and we might ramble in them if we. chose, but the recreation was not suggested any more than the noble library was opened to us as a help against ennui. One of the daughters, accompanied by a groom, went to ride in the late after- noon ; the father took a second to drive early in the next morning, without apology to those who were left behind. All three practiced their music, which was excellent- for two hours at a time. Two of VISITED. 137 ttem sang and played together well, and spent most of the evening at the piano, leaving us free to talk and listen at our pleasure, while their mother knitted placidly on one side of the center-table, the third daughter playing chess with her father on the other. It was an amiable, affectionate home-group ; as happy in and among themselves as good health and spirits and easy circumstances could make them. They took no more notice of us in our character as guests than if we had been bodiless spirits, instead of pleasure- loving girls, who had left a merry circle in which we were made much of, for this nondescript existence. So lost and homesick were we that, on the morning of the second day, we watched for the passing of the country postman, and privily despatched a note to the mother of one of the trio, begging her to contrive an excuse for sending for us that evening. This she man- aged so cleverly that not one of the free-and-easy party suspected why our visit was abridged, or that we had an irrational prejudice against being made an (unconsidered) part of the family. Since then, I have never believed people who tell me that they " do not like to be made company of" Reason enjoins that one should fly his own colors, in and out of port. Being an integral part of one household, he can enter no other except as a guest, nor would he if he could. | It follows, as a necessity, if you would treat your visitors as such, that you must know when they are coming, and the length of their stay, in order to prepare a fitting welcome. The English define both these points in giving invitations, thereby sparing the guests needless perplexity. If you say explicitly, *' Can you come to us on Monday, the i8th of this month, and remain until Friday of the same week? " your friend is sure, that for the specified period, she occuipies her own place, and not that of some one else who cannot come until she has gone, while you can put your domestic affairs 138 HOUSB AND HOME. into such a shape that you can thoroughly enjoy intercourse with her. The fashion of " At Home " days is gaining favor rapidly with those who once condemned it as formal and subversive of genuine friendliness. - The woman who engraves the name of a certain day, afternoon or evening, on her visiting cards as the time when she is ready and glad to receive calls, says, in effect, that she appreciates the desire of her acquaintances to see her, and sets too high a value on their time and hers to risk the loss of a visit. She furthermore marks her recognition of the duty of hospitality by resigning a stated portion of the week to the performance of the^ grateful task. Her visitors are never doubtful as to the chances of inconveniencing her, or of finding her within doors. She belongs, by choice, on that day, to all who will come, and, being prepared to receive them, will be disappointed if they stay away. Any one, except a very intimate friend, is guilty, however unwittingly, of impertinence in present- ing himself at any other season, unless by especial permission. People who have never taken the pains to think twice of this view of the subject, have a way of saying, " Let me call some time when I can see more of you — have you all to myself ; I hate reception days." One must be very sure of his own attractions who thus proposes, uninvited, to absorb the entire attention, for even an hour, of an always busy and useful mistress of a family. If she, with fullest knowledge of her occupations and desires, chooses to appoint the season for receiving the outer world, her wishes will be respected by well-bred acquaintances. It argues presumption and fatuous self-conceit for one to assume that he can never be unwelcome. The opposite extreme of treating a guest with too little ceremony, is to burden him with attention. Some kindly folk would seem to imagine that their friende part with individuality as soon" as the shadow of the hospitable roof envelops them. The determina- VISITED. 139 tion to amuse, to feed, to fill them, body and mind, witli entertain- ment during every hour of their sojourn is obvious at every turn. To insist that lie whom you delight to honor shall eat twice as much as he wants, and does not know what he prefers to take on his plate ; should see things he cares nothing for ; drive when he would rather walk ; sail, when he abhors aquatic sports from the depths of an agonized stomach ; that he shall be diverted when he longs to be alone with his own thoughts for one precious hour of the fourteen that make up his waking day — is benevolent torture. Study your friend's likes and proclivities, addressing your ingenuity to the attempt to make him happy in his own way, instead of forcing him to feign satisfaction with yours. It is quite as possible to bore him by giving him a surfeit of your society as by allowing him to seek amusement in reading, or a solitary ramble in the direction chosen by himself. If he comes to you tired, let him rest. Should he be loquacious, listen while he has his say. So far from considering you stupid because you sit by, attentive and mute, while he turns his heart and brain inside out, he will be likely to commend you as the prince of conversationalists. The definition of a bore, " One who talks so much of hims^i that he gives you no chance to talk of yourse\£" is one of the best things that has been said in this century. See to it that you are the bored, rather than the bore, when the relations are those of host and visitor. It is so impolite to discuss persons and topics in the presence of those to whom these are unfamiliar, that one marvels to hear it done every day by people who should know so much better. If the name of a stranger, or reference to an incident or an event of which your guest is ignorant, be introduced in the course of conversation, address a word of apology or explanation to him, and speedily turn the talk to what would interest him more. I40 HOUSE AND HOME. The ability to make your liome tlie favorite resort of tlie people you most desire to attract, is a thing to be coveted. It is no mean ambition to wish to have the knack, talent, genius, — sometimes it is all three, — of "entertaining " well. The road to success here is short and straight ; it is forgetfulness of self in the intent and effort to please and interest those who have come to be pleased and interested. This is what makes certain houses and hosts " delightful " to all classes and conditions of visitors. The want of it may result in impressing the invited with your superiority to themselves in posi- tion, knowlege or riches, but, as a rule, even toadies of an humble mind and one's most affectionate friends do not like to be put at a disadvantage. There are sensible people in civilized communities who compre- hend that a woman who is worth visiting may have stated work to do that cannot be entirely laid aside for weeks, or days, for the delight of a favorite guest's companionship. .The visitor who cannot see this is an absorbent of the spongiest type. Make your invitations to her as few as is compatible with policy. While giving your friends graciously of your best, avoid the appearance of " putting yourself out " to accomplish this end. Let the flow of hospitality be that of the mountain spring, not the forcing pump. " The first course was roasted hostess," said a wicked satirist of a dinner party. Your guests will not easily forgive themselves if they remark so entire a change in your every- day manner of living as argues an extraordinary press and strain upon yourself and helpers. However skillful may be your endeavor to " bring up the style " of your establishment to the level of one which has an underpinning of five times your income, you cannot achieve a counterfeit that will deceive others. Strike the true key in the beginning, and do not change it. 'B& yourself, and keep what belongs to, and is of you, in just harmony. Bear in mind that VISITED. 141 Recreation, Repose, Refreshment, are the Blessed three that should attend upon the stranger or acquaintance within your gates. The hospitality that conies short of this is a misnomer. Visitor. CEXICOGRAPHERS put down as obsolete—" Hospitate ; to be tbe recipient of bospitality." Tbey may be right in assuming that we do not need the word. We surely want something to express the active- passive receptive condition of the benefits and graces of hospitality. The term itself has been so far estranged from the root, hospes, a guest, as to relieve the said recipient of all responsibility, and to double the burdens of the host. As the relations of the two are popularly regarded, the visitor is not even the crust of the loaf, binding it into form and comeliness, yet part and parcel of the generous whole. He is more like the tasteless shell from which we sip Roman ^unch and ices — ^taking nothing from, and giving nothing to what it holds. It is a common saying that few people know how to entertain. Coronachs are chanted over the tender graces of the dead virtue of hospitality ; tomes written upon the possibilities of resuscitation. A sure evidence of the vitality of the principle in the human mind and heart is offered in the truth that few sighs and little ink are expended in recrimination. Yet the children in the market-place complained — " We have piped into you, and ye have not danced." If we would have successful hosts, we must have guests who appreciate, and do their duty as seconds to the principals in the VISITOR. 143 duet. Hospitality as ^.pas seul must always be a failure. It comes to pass, by the curious reversal of positions we deprecate, that a bidden guest often accepts an invitation witb the mien of one who grants a boon. If the hospitable request be made verbally, he hesi- tates, demurs, " is not quite sure that he can manage it," and having thus deprived the act of the little graciousness it might possess when the question is of the receipt, not the bestowal of a favor, finally agrees to " come if he can." You, if the host, or hostess of the patronizing visitor, know from this beginning, what will be his deportment while he remains under your roof-tree, eats and drinks of your best, and suflFers you to amuse him. He is your master and critic ; if he be amiable, your defence against yourself in judgment of deficiencies that might incommode His Royal Littleness. I have had such an one apolo- gize for my apple-sauce, and condone my coffee, when I had not hinted at a fault in either. Aware though you may be, that he is your inferior in everything, including politeness, duty compels you to submit to his condescension, to let pass, unchallenged, arrogance, boorishness, real insolence, while he is sheltered by the aegis of Guesthood. « The reason for this is plain. The number of well-bred people in every community is in humiliating disproportion to that of the under-bred. You have ministered to the vanity of a small-souled or ignorant being, who, by an odd system of inflation known to his kind, is lifted by the honor done him above those from whom it came. " Really, now," said the ingeniously-stupid scion of a wealthy house to a lady who invited him to a party, " I have been out late so many nights lately that I am awfully tired, you know. Can't you let me off this once ? " 144 HOUSB AND HOME. " With pleasure, now and always," was the amused rejoinder. The man whose heart, or head, or both, do not tell him that your desire to see him within your doors, and not his consent to be there, is the compliment paid by one person to another, can never " hospitate " with you in the subtler sense of the obsolete verb. It carries with it an implication of reciprocity which fine spirits invariably recognize. Receive, as a visitor elect, the proposition of your acquaintance that you shall come to his home, for what it is — an act of good-will, and flattery of the most delicate kind. So far from presuming upon it, you should strive to justify his good opinion of you by modest, genial behavior that will be a tacit acknowledgment of obligation. Make him proud, not ashamed of his friend. The truest breeding is that which teaches the sojourner for an hour, a day, or month, beneath another's roof, to fit cozily into the family groove. Life should run more smoothly for the household because you are with them, whereas, in too many instances, the train is shunted jarringly upon another track, and nothing seems home-like until the disturb- ing influence is withdrawn. One of the best men I ever knew, a gentle-hearted, large-souled Christian scholar, contrived to make himself so obnoxious as a visitor in other men's houses, that a hint of his coming threw hosts, servants and children into a panic. He would have stepped aside into a puddle to spare the life of an angle-worm, but his mild request that a cup of strong, freshly-made cofiee might be sent to his bed- room at six o'clock every morning, obliged mistress or cook to rise in the raw winter dawn to prepare it. At breakfast, he took (or was miserable) a special brand of chocolate, which was not procurable in country places ; he could eat no bread or mufl&ns that were com- pounded with eggs, and never touched pork, veal or fish. Dinner, during his stay, was served by request at five, instead of at six, the VISITOR. 147 usual hour. A bottle of Rhine wine was set at his plate ; certain vege- tables were indispensable to his comfort, and others, so disagreeable to sight and smell that they were tabooed entirely. A lunch of sponge- cake (home-made) and brandied fruit furnished a night-cap, without which sleep was impossible. The bedstead was turned so that the earliest morning rays might not strike upon his eyes, and was, furthermore, propped on two hassocks into an inclined plane, to encourage the flow of blood toward the extremities. An excellent divine, portly and rubicund, carries his daily health-bread in his valise wherever he goes. On one occasion, it was left accidentally on the sideboard, and sliced by an innocent ser- vant for general use at supper time. The owner identified it at a glance, and with great presence of mind, called the host's attention to the blunder. With the mien of an injured saint, he eyed in speechless emotion the servant who collected the desecrated frag- ments in a plate, and set it beside him. He next inquired what kind of tea was on the tray, and, on being told, shook his head mournfully, and supped on bread and water. " You perceive. Madam," he moralized, when the uncomfortable party arose from their chairs, " If I had not brought my bread, I must have starved P Both of these "men were, to all appearance, in robust health. Both should have remained at home, or, if compelled to go from place to place, should have taken themselves and load of idiosyncra- cies to a hotel, where they could pay in dollars and cents for the luxury of pancreatic caprice. ^ Dyspeptics must live ? Resisting the temptation to plagiarize Talleyrand's reply to the lampooner who offered the same plea — '■'■ Je ne vois pas la necessite'''' — let me urge the broader principle of greatest good to the greatest number. If there is nothing fit for you, as an invalid, to eat on your host's menu^ take the alternative of TRUE COURTESY. VISITOR. 151 houseliold. It is underbred and selfish to keep breakfast waiting, because you have overslept yourself, or dinner and tea, while you have prolonged a drive or a walk unseasonably. If a meal is well cooked, it is injured by standing beyond the proper time of serving, and if your host's time is worth anything, you are dishonest when you waste it. It is quite as selfish in want of tactful regard for other's feelings, if less glaringly inconvenient, to present yourself below-stairs long before the stated breakfast hour. You may not like to sit in your bed-chamber ; the parlors may be in perfect order for your occupancy, or the library tempt you to snatqh a quiet hour for reading, but she is an exceptionally even-tempered hostess who does not flush uneasily at finding that you came down by the time the servants opened the house, and have made yourself at home in the living-rooms ever since. The inference is that your sleeping- room was uncomfortable, or that she is indolently unmindful of your breakfastless state. I have an anguished recollection of a long visit paid to my family by an accomplished gentleman whose every intention was purely humane, yet who descended to the parlor each morning at an hour so barbarously early that he had to light the gas to see the piano-keys, on which he strummed until breakfast was ready. There is a savage consolation in the knowledge that, if he is distin- guishing himself in the heavenly mansions as a player upon instru- ments, there is no mother with a teething baby and a headache, in the room overhead. The habits of your entertainers and such incidents of your visits as are less agreeable than you could desire or might expect, ought to be sacred from criticism while you are with them, and afterward. You are visitor, not monitor. Your mission is to please, not to reform abuses. Gossip founded on the report of" one 152 HOUSE AND HOME. who ouglit to know, having been a gnest of the family for weeks at a time," is so far beneath contempt that I may well be ashamed to name it as a possible outrage upon hospitality. Be explicit and courteous in answering invitations, whether you accept or decline. State at what time you will make your appearance at your friend's house, and how "long you will stay. If prevented by unforeseen occurrences from fulfilling an engagement, send off your excuses and regrets instantly, that the failure may be nothing more than a disappointment. It is actual unkindness to suffer useless pre- parations to be made for receiving you and administering to your welfare. If your hostess-expectant knows your tastes, and endeav- ors to gratify them, there will be an individuality in her arrange- ments that would suit no substituted guest so well as the one for whom they were primarily intended. As a final suggestion, accept the caution not to over-praise the appointments of the establishment that widens doors and hearts to take you in. If your own home is grander, your means of enter- tainment in excess of your host's, the laudation smacks too strongly of patronage to agree with sensitive spirits. If your house be a cottage by comparison with your frend's mansion, the anxiety to admire all that pertains to the latter has a savor of sycophancy. Adapt yourself naturally, without question or comment, to the temporary socket in which you are placed. Do not — I entreat you by the memory of personal experiences that galled at the time like an ill-fitting shoe, and stung like sand- burrs — exert yourself to be agreeable. The. perfection of breeding is to make your entertainers believe that the illumination you bring into their home is the reflection of the light shed by their own successful hospitality. With Our Girls. 5 HIS sentence lies uppermost in an open letter npon my table : " Our daughter is in lier eighteenth year. She has been delicate until within a few months, but seems at present quite strong. Her ill-health has interfered seriously with her studies. Of course, at her age, it is impossible to send her to school. Her manifest destiny is to marry early, and make some man a capital wife and housekeeper." A petted, sickly, ignorant child, who has not resolution enough at seventeen, to repair defects in her scholastic training — good for nothing but marriage ! This is the translation of the above. " Heaven help the men, to-night ! " says Lady Betty, smirking at her image in the mirror, be"dight for the evening foray. I take up the words solemnly and sadly. Heaven help the men and the nation, when of such material, and of stuff even more flimsy, are to be made the wives of the rising race — the mothers of the next generation ! The proposition that she who is best able to live alone, to con- trol herself and mold circumstances to work together for her good, is also — other things being equal — best fitted for happy, beneficent wifehood, appears simple enough to be grasped by the average intellect. It is my conviction, founded upon years of critical observation, that she who thinks of love as the business of girl-life, 153 154 HOUSE AND HOME. and of marriage as its aim and end ; whose intercourse witli tlie other sex is colored by these views and expectations, is the last woman any rational man should wed. I join to this the belief that the prevalence of this habit of thought and purpose debases the standard of both womanhood and manhood in our country. From honest intolerance with it are born the eccentricities in the language and conduct of many pure, noble women stigmatized as " strong-minded," for the lack of more apt classification. " I am aweer, my dear boy," says Magwitch to Pip, in " Great Expectations," " that on that occasion I was low ! " The coarse triumph of a vulgar nature merited the epithet less decidedly than does the attitude our girls and boys, our young men and young women, occupy with respect to one another. Every sportsman knows that overmuch and untimely hunting makes game shy and wild. " Who wants to make game of them ! " says Our Girl with spirit. " Look now at me — personally and individually — myself! I am not a husband-hunter ; I do not care to get married for ages ! But I do like to converse with sensible men, and to have a good time with the boys. It may sound frivolous, but I relish innocent fun and frolics. Sleighing and lawn-tennis, and boating- parties, and the like. If I smile twice at the same man, he thinks I want to ' catch ' him ! The code of the parlor is no higher in this respect than that of the kitchen. Bridget does not ' belave in followers without they mane business.' " Accepting this very personal "Myself" as the mouthpiece of a class who have a right to a hearing, I say. First : No amount of misconception of your motives alters the truth that our social, as well as our domestic atmosphere is what women make it. And ifour best women give over the attempt to refine and reform men, they will become Turks^nd Yahoos. Next: Respect yourself — body and spirit. There is untold might of influence in the fearless purity of WITH OUR GIRLS. 