A nod, a smile, perchance a word,
Where road meets road on life’s broad way;
The pilgrim’s heart with joy is stirred;
More brightly glows the weary way.
A word, a glance, a subtle thrill
Of sympathy for brother woe,
And from the fount of human ill
The sweetest drops of pleasure flow.
Though nevermore our paths may meet,
Nor heart greet heart with welcoming kiss,
An instant makes the sad world sweet;
One passing fills the soul with bliss.
[Illustration: _HOME_
_BY Mrs. Louise H. Miller._]
Last month I spoke of how easy it is to let a light day tire you as much
as a heavy one. If you can do three-thirds in one busy day why does it
take all another day to do two-thirds and tire you about as much in one
case as in the other? Why didn’t you have a third of it for your own
amusement or improvement? What became of that third? It is all just
another proof that it pays to do a thing with all your heart, with all
your mind, and with all your body. If you had worked as earnestly the
second day as you did the first, you would have done the day’s work,
had a third of it to yourself, and been no more tired than you were the
first. It wasn’t because you were lazy—you just “had the time” and put it
all on the daily work instead of taking some of it for yourself.
I can hear a small chorus of objections to the above. Wait a minute. No
one knows better than I that the housework for one day is often different
in kind and amount from that of the day before; that one’s strength is
often not the same two days in succession; that there are extras and
specials and interruptions; that the baby may sleep most of one day and
cry most of the next; that many things depend on the mother; that some
women really have all they can do day in and day out and year after year
and work at high speed all the time until they die of it; that often what
fits one case does not fit another. I know all that. _But the principle
is true!_ And nine times out of ten that principle applied to your own
case would help you physically, mentally and morally. And those about you.
“I know all that,” says some one. “There’s nothing new in that.”
I venture that this person, however well she knows it, hasn’t been
_applying it_. No there’s nothing new in it. That’s just where the danger
lies—it is so old a principle that we forget all about it.
“Yes,” say a dozen more, “you are right. That person ought to apply it
and profit by it. If we had work like hers we could accomplish a lot by
it. But we haven’t, more’s the pity, and _our_ work is such that we can’t
do that way with it.”
There lies the real trouble. As in everything else, we can see how
_others_ can make an improvement, but when it comes to our own case,
why, that is quite different, because this and because that and because
the other. The funny part of it is that these other people, while they
are blind about themselves as we are about ourselves, can see very easily
how we could improve matters. Of course other people generally think they
could improve our methods much more than they really could, but it is
equally true that we think they could improve it less than they really
could. Two heads are better than one, and it does help to see ourselves
as others see us.
I don’t believe many busy women can save as much as a third from their
lighter days, but I do firmly believe that nearly every one of you can
save some part of it. Maybe it is only half an hour, but much can be done
in even that little space several times a week. What we need in our daily
work is more generalship. Your body is like an army blundering around
without a leader unless you guide it with your head. That is what your
head is for—to save your body and help it accomplish more. The trouble
is that we all get into a rut too easily and go on doing our work in the
same old way for years. We quit thinking, quit using generalship.
What each of us needs to do many times a year is to sit down and
carefully consider her own work. Does too much time go to one thing and
too little to another? Can we omit any of it without harm to anybody?
Is there some way of doing this duty more quickly without slighting it?
Would such a simple thing as changing the height of the sink, the kitchen
table, the wash-bench, save time, strength and aching back? Will a plain
shelf or two along the kitchen wall make work easier? Would an hour
spent on a carefully planned rearrangement of the kitchen utensils and
supplies save many hours during the coming months? There is no end to the
useless things one can buy for a kitchen, yet there are many appliances
and arrangements that, some in one household, some in another, will pay
for themselves many times over in a year. Read advertisements, papers,
magazines—you can glance through the advertisement pages in a very few
minutes—perhaps go to demonstrations by agents of practical devices for
lightening housework. Notice what your friends are using. Look much and
buy little. But keep yourself awake to new ideas, and now and then when
you are sure of your ground adopt some of them. Where there is no outlay
of money necessary try frequent experiments, but not many at a time. If
any of your family or friends are of an inventive turn of mind, call them
in for consultation. The most valuable inventions are the simplest ones.
You cannot believe all you read or hear about, but you can generally
believe your own eyes if you use them carefully. Go to those of your
friends who seem to manage their work well. If they have any utensils
or appliances that actual experience has proved good investments, note
them carefully. Maybe you or some of your family can make something that
answers the same purpose. If not, sleep on the question and if your
judgment still says that it will pay in the end to get it, try hard to
raise the money. Even on a basis of dollars and cents it may pay in the
long run. And it is generally a question of more than money—a question of
body, mind and soul.
Note carefully how other good housekeepers manage their work. There is a
practical study for you! You have probably watched them many times before
this, but now watch them with seeing eyes.
