Category: School for Housewives

Grapefruit at its Best

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This is the third articles in November of the School for Housewives 1906 series published on November 18, 1906, and is a short talk on the grapefruit.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of Boston Sunday Post.

Grapefruit at its Best

THERE is a tradition that has come to us across seas and through centuries that the much prized grapefruit of today is none other than the mysterious forbidden fruit that grew in the Garden of Eden. Perhaps it is true. Perhaps, too, its slight bitterness is symbolical of the heritage of suffering that Mother Eve laid upon all succeeding generations when she listened to the voice of the tempter and turned longing eyes upon the tree of knowledge.

Certain it is, that in some Eastern countries the pomela, as it is sometimes called, is still known as the forbidden fruit, yet it would be hard to find a modern housekeeper who would not willingly forgive Eve for her shortcomings when this season rolls round and she can add the appetizing dainty to her menu to tempt the jaded palates of those to whom must cater.

Grapefruit is looked upon in some households as an expensive luxury, but when you consider the heights to which the price of oranges is soaring just now and the scarcity of other fruits, and when you remember that in many markets the grapefruit may be bought three for a quarter, and that half of one is quite enough to put before each person, this notion seems bit exaggerated.

Of course, the primary use for grapefruit is as a first course for breakfast, luncheon, or dinner, but it is sometimes used as a dessert for a simple lunch, and its possibilities in the way of salads and sherbets are almost unlimited.

For a simple home breakfast the core is usually removed, the fruit loosened at the sides from the skin and a tiny bit of sugar added to it. It is well to put this sugar on with a skimp hand, for many persons do not care for too much sweet, and it is always possible to add it afterward.

For a more elaborate breakfast, remove all the seed and white fibrous parts, cut the pulp into pieces and mix with cracked ice. This, of course, is served in the shell of the fruit, and is perfectly permissible for the more ceremonious meals of the day. However, if you want something a little different, opportunity is not lacking.

You may take red and white California grapes cut them in halves, seed them and lay them about the edges of the grape fruit. Or you may take Mallaga grapes, seed them and pile them in with the sugar and pulp. Maple sugar, used instead of the ordinary powdered sort gives a peculiarly delicious flavor to the fruit.

Grapefruit glasses are now used very much by people who have wearied of the serving in fruit shell. The cracked ice is plied in the outer glass, while the fruit and its juice are placed in the inner glass. Sometimes when this method of serving is employed the pulp and sugar are mixed and set aside several hours before they are needed.

Salads are becoming more and more a matter of course in this country, and the average man has a leaning toward those whose component parts are of fruit. One grapefruit salad allows the pulp of half of one to each person, This is served on crisp lettuce leaves and garnished with blanched almonds and about a tablespoonful and a half of mayonnaise dressing.

Another salad is made of the grapefruit and celery in equal parts; still another of grapefruit and pineapple. The question of dressing is very much a matter of individual taste. Many persons think that mayonnaise dressing is entirely out of place in a fruit salad and that a French dressing is the only proper thing. One of the latest ideas is to make your French dressing of lemon instead of vinegar, since the acid of the lemon blends better with the fruit.

Whether sugar should or should not be used is another matter often discussed. There is theory that it is out of place with most salads, yet the women who make the best dressing usually confess to adding a little—not enough to let the outsider into the secret, but enough to blend with and soften down the other ingredients.

If the salad is served from the pantry it is always prettily piled up in half a grapefruit shell, which is set on a plate, one being put in front of each guest. If, however, the salad is put on the table in a large salad bowl and served from there, a garnishing of grapefruit peel makes a pretty and effective addition.

For the people who like sherbets of every kind, here is one that can be made of grapefruit. Squeeze every bit of juice from the pulp, being careful to allow not one seed nor a bit of white skin to drop into it. Allow half a pound of cut sugar to each pound of fruit juice ,stir and pour into a freezer.

A drink made from grapefruit, and known as bitter sweet, is made by cutting the fruit into sections, extracting the seed and covering with boiling water, a quart of water to a quart of fruit. When cool, strain and sweeten. This is served in glasses that are one third full of cracked ice.

Grapefruit rind preserves are made by cutting off every particle of the yellow epidermis and using two pounds of sugar to one of rind.

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What Can Be Done with Old Carpets

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This is the second article in November of the School for Housewives 1906 series published on November 11, 1906, and is a discussion on how to bring new life into old carpets.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of Boston Sunday Post.