157 a nature that, having no affinity for evil, passes it unconsciously by. Smile as brightly as you please ; enjoy sensible talks and harmless fun, and be as happy with the boys as the Lord meant you and them to be together. But, from first to last, never forget that your duty to them and to yourself demands that both shall be better for the association. If man's work is like that of the more majestic forces • of nature — tides and glaciers and stormy wind fulfilling His word — yours is the gradual, but potent ministry of dews and showers and sunlight. Regard and regulate the drift of little things, the thistle-down of thought and action. Go to your needle and knitting-work for lessons in the slow accretion of influence and result; the disasters of unfastened threads, and stitches dropped and overlooked. For example : The man who presumes so far upon his privileges as a frequent visitor, as to cross your threshold with his hat upon his head, or a cigar in his mouth ; who lounges at half-length upon the sofa, or helps himself to an easy chair when the ladies present are less luxuriously seated ; who sits, unmoved, at your grandmother's entrance, and sees you or any other woman tug at refractory blind or window, or move a heavy piece of furniture ; who drops, unauthorized, the " Miss " from your name ; who is fond of holding and pressing your hand, or seizing you by waist or arm in what then ceases to be innocent frolic — may become a gentleman through your tactful discipline. He may now, possibly, know n6 better. - " I wish he would not mean quite so well, and do a little better ! " said a young lady to me, once. A highly respectable youth, seeing, in the course of a call upon her, that his sock had slipped down, coolly laid his foot upon a chair, pulled up his trouser-leg, readjusted the offending garment, composed his pantaloon, and put down his foot, without intermitting bis talk. 158 HOUSE AND HOME. " He is the whole support of, a widowed mother, my dear," pleaded I, faintly. "Whatever his solecisms in demeanor, he always means well." Upon which succeeded her plaintive retort. In truth, the marvel is that the majority of our young men are so well behaved, when we remember the herding of schools, colleges, stores and business ofl&ces, and how few of them remain under the paternal roof after the age of fourteen. If you girls do not come to their help in a resolute, sisterly spirit, not only in the polishing of the shell, but in the elevation of the inner man, the race of gentlemen must diminish direfuUy. There are peculiar elements of strength and protection on one side, confidingness on the other, and a certain romantic fervor of attachment in the friendship — pure and simple — ^between a man and a woman, that cannot, from the very- nature of things, enter into the intimacy of one girl with another, or into the sturdier comradeship of men. Human nature knows none sweeter and more stanch. Believing, as I do, in the value and happiness of such attachments, I am loath that the young people I love should be denied the benefits of the same. Is there no power of common sense and will that can give us, instead of prudery and coyness, of suspicion, coquetry, manceuvers, gossip, heart-burnings, unworthy triumphs, worn and callous and bruised affections— the free, frank association, that meditates and distrusts no snare — intercourse that shall unseal springs of healing and refreshment to us, as to our brothers ? Believe me, dear girls, our Father has made no grander creature than an upright, large-souled, tender-hearted man. It is hard to get at the knowledge and understanding of his real nature under the present constitution of society. Still, the genus is so worthy of study and esteem, that you do well to strive by the exercise of what is best and highest in yourselves, to develop the latent germs of true manliness in even unlikely "boys." There may be an WITH OUR GIRLS. 159 imprisoned angel in the block. But, — remember, public opinion condemns strongly and justly, speculation for private enricbment on tbe part of missionaries ! Our Voices. 30ME years ago it was my prideful pleasure to chaperone a party of American girls through the exhumed city of Pom- peii. The traveling group of six comprised two Southern women, one Western, two from the Middle States, and a sixth from New England, All were highly educated, refined, sprightly, and keenly appreciative of the privileges of the Grand Tour. Five out of the six spoke French, and four, Italian so well as to call forth the commendation of our guide. " It was seldom," he went on to say, " that . Americans were fluent in that tongue, although many had sufficient command of French to make their way on the Continent." " How do you know that we are Americans ? " asked a fine type of our best class of girls. " Why not English ? " She had put the same question to a boatman on Lake Como, and received for reply that " The English have red faces, the Americans white." The-Pompeiian guide was less complimentary. " The English speak from the chest," he said, illustrating his meaning by driving his rich baritone into the depths of his lungs ; " the Americans, with the nose," ifO OUR VOICES. i6i Lest we might not catcli his meaning he translated his Italian into Roman-French : " Par le nez I Comprenez-vous ? Comme c'a ?^' To make snre of our not losing the point, he grasped a swarthy, aquiline member between thumb and forefinger, and reiterated the clause sonorously. The girls disclaimed the imputation as indignantly as I after- ward heard an eminent American clergyman, resident on the Con- tinent, repel a criticism passed upon himself by an English parish- ioner. " She told a friend of mine that she would enjoy my sermons more if I had not the ' national nasal twang ! ' — a thing of which I was never accused before ! " It was, I think. Bayard Taylor, who characterized the objection- able habit herein mentioned as the " national catarrh." Nobody is conscious of his own sins in this regard. One of the most eloquent of Southern pulpit orators once con- vulsed a company by asserting, with the full explosive might of a prominent olfactory organ, that he " could detect a Yankee any- where, and in whatever disguise. They all speak through the nose, a trick from which the Southerner is entirely free." I shall never lose the recollection of the luxury of hearkening to the clear, exquisitely modulated voice of a celebrated statesman and scholar, nor of the shock which succeeded his — " Allow me to introduce my young kinsman " — a graduate of two American and one foreign university, whose provincial " twang " was that of the typical Down-Easter. Evidently, domestic association, the training of the schools, and transatlantic travel are an ineffectual corrective combination in some instances. i62 HOUSE AND HOME. We are so used to tlie " national catarrh. " that we have ceased to notice it, except in the more exaggerated forms. The most serious side of the question is suggested by those who insist that — setting aside ridicule and disclaim — ^it is the inevitable conse^ quence of the American climate. I have heard this view of the subject ably sustained in a convocation of New England physicians ; a prominent New York citizen assured me (through his nose), " There is not a resident of New York or Brooklyn who is not a sufferer from catarrh in some form." It may be added that color is lent to this hypothesis by the lessening prevalence of nasal speech as one goes Southward. It is bad enough everywhere in these United States, but the coast lands, subject to freezing fogs, and humid northern valleys between jnountains where the snow lies long, carry off" the evil palm. So many and such great blessings have come to us with our country and climate, that we may bear this adjunct with meek fortitude, as we strive to endure other providential dispensations. If, at the same time, it is possible, by the introduction of new elocutionary methods into nursery and school, to lift the reproach from us, the consideration of curative measures is better worth legislative interference than civil service and sanatory reforms. Another characteristic of the national manner of speech has, to our shame be it said, application rather to the gentler, than the ruder sex. Illiterate men may, and do, as a rule, add loudness to nasality of tone. Plowmen talk to each other over intervening furrows in strident monotone. The artisan, whose invention of a trunk-rivet or faucet-stop has set his educated children in " our best society," never modulates — or thinks it expedient to attempt the feat — the harshly sustained demi-shout that used to drown the clatter of machinery. OUR VOICES. 163 Clergymen, more than any other class of educated men, are apt, in private life, to raise their voices above the subdued pitch of well- bred conversation. This is especially true of popular preachers. The hortatory would seem to be their natural and only mode of articulate communication with their kind. Still, most men who were passably well brought up, and fairly schooled, and whose social status is good, do not habitually transgress the laws of good taste in the pitch and volume of tone. They may shriek upon the Gold Exchange, and thunder upon the hustings. At dinner and evening parties they have their lungs decorously in hand. Miss Alcott touches the blemish with a firm hand in her des- cription in "Little Women" of the Vevay party, where were collected, among the guests, "a goodly number of sweet-faced, shrill-voiced American girls." The American " Lear " may emphasize sorrowfully the old king's praises of the voice " that was ever soft and low." " My girls keep my foot on the soft pedal all the time," said the fond mother of four. " Their spirits make them forgetful of the laws of proportion." Our girls behave better, in most respects, than any others upon the civilized globe. They are prettier than English women, dress better than French women, are better read than German women, and out-scream them all. To a sensitive ear, the jargoning of a women's lunch or afternoon tea is simply intolerable. It is not only that the example of loud speech is contagious, but if one would be heard, her voice must be raised to overbear the surround- ing Babel. Dumbness is the alternative. *The round of after- noon receptions and high teas during the fashionable season — entertainments where the proportion of men is comparatively small — is excruciating or diverting, as nerves are delicate or tough. x64 HOUSE AND HOME. " The peacocks' gala-day ! " muttered a deep voice in my ear, as we entered tlie hall of a house presided over by a charming, high- bred hostess, and the tumult of shrieks and laughter bespoke her " at home " day. The phrase invariably returns to me in similar scenes. It is self-evident that, if all would moderate, as well as modulate their tones, everybody would be heard as easily as when all vociferate ; that if nobody laughs loudly, the hum of revelry will not be riotous. But, for all of practical eflFect the aphorism exerts, it might as well never be known. Is it because our American girl " goes out " so much, and so learns to adjust her voice to the requirements of " the peacocks' gala-days," that she acquires the habit of loud, dissonant speech in the domestic circle, in otherwise quiet drawing-rooms, and — least pardonable of all — in places of public resort ? She spoils our enjoy- ment, and makes us ashamed for her in picture-galleries, by her high, thin chatter of nothing in general and herself in particular ; flirts audibly between opera acts and concert numbers ; entertains the occupants of hotel parlors with full particulars of the doings of " our set," and discusses the last bit of gossip across the aisle of a street-car. Chancing, one day, to get a table at Delmonico's near that at which sat a stately chaperone and four pretty, elegantly dressed girls, I learned more of personal biography and family history than I could write down in an hour. Yet all of the party were evidently people in fashionable, and, presumably, refined society. They com- ported themselves courteously toward each other, and expressed their meaning in well-chosen terms, but as if they had been separated by half the width of the great room. It may be that, as I once heard a daughter answer her mother's caution " not to speak so loudly " in like circumstances, our girl is OUR VOICES. 165 " not sa3diig anything to be ashamed of." To her honor be it said that she seldom does, in public or private. Daisy' Miller was as innocent as she was indiscreet. It is the glory of the American woman, and of our land, that sinless liberty of speech and action on her part are never challenged uncharitably. But rectitude of char- acter and just taste should so interpenetrate her being as to compel their outward manifestation. A sensible thing, quietly uttered, carries conviction as certainly as when shrilled jerkily. A bon mot is as brilliant, distinctly and softly spoken, as when hurled like a catapult at an interlocutor. Animation of manner and vivacity of speech are entirely cofiipatible with gentleness. In the next chapter I shall have something to say as to our manner of pronouncing and putting our words together. I deal now merely with the quality and key of the voice. Like a great many other personal characteristics, it is largely a matter of heredity. Once in a while, as one finds a strayed garden flower on a common, we hear the " soft and low " voice among unmistakably vulgar people. Not nearly so often, however, as we find metallic ring, thick gutturals, or a viragoish edge in the tones of an educated woman, that betray the plebeian strain of her forbears. The mother's intonations descend almost surely to her daughters ; the reed-like pipings of the son deepen into the father's cadences. Home-training, then, has most to do with this much-neglected branch of education. The work should begin long before the child goes into the paid teacher's hands. The. use of the "soft pedal" and the legato movement in our home-harmonies is neglected to our national hurt. These are not pleasant things to say, or to hear. Vanity in our individual and social ways is as deep-seated in us as patriotic pride. I have but one apology to submit for plain talk which may seem i66 HOUSE AND HOME. gratuitously ungracious — an excuse offered in the form of a time- battered anecdote. John Sylvester bantered Ben Jonson to a rhyming-match, and led off with : " I, John Sylvester, Kissed your sister ? " Rare Ben took his turn thus : " I, Ben Jonson, Kissed your wife.'' " That's no rhyme," quoth John. " No ? " drawled Ben. " But it is true 1" mt ^ff^ How We Speak. IT ought to be as easy to speak correctly as to wound our mother tongue. So says Common Sense. It must be easier to speak incorrectly than to pay decent observance to the simplest rules of English grammar. So says sad Experience. Aphorism No. i is not intended to apply to the confessedly and altogether illiterate, who go astray as soon as they are born, speak- ing double negatives. When the man who shovels in your winter's supply of coal, inquires, " If you haint got no more jobs for him, jes' now ? " you scarcely remark the form of the query. Were it couched in simpler and irreproachable syntax, you would catch the unexpected sound, and be surprised thereby into the conclusion that the coal-heaver " had seen better days." " Who is it ? " asked I of the maid who brought me word that " some one wished to see me on business." " She didn't give me no name, mem. She is dressed plain, but she speaks like a real lady." The caller was a broken-down teacher with a subscription-paper, asking funds to pay her entrance fee to the Home for Indigent Gentlewomen. Her shabby mourning and homely face had not 167 i68 HOUSE AND HOME. deceived the quick-eared Milesian, whose English was no better and no worse than that of her congeners. She recognized " the lady " by her tongue. I introduced my escort, on a trip up the North River, tq a mag- nificent woman, with whom he found me in converse on the deck. The adjective is used advisedly. She was tall, portly, handsome, attired in perfect taste, and graceful in carriage. Her address was affable, her voice even and well-pitched. " A fine looking woman," was my companion's comment as we resumed our promenade on the deck, after ten minutes' chat with her. " One of the nouveaux riches^ I suppose ? She carries off her new estate better than the majority of the guild. But she couldn't help telling me that she ' never see no finer scenery abroad than that on the Hudson River. ' " Let these examples illustrate the fact, that with the uneducated masses, incorrect language is the rule, and the accord of the several parts of speech with one another, exceptional. The marvel to the thoughtful observer is^this truth being incontrovertible — ^that the- would-be-elegant-because-rich take so little pains to acquire the shibboleth, without which they must fight their way into the desired land of social equality with those they envy and emulate. .It is a curious study — this persistent mangling of our vernacular. Why the maid who copies her mistress' costume, and catches her very trick of tone and carriage so successfully as to remind the beholders of the years " she has lived in the one place ;" who hears the English tongue properly used by everybody in the house except her one fellow-servant, the cook, with whom she is not on friendly terms — should at the end of ten years, compound negatives and confuse tenses is more than a puzzle. It is a mystery. A stranger contrariety of cause and effect is that the self-made man who began his own creation at thirteen, worked his way up as HOW WH SPEJAK. 169 errand-boy, porter, sWpping-clerk, salesman and partner, to a place among merchant-princes and a seat in congress, should never, with all his getting, get understanding of the practical bearings of such rules as " The verb must agree with its nominative case in number and person." He more frequently learns to speak a foreign language grammatically than to amend his management of his own. Quick of apprehension and adaption to circumstances in the matter of costume and household ceremonies, his untamable tongue con- firms shrewd St. James in every sentence. Time and observation make him a connoisseur in wines, but in modest appreciation of the accomplishment, he tells you confidentially, — '' There ain't no manner of use in a man pretendin' to be a connoishure without he has had experience." He is probably fond of polysyllables, selecting them as his wife buys her diamonds — for their size. He generally employs them intelligently, too, accounting each as a " big thing," concerning which it behooves him to be circumspect. The effect of the phrases ^containing the ponderous prizes is as if his wife's diamonds had been set at a blacksmith's. The strangest of all the curious circumstances attendant upon the habitual disregard of grammatical laws is the unconsciousness of the offender. Our self-made man and the wife he has tinkered into " a match-article," court, as ornaments to their drawing-room, eminent scholars and literary lights, domestic and foreign ; admire intensely in them the facile propriety of expression in which they are themselves deficient, and never suspect the effect of the contrast they offer. Does the inability to discern the difference lie in the ear, or the intellect ? I have called this insensibility the most singular of the paradoxes connected with our subject. May I retract the statement, and substitute the anomaly of people, born well and bred well, educated I70 HOUSE AND HOME. * according to the most approved methods, and moving in refined social circles, whose foibles of speech approach in number, and rival in heinoTisness the direct lingual faults of illiteracy ? People who drop the final g from participles, and other words ending in " ing^'' with the constancy the cockney exhibits in misplacing h. People who say " He donH like it," without a suspicion that the conjoined abbreviation stands for " He do not like it." People who inquire, "You ready?" "You going?" and, sometimes, " Where you been ? " People who never, by any chance, say " Between you and me," but, with the steadfastness of a holy purpose, " Between you and //" People who pride themselves upon the elegant accuracy of every sentence formed by their lips, and tell you in cultivated euphonious- ness of accent, " I have traveled some in England, Russia, Turkey, or Australia," and, " I have not coughed any all night." People who have been on intimate terms with Lindley Murray and his colleagues for forty years, and not learned that ainH is not tolerated by any of them, being an un-parseable word. People who consider the fact that they were bom south of Mason and Dixon's line warrant for ignoring the dictum — "After the words like and unlike^ the preposition to or unto is understood," and cru- cify our ears by telling us on all possible occasions, " I feel like I should do " so-and-so, and " He looked like he meant it." -Who as musically and audaciously say, " I am a heap better," or " a heap worse," I heard a D. D., F. F. V., say in a sermon, " It does seem like the Lord has some great and gracious purpose to fulfill," etc. And a few minutes thereafter — " I expect that this is the proper interpretation of this passage." HOW WE SPEAK. 171 There are people, on the other hand, who, bom and brought up in the shadow of Yale, roll the phrase — " I want that you should," like a savory and insoluble morsel under their tongues, and not a few, who, as Mr. Howells' Minister Sewell regrets, will — albeit they are Harvard graduates — say, to the close of well-spent lives," I don't know aj." People — this final count is written with groanings unutterable — ^who, with the best intentions conceivable (benevolent and syn- taxical), never let slip an opportunity of using the pronoun ''''they " when the antecedent noun is in the singular number. " If a person thinks they can do that." " If anybody has lost anything, they can apply at the desk." " I was talking with some one the other day, and they said," etc., etc. None- of the phrases cited as foibles of speech trench upon the debatable ground of language. One and all, they are glaring defects, flaws in gems, which lessen their value irretrievably. The critical inspector instantly discounts the intelligence or conscien- tiousness of him who tenders them. That those who are guilty of lapses of this sort know better, does not exculpate them, or relieve the listener who respects his noble vernacular too truly to condone the unseemly familiarities that approximate insult. When the delinquents are those who assume to instruct others, the foible becomes guilt. A distinguished author, at a reception given in honor of her visit to a certain town, pressed the hand of a sister-writer who was introduced to her, with the cordial — " You and I had ought to have met before." An eminent lecturer upon scientific subjects remarked at a dinner-party, '* The hall was not sufl&ciently het to-day." The principal of a collegiate institute announced, during the commencement exercises, that the presentation to himself of a 172 HOUSB AND HOME. memorial from the pupils was a " change in the programme made entirely unbeknownst to himself." He was taken by surprise by the testimonial, and the luckless phrase escaped him while oflF his guard. It should have been impossible for him to make use of it in any circumstances. If he had never said it before, he would not have said it then. It is impossible to speak too well. Upon each of us rests the obligation to redeem his daily conversation from slovenliness. Ease and purity of diction are not, of necessity, pedantic. One may speak with unfailing correctness, yet not mount verbal stilts. We owe it to ourselves, to our associates, and to the cause of letters, to set, in honest severity, a watch before the door of our lips. ■PHM ^^^g» ^^^^^ ■mn I^Jf^^^^ ""il^^^^^B vN^fl I^BIBBH^Mri fe^^gSl t.