Turn your attention to the tasks that burden you heavily. Here reforms
are needed most. You will hardly be ready to assert that you are doing
these tasks in the very best way in the world. Find out why not, and then
try to improve on the old method.
After you have thought over your work in general sit down some evening
and plan out the duties of the next day as far as you know them. Forget
how you used to manage. Maybe you will be able to make only one or two
small changes the first time. That is a good beginning. Try again later.
Keep your wits about you and your thinking-cap on all the time. It will
pay.
As the world grows older it accomplishes more in a given time than it
used to do. They can make a hundred things now in the time it took to
make one fifty years ago. Are you a part of the world and its progress or
are you something left behind in the onward march? Not your fault? Well,
you can be pretty sure that it is _partly_ your fault and that you can
remedy some of it if you only will.
* * * * *
_FREE SUBSCRIPTION_
_Besides the prize for the best story of “heroism at home,” every month
another free year’s subscription will be given for the best item or
paragraph of any kind for the Department. The two subscriptions will not
be given to the same person. The subscription may begin with any number
you please._
* * * * *
Someone says that the world’s progress doesn’t concern her off in her
little corner—that she has her work to do and that’s all there is to it.
Well, perhaps it doesn’t in one way of speaking, but her life is both
less happy and less useful than if she let the world’s progress concern
her a little. She says it wouldn’t help her any in making biscuit or
sweeping the floor if she did know some of the stories of history, how
the revolution in Russia is getting on, about the great writers and
painters, about anything outside her work. Well, it wouldn’t—in a way.
The biscuits wouldn’t be any better nor the floor any cleaner. But any
one that isn’t half-witted can learn to sweep a floor or even to bake
biscuits. You are, or ought to be, more than a cook and a housemaid. You
are a _home-maker_, and though good biscuits and clean floors are very
necessary things in any house, they are _not_ enough to make a _home_
out of it. In a true _home_ there must be mental and moral, as well as
physical, comfort. You are still something more. You are a woman and a
free human being. You have your duties to other people, as everyone has,
but, like everyone, you have a duty to _yourself_. You were given a brain
and a soul, as well as a body. You can easily see the need of feeding
your body: the need of feeding your brain and soul are equally necessary.
Why were they given to you? To starve?
No pen, however powerful, no voice, however eloquent, can present in
the full force of its true colors the value of intellectual and moral
development to the housewife, the woman, the home-maker. Religion is
not a subject for our Department. The matter of creed is for each one
to settle for herself. But in those questions of ethics and social
morals that arise in any household and generally have, after all, their
foundation in religion, and in all those questions of intellectual living
and growth, this Department of ours does have its field and its purpose.
Why? Because, as I said, a _home_, a _real_ home, has its moral and
intellectual sides as well as its material side. Because even its
material side, the everyday round of duties, cannot be made what it
should be unless brain and soul are made fit to direct the body. Because
as wives, mothers, daughters, sisters we are responsible for the members
of our family, and for ourselves as human souls. It is not enough to
bring a child into the world and then feed it, wash it, dress it, give
it a place to sleep, and one day say to it: “We have raised you. Go
forth and make your living.” Of course not. We all know that, though
goodness knows there are plenty of people who don’t do even that much.
It is not enough to furnish a clean, warm house and three meals a day
to the bodies of your husband, parents, brothers or sisters. They could
get that much at a boarding-house or hotel. They, and you, must have
moral and mental food, baths, clothes and beds as well as physical ones—a
_home_—not merely a house. We cannot give what we don’t have. To furnish
these things to them we must first get them ourselves.
Then we should give heed to moral and intellectual living and growth
because it is our _duty_. There is another reason—because it is for our
own happiness and pleasure.
It was once my privilege to go over a thousand or two letters from people
who, after becoming members of a great and good system of education by
correspondence, had written in the fullness of their hearts to tell how
it had made their lives brighter and happier and to thank the school,
not as much for the knowledge they had acquired from their reading
and study at home, but for the great pleasure and joy the _having_ of
this knowledge had brought them—for the _new intellectual, social and
moral life_ that had come to them with it. The letters came from all
over the English-speaking world, but I was most struck by the fact that
a large part of them came from housewives. The following is a fair
sample of hundreds from farmers’ wives, laborers’ wives, clerks’ wives,
business-mens’ wives:
“Life has been a new thing to me since I took up your course.
My housework used to be an awful drudgery—a never-ending grind.
Now it is easy and I do it better, for my mind has _something
outside to think about_ and be interested in.”