What Can Be Done with Old Carpets

WHEN in tolerable preservation and passable in appearance, carpets are a discouraging feature in the autumnal domestic upheaval. They have gathered dust during the absence of the family—no matter how carefully the sun has been excluded by closed shutters and lowered shades, the colors have suffered from heated light, producing a general effect of dinginess peculiarly dispiriting to the frugal housewife.

For, as none of us needs to be told, floors and windows are the most serious items in computing the probable cost of housefurnishing. Your notable manager will tell you that, when hangings are up and carpets (or rugs) are down, the rooms are “more than half furnished.” What follows is mere child’s play by comparison. Tables, beds, chairs, sofas, and sideboards are optional with the mistress. It there are few, ingenuity to brought into exercise to place them to the best advantage, and no conventional decree in this our day obliges us to buy parlor and chamber, or even dining-room “sets.” Carpets and curtains are obligatory and immutable. Nor is it worth our while to pretend to ourselves that the wholesome fashion of hardwood or painted floors emancipates us from the bondage of expensive floor coverings.

We need not buy carpeting by the hundred yards, but we do not sit and stand on naked boards. The rich mask parquet and mosaic with costly rugs; the day laborer’s wife spreads rag carpeting in her kitchen, and scrimps her family bill-of-fare all winter to get what she shows as “a genuwine Brussel” (singular number, accent on last syllable) for the parlor. We must have carpets. As axiomatic is the assertion that carpets will wear out, and the cheaper they are the sooner they give way. Furthermore, a worn or ragged carpet imparts a poverty-stricken look to a room and house. No smartness of furniture can banish or conceal the squalor of a dingy floor covering.

A Dismaying Survey.

Appreciating the fell truth, our housewife of narrow means surveys with dismay the threadbare breadths in the middle of the dining room, defining where restless feet have stirred or beaten the pattern to death; the lines of gray blank spaces, stretching from doors to hearth in the family parlor; the holes worn in the 75-cents-a-yard ingrain, promoted only last year from “mother’s room” to the nursery. The hand-made rag carpet in the kitchen, a present from John’s mother, three Christmases back, was turned last winter—but, bless your soul! you can’t expect anything but wear and tear in a house where there are three boys, all under fifteen. The home-made carpet holds its own, so far as that own is represented, by warp and wool. But it is dirty—vulgarly and unequivocally dirty!

Our housemother is not easily approached while she ponders these things in her heart, and couples them with a gloomy talk she held with John last night upon the increased cost of living and the upward tendency of everything except wages. She is sore of heart—poor woman—and, although she may never have heard the word, a pessimist of a pronounced type.

Nevertheless, it is she, and at this season, with whom I would hold converse today.

You may not be able to make money. You and every other woman—even a busy editor—can make time to do what must be done. And, since your carpets are pastworthy, it follows that they must be renovated.

Begin we with the dining room. It not escaped your housewifely eye that the breadths next the walls are comparatively unworn.

“Of course!” you interrupt, sarcastically; “just where they are least seen!”

Take that as your starting point. Have the carpet beaten free of dust; take it to the least frequented room in your house; rip the seams and shift the breadths. Put the breadths together again, piecing ingeniously, so as to bring the best bits into the light and thrusting disreputable portions into dark corners, or where they be shaded by the heavier articles of furniture. A window bench may cover an atrocious two-yard strip. A sideboard is a friend in need, and hearthrug a boon. You will find real pleasure in the task when you discover to yourself a talent or matching figures and discerning possible fits.

When the carpet is a harmonious whole and on the floor, imitate the example of a happy-go-lucky housewife whom I have quoted here before—and more than once—who set the table “so as to humor the spots” on the cloth. Dispose your furniture charitably, with an eye to the weak points in your handiwork.

The parlor carpet, if good at heart, may be manipulated successfully in like manner. The task is easier, since the widest license prevails in the disposition of rugs in a drawing room. One expects to see a tag under the piano, where the feet of the performer must rest. A smaller, cast carelessly down diagonally, here and there, excites no suspicion of the bare space beneath. You may not have an open fireplace, but the sham chimney and mantel demand the corresponding sham of a hearthrug—the bigger, the better.