^M 1^ * The Candy Curse. i^NROSSlNG the East River one day, I found myself next to ^^^ the young mother of a baby. It was a large-eyed, pale- ^V faced baby, prettily dressed, and held in a claw-like hand a stick of peppermint candy. The mother pinned her own embroidered handkerchief about the little one's neck to catch the pinkish drops from the moistened confection. " How old is she ? " asked I, with the free-masonic faith that my interest would be appreciated, which appertains to motherhood the world over. " Six months," returned the proud parent, who evidently belonged to the second-rate middle class of American matrons. "Is she healthy?" " Well, not very. She suffers dreadfully with colic, but that doesn't mean anything. . She'll come 'round all right in time." This particular specimen of babyhood entered upon a career of vice a trifle earlier than common even for a United States infant of the gentler sex. I hazard nothing, however, in asserting that seventy out of every hundred babies bom in our favored land know the taste and consequent pangs of the accursed thing by the time they are eighteen months old. Perhaps fifty in the hundred are allowed, as yearlings, to suck the " harmless " gum-drop and try their tender teeth upon the striped lollypop. 173 174 HOUSED AND HOME). A zealous temperance crusader ran a tilt, not long ago, against brandy-drops and rummy-liearted caramels, declaring, truthfully enougli, that they would implant in the juvenile consumers of the syrupy bon-bons a taste for ardent spirits. The mother who keeps her bantling " good," while she talks or works, by relays of candy, more surely creates a craving which can bring no benefit and may work infinite evil. The boy usually outgrows the inordinate appetite "for confec- tionery, or indulges it in moderation and privately. It is a girl's trick, and a woman's vice. Dr. Grace Peckham tells us in a paper on " The Family Sweet Tooth," that each member of every household in the United States consumes annually forty pounds of sugar. She subjoins, apropos to lavish consumption of the useful saccharine — " That it blunts the appetite, impedes the digestion, and mysteriously wreaks vengeance on the liver, cannot be doubted." I know families — and not a few of them — in which each feminine member averages a pound of candy per week. It is not an uncom- mon thing for a couple of school-girls to eat a pound of Huyler's " butter-cups," or " Maillard's chocolates," or " Costello's marrons glacees^'' or " Amaud's jelly-creams " at a sitting. I have seen the belle of a summer resort dispose with apparent comfort of five pound boxes in as many days. So well is this passion of the maiden's soul understood by him whose life-long business it is to make her happy, that he feeds it with the regularity of grist to a mill, her ruby mouth being the hopper. Candy-shops spring up almost as rapidly as drinking-saloons in our cities ; every cross-roads country-store has its jar of stony or crumbly " sweeties," as our English cousins name them ; the boy who supplies passengers in our out-going and in-coming trains with the daily paper, without which the patriot mind cannot enter upon « THK CANDY CURSE. 175 tfie day's action or the night's rest, deafens us on alternate rounds with laudation of " Broken-Candy," and, lest some weary traveler might escape temptation, the news stands in every station protrude a sly recommendation to " drop a nickel in the slot, and receive a package of delicious bon-bons ! " A young man, walking up Fifth avenue, was the edified witness of a rencontre between two pairs of fashionable damsels at the junction of the avenue -vidth Thirty-fourth street. " Do come to the meeting of our Literary Club this afternoon," cried one brace in concert. " Mrs. S., the celebrated elocutionist, you know, reads ' The Coming Man,' while we work. Just the joUiest, pleasantest way of spending a quiet hour you can imagine I " " What kind of fancy-work do you take ? " " Oh ! " a giggled duet, " We eat candy, and wait for ' The Coming Man,' you know ! " " Eat candy ! " When does not the g^rl of the period devour it ? A sallow child of fourteen was a guest in my house for some weeks. Her mother committed her to me with many injunctions to extreme care and tenderness. She had never been strong, and was rapidly fall- ing into the confirmed delicacy so common in the growing g^rl, that neither mother or daughter is as much ashamed of it as she should be of such a wretched piece of work. The anxious but resigned parent in this case, " supposed," as did my ferry boat acquaintance, that " it would all come right by-and-by." " It " was very far wrong now. The girl, dwarfed in stature, and yellow-brown of skin, was a prey to dyspepsia and sick head- aches. For four successive nights, I was summoned to her room to administer remedies for cramp and nausea. She was a sweet, patient little thing, and unaffectedly distressed by the trouble she gave. " But she was subject to these attacks. So was mamma. Mamma supposed she inherited them." 176 HOUSB AND HOME. As slie turned on tlie pillow in moaning out tlie borrowed phrase, I heard the rustle of paper. Thrusting my hand under the bolster, I drew forth a paper of chocolate comfits and cocoanut-balls. In no wise abashed by my horrified look, the sufferer explained languidly : " I always like to have some candy where I can eat it in the night, if I awake and feel lonesome. Mamma used to leave a paper of gum-drops under my pillow, when I wasn't more than a baby, so's I wouldn't be afraid to go to sleep in the dark. It's a great deal of company. Mamma calls candy, my ' bedside comforter.' " Inquiry showed that her father allowed her twenty-five cents a week for " candy-money." Of course, she bought only the cheapest kinds in order to get enough to last. Confiscation of the poisonous stuff, and gentle remonstrance with the tractable child against the habit I could not condemn unsparingly, since her mother had inculcated it, wrought a rapid and blessed change. In a month's time, she was plump, rosy, and so well that my heart ached when I had to return her to her natural guardians. There is little or no nourishment in sugar, as an exclusive article of diet. But if babies, school-girls, society-belles, mothers and grandmothers would satisfy their lust for sweets with pure sugar — or even the sugar of commerce — ^the mischief done would be reduced to a minimum. Dr. Edson enumerates among the substances added for increas- ing the weight of candy — "Terra alba, kaolin (decomposed feldspar), whiting, starch and ground-quartz." Among the coloring substances used to make our candy pleasant to the eye, he gives arsenic, chromium and lead. Adulterations for flavor are managed by help of a distillation of " rancid butter, wood alcohol and oil of vitrol, into essence of pine-apple; also, by i'HB CANDY CURSE. 177 fusel oil and prussic acid," while " a very fragrant, fruity essence may be made of rotten cheese by treating it with, oil of vitriol and bichromate of potash." Much of the cheap chocolate sold at comer candy stores is mixed with clay, colored with burnt umber. The taste for sweets is natural, and, if indulged within bounds, innocent. The craving for puddings, ices and sweetmeats, at the conclusion of a meal, leads to the introduction of healthful acids into the busy stomach, which neutralize alkalis and oils, and help on the specific end of assimilation. The practice of munching, at all times and seasons, Ijon-bons, expensive or cheap, until the stomach and that mysterious potentate, the liver, are provoked to vengeance sure anH dire, is what I have called it — a senseless vice, and a crying CURSE. With Our Boys. 1 1 I ILLIAM WIRT — ^than whom no more graceful and I I f •■ genial gentleman ever lived, even in liis day wlien the \^^^ "gentleman of the old school" flourished and was the fashion — admonished his daughter to practice sedulously " the small, sweet courtesies of life." We often repeat the phrase, forgetful of its authorship. Obe- dience to the injunction is, I fear me, more rapidly lapsing into disuse than the sage of a century ago could have foreseen in his darkest imaginings. The gentleman of the old school honored me by a half-hour's talk at a party the other evening. He began or ended every sentence with " Madame," with a slight and charming emphasis upon the latter syllable. He wore a white cravat, and gloves, and a dress-coat. Two fingers of one hand were gently insinuated between the second and third buttons of his vest ; the other hand was thrown lightly across his back. He stood erect, while younger men lolled over the backs of chairs and sofas, or leaned against the wall. His silvery head was slightly inclined toward me, and when I spoke, he listened without wandering eye or uneasy motion. " In the olden time we needed not to be reminded to select part- ners for the dance, or to escort ladies to the supper-room," he said, offering his arm to me with a bow that was a compliment in itself, I7« ^^"oSy WITH OUR BOYS. i8i without the neat speech that entreated the honor. " Now, the host's most arduous duty is charging into the herds of men in comers and halls, to drive them through the bare forms of civility. It is lamentable, madame! appalling to one who has noted the progress of the evil ! " I looked out the verb " to herd," that night. " To unite or associate as beasts. To feed or run in collections. Most beasts manifest a disposition to herd^'' Reams of paper are blotted, and thousands of cubic feet of air wasted, in proving that a woman is unsexed by qualifying herself to earn her bread, should need arise. The man who ceases to regard his strength as a protection for her weakness; whose asperities disdain the tempering of her graces ; who marks out for himself a path so narrow that she cannot walk therein at his side — may not be unsexed, but he is dehumanized. The taint of the herd clings to him everywhere. Under such leadership the disposition spreads fast and far. Our boys learn the stare, the scamper, the rush, the crowding and hustling, by the time they leave off the skirts they detest as " girls' clothes." " I shall never fnvite that person to my house again,' said a not very fastidious matron to me not long ago. " He does not know enough to touch his hat to a lady in the street." I recalled the censure in the course of a morning walk taken in the streets of a large city which shall be nameless. I was nodded at, and to, more or less familiarly, by a butcher's errand-boy, by a candidate for a seat in the U. S. Senate, by a Judge of the Supreme Court, by a wealthy merchant rolling down town in his carriage, by an eminent lawyer bom of aristocratic stock, and by the smiling superintendent of a Sabbath school. The day was bitter, and the butcher's boy had no gloves. I forgave i82 HOUSE AND HOMK. him for keeping his hands in his pockets, but not for whistling a negro melody as he passed me. In another city, I have been lately waited upon (?) by a dry- goods clerk to the measure of " Rock-a-by, Baby," hummed over and over, under his waxed moustache, and, upon putting a civil ■ question to the proprietor of another " genteel " establishment, I was almost stunned into astonished silence by a vociferated — "What say ! " flung into my face. No wonder that the old-world peasant who stands, hat in hand, before " the lady " who hires him at Castle Garden, soon recognizes in the omission to remove or touch his head-covering, the sign-patent of free-and-enlightened citizenship, and nods as royally as does his mistress's husband. In the matter of hats, our school-boys might be so many Quakers. The instinct- ive pluck at the cap at the approach of a lady-acquaintance, the bow and smile, the yielding the right of way at crossings and doorways, the spring forward to open and hold back gates, are as graceful and becoming now as in our grandmother's sight, but have a pathetic charm from their rarity. Another cheap and easy declaration of masculine sovereignty is the contempt for, and abolition of the empty titles affixed by old- fashioned custom to the names of seniors, superiors in rank or learning, young ladies, and even school-girls — to these last by virtue of their, then, honored sex. The stately graciousness of Hon. Edward Everett, statesman, scholar and philanthropist, did not deter the college lad over the way from alluding to him as " old Ned Everett, you know." Phineas Fungus, Esq., is enormously rich, the mayor of his native town, and might be governor of the State if he willed it. But the draymen and porters chat at the doors of his warehouses, of "Phinny" and "Old Fun," unless when they are prematurely reverential. Then he is " the Boss." WITH OUR BOYS. 183 Familiarity of speech leads as naturally to freedom of touch as brooks to rivers, or neglect of " small, sweet courtesies " to overt boorishness. I do not exaggerate in asserting mat the feminine portion of Young America that affects picnics, singing-schools^ straw-rides, church sociables and surprise parties, needs as much to be ticketed "Hands off!" as the valuables/in an art-exhibition.. When the finger of a man who is not my Imsband or kinsman is pressed upon my shoulder to point a sliory, or attract attention ; when a forward youth fillips my arm wwh his folded glove at an evening party with : — " I say ! " I may jbe, and am offended, but in a quiet, matronly sort. When I see a (thoughtless school-girl sit, hand-in-hand, on steamboat or car with a man whom I know to be a mere acquaintance, or the opera-cloak pressed long and closely about the pretty young thing whom her escort wraps up officiously before leading her to her carriage: when girls are hauled and pushed and buffeted in romping games, and in dances that are nothing better, as the herd might jostle one another, my blood heats with more indignant fire. No true man will needlessly^ much less wantonly, put a woman upon the defensive. The best that can be said of him who claps the lady-guest on the back as he might her husband, or the coxcomb, who, without her permission, dares to omit the " Miss " in accosting his s^rl-friend is, as I said in a former chapter, that he " knows no betteiK" If they guessed how often the plea is urged in extenuation of their bovine gambols by charitable friends with juster ideas of th^decencies and amenities of society, the shock to self-conceit might be a wholesome lesson. I have read the letters of: my great-grandfather. Colonel under the commission of the Continental Congress, and a sturdy Puritan patriarch, to the wife of many years' standing. His tenderest epithet is : — " My excellentUiVife," He usually addresses her as, *' Honored Madam." I womdrthat-ajiy spoken or written word of i84 HOUSE AND HOME. those who note, sorrowfully, with the courtly old censor I have quoted, the progress of the decadence in manners, if not in morals, since the age we deride as formal and severe, could ingraft upon the social free-thinking of this, something of the outward deference to womankind — as such — that lends exquisite, if quaint, flavor to the family histories of that date. Our Boy, and Our Boys Father. ^\ WITTY man once told a story to a company of friends ^^\ apropos to a talk upon the best way of bringing np boys f * without spoiling tbem by indulgence, or estranging them ▼ by unwise strictness. I cannot give the anecdote the raciness imparted by the witty man's manner and tone, but I reproduce the matter. The heartache that outlived the laugh which applauded the conclusion, is with me still. "A Boston clergyman," said the witty man, " consulted one of his deacons as to the evil courses of his (the B. C.'s) son, and the possibilities of curing him of them. " ' He has rubbed into people's minds the unkind old saying about clergymen's sons,' complained the father. ' He is twenty-five years old, and has been nothing but a sorrow to his mother and myself, since he was expelled from college at seventeen. He drinks hard, gambles and loafs ; comes home drunk every night ; frequents the lowest places of amusement, and takes pleasure in vile company. Nothing good has any hold upon him. I am at my wit's end. My wife is dying slowly of a broken heart. What would you advise ? ' " The deacon was a deep thinker, and a slow talker. He took off his glasses and rubbed them with his pocket handkerchief, while he swung himseff gently back and forth in his revolving desk-chair. 185 i86 HOUSE AND HOME. " ' Maybe you haven't made a companion' of your boy, doctor— haven't entered into his feelings and interests as you might. That works pretty well, sometimes. Go to hear Booth and Barrett with him, instead of letting him stray into variety theaters by himself, or with even worse company. Go ' to a horse-race with him, and talk horse now and then. Take him out to drive with you, and let him choose the horse and hold the reins. Go to see good pictures and hear good music with him, and don't mind setting up a supper for him afterward at Parker's or Young's. See if you can't interest him in your affairs and talk. Take him to the top of the State House and point out the changes in the country and city, since you were his age. Touch him up on politics and history. Stimulate his pride as a citizen of a great and growing country. Bring in the Boston tea-party, and John Hancock and Faneuil Hall. While you are talking, work him nearer and nearer the edge of the roof, and when you've got him where you want him, give him a smart shove and break his blamed neck ! That's the only way to cure your boy ! ' " The element of the unexpected and the incongruous raised a general laugh, as I have remarked. The terrible touch of truth in the grotesque climax pricks like a thorn in the remembrance of the story. Girls are brought up like hop-vines, convolvuli and other climbers. If there be a little more wood in some than in others, hdres are substituted for strings, and the training fingers are plied more frequently than with succulent stetns, each terminal bud of which points naturally in the direction of the next needful coil and cling. Boys grow up — manipulate and dictate as we will. The young tree takes shape early, makes wood, bark, and branches after its kind. The attempt to make wall-fruit of the sturdy thing by OUR BOY, AND OUR BOY'S FATHER. 187 binding it to espalier and bricks, is a continual conflict of wills. Bound in on one side, tbe rebel flings audacious arms abroad on the other, twists, and writhes, and knots into ungainliness. " Turns ugly," we say of the boy. The mother sheds ineffectual tears that Dick yawns aggressively or drops asleep over his book during the quiet home-evenings she, " father," and the girls " do so enjoy." Father has his newspaper, mother her mending-basket, and the girls their fancy-work, over which they twitter like wrens in nesting-time. Dick is not interested in their chirpings, nor has he reached the dressing-gown-slippers-and-evening-papsr age. Even if he be a student, night-fall, which brings the longing for domestic quiet to elderly world-workers, suggests fun — stir — larks — ^to him. It is as natural for him to feel the inclination to leap domestic bounds as for a colt to jump the paddock-fence for a gallop upon the upland moors. The world is before the immature man. It is his to conquer, and he would try his coming strength in a preliminary wrestle, once in a while. At least, he must reconnoiter. His whole nature is uneasy for action. We may know that he is not equipped for it, but he does not. The English have a word that well describes our boy in the transition stage. They say he is " bumptious." If, in the first dress-coat which, with the native youth, now usurps the place in ambition and affection once held by the first pair of " real men's boots," he reminds us, in this same bumptiousness, of a pollywog who has developed one pair of legs, but not parted with his tail, we smile affectionately, and are almost sorry to think how mortified he will be, in the inevitable days to come, in the recollection of the absurd figure he cut. Mentally and morally, he is what he appears to us physically — all growing legs and arms. The inches increase i88 HOUSE AND HOME. so fast that he has not time to get used to one before another is here. Nobody — to the senior's shame be it said — is more intolerant of the lad's figurative and literal lurchings and lunges, thsinpaier- familias. Men have shorter memories of their youthful follies than have women. When Paul put away childish things, he threw them clean out of sight. Dick, fretting on his curb, hungering for green pastures while he is fed upon the well-cured hay pater munches contentedly, finds it more difi&cult to believe that his parent was ever coltish, than does the sober old roadster himself. In the recollection of that by-gone period — its follies, scrapes and longings — on the father's part, lies the boy's salvation. " I fines you joost noting at all I " said the Dutch justice to the prisoner convicted of having got drunk on gin-sling. " I vonce got droonk mit g^n-sling mineselluf ! " The attempt to convince Dick that his father has always jogged along the well-sprinkled highway of the respectability which is its own reward, will, if successful, fix a great gulf between the pair, just when the youngster's need of help is sorest. " Papa was such a pious duffer at school that he wouldn't under- stand, so I came to you," was the prelude to a penitent confession of boyish misdoing. " You can't know how it is yourself, of course — " stammering, as a faint smile crept tremulously to the con- fidante's lips ; — " only, you see, mothers somehow make allowances for Everything." The father who does — to steal the lad's slang—:" know how it Is himself, " and is not ashamed to quote his past experience in warn- ing or encouragement, has a purchase upon the young fellow's confidence nothing else can give. Our " B. C." did not begin the business of entering into his son's feelings by rejuvenation of him- self, early enough. The egregious injustice of trying to drag a boy OUR BOY, AND OUR BOY'S FATHER. 