The wording wasn’t alike in any two, but, in every one of the hundreds
written, there was the same idea—“something outside to think about and be
interested in.” This was the note sounded in nearly every one of all the
letters from men and women both. Some were women living many miles from
the nearest neighbor, some were bed-ridden invalids, some factory girls,
some servants, a few fashionable “society women,” some of the men, lonely
sheep-herders on the Western plains, some naval officers, some this, some
that, but one and all gave thanks from grateful hearts for a lift out of
the rut of daily drudgery, for a broader horizon, for greater usefulness.
I cried over some of those letters. They came straight from the heart if
ever anything did.
That was the voice of _experience_, not the voice of theory. What they
could do, we can do. We are not going to have any study courses or any
lessons to learn. There will be nothing any of us _has_ to do. But I
believe each of us is going to think things over, talk it over and then
make herself some spare moments, if she hasn’t some already, and set to
work to make life a better thing for herself and those dear to her by
getting “something outside to think about.”
How am I going to bring this about? Oh, _I_ am not going to do
it—_we_ are! I have no idea of going into any house and saying, “Do
that this way, and do this that way.” All of us are going to help by
making suggestions, by giving experiences, by offering interesting
bits of information. It is for you to decide which of these _you_ can
use. The thing to be desired above all others is that each of us may
learn to _think for herself_. Many think for themselves very keenly
already—perhaps more keenly than I do—and these are the very ones that
can help the rest of us most; but we can all think better, if we all
think together.
By the next number, April, which will come out March 25, there ought to
be a fair number of questions and suggestions from our readers. Don’t
forget that the best suggestion or bit of information sent in each month
entitles the sender to a year’s free subscription, to any name and
address desired. And remember that another free year’s subscription goes
every month to the person, man or woman, who sends us the best true story
of heroic living in common everyday life. The notices elsewhere in our
Department give the particulars.
How are we going to get “something outside to think about?” Well, there
are plenty of things outside and there are plenty of ways of bringing
them into our lives. Each of us will find some things and some ways—all
by herself if she will try and then she can tell the rest of us about
them—but in our Department each month we can take one set of things, see
whether there isn’t something of value there for us, ask questions, make
suggestions, try experiments, offer bits of information, talk about it
with our families, think about it while we are working and while we are
resting or amusing ourselves, bring new things into our lives. I am not
going to set up as a teacher and there isn’t going to be any course of
study. There is only one thing I claim to know that some of you don’t
know—that we, any of us, can make our lives brighter and more valuable by
feeding our minds as well as our bodies. I know this by experience—not
only by my own experience and that of my two daughters but also by the
experiences of scores and hundreds of other women I have known and,
perhaps, helped a little. I never talked to anyone in print before, but
for many, many years, ever since one golden day when I discovered that I
was actually making my own life happier and fuller and less ugly by an
effort to feed my starving mind in my few spare moments, I have never
missed a chance to do what I could to show other women how they could
get the same blessing for themselves.
In this number we will talk and think about reading and what it can do
for us if we go about it right. Next month we will consider woman’s
interest in politics. After that there are many more subjects—flowers,
trees, gardens, stock, other animals, history and women in history,
business and women in business, painting and women artists, women’s
clubs and study circles, customs of other nations, food, correspondence
courses, music and women musicians, and hundreds of other subjects. I
want you to help me select the subjects as we go along.
* * * * *
_IS READING WORTH WHILE?_
“In science, read, by preference, the newest works; in
literature, the oldest. The classic literature is always
modern. New books revive and redecorate new ideas; old books
suggest and invigorate new ideas.”—_Bulwer._
What is reading worth to a busy housewife? “Well,” says one, “it may be
worth a good deal, but I haven’t time to find out.” If this woman knew
there was a twenty-dollar gold-piece to be picked up at the end of a few
minutes walk, would she have time to stop her housework long enough to go
and get it?
What can we get by reading? Maybe only rest, amusement and a “change.”
Maybe this and also some knowledge. Maybe some valuable experience. Are
any of these worth taking time from housework for?
There is surely no need of saying that rest, amusement and change are
necessary in the long run for any kind of work. You save time by taking
a vacation. Somebody has said that anyone can do twelve months work in
eleven, but that no one can do eleven months’ work in twelve, meaning
that we can accomplish more in a year by devoting one month of it to a
sensible vacation.
There can be no doubt that we can gain much knowledge from books. It is
one of the chief sources from which the world gets all that it knows. But
is any of this knowledge worth while for a housewife? If anyone doubts
it, stop and think. How about the Bible, the newspapers, the cook-book?
Is this the only reading from which we can profit? In your own experience
surely you can recall at least a few other books that told you something
you were glad to know.
How do you get _experience_ from reading? Isn’t it safer to learn human
beings and their ways by studying them direct? Yes, and no. It depends on
the book. Perhaps the author can tell you in a few hours more real truth
about men and women than you can learn alone in years.