191 up to the plane occupied by a man of forty, when the man of forty will not, or cannot, step down for a while into the tracks left on the lower road by his own rash, uncertain feet, is unreasonable, selfish, and monstrous. " Out, again ! " said a merchant-father, lowering his newspaper to frown over it at his son, a handsome stripling of eighteen, in correct evening costume, who looked into the family sitting-room to get his mother to put a rosebud in his button-hole. " The third time this week ! Where, now ? " The lad, respectfully enough, named a neighbor's house. " There is to be a little dance there, this evening, and I promised to come in." " When I was your age, young man, I spent most of my even- ings at home with my parents, and was in bed usually by nine o'clock. I don't know what the world is coming to I But there is no use talking ! If you ride to the devil, you must go I " The boy's sunny face darkened ; he bit something back from his lips before he laid them silently to his mother's cheek. The father noted the caress, and remarked upon it when the son had gone. " If you would use your influence to better purpose, the fellow might be good for something." The wife's answer is worth repeating : "It is as natural for young people to get together for social amusements as for old people to hug the fireside, and long for quiet and rest. If we do not encourage the boy to have harmless pleas- ures at proper times, we tempt him to seek hurtful pleasures at unlawful hours. If he could not go into society without me, I would leave you to read and doze here alone and accompany him, at 192 HOUSE AND HOME. any and every cost of personal convenience. I would ratter sacri- fice myself tlian him. My service to my generation is nearly done. His has just begun." The father resumed his paper with a grunt that might mean dissent or contempt. It was not sympathy. To me, the firm gentleness of the mother's reply was like the echo of Other Words, in which is the healing of the world : " For I came not to call the righteous^ but sinners to repentance^'' Literary Life of the Household. SOMB households have none. Households wherein money abounds, and taste in the matter of furniture and dress is distinctly evinced. There is even a pleasing display of the surface sestheticism which, with many, passes for culture, having come into fashion with galvanized (nickel) silver, and machine lace, and cotton-backed velvet. There are still other households where shams are abhorred and in which a part of religion is to have " everything of the best." The father is a solid citizen, who reads one first-class journal through every day, and votes in church and politics on the right side, as his father did before him. The mother is a wise Lady Bountiful at home, and in neighborhood; thrifty, sensible, kindly and not uneducated, as education went, thirty years back of us. Sons and daughters — albeit known to non-fashionists as " society men and women " — are irreproachable in character, courteous, popular and alive to the fact that the world moves to different measure than the minuet music of lang syne. All these representative families have social, domestic, some of them religious lines, — none what maybe styled, according to the most liberal interpretation, literary life, I^et me specify at this point that this broad rendering is here applied to what is, in itself, an elastic 194 HOUSE AND HOME. definition, — ^the second given by my oft-consulted lexicon, of the word " literary," — " Versed in, or acquainted with literature." The degree of acquaintanceship with which we have to do is what may be termed amateur cognition, in contradistinction to pro- fessional mastery ; appreciation of literature as an art, not profound understanding of it as a science. Such knowledge as any of us may have of fashions in dress and household decoration, and political economy, without professional interest in the topic. In the consideration of our subject we will, therefore, exclude the families of editors, publishers and authors. Unless the intel- lectual cuticle and epidermis be phenomenally tough, the members of these must take in through the pores some measure of literary knowledge, or, at least, appreciation. Wise sociologists are beginning to admit that the system of compulsory education, while excellent so far as it goes, does not go far or deep enough. It is, in effect, harrowing, not plowing. Every teacher of youth who brings to bear upon his calling more than me- chanical fidelity knows against what odds he labors who tries to undo in six hours what has been wrought in double that time. How grateful is the task of drilling the seeds of knowledge into prepared soil 1 Such an instructor could describe, with marvellous accuracy, what manner of parents and home influence each of his pupils has, although he may never have entered the doors of one of them. It is the family life that gives mental tone and character, no less than moral. The child who hears ungrammatical speech at home, studies grammar as a dead language. His desk-mate, who meets frequent allusion in his lessons in history, geography and natural philosophy, to matter she has heard talked of in the home circle, is at once on familiar ground. At the best, the province of the schools is only to dig a foundation and build walls. The mis- cellaneous information picked up, the learner knows not how ; the LITERARY LIFE OF THE HOUSEHOLD. 195 habit of collecting and classifying material whicli is acquired by asso- ication witb trained minds; the dwelling in an atmospbere of thougbt and intelligence ; — ^tbese furnish the rest, are the means by which the edifice grows into compactness and beauty. The inference is patent. Where this kind of education is withheld, the child sustains irreparable loss. It is a wrong, unavoidably or carelessly inflicted, that, throughout his life, stamps the self-made man as one who " had few advantages in youth." The pat phrase gives the popular verdict on this head. It matters not to what fair proportions he may attain — mentally, politically or socially — there is ever that about him which betrays his tribal antecedents, be it only a conciousness of altitude, a toss and pluminess of air, as of a tall reed that has shot aloft out of a tangle of coarse grasses and mud-flags. More palpable indications of his early disadvantages are provincial tricks of speech, and lingual lapses into glaring faults of grammatical construction. Our rising man tells his friends that he " wants they should visit with " him at his own house, he " guesses " and " presumes likely," and, as the president of a board of education, announces publicly that " children had ought to be learned to speak correct from their cradles " {sic). This same president had attended a public school for twelve years. He possessed much crude mental strength which, combined with sharp perceptive powers and infinite energy, made him a valuable citizen and a millionaire. His speech was the vernacular of his father's house, and he never unlearned it. He thought better than he talked, or he would never have got his head above the mud. The " society young people " we spoke of, just now, early lop oflF provincialisms and eschew double negatives, whether their parents follow their example or not, avoiding verbal blunders as they shun mistakes in the etiquette of the table or in the combin- 196 HOUSE AND HOME. ation of colors. But, with so large a majority of them that I am ashamed to state it, even the literature of their own language is a sealed well from the day they leave school. Beyond a few novels, usually of the lightest caliber, or lighter tales in weekly or monthly periodicals, the girls read little, the young men less, the parents least of all. It is a marked exception in a rule, terrible in its universality, when the Business Man, whose whole heart and soul and being are in the craft that gains his wealth, reads anything except The Newspaper. The capitalized words go together as naturally as knife and fork, shovel and tongs. If he be a very successful Business Man, the strong probability is that he considers love of literature a weakness, and what he calls a " bookworm," as scarcely worthy of the scientific classification of the creeping thing whose name he borrows — "An animal of the inferior grand division of Articulates." Book-makers under-rank Lumbrici in his esti- mation. Such an eminently successful citizen (who might have sat for the portrait of Silas Lapham) once told me that he would not have a library in his house for fear his boys might pass their evenings " fooling over books." He — their sire — " could not have made money faster if his skull had been crammed chock full of college learning." Yet some of his brethren attempt the role of Maecenas in the matter of pictures and music, conning a limited list of florid art catchwords, and rolling them like unctuous morsels, or a quid of tobacco, in their mouths. Paintings, statuary, opera-box and cham- ber-concerts represent money ; the possession of them pre-supposes depth of purse. It would be singular if the girl who " does not care to read " should, after marriage, develop a taste for literature. If there exist within her any natural love for such pursuits, the com- parative leisure of maidenhood will foster it into active growth. Association with people who take it for granted that, as Miss Edge- LITERARY LIFE OF THE HOUSEHOLD. 197 worth's Mrs. Harcourt quietly reminds her foolish visitor — " Every- body reads now-a-days " — ^may engender a disposition and create a conscience in this direction while the mind is immature and the character plastic. But I have yet to meet the unintellectual, frivo- lous girl who, as matron and mother, learned to love books and sought, voluntarily, to repair the deficiencies in her early mental training. The man of letters who dreams of marrying the beauty who " hardly ever opens a book," and educating her into a help- meet for his erudite self, would do well to ponder the summing up of David Copperfield's experiment in this kind of agriculture : " It began to dawn upon me," he says, " that perhaps my child-wife's mind was already formed." If the father's contemptuous neglect of literature deserves the epithet I have applied to it — " terrible " — what shall we say of the motheris indifference, her contented settling down into what is, for . all practical and beneficent purposes, illiteracy ? " Who is she ? " the stereotyped inquiry of the cynical chief of police when a crime of unusual atrocity was reported to him, may be applied more pertinently when the social, moral, or intellectual status of a family of young people is brought up for judgment. Whatever may be the father's proclivities, the children, in their nonage, either follow their mother's lead, or override, if they do not also despise her. (Yet there are married women who deafen Heaven and the public with cries for " Higher missions!") If the mother's books are valued friends, from communion with which she draws sustenance for heart and mind, if their essence interpenetrates her speech and refines manner and visage, her offspring cannot escape the reflection of color and light from the same source. If these things be so, and nobody denies them, why is not every mother a reader, and, through reading, a learner for the sake of imparting what she knows to those she loves best ? I anticipate 198 HOUSE AND HOME. the reply as certainly as if it were already spoken in my ear. I wisli I had recorded the number of times it has grated on my tympanum and grieved my soul. " Nobody would enjoy reading more than I ! " then the conven- tional sigh of resignation, " but I cannot make time for it." A plea as false — I mean it I — ss false as if the speaker were not a Christian woman, the rule of whose life is to keep the Decalogue in letter and in spirit. Women say it with tears in their eyes, coupling it with the confession that they do not read a book through in a year, who, as school-girls, carried off prizes for composition and belles lettresy women who " make " three or four hoyxrs, per diem^ for embroidery and housework their servants are paid to do, and, least necessary of all, for gossipiy with members of their own families. Without pushing proof further, you may quietly assume, when you hear anyone, except a factory slave, make such an assertion, that the root of the matter is not in her and never was. Your true book-lover will read, and exercise such ingenuity and steadfastness to accomplish this end as her neighbors to the right , and left put forth to get hold of the latest fashions or a choice scrap of scandal. Let us be honest with ourselves — call ignorance and indifference to that ignorance, blindness to duty, carelessness as to responsibility, fatuous content with mediocrity iand glaze and veneer, by their right names. It is your business and mine, my resigned sister, to make the " Literary Life of the household," — duty, which cannot be demitted unless the priestess at the altar be deaf, dumb, blind and idiotic. The selection of good, helpful, ennobling books, the systematic study of these, the reading with and for your children, should be taken into the account of daily tasks and^ privileges as conscientiously as the family mending, the making of beds, the setting of tables and the polishing of candlesticks. x^W^ ■ ^ntE-\/onAN • WHO -WlUL- J^EAD ■ LITERARY LIFE OF THE HOUSEHOLD. 201 " Viti sine Uteris mors est ! " declaimed my twelve-year-old boy, bursting into the library one evening, where I sat in tbe twilight somberly pondering the problem I have discussed. And, as I looked up inquiringly, — " The motto of our school, mamma ! Which is, being interpreted," — grandiloquently — "Life, without letters, is Death." Call the interruption coincidence if you like. Or, is the legend an extreme statement, exaggerated into irrelevancy ? Women as Mothers. ^\ LEADER among what is known in New England as the ^^\ Remonstrants — that is, the party opposed to woman suf- f * frage — wrote to several hundred women all over the ^ country, asking for an expression of their views on the subject. " So many are inanely non-committal, so many illogical, and A^olent," she says, " that my assistant in the correspondence proposes, when the replies are all in, to compile the epistles in a volume entitled— i' Reasons why Women should Not Vote.' " Our boys are, in another score of years, to make the laws, heal the soul and bodied, formulate the science, and control the com- merce of their generation. Fathers who, recognizing this great truth, do not prepare their sons to do their part toward accomplish- ing this work, are despised, and justly, by the community in which they live. Our girls are, in another score of years, to make the homes which are to model and control men who are to make laws, heal souls and bodies, formulate science, and control the commerce of their generation. In these homes, are to be born and brought up by the mothers, our grandsons, who are to make laws, etc., in their generation. The house-that-Jack-built row of bricks runs on in immutable lines into the vista of the eternities. WOMEN AS MOTHERS. 293 Yet — and herein is mystery — the mother who does not, with definite purpose, in the fear of God and love of her kind, prepare her daughter to fulfill this niission, loses neither caste nor favor among her congeners. Our protestant sympathies are shed waste- fully upon the novice, who, by the rules of certain conventional orders, must mingle in the gayest society to which she has access, that she may test the strength of her resolution by temptation. The lives of our girls, as we help make them, are, for the interim that separates the school-room from the bridal altar, a novitiate, rather than an apprenticeship for the noblest work ever intrusted to human hands; The black veil typifies the marriage ring. In her farewell to the merry-go-round of parties, balls, and frolics generally, our daughter blows the foam from the cup, sparkles, and subsides into stateliness ; the wine of existence and herself " settle down." Said one affectionate, sensible mother, when reminded that practical knowledge of the duties of mistress, wife, and mother would make the prospective matron's task easier in days to come, — " But what time have girls who go into society, for regular home occupation? What with a lunch, and high tea, and an evening party, six days out of the seven, and a german every week, to say nothing of theater, opera and dinners, they are driven to the full measure of their strength. I see the force of what you say, but where is the leisure to come from ? " I do not essay to answer this query. The life of the popular " society girl " is as wearing to the nervous forces as that of the " variety " actress, and she " goes off" under the strain quite as fast as does the painted dancer and vocalist. The youth who is her favorite partner abates not a whit of his daily labor on the morrow, most of which she spends in bed, that she may freshen up by evening. What is her business is his recreation. By the time they join hands for the minuet of working-day living, he has come to 204 HOUSE AND HOME. consider this style of re-creating Hs spirits " a bore, you know," and is glad to try domesticity as a change. In entering upon their home-life, she begins to work, he to rest. It ought not, he thinks, to tax the strength of a tolerably healthy woman to keep a well- appointed flat or cottage in order, and direct the operations of one or two servants. When the sweet voice takes a wiry ring, and the plait between the brows becomes a crease, when her vivacious chit-chat degenerates into a monologue upon housewifely woes— her spouse is naturally perplexed, perhaps impatient, peradventiire, even slightly contemp- tuous. He had thought that she had more "grit," and some perception of the serious side of life. How in the name of precedent and the commonest kind of common sense, can the poor young wife be otherwise than disheartened arid chronically fatigued ? A new ^et of mental and physical muscles are brought suddenly into active use. The breaking into harness that seemed in anticipation a novel and enticing sporty turns out to be compulsory exercise. How she will support the experience depends upon her moral and bodily staying-power. Before the tender feet of the over-wrought creature are used to the shards and pit-falls of her road, a child is laid in her arms. As a girl, she thought and talked freely of probable" wifehood, even pictured to herself the pretty pomp of controlling and adorning a home of her own. Thoughts of, and preparations for the one great untransferable Mission of woman, as hers, would have been unmaid- enly. In her mental schedule, be it long or brief, there is no note of the necessity or even expediency, of fitting herself in health, in knowledge, in discipline of spirit and temper, for the maternal office. She knows that children are sent to most married people, and that, but for' the supply of new material, the human race would become extinct. She has a nebulous idea, too, that the training of '"'. • 1111 1 «!■ I" i«l ■■ • i ml n I id Wl 111 Btl' |l (111 • - /^THBE^ And B/kBV WOMEN AS MOTHERS. 207 infants is generally the mother's concern. But there will be time enough to think of such things should Providence add this burden to the rest. So the months wheel by, and the youpg immortal who, through her agency, may become the best or the worst man of his age, lies in her awkward embrace, his feeble life hanging upon her ignor- ance. Why the Allwise Creator should send babies to those who know as much about taking care of them as a peasant Laplander of the precession of the equinoxes, is a problem reserved for the clari- fied intellects of the hereafter. Now, it is a dissected theorem with half the pieces missing. " I am the mother of an immortal being ! God be merciful to me a sinner! " is the entry in Margaret Fuller Ossoli's diary when her boy was bom. It was the cry of the human and the maternal in the soul of her who frankly confessed, " I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect compara- ble with my own." Our smaller-minded (and humbler) mother may take up the lament, according to her individual interpretation of its meaning. Without trenching upon debatable ground, may one whose religion teaches her to fill her own sphere to the round outermost verge before aspiring to a higher, point the dismayed learner to the fact hinted at a while ago ? We will grant, for courtesy's sake, that it is in admiration of the masculine half of the man created in our Maker's image that we seek to stand firmly upon his level, and, our rights unchallenged, to share equally in his honors and prizes. God be merciful to us sinners if in the contest we trample in the mire our Koh-i-noor, our pearl of great price, which man could not purchase by the sale of all he possesses, — our unique of Mother- hood I Our Baby. ONE hears every day an immense deal of wishy-wasliiness talked by callow pessimists, and their dyspeptic elders, of the unsatisfactoriness of life, the worse than uselessness of living. The first-named consider it knowing to be blase^ the latter confound ennui and experience. The world is a dear and bonny home, thanks to the dear Lord who made it so very good that His creatures in all ages have not been able to spoil it. Of Queen-mother, Nature, it may be said that as custom can not stale her infinite variety, neither can ingratitude chill her infinite kindness. Each spring-time is a resurrection ; each fruit-season brings the thrill of a pleasant surprise ; each Christmas-tide stirs our souls as if the Birthday of birthdays — the red heart of all a-throb with living fire set in the mid-breast of white winter — ^were then celebrated for the first time. Still, as when the morning-stars chanted the completion of the young earth, all things leave the Father's hand fair and new. Our Baby is, to whatsoever home he may come, the freshest, most exhaustlessly interesting creation the*angels ever lowered to our level. " Come away ! " said a girl pulling at her friend's sleeve. " You don't care to listen to that pair of new mothers. They are only comparing notes and asking advice about their lamblings. I heard soS OUR BABY. 209 one say just now — ' I had no idea, until mine came, that a child was such a solemn responsibility.' I always stop up my ears and run when they begin that sort of cant." The other resisted. " But I do care to hear this ! They are discussing the reform- dress for infants — and maybe you don't know that we have a baby —my sister's — at our house ? That makes all the difference in the world, you see." With the tenancy of the cradle in " our house," other topics be- sides the reform-dress start suddenly into prominence. We never pass a child on the street without seeing it. The gutter-baby, pat- a-caking mud-pies on the curb-stone ; the patrician baby, making round eyes at the little Arab through the carriage-window ; the sickly baby, the healthy baby, pretty babies, and homely babies (if such exist), all pull at the check-strings of our hearts, each remind- ing us in some way of the tiny bundle of warm unconsciousness at home, lapped in love and fed on kisses. We loiter before windows which display baby clothes ; emulate the sweet nonsense of Trad- dies and his " dearest girl," in selecting the toys we will buy for the boy when he begins to take notice. When caught lingering over school catalogues, we blush and laugh foolishly, and nobody except his father and mother is privy to the secrets of the savings-bank account begun in his own name when he was a day old. "All the difference in the world ? " Yes ! and in the universe. Ours is always a wonderful baby. I confess to a sensation of chagrin when a young mother does not confess this directly, or indirectly. In some one particular, if not in all, he resembles no other child ever bom, and surpasses the rest of the infant creation. Many years ago I witnessed an illustration of this vicarious vanity that shocked my girlish sense of fitness, but which I recall 2IO HOUSE AND HOME. now witli reverence. A neighbor's child was, as the old* wives insisted, " marked " by a snake on which the mother trod in the garden three months before it was born. The recollection of the deformed baby lent an awful fascination to " Elsie Verner " when I read it, twenty years afterward. She was an idiot girl, and had never walked, when she died at the age of six. Her skin was covered with scales, her head was flat, her eyes were narrow and black. Chancing to call at the house one day, I saw the poor little thing — usually screened from curious eyes — roll and wriggle across the floor to the mother's feet, and, grasping her dress, laugh up in her face. Such a laugh ! The cleft tongue shot out with a hiss : the forehead receded entirely under the low forelocks ; the eyes gleamed ■ — the whole effect was indescribably revolting. And the mother, a handsome woman in her prime, caught up the animate horror, covered her with kisses, and called her the " dearest, loveliest rose- bud ever made ! " Our baby is always an " incomparable sweet angel," the rose of the world. The divine ingenuity that lays up against his coming such store of mother-love, does not over-estimate the prospective demand upon the supply. The care of baby takes more of mamma's time, draws more heavily upon her nerve-power and physical strength than all her other duties combined. She is not her own property, by day or by night. There are as many anxious as happy thoughts of him. She is never quite easy when he is out of her sight, never quiet when he is present, unless he is asleep, and then holds her breath to listen for his. All this, and so much more to the same effect, is true that we declare without reservation, that the active business of motherhood gives occupation to the hands, heart and head of any one* woman. She can no more escape the weight, than can her husband from the burden of his craft or profession. The one is to her, what the other OUR BABY. 213 is to him. This is the kernel of our " talk." You, discouraged mother, — bewailing your pinioned hands and stagnating mind, fretting for the liberty of a toilless girlhood, for the gala-days that are no more, ready to cry out upon marriage as thraldom, and maternity as degradation — make the mistake of reversing the order of duties. Your husband, with a juster sense of values, resigns recreation, when prudence bids him bide by the stuff, or watch over investments ; when he espies a chance to make money, postpones to a more convenient season the merry-making. His holidays are sandwiched between so many weeks that he almost forgets the flavor of one, before another comes. Should he complain, you would call him faint-hearted, and think him lazy. Yet yours is the nobler and far more important work. He makes money that perishes with his using (and other people's) . You make men and women, who will live forever, and, through all that forever, bear the imprint you stamp upon them. He seeks fame that will be his during his life-time. You are carving tablets for the never-ending years. The sublime patience of him who " painted for posterity " should be in you informed by a more sanguine faith, a wider and clearer outlook. None of us can, if only for our own sake, afford to slur over one of the duties that develop into more distinct and grander proportions with our children's growth. In living their lives over with them, we keep ourselves young, yet gain a serener dignity of womanhood. Instead of growing intellectually rusty, we must avail ourselves of every means within our range of studying with and for them. The true-hearted and far-sighted mother keeps a place open in society to which she may return with her young daughter, when nursery cares are over. She sees mercy in sharp experiences by which she has learned to save her boys and girls from like blunders and like sorrows : that she may teach them wisdom, makes herself wise. 214 HOUSE AND HOME). " It is not," writes a motlier of the death of her first-born, — " it is not for the day-old baby that I mourn, but the little one who was to keep me from feeling lonely when my husband is not with me ; who was to run down* the street to meet papa when he comes home, the boy with whom I was to study his lessons over the winter fire, and whose summer sports I was to share ; the college-lad, of whose honors I should be so gloriously proud, the man whose arm would be his old mother's support. All these I have laid away under the snow to-day, with the wee creature that never opened its eyes upon mine ! " Such are the stages in the forward life, the renewed youth of every mother who still holds to her breast a living child. Her off- spring are her reward and her monument. If this life be not worth living, none is. Vagaries of the American Kitchen. 5WBNTY-SEVEN religions have I found in this country 1 " writes a French tourist, " and but one gravy ! " Had the satirist been familiar with the machinery of the average American kitchen, he might have added — " And that is made in a frying-pan ! " Our housewife may be unversed in the matter of steamers, braising and fish-kettles. The chances are as ten to one that she never owned a gridiron, and would laugh a patent " poacher " to shrillest scorn. Were any, or all of these given to her, and their uses enlarged upon intelligently and enthusiastically, she would shake an unconvinced head and brandish her frying-pan in the face of anxious innovators and disgusted reformers. A convenient implement ? Hear her testimony and behold her practice ! For breakfast, her family is nourished, be it winter or summer, upon fried bacon, or salt pork, fried mush and fried potatoes. The bacon is cooked first ; done to a slow crisp, and set aside to " sizzle " out any remaining flavor of individuality, while she gets the mush ready. The meat comes out, and the slices of stiffened dough go in, first to absorb, then to be (still slowly) cooked by the hot fat. All the fat is soaked up before the cold, boiled potatoes, cut into clammy " chunks," are put in. In fact, the last relay of mush is 215 2i6 HOUSE AND HOME. scorched to the bottom of the pan, and the bits of pork, clinging to the sides, are unsavory cinders. A great spoonful of lard sets all that to rights, and is just melted when the potatoes are immersed in it. Browning, under this process, is an impossibility, but a few outside pieces bum satisfactorily, and the rest smoke as the con- tents of the invaluable utensil are dished. Breakfast is ready. If the wheels of her domestic organization are not greased into fair running order, the fault is not hers, but that of the recalcitrant stomachs that will not assimilate " good, wholesome food." " Our men-folks set so much store by a warm, substantial break- fast, that I make a matter of duty of getting it up for them," says the dear woman, complacently, wiping the frying-pan, and hanging it where it will be " handy " to fry steak-and-onions for dinner, and to frizzle smoked beef or cod-fish at supper-time. In proportion to " our men-folks' " appreciation of hot, nourish- ing viands, is our house-mother's relish of a " comfortable cup of tea." The black earthen, or tin teapot stands on the stove for the greater part of the day, and rarely has a chance to be scalded and dried in the sunshine, as every vessel in which tea is brewed should be at least once in twenty-four hours. So soon as the water in the kettle nears the boiling point, after the morning fire is lighted, the handful of tea-leaves, thrown hap-hazard into the bottom of the pot, is hopelessly drowned, and the decoction set where it will gradually repair the lack of heat in the water. From steeping, it passes to simmering — from hissing to bubbling. The maker thereof must have her favorite drink, "just off the boil." Nor would she recognize it without the harsh, herby taste acquired by the cooking, which refined connoisseurs would brand as " murdering." The process of tea-making on the breakfast or supper-table ; the pretty array of urn. Spirit-lamp and " cozy " she would condemn as " fashionable foolery." The enjoyment of the delicate aroma of the beverage, newly-made VAGARIES OF THE AMERICAN KITCHEN. 219 by pouring boiling water upon just-moistened leaves, and never set over the fire, she would stigmatize decidedly as " downright aflfecta- tion ; " and associate it, by some subtle demonstration, with the hard times and increased price of living. She takes her tea as her ,mother did, and she likes her " rye'n Indian bread with some sub- stance into it — not as light as vanity ! " Upon stew-pan and soup-kettle, she looks with almost as much disfavor. If the meat she bakes and fries be tough, she blames the butcher. Somebody must eat the coarser portions of ox or sheep, and people in moderate circumstances cannot fare sumptuously every day. In this spirit of equitable economy, she buys rump- steak, chuck-rib or osseous chops, and commits the roasted or grilled leather-and-fat to the digestive apparatus of husband and offspring with calm fatalism, truly edifying to behold. If the eaters develop a tendency to diseases of the alimentary organs, she can discourse as piously upon " providential visitations," as any erudite College Don over the slaughter done in dormitories and clubs by sewer gas. Soups she reckons as " slops," " Unless," as one of the guild said the other day, " the meat and vegetables be left in. Then, a pot of rich soup is a dinner by itself." " Rich " being the synonym of greasy. Tell her, if you do not mind squandering time and breath, that the chops which, served by her, are a ghastly waste of bone, gristle, skin, burned tallow, and desiccated lean meat — would feed her brood almost luxuriously were she to trim them neatly, stew very slowly, add to the cooled and skimmed gravy (keeping the meat hot over boiling water) a dash of piquant catsup or tomato sauce, and, having thickened it with browned flour and boiled it for one minute, return the same with the meat to the fire for another minute before serving — ^brown, tender and sayory. You will receive for your benevolent 220 HOUSH AND HOME. officiousness, a stony stare of indifiference, or be told flatly that life is too short to be spent in such " notional doctoring up of the wholesome victuals the Lord has made." In illustration of which aphorism, she will go on with the interrupted conglomeration of pork-fat, cold water and second-rate flour, known to her and thousands like unto her as " family pastry." When lard, flour and water have been kneaded into a tenacious composite, it will be spread upon plates and stratified variously with insipid custard, or half-sweetened fruit, or a plutonic mixture of molasses, chopped peel, pulp and acid, popular under the name of " lemon-tart." Profoundly ignorant, or reckless of the truth that grease is not gravy, and is, in itself aii abomination to well-ordered stomachs, she serves with roast beef, mutton, veal, poultry, a bowl of brown precipitate, overlaid by several inches of clear oil, and looks con- temptuously at the guest who prefers politely to take his meat, as Southern children say of butterless and sugarless bread — " dry, so." When the infrequent soup makes its appearance upon her board, oleaginous islets and continents swim languidly upon the surface, coat the spoons and tongues of those who partake of the unskimmed, unstrained mess of pottage. The colander — the most efi&cient check upon that Lord of Misrule, the frying-pan — ^inasmuch, as by its use, some of the reek and drip may be got rid of before the food is served — ^is seldom in our house-wife's hands, except when squash or pumpkin-pies are to be made. Least of all, does she think of employing it in serving vegetables. Beans, peas, onions, succotash, beets, etc., go to table half-submerged in the liquor in which they were boiled ; a little salt, butter and pepper, stirred into the floating mass, constitute the " dressing." She leaves esculents undrained, and turns washed cups, saucers, dishes, even glass and silver, upside-down upon tray or kitchen VAGARIES OF THE AMERICAN KITCHEN. 221 table, "'to dreen " before wiping tbem. The process saves time and towels. Her mother " washed up " dishes, in this manner, and her mother's daughter sets her shrewd face, like the Jamestown Tower, or Plymouth Rock, against new-fangleism in her dominions. Even in the matter of toasting bread, she is incorruptible in her devotion to traditional usages. Explain — when she inveighs against the " wicked waste " of paring your slices of stale bread — that they will not curl or warp, if the crust be first removed, and that nobody cares to eat toast-crusts. She always has — ergo, she always will — cut her fresh loaf into thin rounds, and char one side of each, while the other is palely smoked, when " people take a notion to a bit of toast with their tea." To her, " it seems like sick-room feed." For such provisions, we need hardly say, she has no respect ; for their preparation, no vocation. I honestly believe that, in our land, where humanity and plenty walk hand-in-hand, and home-loves flourish as they do nowhere else on earth, thousands of young chil- dren and invalids perish yearly for the want of suitable nutriment. I could fill many chapters with the truthful details of ignorance and carelessness on the part of those who pride themselves upon their skill as nurses, who enjoy the reputation of being excellent mothers and housekeepers. Do you ask, thoughtful reader, where is the remedy for these obstinate vagaries — ^these fallacies to which our countrywomen, as a body, give the prominence of principles ! I was more hopeful, ten years ago, than I am now, of possible reformation among the reigning autocrats of the culinary depart- ment. " Mother " is joined to her sooty idol, the FryinG-Pan ; to her family pie crust; to boiled tea; to undrained beets, and drained china. She will go on expressing and dispensing oils, until she sleeps with her mothers, who " always did just so." 222 " HOUSE AND HOME. Tlie one ray of liglit penetrating the smoky interior of the National Cuisine, comes from the fact that our young girls — ^the wives and housekeepers of the next generation — are beginning to look tipon cookery as a practical science, and dietetics as a serious study ; however refined and accomplished they may be, are opening their eyes to the truth that proficiency in housewifery is a thing to be desired, to make one wise and her kind healthy and comfortable. To their clear common sense, their affectionate zeal and busy hands, we commit the kitchen of the future. Breakfast as it Should Be. BRBAKFAST may be considered the one fixed fact among our movable feasts, tbe very names of whicb are varied by tbe fluctuation of the social barometer. Jones, as a thriving mechanic or smart clerk, living in a nice three- story brick on a side street, has a good dinner of two courses at one o'clock, and " something hearty " with his seven o'clock tea. Mel- chius Jones, Esq., manufacturer or merchant prince and millionaire, gets -his luncheon at a city restaurant, and subsides into the bosom of his family around a gas-lighted dinner-table, so crowded with glass, silver and flowers, that meats and vegetables must be served from the side-board. Fashion may, and does push the morning meal further on into the day, in households where leisure and luxury have succeeded to the hurry and toil of "Searlier years. But it is breakfast still, a family repast, and a bountiful one, that refuses to be materially modified by the pressure of imported ideas and habits which are rapidly denationalizing our homes. The free-and-easiness of the English breakfast hour — the huge cold rounds and joints and game-pies on the side-table for the strong, the toast-and-tea for the weak ; the sitting-down and the rising-up at the convenience of the several members of the company — impress the Yankee J^o^g^wife as unseemly and shiftless. She will not 224 HOUSE AND HOME. have " things " standing about all hours of the day, nor would American (imported) servants endure the imposition upon time and service. But it seems strange at the .first blush, that the continental breakfast, simple, inexpensive and convenient, has not been eagerly adopted by us. A hundred jaded women, — sipping chocolate in Parisian and Italian hotels, and seeing that the family appetites are satisfied by crisp rolls, fresh eggs and butter, with an occasional treat of honey or marmalade for the children — brighten into anima- tion with the resolve to introduce the like order in our transatlantic homes. Ninety-nine of the hundred make the experiment upon their return. We have never known an exception to the general failure of the pretty plan. In most instances, the rebellion begins in the lower house. Our " help " cannot work, they assert, without meat twice a day, at least. Across the sea, they labored doubly as hard, and lived upon potatoes, polenta^ or black bread and sour beer. In our climate they must be fed upon the fat of a more goodly land than they had dreamed of before touching our shores, or muscles grew flaccid, bones soften, and stomachs collapse. We may temper the heat of our indignant contempt for such flagitious affectation by'asking ourselves why the crusty roll, single cup of coffee or chocolate, and boiled ^^^^ no longer upbear our strength and spirits until the next meal is served. Why, by degrees, the bit of toasted bacon, dear to the English heart, the Scot's oat- meal, the Cuban's orange, find their way to the otherwise meagerly- furnished board ? Why, as the days shorten and the cold strength- ens, the children clamor for buckwheats and maple syrup, and papa endorses the draught upon caterer and cook. Paterfamilias wastes no time in dissertation upon climatic in- fluence, or the tyranny of custom. BREAKFAST AS IT SHOULD BE. 225 " I am a practical ma^," he says, " who does half a day's work before the French banker or advocate goes to his o£&ce. Too busy to suspend operations at half-past eleven or twelve o'clock, for the dejeuner a la fourchette that supplements his eight o'clock coffee and roll. I don't argue nor expatiate, I only know that in order to do an American citizen's work, I must be well fed, and that, without a substantial breakfast, I am used-up by noon — an exhausted receiver — sir ! " The question resolves itself in his mind into a clear case of supply and demand. The climate may have something to do with it. Habit probably has more. Be this as it may, the engine plays all the time under a full head of steam, and boiler and fire must be fed generously. We do well to imitate the practical in accepting the American breakfast as it is, because it is. Our suggested reforms will not plear the table of a single dish, without offering a substitute. Because it is a substantial meal, it should be tempting, nourishing and eaten deliberately. As a family gathering, the party should be cheerful and at ease. As the initial repast, — the breakfast of the new day should beget comfort and harmony, put mind and body in tune for labor which ought to be worship. Whereas, the plain truth is that the disregard of some, or all of these conditions is a notorious fact in most dwellings, even among our well-to-do and wealthy classes, and their observance in our homes remarkable by reason of the rarity of the spectacle. Goblin Care enters the chamber of the dual head of the house- hold, at the turn of the morning tide, when the waves of physical life pulse most feebly. He takes the house-mother by the hand as she starts from her latest and most delicious doze to hurry the tardy cook. He mounts and fastens upon the shoulders of the practical man, who must be at warehouse, ofl&ce or factoiy at eight-or maybe 226 HOUSE AND HOME. nine o'clock. Whatever the hour, it must be " sharp " upon him before he brushes his teeth, and plunges his face into cold water. He is in the middle of next week, by the time he kicks aside slippers for boots, and wonders audibly, — " if they are going to keep a fellow waiting for his breakfast." The morning paper lies at his plate. Electric shocks of stock-market news contract windpipe, and agitate diaphragm as he bolts breakfast, and gulps down coflFee. Political excitement congests the stomach-coats and transmutes buttered buckwheats into hot lead. Engrossed in the world's news, brought to his door with the rising of the sun, he throws liquids and solids into the palpitating interior of the machine, with little more thought of order and assimilation than the stoker exercises who " chunks " the black lumps into the fire-chamber, and then bangs the door. Bridget, inarketing, shopping and dress-making, sit heavily upon the soul of wife and mother. The children hate early break- fasts, and are seived with the de-appetizing sauce of acerb rebuke for indolence as they straggle in. The dispersion to the different spheres of action is a disorderly rout, and the poor woman left to hold the fort, cogitates, by turns, upon the cause of the dyspeptic qualms that add physical to mental disquiet, and the " crossness of everybody in the morning." " It is such a comfort to get breakfast over ! " is her one solace. Our busy American citizen may demand, as a vital need, his substantial daily meal. He does not enjoy it. The running of a vast majority of human animals upon the daily course is like that of spavined horses. We are stiff and sore when first led from the stall, but warm to our work and into suppleness with judicious management. Who of us has not experienced the desire to turn the day hind-part-before, setting bodily and mental depression, with the yawning, and peev- BREAKFAST AS IT SHOULD BE. 229 ishness, and " gone-ness " that expresses this, at the latter end when bed and slumber would be the natural and speedy cure? Who practices the philosophy of gentle lubrication and moderate movement, leading up to steady labor which we might learn from a doltish groom ? The breakfast table should be a study — hygienic and sesthetic — ^with those who would profit thereby. Conspicuous among its appointments, set the fruit basket. For those whose stomachic idiosyncracies do not forbid this order of course, let oranges, grapes, bananas in winter, and summer fruits in their season, precede the weightier matters of a meal. There is amelioration of harsh business, if not refinement of tone, in the sight and manipulation of the gracious gifts direct from the Maker's hands. The juices are a grateful assuasive, and a stimulus to digestion. Oatmeal porridge, soaked over night and steamed in the morning to a smooth jelly — mollient, not drastic — then drenched with cream, may succeed the fruit, or be served as a dessert. The Briton's toasted bacon is a potent persuasive to reluc- tant appetite. Fried potatoes, thin as a shaving, hot, and so dry as not to soil the enveloping napkin, come delicately and seductively into line. Let the bread be sweet and light, the butter above sus- picion, coffee and tea fresh and fragrant. By the time the skirmish- ing is over — and the process should not be rapid — the business of the hour is fairly begun. Now should the practical man be built up with boiled eggs, or omelette, or beefsteak, or mutton-chops (always broiled I), or chickens, stewed or broiled, or savory ragouts, or sausage — the list is long and attractive to eye and imagination. The second cup of hot coffee is here in order. And — not until hun- ger has been appeased by deliberate and careful mastication of these substantial edibles — should the morning paper be unfolded. Wives and children have reason for their bitter aversion to the triple 230 HOUSE AND HOME. sheet, behind the crackling abomination of whose folds the lord of the home devours his provender. If the ill-used stomach could speak, its verdict would accord with their condemnation. She who dignifies the common uses and needs of life into humanizing, Christianizing influence upon those whose daily min- ister she is, serves her generation well, although her apparent sphere be no broader than her Breakfast Tabi^B. The Tea-Table. yORKSHIRB people, in those days, took their tea around, the table, sitting well to it, with their knees duly intro- duced under the mahogany. It was essential to have a multitude of plates of bread and butter, varied in sorts, and plentiful in quantity. It was thought proper, too, that on the cen- ter plate should stand a glass dish of marmalade. Among the viands was expected to be found a small assortment of cheese-cakes and tarts. If there was, also, a plate of thin slices of pink ham, garnished with green parsley — so much the better." Thus writes Charlotte Bront6, of the Yorkshire teas of eighty years ago. Word for word, we may apply the description to the third and latest jneal in the majority of the houses of what may be called our " solid middle-class Americans," — people who are doing well, and like to live well. Only, we must substitute for the " multitude of plates of bread and butter," the array of saucerlings gathered about the central trenchers from which our citizen and his family take their food. If the board is spread for " company," the number of these increases in proportion to the importance borrowed by the occasion from the quality of the guest and the desire of the hosts to set out a handsome " entertainment." Apple-sauce in one. 232 HOUSK AND HOMK. a spoonful of cold pudding or custard in a second, lettuce, or other succulent salad, in a third, flank the good-liver's plate at his ordinary supper. When there are invited participants, one often sees marmalade, chicken or lobster salad,, a trifle of blancmange, brandied peaches, and, in conclusion, ice-cream, in as many china or glass receptacles — not one being removed to make room for the others. The amused perplexity of him who is not to this fashion born, as he beholds himself gradually environed by these outposts in the contest waged against hunger, is only exceeded by the inflexible resolve of the directors of the campaign that the last and the least of these shall be honored. In their season, oysters, stewed, fried and scalloped — chicken, broiled, roasted or fricasseed ; a choice cut of salmon ; a big roe shad, — is the bulwark at the lower end of the board. Pota- toes, tomatoes, cucumbers and green peas skirmish up one line of eaters, and down another, while coffee-urn and tea-pot are fixed towers of strength and observation at head-quarters. Such, and often more abundant and incongruous, is the evening banquet to which neighbors and such strangers as the master and mistress would convert into acquaintances, are bidden in the formula : — " Come around on Thursday evening, and take a social cup of tea with us. Very informally, you know. Our tea-hour is half-past six." South of Philadelphia, they ask you for half-past seven, and call it " supper." " In point of fact," as Cousin Feenix would say, it is neither one nor the other. As an amplification — a mammoth and illustrated edition of our Yorkshire and American family-tea — it is an over- grown caricature, swollen out of all likeness to simple cheer and cosy comfort. It is too early and not sufficiently elegant to rank with the formal " party supper." It is much too elaborate to pass for the Bnglish fourth meal of the day (sometimes the fifth, if five THE TKA-TABLH. 