We have heard so many queer things about “literature” that we are likely
to think of it as fancy things written by a lot of delicate, long-haired
men and masculine women and having very little to do with our own
everyday lives. Well, there are many over-cultured and over-educated
people who would define literature that way. But they are mightily wrong!
The _best_ literature is generally simple, not “fancy.”
Literature is the spoken or written record by which each generation
of mankind is enabled to preserve the knowledge and experience of the
generations before it and to begin where the last one left off instead of
having to begin all over again.
It doesn’t matter whether it is written or only spoken. Indeed, before
man invented the alphabet or even learned to transmit his ideas and
feelings by crude, rough pictures there wasn’t any literature except what
was spoken or recited. The “Iliad” and “Odyssey” of Homer were sung or
recited, long before they were put down on parchment. Our fairy-stories
and legends generally date back hundreds and hundreds of years and were
preserved only by each generation telling them to the next. In later
days, especially during the Middle Ages, many valuable poems and stories,
and even more of history, would have been lost to us forever if wandering
bards and minstrels had not recited or sung them and taught them to
others. There is no way, except literature, by which we can learn from
the past. Did you ever think that our generation has, by itself, added
only a very, very tiny bit to the knowledge existing in the world when
our generation was born? All our great inventions would be impossible
without this previous knowledge.
Of course, literature in its stricter sense is more limited than all the
material covered by the definition above. A dictionary, for example, can
hardly be called literature. A bit of writing or talking to be literature
must show the imprint of the author’s personality and it must have in it
something valuable enough to make it worth preserving. But, in general,
the definition as given gets at the root of the matter, and that is all
we need be concerned with. It shows that literature is not a fad or an
amusement of too highly cultivated people, but one of the biggest and
most valuable things in the world. _We_, no matter who or where we are
or even whether we can read or write, are dependent on literature in our
everyday lives.
How can we tell good literature from bad? Well, it is often pretty hard
to tell about the books and stories of today, but there is a very easy
way of telling about what was written a hundred or a thousand years ago.
Nowadays, when most people can read and write and the printing-press
makes it possible to produce great numbers of books and papers, there
are thousands of people writing all the time and naturally a lot of them
write very poor stuff. We talk about the “best selling books” and go wild
over some new novel. We did the same last month and we’ll do the same
next month.
“What is the most popular novel this month?”
“Oh, ‘So-and-so’ by So-and-so. It’s simply grand!”
“What was the most popular novel last month?”
“Let’s see. Oh, yes—‘So-and-so,’ by So-and-so. It’s a perfectly charming
story.”
“What was the most popular novel a year ago?”
“A _year_ ago? Mercy, I don’t know! There are so many novels now.”
There it is. All the time people are raving about the “latest” book. Like
as not in a year they can’t even remember its name. Why is that? Because,
hardly any of these books are really _good_ literature. Many of them are
interesting and amuse us while we read them, but that’s all. In a year,
or less, we have forgotten them.
Then what _is_ good literature? We can find out this way. Consider
all the books that were written a thousand, a hundred, fifty or even
twenty-five years ago. How many of them are read now? Comparatively very,
very few. Now _why_? Because they weren’t good enough. There is a sure
test for you—if a book lives on after its author is dead and buried you
can be pretty sure that it is good literature. It had something to say
that did more than amuse people for a month. The author had put into
it some little bit of _human nature_, of _human life_, that is as true
for people a hundred years later as it was for those who first read it.
(Mind you, I am talking about novels, stories and plays, about fiction
and poetry, not just about such things as histories which are generally
preserved anyway because of the cold facts in them.) The authors of such
novels or poems have written into them some of their own experience and
observation of _life_. The characters in them are real human beings, and
the feelings, thoughts, passions, sentiments, actions of the characters,
or those expressed by the author without the aid of his characters,
are, in general, the same feelings, thoughts, passions, sentiments and
actions that you and I and our acquaintances have in us today. Therefore
we understand the people in those books and sympathize with them, even
though they may have lived centuries ago, in a foreign land, dressed
in strange clothes, bound by strange customs and outwardly having very
little in common with us. There is only one thing that people are
_always_ interested in—human nature. It is according to whether a book
gives us a true picture of human nature that it lives or dies, that it is
good literature or bad.
With new books now appearing by thousands it is almost impossible to tell
which will live and which will die, which are really good and which are
not. Time is the only sure test. The men talk about Dr. Conan Doyle’s
“Sherlock Holmes” stories now and some of us women like these tales
equally well, but will they be alive in 1975 or not? Emile Gaboriau died
only twenty-three years ago. His detective stories are better ones than
Dr. Conan Doyle’s, but they are no longer read except by the few. Wilkie
Collins wrote novels that made you hold your breath with interest and
were widely read. He has been dead only seventeen years, yet already “The
Moonstone,” “The Woman in White” and his other books are of the past.