233 o'clock tea be reckoned in). This fifth repast consists, among the middle and lower classes, of cold meat, pickles, beer and cheese. The higher stay stomach and nerve at ten, eleven, twelve o'clock, with salads, cold game, wines, and perhaps one spicy entree^ such as deviled lobster, or sweetbreads stewed in champagne. Our national " big tea " — no other title suits it so well — costs as much in money and labor as would a pretty little dinner, with five or six courses, duly arranged and served. The machinery, ill-adapted for the weight it has to carry, works awkwardly. Except to those whose primary object, always and everywhere, whenever their knees are "duly introduced under the mahogany," is the gratification of appetite, the entertainment is a baleful weariness, the happiest moment of which is that when the back is turned upon the dis- orderly table where meats and sweets are jumbled without plan or taste. It is time that the slowest learner among those who serve and those who partake, should understand that the success of feasts, in our day, from the humblest to the highest, depends upon a judicious display of a few really excellent dishes ; that the elegance of a bill-of-fare consists no more in the abundance of the things therein set forth. The family tea — as such — is actually a more choice affair to which to invite your friend, or your friend's friend, than the mongrel " spread " we have described. Whatever may have been the haste and huddle of breakfast and the early dinner, there is surely no excuse, at the decline of day, for a table-cloth awry, and a clutter of table appointments. With the afternoon dresses of " mother and the girls," the faintest sense of what is fit and fair would, one miglit imagine, suggest a touch of festal order in drapery, china and glass, and something of the incense of welcome in what is made ready for the tired man of the house. 234 HOUSE AND HOME. On the contrary, who does not know by heart (or by stomach) the order complacently *recognized by our model cottager as the regulation thing ? Imprimis, two plates of dry bread set precisely opposite to one another ; item, a dish of chipped beef at the foot, facing the tea-tray at the top ; the glass bowl of canned or preserved fruit, or, more probably, the incorrigible national apple-sauce, set in a right line with the butter-dish and cake-basket. In a sun-set saunter through a street of trim, modern houses, "built with especial reference to the wants of small families," one can guess with tolerable certainty, froin the smokeless chimneys and bowed dining-room windows, as well as from the absence of all appetizing odors in the cooling outer air, within how many domiciles this prim display awaits the master's home-coming. Let every housewife be a law unto herself in the ordering of the one social and leisurely meal of the trio she has to prepare daily. Abolish routine, and study surprises. Toss up an omelette on Monday, garnished with parsley ; mollify the flinty slices of Tuesday's stale bread into cream-toast, and reserve enough of Wednesday's morning baking to make a loaf of French rolls for tea. Chops or a steak will jump with the husbandly mood on Thursday, while Friday's fish-market will divide your mind by an embarrassment of riches that would furnish forth savorily the else scanty board. If love and ingenuity can vary, each evening, the expression of the common joy at the return of spouse and parent to hearth and home, affection should go to school to cunning when into Saturday night steals, as through crevices in the door the morrow will unbar, a breath of Sabbath rest and holy joys. " We always use our best china on Sunday nights. It was my mother's ; blue, with white lilies-of-the-valley on it," said the so-called prosaic mother of a large family. " It's foolish, I suppose ; THE TEA-TABLE. 237 but I liave a fancy that we are all better, as well as happier, for our Sabbath-day tea." Such foolishness is more than shrewdness or clever guess-work. It is spiritual insight. " Our Sabbath-day tea " is, in that house- hold, the swept and garnished nook that will expand into the orderliness and beauty of the whole life. The faith that reaches after the inner refinement, of which the best china — " blue^ with lilies-of- the valley," is the visible type, may be but a little leaven, but of such potency that years nor generations shall suffice to trace out its workings. If he is accounted a benefactor in his age who makes two blades of grass grow where but one grew before, what praise shall be awarded to her whose kitchen-range is an altar of sacrifice to the love that strives continually to express tender and unceasing thought of the objects beloved, not in words only, but in deeds ? We may smile at the linked images of supper-rolls and devotion akin to that which moved a Rachel Russel and a Margaret More ; of a surprise-salad set before the jaded husband at tea-time, and such sympathy 'with his too arduous labors and pecuniary trials as robs the wife's cheek of bloom and her eyes of slumber. The truth remains, and is stubborn, that hungry Jeannot would rather Jeannette should meet him with an omelette, than with a rose-bud, as an evening welcome home. " A cold tea " is a convenience to housekeeper and to help. Paterfamilias agrees outwardly to the assurance that it is more wholesome for the children. For all thatj he appreciates the pleasing iniquity of one covered dish and the hot biscuits that ought to-but-seldom-do give him dyspeptic night-mares, while he and the boys are secretly conscious of an increase of self- respect when, on the blessed Sunday evening, the best china is set out for them. As a people, we know too little, and care less, for family f^tes. In our aversion to foreign sentimentalities, we deny utterance to 838 HOUSE AND HOME. feelings that honor our humanity ; make bare and lonely the lives for which we would lay down our own. And what other of our household meals can be so easily converted into a feast that shall wear the air of a voluntary tribute of affection, a benediction and caress, that shall efface the day's worries, and give tone to the evening's pleasures, as our *' Family Tea ? " What our Children Eat. IN an interesting and valuable little work entitled " Food for the Invalid," the late Dr. J. Milner Fothergill, of London, said, " up to a recent period, oatmeal porridge and milk was the food of the nursery, par excellence^ and is still so where the parents possess good sense and the children good digestion — condi- tions which do not co-exist in every household." This one sentence distinctly proclaims the nationality and dwelling-place of the distinguished author. " Up to a recent period " the food of the American nursery has been more " promiscuous " than that of the adult members of the household, by reason of such adjuncts to the regular daily fare as green apples, pop-corn balls, taffy, and candies illimitable and indescribable. " It is astonishing what children can eat with impunity," is a complacent proverb which could hardly have gained circulation in any other country, if we except Lapland and West Africa. Casting aside imaginative drapings, let us omit from the statement just penned the clause, " Up to a recent period," — and confess what is the diet of children in ninety-nine hundredths of the homes of the comfortable classes of our enlightened land, abodes where poverty 3» 24o HOUSE AND HOMK. never lays her scrawny hand on meat or sup. We will furthermore exclude such extreme cases of eccentric dietary as recur at once to the memory of each reader. I have seen a baby just one year and two weeks old, toddling on the orchard-grass and munching, with his double quartette of small white teeth, wind-fall pears of an inferior grade at best, which his mother asserts, " agree with him as nothing else does." Within a month, another, two months younger, was displayed by his proud papa as a prodigy who " will have a bite of anything his mother eats, yet was never sick in his life." A year or so ago, I was accosted in my walk on a farmhouse porch by a laughing father, and made to hearken to a story of a feat performed by his whey-faced three-year-old, who had been brought out of town to recruit from a severe attack of cholera infantum. " The young dog attacked a basket of peaches, not over-ripe ones either, standing by the kitchen door, and ate ten before I left him ! " With a hinted doubt as to the propriety of terming these " ex- treme cases," as American families go — ^let us see what is the ordinary nourishment (?) of the American boy or girl from eight- een months old and upward. Bobby's mamma orders for breakfast : — Oatmeal porridge : fish- balls ; stewed kidneys ; fried potatoes ; hot rolls ; buckwheat cakes and syrup ; oranges ; pears ; tea and coflFee. Bobby's eyes roll eagerly over the board as the several dishes are brought on, and when, well-stufifed and happy, he alights from his tall chair at the end of the meal, his bib indicates that he has sampled all, if he has not partaken to satiety of each one. And this not because he is a spoiled child who clamors for forbidden food. He is more than passably docile and obedient, but nobody thinks of refusing to give him kidneys, fried potatoes, buckwheats WHAT OUR CHILDREN EAT. 241 or coffee. His mother could not decide, if questioned, whicli of these is wholesome fare for infants, and which likely to prove deleterious to the young stomach. She has probably never given the matter a thought. At dinner there will be soup, fish, highly seasoned entrees^ pastry and black coffee. The supper table will be inviting with lobster salad, Welsh rarebit, jelly-roll, crullers and preserves. Bobby has his share of all, and goes to bed within one hour after bolting the last doughnut, as thoughtless of evil as is the fond parent, who might as kindly treat him to india-rubber au gratin and bullets au naturel. He lives through it? Why — yes — generally. That is, he does not always and immediately die as the unmistakable result of the poison. His system takes care of it somehow, or gets rid of it somehow else. If, by the time he is thirty, the long-suffering stomach will pay no more debts of his contracting, who reckons up the account back to infancy and reveals why the trial-balance does not come out right ? He lived through scarlet fever, but it left him slightly deaf; the measles kept him a prisoner all of one winter, and his eyes have been weak ever since ; or the arm he broke on the base-ball ground is not quite as supple as the other. = All these drawbacks are recorded in the family memory, and freely discussed. Not even the always-vigilant, never-forgetful mother thinks of associating childish excesses in eating with the lad's sick headache, or the man's defective digestion. While we cannot set aside the weighty bulk of evidence in sup- port of the influence of heredity upon the rising race, we may well, for a while, withhold our feet from spuming the bones of our fore- fathers, and look for a more modem solu1;ionof the ills of our corporeal frames. 242 HOUSB AND HOMK. We may not love our Britisli cousins, but we cannot deny to them the possession of brawn, phosphates and complexions. Their climate is execrable for eight months of the year, yet we take it for granted that they owe their superiority in the matter of constitution and nerve to atmospheric influences. Johnny Bull, Jr., breakfasts on porridge, and sups on bread and milk ; dines on plain roast or boiled meat, potatoes and rice pudding ; tastes plum cake at Christmas ; hardly knows the flavor of tea or coffee, and eats less candy in twenty years than our free-bom Bobby disposes of in a twelvemonth. I once put a magazine article on " The Royal Children " in the hands of a shrewd, sallow lad of twelve. He looked up presently, with a sniff of infinite contempt. " I don't think it pays to be a prince if a fellow has got to dine every day on boiled mutton and babies' pudding ! " We set better tables, so far as variety and abundance go, than any other people in the world, eat more, and digest it less comfort- ably than any sister civilized nation. This generation is beyond repair in these particulars. For abatement of American dyspepsia we must look to the mothers who are making the constitutions and history of the coming century. The article from which our text is drawn goes on to give the preference to hominy over oatmeal, and recommends American maize as " being the richest in fat of all the cerealia, while it con- tains albuminoid matter in as high a proportion as does wheat. Preparations of maize," it says, " are peculiarly adapted to the nursery," Our Bobby, accustomed to the varied menus I have sketched, would rebel hotly against a breakfast of hominy and milk. I once heard him condemn mush as " chicken feed." He and his elder brother and sisters are products of an artificial civilization, modeled WHAT OUR CHILDREN EAT. 243 on the American pattern. But it is possible to bring up Bobby's baby-brother in ignorance of the savoriness of fried oysters and the piquancy of curries ; to train his healthy desire for food in the direction of cereals, milk, boiled eggs, roast beef and boiled mutton, fresh ripe fruits, and what our scornful young democrat stigmatized as " babies' pudding." Sustained by such fare, his digestion will grow stronger with years, his bones firm, his brain clear, and his nerves steady. He may not be mannish so soon as the boy next door, who complains that his coffee is not strong enough to brace him up, and is critical of ragouts and vol-au-vents, but he will be more manly in a sturdy, wholesome way, with the sort of superiority the elm has over the ailantus. As a preliminary step, let the mother settle dietetic problems on the basis of what Baby may eat, not what he can devour, and apparently digest. Introductory to Menus. IN the preparation of this series of bill-of-fare for family use I have sought to accomplish three things : First and chiefly — ^To be practical. Secondly — ^To express my faeaning clearly and fully. Thirdly — ^To adapt menu and recipes to the service of people of moderate means. *' How do you make your delicious chicken salad ? " asked one housekeeper of another, in the day when the dish was comparatively new. " Oh, I put in all the good things I can think of, and when it tastes just right, I stop," was the satisfactory reply. Too many recipes, furnished by practical cooks, and printed for the use of the inexperienced, are constructed on this principle, and presuppose skill and judgment in the tyro. Almost as serious is the blunder of yielding to the temptation to write out showy lists of dishes as model meals, for the reader whose income is not above the average of that of the young merchant, or professional man. The true cook has, in her modest sphere, such pleasure in recipe- making as the musician or poet has in composition. All three fail of popularity when they discourage, instead of animating those they would instruct. The teacher's province is not to display his own proficiency, but to develop the pupil's powers. S45 246 HOUSE AND HOME. Tuition that falls short of this end is failure. The housewife who has a fixed and small allowance for market- ing, reads in the Home Comer of her family newspaper a breakfast menu that calls for a dish of meat, one of fish, and another of eggs ; for two kinds of hot bread ; for oatmeal porridge ; potatoes, fruit, coffee, and milled chocolate — and, with a sinking heart, she turns elsewhere for help in her attempt to vary the monotony of the first, and most trying meal of the day. Recipes and cook-books are not prepared for millionaires' wives. Our prudent manager knows as well as does her would-be mentor, that few families, even among her wealthy neighbors, sit down daily to breakfast-tables spread as lavishly as the imaginary board above sketched. To discourage- ment is added contempt for the printed guide that would assert the contrary to be the rule. ' A clever little woman who has a positive genius for cookery, threw up her hands tragically when I recommended as easily-made and cheap the oyster-bisque, directions for which will be found hereafter. " I have a recipe for oyster-bisque, thank you ! It calls for sixteen ingredients. I counted them. One of them is a quart of cream. I could not put that soup into my tureen for less than $1.50, not computing time and labor. I do not believe in fifty-cent dinners for six people, but we can't afford five-dollar feasts for every day." A novice brought to me once, an article clipped from a favorite weekly, in which minute instructions were given, dialogically, for the manufacture of meat dumplings. The tale — as a tale — ^hung well together. But the meat never went into the pastry. Why and how they were kept apart was a worse quandary than the King's enigma as to how the apple got into his dumpling. With this prefatory, and I trust, not tedious laying of the cloth, we will proceed to business. foiled ToWl. I^OA^t Dvick. Spring Bills of Fare. No. I. BREAKFAST. Coarse Hominy. Potato Rolls. Fried Pigs' Feet, Breaded. Buttered Toast. Cold Bread. Fruit. Tea. Coffee. Coarse Hominy. This is otherwise known as cracked corn. Wash it well and set it to soak over night. In the morning, drain and cook soft in boiling water, salted. Bat with sugar and cream, or cream only. Potato Rolls. One cup of potato, mashed or whipped, until smooth and light, with two tablespoonfuls of butter and two cups of lukewarm milk ; one tablespoonful of sugar ; one scant cup of flour ; one-half yeast cake — dissolved in warm water ; one teaspoon ful of salt — an even one ; mix these together, using but half the flour over night, and 248 HOUSE AND HOMK. leave them to rise. Early in tlie morning, work in the T%st of the flour, knead thoroughly and let it rise for an hour and a half; mold into small rolls after a second brisk, hard kneading, set in a pan and leave in a warm place for half an hour before baking. Send hot to the table. Fried Pigs' Feet, Breaded. Buy the pigs' feet ready pickled from your butcher. If they have only been kept in brine, soak three hours and boil until tender. While hot, cover with boiling vinegar, in which you have put a tablespoonful of sugar and half a dozen whole black pepper- corns for each cupful of vinegar. Do this the day before you cook them for breakfast. Before frying, wipe each piece well, roll in beaten egg, then in cracker crumbs, and cook in plenty ; one even teaspoonful of salt. Stir sugar and butter together to a cream ; add the beaten eggs; beat two minutes, and put in the milk and salt ; last of all, the meal and flour mixed together, and sifted with the baking powder; beat up one minute to aerate it thoroughly, and pour into a shallow pan. Bake steadily, rather than fast, and eat hot, cutting it into squares. LUNCHEON. Salmon Fingers. Dressed Potatoes. Crackers. Cheese. Olives Com Starch Hasty-Pudding. Hasty-Pudding Sauce. Salmon Fingers. Soak a pound of smoked salmon four or five hours in tepid water, when you have scrubbed oflf the incrustfng salt. Lay then in cold water, and bring it to a gentle boil. Take out the salmon and 282 HOUSE AND HOMB. cover with ice-cold water, leaving it tlius for fifteen minutes, chang- ing the water once for colder. Wipe the fish dry., and cut with a keen blade into strips about the length of your middle finger, and an inch wide. Have ready in a dish some melted butter in which have been mixed the juice of a lemon, a teaspoonful of Harvey's, or Worcestershire sauce, and a pinch of cayenne. Turn the strips of fish over in this, until well coated, then, roll in flour and fry in hot dripping. Arrange symmetrically on a hot dish. This is a piquant relish and easily prepared. Dressed Potatoes. Bake large Irish potatoes, turning them several times to keep the skin whole. When they yield to a hard pinch, cut a piece from the top of each, scrape out the insides carefully, and whip to a smooth paste with a little milk, butter, grated cheese, salt and pep- per. Work the potato until it looks like cream, fill the skins with it put back the caps on the cut ends, and set the potatoes upright in a hot oven for three or four minutes. Line a deep dish with a napkin, and send the potatoes in it to table. Corn Starch Hasty-Ptjdding. One quart of boiling milk ; four tablespoonfuls of corn starch ; one teaspoonful of salt ; one tablespoonful of butter. Wet the com starch with cold milk and stir into the boiling. Cook in a farina kettle ten minutes, beat in the butter and, this dissolved and incorporated, turn into an open deep dish. Hasty-Pudding Sauce. One cup of hot milk ; one cup of sugar ; two eggs ; one table- spoonful of butter. SPRING BILLf OF FARE. 283 Stir tlie butter into the boiling milk, add the sugar, and pour this on the beaten eggs. Return to the custard-kettle and stir until it begins to thicken. Flavor with vanilla, adding, if you like, nutmeg, and set in hot, not boiling, water until needed. DINNER. Fish Bisque. Roast Sweetbreads. Imitation Spaghetti. Rice and Tomato. Graziella Pudding. Fruit. Coffee. Fish Bisque. Strain the water in which fresh cod or halibut has been boiled, through a cloth, season with pepper and salt, and set away in a cold place for next day's dinner. Of this make a bisque as directed below. To a quart of the liquor, heated to boiling, add a cupful of the cold fish left over, minced very fine ; when it has simmered five minutes, stir in three tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in one of flour and a tablespoonful of minced parsley. Have ready in another vessel a cup of hot milk in which a scant cup of dry crumbs has been stirred, with a bit of soda no larger than a pea. Mix these with the soup, stirring all together well, simmer one minute, and serve. If made exactly according to the directions given and well seasoned, this bisque will be very good. Send sliced lemon and crackers around with it. Roast Sweetbreads. • Parboil the sweetbreads by cooking them for ten minutes in boiling salted water. Drop them into a bowl of ice-water and leave 284 HOUSE^ND HOME. them stand there fifteen minutes, changing the water as it warms. Wipe dry, roll in salted and peppered flour, and arrange in. dripping pan. Put a teaspoonful of butter on each, and roast forty-five minutes, basting often with butter-and-water. Take up, and keep hot in a chafing-dish while you strain the gravy into a saucepan ; add a little hot water, and a tablespoonful of butter cut up in one of browned flour. Season and bOil up, add half a can of mush- rooms, cut in halves, cook three minutes, and pour over the sweetbreads. Imitation Spaghetti. Boil and mash potatoes, adding salt and butter, but only a table- spoonful of milk, as you want a stiff paste. Rub this through a colander into a buttered pie or pudding dish. It will fall in small, pipe-like shapes. I^eave them as they lie, and, when all the potato has passed through, set the dish on the upper grating of the oven to brown delicately. Rice and Tomato. Boil a cupful of rice in salted water (plenty of it), shaking now and then until each grain is tender, but whole. Have ready a cupful of stewed and strained tomatoes, well seasoned with butter, pepper, salt and some minute atoms of onion. Dish the rice, stir a generous tablespoonful of butter through it, with two of grated cheese. Mix well, and pour the tomato sauce over all. Set in hot water for five minutes, covered, and serve. A little gravy is an improvement to the sauce. GrazieIyLA Pudding. Half a pound of figs ; two cups of fine bread crumbs ; one half- cup of powdered suet ; two cups of milk ; one half-cup of sugar ; SPRING BILLS OF FARH. 285 four eggs ; two tablespoonfuls of flour ; a good pincli of cinnamon ; bit of soda, tlie size of a pea, in the milk ; one half-teaspoonful of salt. Cover the crumbs with the milk, and let them soak while you prepare the rest of the materials. Mince the figs, when you have washed and dried them. Beat the eggs light and add to the soaked crumbs, next, the sugar and spice and salt, and, finally, the figs dredged with the two tablespoonfuls of flour. (All the flour must go in.) Beat very hard from the bottom to the top, pour into a buttered m6ld, fit on a close lid, and steam for three hours. Dip the mold into cold water for a second, turn out, and eat with hard sauce. No. 8. BREAKFAST. Hominy. Pop-overs. Eggs in Toast Cups. Stewed Potatoes. Strawberries. Tea. Coffee. Pop-overs. One pint of Hecker's prepared flour, sifted with half a teaspoonful of salt ; two cups of rich milk ; two eggs. Sift flour into a bowl ; beat the yolks light, stir the milk and flour into this. Lastly, add the whites whipped stiff. Bake immediately in heated and greased " gem " or muffin tins. Send at once to the table. Eggs in Toast-Cups. - Slice stale bread three-quarters of an inch thick, and cut with a large cake-cutter, or tumbler, into rounds. Press a small cutter on 286 HOUSE AND HOME. these about half tlie way througli, and scrape out the crumb from the inner circles, leaving sides and bottoms unbroken. Set in the oven to dry for ten minutes ; take them out and let them cool. Have ready some salted lard or dripping in a frying-pan ; put in the bread-cups when it is hissing hot, and fry to a light brown. Take out, drain off the fat, arrange on a hot dish, and lay a poached egg in the cavity of each. I regret that I do not now recall the name of the maker of a convenient utensil called, " an egg poacher." It is to be bought at house-furnishing stores, and greatly simplifies the business of poaching eggs nicely, and with smooth edges. Strawberries. Serve the larger varieties, whole, with the caps on. Send around powdered sugar with them, and let each person help him- self, dipping the berries, one by one, in a little heap of sugar on his plate and eating them from the caps. LUNCHEON. Savory Rice and Brains. Tomato and Lettuce Salad. Crackers and Cheese. Cold Bread and Butter. Ambrosia. Light Cakes. Savory Rice and Brains. One cup of rice ; one cup of skimmed gravy or broth, well seasoned ; one pint of boiling water ; two tablespoonfuls of grated qheese ; salt and pepper ; one egg ; brains of a calf. SPRING BII.LS 01^ FARE. 287 Soak the rice three hours in cold water ; drain, and put over the fire in a farina kettle, with the broth and hot water. Cook until tender, shaking up now and then, but do not put a spoon into it. When done, it should be quite dry. Drain in a fine-holed colander; mound on a platter; sift powdered cheese over it, and let it brown slightly on the upper grating of the oven. To prepare the brains, boil them fifteen minutes in salted hot water, throw them into cold, and leave them there as long ; dry, mash them to a paste with a beaten egg ; pepper and salt them ; stir in a teaspoonful of flour, and drop, a spoonful at a time, into hot fat. Drain, when nicely browned, and lay around the hillock of rice. Tomato and IvETTuce Salad. Pick out the crispest leaves of lettuce ; lay a raw tomato, peeled and cut in half (horizontally) on each ; arrange on a cold dish ; scatter cracked ice among the leaves, and send to table. In serving, pour mayonnaise dressing over the tomato. Ambrosia. Pare and cut (or pull) a ripe pineapple into small pieces. Put a layer in a dish ; sugar well ; cover with grated cocoanut ; lay in more sugared pineapple, and so on, until the materials are used up, covering the top thickly with cocoanut. Pass sponge, or other light cake with it. DINNER. Clam Soup. Leg of Mutton, with Caper Sauce. Lobster Salad, with Cream Mayonnaise. Mashed Potatoes. Green Peas. Crushed-Strawberry Ice-Cream. White Cake. Coflfee. 288 HOUSE AND HOME. Ci,AM Soup. One quart of clam liquor ; fifty clams ; one cupful of boiling water ; one pint of milk ; two generous tablespoonfuls of butter rolled in flour ; a teaspoonful, each, of minced parsley and onion ; a pinch of mace ; pepper and salt to taste. Put the liquor, water, onion, and the hard part of the clams over the'fire ; stir gently for twenty minutes after the boil begins ; strain and season ; return to to the fire with the soft parts of the clams, chopped fine, and boil slowly twenty minutes longer. Have ready the milk, scalding hot, in another vessel ; stir in the floured butter, cook two minutes, add the clam soup and turn into the tureen, which should be lined with split Boston crackers, dipped in hot milk, then buttered. Leg of Mutton, with Caper Sauce. Wash with vinegar, peeling off as much of the tough outer skin as will come away easily ; boil, twelve minutes to the pound, in a pot of hot salted water ; take out, wipe all over with a clean cloth and rub with butter. For the sauce, take out a large cupful of the liquor half an hour before the meat is done ; set the vessel contain- ing this in cold water to throw up the fat ; skim carefully, strain into a saucepan, bring to a boil, stir in a great spoonful of butter rubbed in as much flour. When it has cooked three minutes, add two tablespoonfuls of capers. Lobster Sai^ad — ^with Cream Mayonnaise. Meat of two lobsters picked out and cut, not chopped, up ; one large cup of mayonnaise dressing ; one cup of whipped cream ; lettuce. SPRING BILLS OF FARE. 289 Make the mayonnaise dressing by whipping the yolks of five eggs thick, then adding half a cup of best salad oil, drop by drop, until you have a smooth, batter-like mixture ; beat in, then, two tablespoonfuls of vinegar, gradually, — a pinch of cayenne, and half a saltspoonful of salt ; keep the mixing-bowl on ice while pre- paring the dressing, and leave it there while you sprinkle the lobster with salt, pepper and vinegar. Heap it in a bowl lined with crisp lettuce leaves. Do this just before serving it; beat the whipped cream into the dressing, cover the lobster thickly with it, and send it to table. Crushed-Strawberry Ice-Cream. Mash a quart of strawberries, sweeten very liberally, and stir them into two quarts of half-frozen custard, made in the proportion of six eggs and a heaping half, pint of sugar to each quart of milk. Beat the berries in thoroughly, and freeze quickly. Delicious I White Cake. Three cups of sugar ; one cup of butter ; one half-cup of milk ; whites of nine eggs ; one quart of Hecker's prepared flour ; essence of vanilla, or bitter almond. for icing and filling. Whites of three eggs ; three cups of powdered sugar ; juice and grated peel of a lemon. Rub butter and sugar to a cream, whip in the milk, essence, the flour and stiffened whites by turns ; bake in jelly cake tins, and when cool, spread the icing between and on top. 290 HOUSE AND HOME. No. 9. BREAKFAST. Milk and Rice Porridge. Shad au gratin. Aunt Chloe's Muffins. Fried Potatoes. Berries. Tea. Coffee. Milk and Rice Porridge. One scant cup of rice, soaked over night in cold water; one quart of milk : one-half teaspoonful of salt. Put salted milk and rice together in a farina kettle, fit on a close top, and keep the water in the outer vessel at a steady boil for one hour, shaking up vigorously, now and then, but not stirring. Turn out and eat with cream, and if you like, sugar. Shad au gratin. \ Clean, split and cut a shad into eight pieces, four for each side, sprinkle with salt and pepper, roll in beaten ^%%^ then in fine cracker ctumbs, and fry in hot lard or dripping ; drain off the grease. Serve on a hot dish garnished with sliced lemon and sprigs of parsley. Aunt Chloe's Muffins. One even quart of sifted flour ; one quart of buttermilk ; two tablespoonfuls of Indian meal ; one teaspoonful of soda, and one of salt, sifted three times with the meal and flour ; two well-beaten eggs ; one even tablespoonful of sugar. Beat the eggs, mix with the sugar, then with the milk ; add the flour sifted with soda and salt, beat hard one minute, and bake at once in muffin rings on a hot griddle. SPRING BILLS OF FARE. 291 LUNCHEON. Chicken Croquettes. Home-made Crackers. Lettuce Salad. Bread. Cheese. Olives. Commeal Cup Cake. Chicken Croquettes. Two pounds of cold chicken without bones, or one can of boned chicken ; one cup of cold mashed potato — made soft with milk ; two eggs ; half a cup of gravy, or drawn butter ; salt and pepper ; cracker crumbs ; dripping for frying. Chop the chicken very fine, mix with the g^avy, and season. Beat in the eggs, then the potato, and stir until smoking hot, in a buttered frjdng pan. Let the mixture cool quickly. Make into croquettes, roll in fine cracker dust and fry in plenty of nice fat. Home-Made Crackers. One quart of prepared flour; three good tablespoonfuls of butter ; two tablespoonfuls of sugar ; one pint of milk ; one half teaspoonful of salt. Rub the butter into the flour, put the sugar with the milk, mix into stiff dough, lay on the floured pastry board, and beat from end to end with the rolling pin, stopping every five minutes, or so, to shift the mass, and double it over upon itself. Keep this up for twenty minutes ; roll into a sheet, less than a quarter of an inch thick, cut into round cakes, prick these deeply with a fork, and bake in a moderate oven. They are better the second day than the first. 292 HOUSB AND HOME. Lettuce Sai^ad. Pick over the lettuce, selecting the crisp, young leavesj wasli them and lay in ice-water for fifteen minutes before sending to the table in a glass bowl. Send with it a salad dish lined with a napkin. Pick the larger leaves to pieces, and fill the salad bowl with them. Gather up the corners of the napkin, shake it lightly, and turn out the lettuce into the bowl. Season with pepper, salt, sugar, vinegar and oil ; toss up well with a salad fork and spoon, and send around at once. Salad left three minutes in the dressing begins to wilt and toughen. CoRNMEAL Cup Cake. Two even cups of white Indian meal ; half a cup of wheat flour ; four tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar ; four beaten eggs ; one tablespoonful of butter ; half a teaspoonful of soda ; one teaspoonful of cream tartar ; one teaspoonful of salt, sifted with meal and flour ; one-half teaspoonful of mixed mace and cinnamon ; one quart of boiling milk. Stir flour, meal, salt, soda, cream tartar into the hot milk ; heat for fifteen minutes in a farina kettle surrounded with boiling water, stirring all the time ; add the butter, turn out and beat hard ; let the mixture get cold before beating in the eggs, whipped light with sugar and spice ; stir hard and bake in buttered patty pans ; turn out and eat warm with butter. DINNER. White Soup. Veal and Ham Cutlets. Asparagus. Young Beets. Strawberry Trifle. Coffee. SPRING BILLS OF FARE. 293 White Soup. Three pounds of a " knuckle " of veal, bones broken, and meat minced ; one half-cup of raw rice ; three quarts of water ; two table- spoonfuls of butter, rubbed in flour ; half an onion chopped ; three ^SS^ j one cup of milk ; two tablespoonfuls of minced parsley ; salt and pepper to taste. Put water, meat, bones, rice and onions over the fire, and boil very slowly for four hours. Strain, pick out meat and bones and rub the rice through a fine colander. Season, return to the fire, boil up, skim well, and put in parsley and butter. Heat the milk in a saucepan, pour upon the beaten eggs, and stir into the soup, removing the latter from the fire as soon as they are fairly mixed together. Veal and Ham Cutlets. Cut generous slices of cold boiled ham, and fry them in their own fat, remove to a hot chafing dish, and in the same fat, adding a little lard, cook the cutlets when you have beaten them flat with the broad side of a hatchet, salted and peppered, then dipped them in egg and cracker crumbs. Lay them in overlapping alternation with the ham on a hot dish. Asparagus. Cut off about two inches of the woody end of each stalk, tie the tender " bud " ends into bundles of six stalks each, and boil tender — about thirty minutes, if large, in hot, salted water. Have ready slices of crustless toast on a hot dish, wet with the water in which the asparagus was cooked ; lay the stalks on them, and pour drawn butter over all. 294 HOUSE AND HOMB. Young Be^ts. Cut off the tops, not too near the root, wash, without scraping or peeling, and cook from forty minutes to an hour in hot, salted water. Scrape off the skins, slice and dish, then cover them with a dressing made by heating four tablespoonfuls of vinegar with a heaping tablespoonful of butter, salt and pepper to liking. Strawberry Trifle. One stale sponge cake, sliced ; four eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately ; four cups of milk ; one cup of sugar ; three pints of fresh strawberries. Scald the milk, beat in the sugar and yolks, and cook, untit it begins to thicken — about ten minutes. Let it get cold. Cover the bottom of a glass dish with sliced cake, wet with cold custard and Btrew with berries, sprinkle with sugar, cover with cake, wet this with custard, more berries, sugared, and so on until ihe cake is used up. Pour in all the custard, beat the whites to a meringue with a tablespoonful of powdered sugar, and heap on the top of the dish, sticking a few choice berries in the white mound. Set on ice until needed. It should be eaten soon after the berries go in. No. lo. BREAKFAST. Oatmeal Gruel. Curried Eggs. Flapjacks. Baked Potatoes. Cold Bread. Fruit. Coffee. Tea. SPRING BILLS OF FARE. 295 Oatmeal Gruel. One even cup of fresh oatmeal ; one pint of cold water ; one pint of milk ; one even teaspoonful of salt. Wet the oatmeal with the water, and set over the fire in a farina kettle, stirring often, and, as it stiffens, beating in a cupful of milk ; stir steadily five minutes after it reaches the boil, adding gradually the rest of the milk. Cook, in all, half an hour, dating from the scalding point. Turn out, and eat with sugar and cream. Curried Eggs. Put a teaspoonful of minced onion into a cupful of weak broth ; let it boil, strain out the onion, put the broth into a deep frying-pan, season well, and poach six or eight eggs in it until the whites are firm ; remove them with a skimmer, and lay on rounds of buttered toast in a heated platter. Pour half a cupful of hot milk in the bottom of the dish, and let the toast soak it up while you make the sauce. Do this by stirring into the broth in the frying-pan a table- spoonful of butter and, as it dissolves, a good teaspoonful of curry powder wet up with water. Simmer until thick and pour over the eggs in the dish. Flapjacks. One cup of fine white meal ; one cup of flour ; two cups of boiling water ; one tablespoonful of sugar ; one teaspoonful of salt and the same of baking powder ; two eggs ; three cups of milk. Put meal and salt into a bowl, and scald with the water ; when it is cold, stir in the milk ; sift flour and baking powder together, and beat in next, then, eggs and sugar whipped light together ; beat for one minute hard up from the bottom, and bake on a hot griddle. 296 HOUSE AND HOME. LUNCHEON. Mock Snipe. Thin Bread and Butter. Rice Pilau. Cold Meat. Crackers. Cheese. Olives. Oranges cut up with Sugar. Cake. Mock Snipe. Cut very thin slices of fat salt pork about the length of your middle finger and twice as wide ; drain every drop of the liquor from large oysters ; bind each about the middle with a slice of pork, skewer together with a wooden toothpick, or stout straw, thrust through both, and fry in butter or dripping to a nice brown ; drain off the fat, and serve, without withdrawing the toothpicks. Lay within an edging of watercresses. The sharp points of the skewers give the dish some resemblance to broiled snipe. Eat hot. Rice Pii.au. One cup of weak broth, and the same of stewed tomatoes, strained through a fine sieve ; one half-cup of raw rice ; one table- spoonful of butter ; minced onion, pepper and salt. Simmer broth, tomatoes and onion together for fifteen minutes ; strain out the onion, season well, and put over the fire with the rice, which should have soaked one hour in cold water ; cook gently, until the rice is tender, shaking up the saucepan now and then, but never stirring it ; add the butter, working it in lightly with a fork, and set it at the back of the range to dry off, as you would boiled potatoes. Serve in a heated, deep dish. SPRING BIIvLS OF FARE. 297 Oranges cut up with Sugar. Peel, witliout tearing the fruit, divide deftly into eighths, and cut these crosswise, removing the seed when it can be done without mangling the flesh. The beauty of the dish depends upon care in dividing, and seeding, and the keenness of the blade used for cutting. Pile in a glass dish, and sugar each portion as you serve it out. If the oranges are left long in sugar, they wither, and lose their fresh flavor. Pass cake with them. DINNER. Tomato Bisque. Chicken Fricassee, cache. Bermuda Onions, stuflfed. Potato Croquettes. Chocolate Trifle. Light Cake. Fruit. Coffee. Tomato Bisque. One quart can of tomatoes ; one quart of \milk, with a tiny bit of soda stirred in; one even tablespoonful of corn-starch and a heaping tablespoonful of butter, rubbed together ; salt and pepper to taste ; one half teaspoonful of sugar. Stew the tomatoes for half an hour with salt, pepper and sugar, rub through a fine colander back into the saucepan, and heat to boiling. Scald the milk in another vessel, add corn-starch and butter, and stir until well thickened. Mix with the tomato, bring to a quick, sharp boil, and a delicious soup is ready for eating. Chicken Fricassee, Cache. Cut up the fowl and stew tender in enough cold water to cover it. Pour off" the liquor to cool, that you may skim off the fat. Cut 298 HOUSE AND HOMB. the meat from the bones in neat pieces with a sharp knife. With these, neatly fill a bake-dish, cover and set aside. Put two table- spoonfuls of butter in a frying pan and cook in it, when hot, half an onion, sliced, until it is of a light brown. Strain the hot butter into a bowl, add two tablespoonfuls of flour, and, when you have a thick batter, the liquor (strained and skimmed) in which the chicken was stewed. Season well and pour upon the chicken. There should be enough liquid to fill the dish. Set in the oven, covered, while you mix quickly a pint of prepared flour into a soft biscuit-paste, with cold water or milk and shortening. Roll out into a sheet half an inch thick, cut into round cakes, and lay these, fust touching one another, on the surface of the chicken-gravy. Shut up in the oven, and bake until the cakes are delicately browned and " puffy." Serve in the bake-dish. Bermuda Onions, Stuffed. Make a round hole in the upper end of each, dig out at least half the contents ; set in a dish covered with warm, slightly salted water, and bring to^a simmer. Throw away the water ; carefully fill the onions with minced poultry or veal, put a bit of butter in the dish to prevent burning, scatter fine crumbs thickly over the onions, and bake, covered, half an hour. Potato Croquettes. Mash mealy potatoes to a soft paste with milk, and a little butter ; work in a raw &gg^ well beaten, and a teaspoonful of prepared flour. Mold into rolls, rounded at the ends, dip in beaten &gg, then in fine cracker crumbs, and fry in good dripping or salted lard. Croquettes are best when left to get cold and firm before they are cooked. Drain all the fat from them before dishing. SPRING BILLS OF FARE. 299 Chocolate Trifle. One quart of milk; four tablespoonfuls of Baker's 'chocolate, tliat flavored with vanilla, if you can get it ; three-quarters of a cup of sugar ; six eggs ; one pint of whipped cream ; a saltspoonful of salt ; one teaspoonful of extract of vanilla ; bit of soda. Heat the milk in a farina-kettle with the soda and salt, wet up the chocolate with a little cold milk, and stir it in, keeping the spoon going until the chocolate is dissolved. Beat eggs and sugar together in a bowl, pour the hot milk and chocolate on them, mix thoroughly, and return to the fire, stirring industriously. When it has thickened nicely, pour it out, flavor, and set away