Both Gaboriau and Collins have some real merit and will probably always
be read at least slightly, but what of the thousands of other authors who
wrote books twenty-five years ago and whose very names are forgotten?
Among the books that have come down to us from the past we can choose
pretty safely. If they have lived this long we can be sure there is
something worth while in them. I know a few sensible women, some of them
with both time and money, who make it a rule never to read any book until
it has been published a year. If at the end of that period it is still
interesting other people, then they buy it, being pretty sure that it
must have at least some small merit. They say it is surprising how very
few books do remain in the public attention that long.
Now I know just what will happen. Some of you know all I have been saying
as well as I do, but some one is sure to say:
“Oh, yes, that’s all true enough, I suppose, but when I find time to
read, I don’t want to wade through anything heavy.”
Nobody asked you to. Books aren’t “heavy” just because they are good.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s “Marjorie Daw” and “The Story of a Bad Boy,”
Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer,” “Huckleberry Finn” and “Innocents Abroad” are
certainly far, far from being heavy; so are Charles Kingsley’s “Water
Babies,” De Foe’s “Robinson Crusoe;” so are Dr. Brown’s “Rab, and His
Friends,” Ouida’s “A Dog of Flanders,” though both bring tears to the
eyes; so are the poems of Robert Burns and Longfellow; so are Æsop’s
“Fables,” the stories of Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page; so
are hundreds of others. Yet all these just named are good literature.
If by “heavy” you mean only things that are dull or hard to understand,
the list of good books that are not “heavy” grows tremendously, and
there are still others that may be hard to understand in places but are
nevertheless interesting enough to “amuse” you all the way through.
Shakespeare, George Eliot, Hawthorne, Poe, Tennyson, Stevenson, Dickens,
Thackeray, Whittier, Helen Hunt Jackson, Hugh Conway, Bret Harte,
Augusta J. Evans, Louisa M. Alcott and scores besides are more than
“worth while.” If there are now and then dull or difficult pages in some
of them yet they are all the world away from being “heavy.”
Reading for amusement only is much better than not reading at all. We
need amusement. But there is one danger. If what we read for amusement
happens to be poor literature it is _not true to life_ and you are
learning things about yourself and others that are not true and may lead
you into mistakes some day. You know what dime novels—Wild West and
detective stories—will do to young people. It isn’t only because they
are exciting and deal with crime, but because they give false ideas of
life and false ideals. There are thousands of books, apparently harmless
enough, that will hurt grown people as much as dime novels hurt the
children. There are plenty of books you can read “just for amusement”
which are also very good literature and very good teachers of life. Why
waste time on the poor ones?
When I say a book is good or bad I am not referring to its morals but to
its merit as literature. A hopelessly poor piece of literature may have
excellent morals, and a book that is good literature may be very unsafe
from a moral point of view. The relation of literature to morals is too
big a question for me to discuss. Each of us must steer her own course
in regard to this question. It is, however, helpful to remember that if
the purpose and main lesson of a book are morally good, even though it
may deal a little with questionable subjects, its reading may tend toward
good rather than evil.
_SHOULD WOMEN BE INTERESTED IN POLITICS?_
Next month in the April number we will take up woman’s interest in
politics. Is there any reason for her being interested in them? What
effect do city, state and national laws and law-makers have on her own
personal welfare or that of her family? If she raises children what
effect does that have on future politics? What two great questions now
before the country bear directly on the price she pays for food and
clothing and on the price her husband receives for what he sells or for
his labor? What about the men the voting members of your family help
elect to the state legislature or the national Congress or White House?
(Perhaps if you live in Colorado, you vote for President yourself.) What
about the wives and children of these men? What about the candidates who
were not elected and their families? If there is an election on, ought
you to know which of the candidates are rascals, which represent wrong
principles, which will vote for measures that will make the things you
buy more expensive? Ought you to use your influence against such men?
Let us each see who can send in the best reason for a woman’s being
interested in politics. The answers must be very short, and they must
reach our office before March 10, for the April number, as you know,
appears March 25, and by March 10, at the very latest the printer should
be working on whatever is to go in it. This seems like working a long
ways ahead of time, but the Editor tells me that most magazines by that
time, will be all done with the April number and working on May or June!
So you see you will have to write very quickly to be in time.
[Illustration: _THE INTEREST OF EVERYDAY THINGS._]
We had a glimpse last month at some of the interesting things connected
with bread and bread-making. The house is full of things we have known so
long that we scarcely think of them except as parts of the daily routine,
but which, if we turn our attention to them, prove veritable mines of
information, history, travel and even romance. This month we’ll consider
some of the things concerned in bread-making.