to get cold. Just before dinner, turn into a glass bowl, and heap on top the whipped cream, slightly sweetened. Or, if you have custard cups, nearly fill them with the chocolate, and top them with the snowy cream. This is a pretty dessert. Send around fancy cakes, or arrange an attractive basket of alternate slices of sponge and angel cake. Ko. 11 BREAKFAST. Milk Porridge. Brown Stew of Liver. Egg Gems. Bake^ Potatoes. Bread Toast. Coffee. Tea. Fruit. Milk Porridge. One pint of oatmeal ; one pint, each, of boiling water and milk ; one teaspoonful of salt. 300 HOUSE AND HOME. Sift tlie meal into the salted hot water, stir well, and leave it all night on the cooking stove. In the morning, surround with boiling water and cook one hour without stirring ; add the hot milk, simmer ten minutes, and pour out. Brown Stew of Liver. Lay the sliced liver for half an hour in cold salt-and-water ; wipe, and , cut it into inch-square bits ; fry half a sliced onion to a nice brown in dripping ; strain out the onion, add a tablespoonful of browned flour to the fat, and stir to a smooth roux, adding a cupful of boiling water as you go on ; turn all into a saucepan, put in the liver with another cup of hot water, cover, and stew very slowly one hour, or until tender ; season with pepper, salt, parsley, a teaspoon- ful of tomato catsup, and serve in a deep dish. Egg Gems. Three cups of prepared flour ; three cups of milk ; three eggs ; one saltspoonful of salt. Beat the eggs light, add milk, flour and salt ; beat fast upward for one minute and a half; fill hot, greased gem pans ; bake in a quick oven. _ Graham gems made by this recipe, substituting Graham flour for white, are delicious. LUNCHEON. Broiled Smoked Salmon. Sweetbread Salad. Oatmeal Scones. Bread. Butter. Pickles. Crackers and Cheese. Soft Gingerbread. Chocolate. . SPRING BILLS OF FARE. 301 Broiled Smoked Salmon. One p»und of smoked salmon ; two tablespoonfuls of butter ; juice of a lemon ; cayenne pepper. Wash and soak the salmon for one hour ; wipe, and with a sharp knife cut into strips three inches long and an inch wide ; parboil in hot water to which has been added a tablespoonful of vinegar and four or five whole cloves. When it has simmered for fifteen minutes, drain, wipe dry, and broil on a gridiron to a nice brown ; lay on a hot dish, butter well, squeeze the lemon over the strips, pepper, and serve. Sweetbread Salad. Parboil three sweetbreads for ten minutes in fresh hot water ; drain, and throw them into ice-water to blanch them ; when quite cold, cook fifteen minutes in salted boiling water, take out, wipe, and set where they will cool suddenly. This will make them firm and crisp. Cut into round slices. Line a salad bowl with lettuce, lay the sliced sweetbreads on the leaves, and pour a mayonnaise dressing over them. Oatmeal Scones. Three cups of oatmeal ; one pint of white flour, prepared ; one pint of boiling milk ; two tablespoonfuls of butter ; half a tea- spoonful of salt. Sift oatmeal, flour and salt twice together into a bowl, melt the butter in the milk, make a hole in the middle of the meal, &c., and pour this in. Stir into a soft dough as quickly as possible, roll into a sheet less than an eighth of an inch thick, cut into round cakes, and bake on a hot griddle. Butter while hot and serve. They are good cold, also. 302 HOUSE) AND HOME. Soft Gingerbread. Two heaping cups of flour ; a scant half-cup of buttfer ; half-a- cup of milk ; one cup of molasses, and two tablespoonfuls of sugar ; two eggs; one dessertspoonful of ground ganger; a half-teaspoonful of cinnamon ; a quarter-teaspoonful of soda, sifted with the flour. Rub sugar, molasses and butter to a yellow cream, add the spices, the beaten yolks, the milk, whites and flour. Bake in two loaves in a moderate oven. DINNER. Cream Soup. Glazed Cod. lyarded Chicken. Cauliflower with Cream Sauce. Browned Potatoes. Stewed Carrots. Fatima's Puddings. Fruit. Coffee. Cream Soup. One quart of veal, or chicken, or mutton stock ; half cup of raw rice ; yolks of three eggs ; one cupful of hot milk ; one tablespoon- ful of corn-starch wet up with cold milk ; salt, pepper and minced parsley. Simmer rice and stock together until the grains are soft ; rub through a colander or sieve, and put back into the soup pot ; sea- son, stir in the corn-starch, and simmer gently while you beat the yolks and pour over them the hot milk ; add to the soup, cook one minute, but do not let it boil ; serve in a hot tureen. Glazed Cod. Cut a steak from the most solid part of tie fish, lay in salt and water for two hours, wipe dry, wash with vinegar and put into a SPRING BILLS OF FARE. , 303 dripping-pan, with half a cup of boiling water ; turn another pan over it, and steam for half an hour ; remove the upper pan, rub with butter, and season with salt and pepper ; baste twice in the next ten minutes with the butter and water in the pan ; drain this off into a sauce-pan ; wash the fish over with two beaten eggs, and shut up in the oven for a minute to glaze ; thicken the gravy with brown flour; add the juice of a lemon and half a glass of wine ; boil up, pour a few spoonfuls about the cod when dished, the rest into a boat. Larded Chickens. Draw, wash thoroughly and wipe the chickens ; truss as for roasting ; lard the breasts with strips of fat salt pork in regular lines an inch apart, each lardoon being a half inch from the next in its row; lay the chickens, breast uppermost, in a dripping-pan, with a half cup of boiling water, and roast, basting often ; allow about twelve minutes to the pound ; keep the chickens warm while you mince the boiled giblets, and stir them into the gravy with a thickening of browned flour. Caulifi^ower with Cheese Sauce. Boil in the usual way when done, put into a deep dish, and pour over it a sauce made by heating a cup of milk, stirring into it a table- spoonful of butter, cut up in one of prepared flour, and, when this thickens, adding three great spoonfuls of dry, grated cheese. Sea- son with salt, and a dash of cayenne. Fatima's Pudding. One half pound o^^' lady fingers," stale enough to crumble easily ; one quart of hot milk ; six eggs ; one cupful of sugar ; grated peel 304 . HOUSK AND HOME. of an orange, and half the grated peel of a lemon ; juice of two oranges; soak the crumbs in the hot milk ; beat the eggs light, add the sugar and grated peel ; when light, the milk and crumbs. Before the juice goes in, have a row of stone custard cups (buttered) ready in a pan of boiling water at the oven-door ; add the orange juice with a few strokes of the " beater ;" pour into the cups, and shut up at once in the oven ; bake half an hour, and turn out on a hot dish ; eat with the following sauce : two tablespoonfuls of butter, stirred into one of arrowroot or corn-starch ; a cup of powdered sugar ; two eggs ; a cupful of boiling water ; juice and a teaspoonful of grated orange peel. Heat the water in a sauce-pan, add sugar, butter and corn-starch, and when thick, the orange juice and peel; finally, the beaten eggs ; cook two minutes. No. 12, BREAKFAST. Oatmeal Porridge. Baked Fish Cake. Scrambled Eggs. , Com Cakes. Fruit. Tea. CoflFee. Bakbd Fish Cake. Two pounds of cold, boiled fresh cod or halibut; a cup of mashed potatoes ; half a cup of bread-crumbs ; a cupful of drawn butter, in which has been stirred a teaspoonful of anchovy paste ; a tablespoonful of finely cut parsley, and half as much minced onion ; a raw egg, butter, salt and pepper. Mix the fish, " picked " evenly, with herbs, potato and drawn butter ; season ; put into a buttered bake-dish and set in the oven, covered, fifteen minutes; sift the SPRING BILLS OF FARE. 305 crumbs on top ; stick bits of butter in them, and brown quickly. Wasb over with beaten egg, shut the oven for a minute, and serve the cake in the bake-dish. Scrambled Eggs. Put a tablespoonful of butter, a gill of milk, a saltspoonful of salt, half as much pepper, and a tablespoonful of minced parsley in a frying-pan. When the mixture boils, break and stir into it eight or ten eggs. Beat and stir until they are well mixed, and cease to run over the pan. Line a dish with crustless toast dipped in hot milk, salted, peppered and buttered, and pour the eggs on this bed. Corn Cakes. Three even cupfuls of white Indian meal ; two cups of sour or buttermilk ; one heaping tablespoonful of lard ; one tablespoonful of sugar ; two tablespoonfuls of flour ; one teaspoonful of soda ; three eggs well beaten ; a cup of boiling water. Sift meal, flour, salt and soda together three times into a bowl ; mix sugar and lard in the boiling water, add the milk ; make a hole in the meal and flour, and put this in, stirring down quickly. Now, add the beaten eggs, and whip upward hard, until you have a smooth, light batter. Bake in greased pat6 pans at once. Eat hot. LUNCHEON. Steamed Clams. String Bean Salad. Cold Meat garnished with Parsley. Bread, Butter, Crackers. Fried Bananas. Cocatina and Macaroons. 3o6 HOUSB AND HOME. p Steamed Clams. Put the clams, without removing the shells, in your steamer, laying them flat, that the juice may not escape ; set the steamer over a pot of boiling water shut up tightly, and keep this at a hard boil, but not touching the clams, half an hour. Peep in then to see if the shells have opened. If not, close down the top for ten min- utes more ; take out the clams, pry off the upper shells, and arrange the lower (holding the clams) on a flat dish. Lay on each, a sauce made by whipping a tablespoonful or more of butter to a cream with the juice of a lemon, a little chopped parsley, salt, and a touch of cayenne. Kat hot, with warmed crackers. String Bean Salad. Take a cup of cold, boiled string beans, and if they have not been cut into inch-lengths before they were cooked, do it now ; heap on a flat dish ; encircle with a row of cold boiled beet slices ; on each one of these lay a slice of hard-boiled egg ; garnish with crisp lettuce leaves as a frill and send around mayonnaise dressing with it. This will make a pretty and palatable dish. Fried Bananas. . Pare a dozen bananas and cut each lengthwise into three slices ; have ready a batter made by beating two eggs light with half a cupful of milk and four tablespoonfuls of prepared flour, slightly salted ; dip the banana slices into this and fry in boiling lard to a golden brown. Drain off the grease and serve on a hot dish lined with white paper. SPRING BILLS OF FARE. 307 DINNER. Cliicken Bisque. Brisket of Beef a la mode. Stewed Com. Lima Beans. Browned Sweet Potatoes. Batter Pudding. Cream Sauce. Chicken Bisque. An old fowl ; a cupful of cracker crumbs ; a quarter pound of almonds, blanched and dried to crispness ; a large tablespoonful of minced onion, and the same of parsley ; a cup of hot milk ; four quarts of cold water ; pepper and salt ; two raw eggs, beaten light. Clean and boil the fowl slowly in the water, until the flesh slips from the bones ; salt and pepper it, and set away in the liquor until next day. Skim it, then, and taking out the fowl, bone and mince the flesh fine. Shred the almonds into minute shavings, mix with the chopped meat, onions and parsley, and put all into the broth when you have strained it into a pot. Simmer gently half an hour, taking care it does not scorch ; add the cracker crumbs, then, the beaten eggs when you have stirred them into the hot milk. Take from the fire, and set in boiling water five minutes, covered, before turning into the tureen. Brisket oe Beee a la mode. Take out the bones with a sharp knife, and bind the beef into shape with broad tapes. Make incisions .quite through the meat perpendicularly, and thrust into them lardoons of fat salt pork. The holes should be less than an inch apart. Lay in a broad pot, put in two cupfuls of warm — ^not hot — ^water, fit on a tight lid, and cook slowly twenty minutes to the pound. Take up the meat, and 3o8 HOUSE AND HOME. lay in the dripping pan. Cover the top an inch thick with a force- meat of crumbs, fat salt pork, a dozen finely-minced oysters, a tea- spoonful of chopped onion, and pepper to taste ; set in the oven long enough to brown nicely. Meanwhile, cool and skim and strain the gravy ; return to the fire in a saucepan, thicken with browned flour ; add a glass of wine, and a teaspoonful of French mustard, boil up once and serve in a boat. Stewed Corn. Open and turn out a can of com three hours before using, drain off the liquor and set the com in a cold place. Half an hour before dinner, put a cup of boiling water in one of milk in a saucepan ; drop in a bit of soda ; add the com and cook gently half an hour. Salt and pepper to taste, stir in a tablespoonful of butter, rolled in one of flour, boil up once and serve. Lima Beans. Canned Lima Beans are heated in the same way as com, only leaving out the milk and flour. They should be drained also before the butter is stirred in. Browned Sweet Potatoes. They are getting soft and watery at this season. Boil them fifteen minutes, peel, and lay in the oven to bake, basting them with but- ter until they are of a fine brown. Batter Pudding. Two cups of Hecker's prepared flour ; three cups of milk ; four eggs ; a quarterspoonful of salt ; one tablespoonful each of lard and SPRING BILLS OF FARE. 309 butter. Chop the shortening into the flour with the salt until thoroughly mixed. Beat the eggs very light, add the milk to them, beat in the flour by the handful ; pour into a cake-mold with a funnel in the middle and bake in a quick oven. Cream Sauce. One cup of sugar ; one cup of milk ; whites of two eggs, beaten to a meringue ; one tablespoonful of butter cut up in two teaspoon- fuls of corn-starch ; vanilla seasoning. Heat the milk to boiling, stir in sugar and floured butter. Boil up sharply, withdraw from the fire and beat in meringue and flavoring. No. 13. BREAKFAST. Mush and Milk. Oyster Omelette. Waffles. Stewed Potatoes. Fruit. Coffee. Tea. Mush and Milk. One cup of Indian meal, scalded with two cups of boiling water ; one quart and a pint of boiling water ; two teaspoonfuls of salt ; stir the scalded meal into the boiling salted water, and cook in a farina kettle for at least an hour. You cannot cook much too long ; now and then beat up from the bottom and work out the clots. Serve in an open dish. Eat with milk and cream. Oyster Omelette. Six eggs, whites and yolks beaten separately ; one tablespoonful of cream ; a half teaspoonful of corn-starch wet with the cream ; a salt 3IO HOUSE AND HOME. spoonful of salt and a " dust " of pepper ; a dozen fine oysters, broiled. Beat yolks well, adding the cream and com-starcli, stir in the stiffened whites lightly, have ready a tablespoonful of butter in a fr3ring pan hissing hot, but not browned. Pour in the omelette, and as soon as it sets at the edges, loosen with a knife, and shake gently with a uniform motion from side to side, until the center is almost " set." The oysters should have been broiled before you began the omelette. To do this, roll them in fine cracker dust, salted and peppered, broil quickly over a clear fire, transfer to a hot dish, put a bit of butter on each, cover and keep hot while the omelette is cook- ing. When this is done, line one half of it, as it lies in the pan, with the oysters, fold the other over it dexterously and reverse the frying-pan quickly upon the heated dish in which it is to be served. Waffles. Three scant cups of milk ; two eggs ; three cups of prepared flour ; one heaping tablespoonful of butter, just melted ; half a tea- spoonful of salt ; one tablespoonful of sugar. Beat the eggs very light, cream butter and sugar, and put them in. Add the milk, then salted flour. Mix thoroughly, and bake in well greased waffle-irons. Tiy a spoonful of batter first to test it and them. Stewed Potatoes. Peel, and cut in square bits, dropping these in cold water as you go on. Cook tender in boiling, salted water. Turn off half of this when they are nearly done, and repUqe witb a like quantity of hot SPRING BILIyS OF FARE. 311 milk in wliicli has been dissolved a tablespoonful of butter cut up in flour. Simmer tbree or four minutes, pepper, salt, and stir in a teaspoonful of finely cut parsley. Boil up and dish. LUNCHEON. RecbauflFe of Fisb. Tomato Toast. - Bread and Butter. Crackers and Cheese. Rusk. Jam or Marmalade. Rechauffe of Fish. Pick cold boiled cod or halibut into even small flakes ; put into a fr3dng-pan a cup of boiling water (for a heaping cupful of fish) , season well with pepper and salt, stir in a tablespoonful of butter cut up in a great spoonful of flour. As it simmers, add the fish, toss and turn with a fork, and when smoking hot, put in three table- spoonfuls of cream. It should be just stifi" enough to be mounded in the middle of a platter. Have ready the beaten whites of two eggs ; spread quickly on the mound and set the dish in a hot oven long enough to cook the meringue. Garnish with lemons, cut lengthwise into eighths. Tomato Toast. Stew a quart of ripe tomatoes ten minutes, and run through a colander. Season with pepper, salt, a little sugar, and two teaspoon- fuls of butter, and simmer to a smooth soft pulp. Another ten minutes is enough. In another vessel scald half a cup of hot milk with a bit of soda half the size of a pea dissolved in it, stir in a tea- spoonful of butter, add to the tomatoes, and pour at once over slices of crustless toast buttered well, and laid on a heated platter. I>i. w?^'"^<^<^a^ t^v. ^^ *^-l]wH M^P ^^^ aB|ifa\w,.^^^^P^ ^ Index. PAOB. PAOB. Ambrosia . 287 Beets, Young 294, 314 Apples and Bacon 280 Biscuit, Egg • 253, 353 Apples, Fried 408 Biscuit, Buttermilk . 338 Apple Meringue 357 Biscuit, Deviled . 277 Apple Pyramid 391 Biscuit, Graham 489 Apples, Steamed 457 Biscuit, Quick 494 Apples, Sweet, Baked • 477 .496 Bisque, Chicken 307 Bacon, Breakfast 373 Bisque, Fish 283 Bananas 319 Bisque, Fish maigre . 366 Bananas, Fried 269,306 Bisque, Salmon 350 Bannocks . 3S8 Bisque, Tomato 297 Bass, Boiled . 273 Blanc Mange 317 Beans, Baked 479 Brains, Calfs . 462 Beans, au Maitre d' Hotel 356 Bread and Butter (thin) . ■ 328,451 Beans, Kidney 320 Bread Batter, Southern 467 Beans, Lima . 308 Bread, Brown 479 Beans, String ■ 32s .362 Bread, Brown, Steamed 249 Beef Balls 364 Bread, Com , 281, 410 Beef, Braised, 408 Bread, Corn, Boiled . 462 Beef, Brisket of, a 1^ mode . 307 Bread, Risen , 438 Beef, Corned, Boiled 392 Bread, Corn, Terhune 334 Beef, Corned, Hash . 472 Bread, Fried 429 Beef, Deviled, in batter , 260 Brewis 259. 437 Beef Hash, au graiin . 394 Cabbage, Stewed . 403 Beef Heart, cold . 418 Cafe au Lait . 485.422 Beef Loaf 375 Cake, An Excellent Cup 452 Beef, Pot-roast of . 430 Cake, Cafe au Lait 396 Beef, Roast a I'Orleans 330 Cake, Cocoanut 339 Beef Roast, with Yorkshire Pudding 453 Cakes, Corn 305 Beef Sausages . 369 Cake, Cornmeal Cup . 292 Beef Scallop , 406 Cake, Creamed Sponge • 454 Beefsteak and Onions 314 Cake, Huckleberry . 329 Beefsteak, Stewed • 414 Cake, Jelly Roll . 402 Beefsteak with Sherry sauce . 251 Cake, Jelly (warm) , 370 Beefs Tongue, fresh augratin • 325 Cake, Lady 361 528 HOUSE AND HOME TAOS. PAoa. Cake, Layer Cocoanut 375 Corn,- Stew of, canned 476 Cake, Lemon 36« Crabs, Deviled 322 Cake. Light . 416 Crackers and Cheese 312 Cake, Marmalade . 457 Crackers, Home-made 291 Cake, Pink and White 354 Crackers, Oatmeal 334 Cake, Sponge . 349U12 Crackers, Toasted 391 Cakes, Tea 469 Cream, Rice 315. 420 Cake, Walnut 480 Cream, Russian 263 Cake, White . 289 Cresses, Water \ 254 Cairs Head, Baked 476 Croquettes, Chicken . 291 Cauliflower OM^afon 487 Croquettes, Hominy • 487 Cauliflower, Baked 367 Croquettes, Lobster , 347 Cauliflower, Cheese Sauce . 303, 415 Croquettes, Potato . 29! 5, 367. 372 Celery augratin . 399 Croquettes, Veal and Ham . 411 Celery, Fried . 403 Crullers . , . . 485 Celery, Stewed 459 Crumpets 450 Celery, Stewed Brown , 372 Cucumbers, Fried 348 Charlotte a la Boyale 336 Custard, Burnt . 415 Charlotte, Apple 429 Custard, Cocoanut 320, 448 Charlotte, Apple, Baked . 440 Custard, Corn Starch . 326 Charlotte, Myrtle's . 427 Custard, Sponge Cake 482 Cheese Bars 490 Dinner-Pail, The 383. 388 Cheese Fingers 406 Dinner, The Christmas . 500, 509 Chestnuts, BoUed . 440 Dinner, The Thanksgiving , 443.448 Chicken, Boiled, on Rice 459 Dodgers, Cornmeal 259 Chicken, Broiled, Deviled 353 Doughnuts 406 Chicken, Broiling, Fricasseed 366 Ducks, Potted 335 Chicken, Brown Fricassee of 351 Ducks, Stewed 492 Chicken, Curried 319 Dumplings, Apple, Baked 466 Chicken Fricassee Oach/ . 297 Eels, Stewed, a la Francaise 327 Chicken, Fried, Whole 346 Eels, Stewed 483 Chicken, Tjarded . 303 Eggs, Baked 468 Chicken Legs, Mince of 328 Eggs, Boiled 374 Chicken Steamed, Stuffed 481 Eggs, Creamed 455 Chocolate 250 Eggs, Curried 295 Chocolate, Frothed 328 Eggs, Deviled 386 Chowder, Clam 458 Eggs, Fricasseed 449 Chowder, Cod 475 Eggs in Toast Cups 285 Chowder, Lakewood . 345 Eggs, Meringued 266 Chowder, Lobster . 376 Egg Sauce 268 Clams, Steamed 306 Eggs, Scalloped 369 Cocoa-theta . 267.475 Eggs, Scrambled 305 Cod and Macaroni 371 Eggs, Stewed 400 Cod, Boiled 268 Egg-Plant, Stuffed 336 Cod, Glazet: . 302 Fish Balls . ; . . 461 Coffee, Meringued 348 Fish, Blue, Broiled 435 Cookies 464 Fish Cake, Baked ' . 304 Corn, Stewed . . 308 Fish, Rechauffe ot . , 311 INDEX. 529 Fish, White, Fried 325 Flounders, Cutlets, Baked 397 Flapjacks . 255 Fondu, Cheese 496 Fondu, Chicken or Veal . 478 Fowl Roast 4 la Guyot 341 Fritters, Brain 478 Fritters, Clam . 438 Fritters, Corn 354 Fritters, Oyster-Plant . 481 Fritters, Sponge Cake 418 Fruit 279, 394 Galantine . 271 Gems, Egg 300, 390 Gems 484 Gingerbread, Oatmeal 474 Gingerbread, Prudence's, i ivithout Eggs 266 Gingerbread, Soft 302, 434 Gingerbread, Soft Raisin 491 Gingerbread, Warm . 360 Griddle Cakes, Barbara's 395 Griddle Cakes, Com . 364 Griddle Cakes, Crumb 422 Griddle Cakes, Farina, 270 Griddle Cakes, Flannel, w ithout Eggs 405 Griddle Cakes, Oatmeal 478 Gmel, Farina . 358 Gruel, Oatmeal 255 Haggis, Dundee 420 Halibut, Baked 486 Halibut, Steaks 465 Halibut, StuflFed . 318 Ham and Bggs, Mince of 321 Ham, Barbecued . 456 Ham, Deviled . 439 Ham, Fried in Batter 363 Hen's Nest, Winter A . 488 Herrings, Scotch . 417 Hominy, Boiled with MiU ■- . 455 Hominy, Coarse . 247 Ice Cream, Banana 331 Ice Cream, Crushed Straw berry . 289 Ice Cream, Peach 362 Jelly, CoflFee . 460 Junket . 334 Kidneys and Ham . 405 Kidneys, Deviled 342 I 471 Soup, Potato . 480 Tomatoes, Stufiied 351 Soup, Potato, purde 469 Tongue, Beef's, a«^fa^«« 465 Soup, purde maigre 250 Tongue, Beefs, Browned 441 Soup, Rabbit . 424 ,440 Tongue, Larded . 398 Soup, Russian 497 Tongue, Deviled 256 Soup, Tomato . ; 329 Tongue, Jellied 451 Soup, Turnip, maigre 407 Tongues, Lambs', Pickled . 333 Soup, Turnip /&r/(j . 392 Tongues, Sheeps', Stewed 358 Soup, Turnip /a;-/if (without Meat) 397 Trifle, Chocolate 299 Soup, Vegetable . 434 Trifle, Strawberry 294 Soup, Vegetable, Family . . 491 Tripe, Fried . 264, 468 Soup, White . 293 Turkey, Steamed . 425 Spinach, aunaturel , 252 Turnips, Creamed 470 Spinach, on Toast . 314, 408, 419 Turnips, with White Sauce 342 Squash, Scalloped • 435 ,482 Veal and Ham Cutlets 470 Squash, Stewed , 426 Veal and Macaroni, Scalloped . 495 Squash, Summer . • 347 Veal Braised . 376 Strawberries . 255 , 286 Waffles , . . • 310, 374 Succotash, . • 278 Waffles, Farina 327 Sweetbreads, Ragout of • 349 Waffles, Rice 364 Pickles, Chow Chow, etc. , 5" Fruit Jellies . . 517 Preserves, Jams and Marmalades 520 A Few Dishes for the Invalid 525 THE END.