_Wheat_
Wheat, for example, takes us all over the earth and back to the days
before there was any history at all. Wheat, like our other grains,
belongs to the Grass Family and its scientific name is _Triticum
vulgare_. It is the most valuable of all the cereal grasses and, next
to maize, or Indian corn, the most productive. Rice is really its only
rival as a human food. It is generally supposed that it originally came,
like so many of our grains and fruits, from the plains of Central Asia,
but it has been found that a certain wild grass of Western Asia and the
Mediterranean regions, can be cultivated into what we call wheat. It
is the bread-food of most European nations (who, by the way, call it
corn) and is supplanting maize in America. In our country alone 40 or 50
million acres are devoted to it every year, and the yield is a million
or so over half a billion bushels. Generally, one-fifth to two-fifths
of this is sent to other countries. Russia, Canada and other countries
produce large quantities of it.
Wheat was widely grown in the pre-historic world. As far back as there
is any record of languages there was a word for wheat. We know that
the Chinese (who knew about gunpowder, printing, glass, spectacles
and many other things centuries before we “invented” them) cultivated
wheat as far back as 2,700 B. C., and regarded it as a direct gift from
heaven. The Egyptians attributed wheat to their heathen goddess Isis.
The Greeks believed that Ceres, their goddess of agriculture, gave it to
her favorite, Triptolemus, and lent him her miraculous chariot to drive
over the earth and distribute the new grain to the sons of men. There
is a pyramid in Egypt, which scientists estimate was built 3,359 years
before Christ was born, more than 5,000 years ago, and in one of the
bricks of this pyramid they found imbedded a little grain of wheat. How
much that single grain told the world! The lake-dwellers of Switzerland
and Italy also left traces showing they knew the use of wheat, as did the
inhabitants of what is now Hungary, in the Stone Age.
There are more cultivated varieties of wheat than of any other grain, the
number running up into the hundreds. New varieties are generally secured
by taking the pollen from tiny flowers of one variety and putting it on
the pistil of another, so that the resulting seeds, while they take after
both parents, produce a new variety unlike either of them. This process
of cross-breeding has been made to produce marvelous results not only
in other grains, but in fruits, nuts, flowers and trees, as any of you
who are familiar with the work of Mr. Luther Burbank, the “California
Wizard,” know.
_Flour_
Flour, being generally a product of wheat, has had much the same history,
but the process of milling has a little story of its own. The earliest
mills consisted merely of two stones, one round, the other hollowed
out. The grain was placed in the hollow and then crunched into small
bits by the round stone. Later on, man thought of putting a handle on
the round stone, making something like a mortar and pestle. Another and
later way of improving this crude mill, was to groove the round stone
and make it fit into a fairly deep hole in the under stone, with a place
for the ground meal to come out. This is called a quern. You have heard
of someone’s being “caught between the upper and nether mill-stones.”
In Deuteronomy (XXIV, 6,) we find this: “No man shall take the upper or
nether mill-stone to pledge, for he taketh a man’s life to pledge.” In
Numbers (XI, 8), “ground it in mills or beat it in a mortar” shows that
the children of Israel, knew both kinds of mill, and other passages show
that they had at least two kinds of meal or flour.
The Romans used only the mortar and pestle, and until 173 B. C. the poor
woman did all the work. Then baking became a regular occupation, and the
bakers were called _pistores_, which means “pounders.” When the Romans
conquered Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium and Britain
they took their customs with them. The hand-mill was followed by one
with animal power, and later by one with water-power. As late as 1800 A.
D. there were to be found in remote parts of Scotland and Ireland crude
mills made of two large stones ground against each other by running or
falling water.
The wheat grain is really not a seed, but a fruit, for it is composed
not only of the true seed, but of the seed and its husk or covering. The
two considered together, make what botanists call a “fruit.” In modern
milling this husk is generally separated from the seed and made into
bran, while the seed becomes flour. When the two are mixed we have “whole
wheat” flour.
Good flour, should be a pure, uniform white powder, only faintly tinged
with yellow, free from grits and lumps, should show some adhesiveness
when pressed, should have no smell of damp and moldiness or any acidity
of taste.
Most flour now, is “new process” flour, made by a gradual crushing
between sets of rollers revolved by water-power, steam or electricity.
The “new process” originated in Hungary and France and began to be
generally adopted about 1880.
_Yeast_
Yeast is a vegetable. Strange as it may seem, yeast is a tiny fungus
growth, though it takes a microscope to see it. In brewing (particularly
with hops), in wine-making and in any other process of fermentation
where the liquid contains some sugar and some albuminous matter, the
clear liquid becomes “muddy.” Then the minute things that made it muddy
collect into a foaming, bitter mass which is yeast. This yeast has the
power of setting up fresh fermentation when put with other things. It is
fermentation that makes bread-dough “raise.” Oh, yes, there is alcohol
in bread-dough, but it doesn’t stay there. As I told you last month,
12,000,000 gallons of alcohol are made and lost in bread-making every
year in Germany alone! Some day scientists will learn how to save it.
_Hops_
We generally think of hops when yeast is mentioned. I wish any of you who
can tell us the story of hops would send it in to our Department.
_Salt_
How could we cook, or eat, or live without salt? It is an absolute
necessity for people and animals. Also, it is very valuable as a
fertilizer, and was used as such centuries and centuries ago by the
Hindoos and Chinese. Further than this, soda is derived from salt, and as
soda is necessary in making both glass and soap, these two useful things
could not be made if it were not for salt. Most of our modern textile
fabrics are more or less dependent on chlorine, which is made from salt.
We all know how valuable salt is as a preservative for butter, meats and
other animal food, and now they are learning a way to preserve timber
with it. We know, too, its use in freezing ice cream, but may not realize
how much it is used for refrigerating other things. In short, even if we
could live at all without it, life would be pretty miserable.
The chemists call salt _chloride of sodium_ and use this symbol for it—Na
Cl, which shows what it is composed of, but doesn’t mean anything to me.
We get salt in three ways—from rock-salt mines, from natural brine
springs and from evaporating sea water. The world’s biggest rock-salt
mines are in Gallicia, upper Austria, Bavaria, Hungary, Transylvania,
Wallachia; at Vic and Dienze, France; at Bix, Switzerland; at Cadrona,
Spain, and at Cheshire, England. That at Wieliczka in Gallicia is a mile
long, three-fourths of a mile wide and over a thousand feet deep. Some
of its chambers are 150 feet high—as high as a sky-scraper—and one of
them is fitted up as a chapel to St. Anthony, the altar, statues and
everything being solid salt. In this mine is a lake 650 feet long and
40 feet deep. There are horses there that have never seen the light of
day, and men, women and children who live in salt houses and never see
the outside world above their heads. It is a small village buried down
under the ground. When the emperor and his family visit the mine, it is
brilliantly illuminated and a grand festival is held in a great hall.
In Africa are large beds of salt land, beds of rock-salt and a lake
covered at times with a shining white crust of pure salt two feet thick.
France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and some Mediterranean islands are the
chief producers of sea-salt. In China there are salt wells of great depth
and number.
In Spain, France and other countries salt is a government monopoly, and
no one else can sell it. Travelers tell me they have seen salt lakes in
Spain where the people living along the shores were prevented by the
_guardia civile_, or national police, from picking up the salt deposited
in large quantities at the water’s edge. They had to buy it of the
government. The poor use salt sparingly over there even now, and you may
remember that the heavy tax on salt was one cause of the awful French
Revolution.
In our country nearly every state has salt deposits of some kind.
Virginia furnishes lots of rock-salt. The most important salt springs are
in Onondaga County, New York, and furnish nearly half of what the country
uses. The state owns them and gets a royalty of one cent a bushel.
Michigan produces about twenty million bushels a year.
[Illustration: _VARIOUS HINTS._]
_Removing Grease Spots_
To remove a grease-spot from cloth, lay a piece of clean blotting paper
over the spot and then pass a hot iron back and forth over blotter. As
the grease is melted and soaked into the blotter, cover the stain with a
fresh part of the blotter and continue the operation until the stain has
disappeared.
_Dish-Mop_
The little dish-washing mop is a comparatively recent invention, but its
use is increasing as its advantages are learned by experience. It is
merely a handle about ten inches long with a miniature mop, smaller than
your clenched fist, at the end. With very little trouble a home-made one
can be arranged, which is practically as good as the store ones, though
the latter can be bought for ten or fifteen cents. The little mop saves
the hand from going into the water so much, answers every purpose of the
old dish-rag, and can, like the cloth, be cleaned by vigorous boiling.
_Spice Cabinets_
The little tin or wooden cabinets, now on sale in large quantities at the
bigger stores, with from four to twelve small drawers for spices, are
great space-savers and time-savers. The only objection is that, despite
the label on each drawer, the busy cook is sometimes likely to get hold
of the wrong one.
_Soup-Stock_
If soup-stock is put to cool in an earthware vessel, instead of a metal
one, much better results are obtained. It is claimed that this is one of
the secrets of the excellent soups the French are famous for.
_A Fuel Saver_
If one uses a gas stove, a single burner can be made to do several
times its ordinary work by means of a thin sheet of iron, about a foot
square, placed directly over it. The flame spreads out against this sheet
and renders its whole area available for cooking, so that two, three
or even four small vessels can get from this one burner enough heat
to boil water, or at least to keep the contents warm against the time
for serving. No more gas is used than when a single vessel is allotted
to each burner. It is possible to buy a sheet of iron, an eighth or a
quarter of an inch thick, made expressly for this purpose, the edges
being turned down to raise it about half an inch from the surface of the
stove.
_Table Mats_
Asbestos, bought in large pieces, cut into round, oval or square mats,
and either covered daintily or placed under regular table-mats, makes
not only an economical protection for a polished table against hot
dishes, but a very sure one.
_Coal Oil and Gasoline_
If you are in the habit of starting a fire by pouring coal-oil on the
kindling, break yourself of it. You may do it safely fifteen hundred
times and be blown up the next. Coal-oil will not even burn if you drop
a match in a barrel of it, but if you spread it out in any way (as on
a lamp-wick) it will not only burn but the gas thus formed will often
explode with terrific force. Never fill a coal-oil lamp while it is
burning.
Gasoline is still more dangerous. If the fire insurance inspector finds
out that you keep even a small bottle of it in the house, he will have
your policy cancelled immediately, unless you have paid extra for a
special clause permitting you to keep a small amount on the premises.
I knew a physician who was killed and blown clear across the street by
the explosion of gasoline in a saucer, which was being used for cleaning
spots on the carpet of a house he was visiting. The vapor caught fire
from an open grate two rooms away from where the saucer had been left.
Gasoline is an excellent cleaner, but if you use it, do so out of doors.
Let no one come near with a lighted match or cigar, and throw away any
of the liquid that may be left. As an explosive, gasoline is much more
powerful than gunpowder.
_A Cheap Shower Bath_
Five feet of rubber tubing and a ten-cent spray will make as good a
shower-bath apparatus for the bath-tub as any one could ask. The stem
of the spray will twist into one end of the tubing and if the bath-tub
faucet has the right kind of attachment it will twist into the other end,
making a long flexible shower-spray that will prove an unending comfort.
If the faucet hasn’t the right kind of nozzle to fit a hose, one can be
purchased from the plumber or hardware store for very little. Besides
the pleasure and comfort a spray gives, there is the added satisfaction
of thoroughly cleaning the body with perfectly clean water before drying
with the towel.
_A Warmer Bed_
If you continue to feel cold in bed even after piling on a mountain of
covers, turn your attention underneath. A feather-bed lets no cold reach
you from below, and a box-mattress is often nearly as good a protection,
but an ordinary mattress, even a good one, is very likely to let the cold
through. If you don’t use a comforter under the sheet, for the sake of
the mattress and for greater softness to the body, put one there for
warmth. If this is not enough, spread several layers of newspaper or
wrapping paper between this comfort and the mattress. It will crackle
under your weight for a time, but it will keep you warm and cosy.
_Hanging Pictures_
If you are hanging a picture from a nail in the wall instead of from the
picture-molding, you can save the wall by using a very small, thin wire
nail. If it is driven in without “wobbling” and downward at a narrow
angle with the wall a small nail will hold a surprisingly large picture.
_Save your Eyes_
Do not sleep with a strong light shining into your eyes. In sleep the
eyes are relaxed and, closed though they are, suffer from too strong
a light. The sun shining into them before you wake in the morning is
especially bad. Never read or put the eyes to a strain before breakfast.
_To Reduce Weight_
A physician gives the following foods as a broad and common-sense diet
for those wishing to reduce their flesh: lean mutton and beef, veal and
lamb, soups not thickened, beef-tea and broth, poultry, game, fish and
eggs, bread in moderation, greens, cresses, lettuce, etc., green peas,
cabbage, cauliflower, onions, fresh fruit without sugar.
_Peeling Onions_
It is said that if when peeling onions one holds a needle or any small
piece of polished steel between the teeth, the steel will attract the
acid fumes of the onion and save the eyes.
_To Keep Lemons_
1. Cover with buttermilk or sour milk and change once a week. This will
also freshen dry lemons.
2. Put in clean white cask or jar, cover with cold water, change every
other day and keep in a cool place. This method will keep lemons fresh
for months.
_To Clean Knives_
Many are unfamiliar with this old-time method: Take even portions of fine
coal ashes and soda, mix with a little water, rub the knives briskly with
the preparation, wash in tepid water without soap, and wipe dry.
_Floor Polish_
One quart turpentine, six ounces yellow beeswax, four ounces white resin.
Melt the beeswax and resin together over a _slow_ fire and when partly
cool add the turpentine. Bottle for use.
[Illustration: _HEROISM AT HOME._]
_A PRIZE FOR THE BEST TRUE STORY._
_Every month the Department will publish a little story of heroism in
the home—not any one act of heroism, but the tale of how some one lived
heroically, lived self-sacrifice, in everyday life. It must be true and
must be about somebody you know or have known or know definitely about.
It must not have over 500 words. The shorter, the better. Whoever sends
in the best story each month will not only have it printed but will
receive a year’s subscription to WATSON’S MAGAZINE sent to any name you
choose. Tell your story simply and plainly._
[Illustration: _THE MONTH’S MEMENTO._]