Now for the nursery ingrain, too good to be thrown aside, even if you could afford to do it, yet unpresentable in its present dishevelment. Take it up and bundle it up—never mind about shaking it—and send to one of a dozen factories, where it will be cleaned, torn into shreds, woven into rugs of the size designated in your letter of instructions and returned to you in such guise as reminds you of the spring resurrection of leaf, bud and flower from the unsightly root burled in soil. Meanwhile, have the nursery floor painted—or stained and oiled—letting the children sleep elsewhere for three nights to allow paint or stain to dry so thoroughly that the smart new rugs will not suffer from contact with it.

For smart they will be, and new to all intents and purposes, with a world of honest wear in them.

I have omitted in the inventory of pastworthy floor covering the grievous disappointment of the “filling” you laid down in own bedroom four winters agone, in the fond hope that it would be as serviceable as it was cheap. You bought it for 15 cents a yard off at an auction—a bankrupt sale. It was soft green in color—“Nile green,” said the auctioneer—and rested the eyes with its modest uniformity of hue. You mentioned to John, one unseasonably warm spring day, that it reminded you of mosses and young grasses.

It began to fade by the first of April, and has been at the evil work ever since. It has faded in spots—“greenery yallow” and “yallowy green,” saffron and sage color—each vying in hideousness with its neighbor. A more depressing, hopeless carpet it would be hard to imagine, and impossible to manufacture.

Banishing a Nightmare.

Why not rid your eyes and spirits of the nightmare by dyeing it? I am assured by six incorruptible witnesses that this is practicable.

Make up your mind what scheme of color you will adopt, and purchase patent dyes with this end in view. Mix with boiling water in as saucepans as have colors or shades, and keep them hot while you work. Use a broad painter’s brush—four inches in width is not too large—and apply with long, straight sweeps. Paint toward you, as you kneel on the carpet, receding as the painted area broadens. If you paint in strips, or patterns, let each dry before you begin another, that the colors will not run into each other. If you would have a border running around the main carpet cut out a conventional design in stiff pasteboard, tack or pin it to the carpet, and apply dye within the openwork of the design, shifting as you go. This is known, by fresco painters as “stenciling.”

Do not step upon the dyed carpet until it is perfectly dry.

Our descending scale has brought us to the home-made and vulgarly dirty kitchen carpet. Were it mine, I should wash it on the floor. Choose a fine, windy day, when John and the boys are safely off to work and to school, for the operation. Shave a bar of old white soap into a pail or hot water; churn it to suds and stir it in a cup of gosolene. (Have no fire in the room.)

In another pail, close at hand, have plenty of clean hot water for rinsing. You should be provided with a new, strong scrubbing brush and abundance of clean, soft cloths. When everything is in order, scrub that carpet as you would a floor, but with less slopping. Wash a space the width of a breadth and a foot wide, rinse quickly and wipe as dry as you can get it before taking the brush in hand for another scrub. Proceed in this way until you have been over the whole carpet. Rub the badly soiled parts hard, applying suds several times before rinsing.

The floor will be dry in an astonishing short time, if you have not been too lavish with the water.

Leave windows and doors open, and let the air and sunshine do the rest.

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A Candy Pull

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This is the last article in October of the School for Housewives 1906 series published on October 28, 1906, and is a talk on the entertainment of doing a candy pull. The article also discusses how how many candy is much better for children rather than store bought bonbons full of chemicals.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of Boston Sunday Post.

A Candy Pull

THAT is what they call it now-a-days.

In my youth and at the South, it was known familiarly as a “Molasses Stew”—sometimes as a “Sugar Stew.” It was a popular form of entertainment on winter evenings, and divided the honors at “Halloween” with snapdragon and the dozen charms practiced a peep into the future we had not then learned is lovingly veiled from our presumptuous eyes.

HOMEMADE SWEETS

I do not know that confectioners were more honest then than now, but they were more simple concerning that which is evil. In unbiblical language, they were not “up” in the matter of adulterations of their wares. Alba terra had no marketable value, and candy-makers neither poisoned nor painted the “goodies” that had children for their chief customers.

The subject of this Talk with the Housemother was suggested to me by the sight of a “scare head” in a newspaper:

“WHOLE FAMILY POISONED BY CANDY BOUGHT OF A REPUTABLE CONFECTIONER!”

It was not cheap candy, I learn from perusal of the story, but put up in pretty boxes, and colored attractively. Retail price—40 cents a pound. The father bought it on his way home from work, and he, the mother and the three children ate the whole pound before bedtime, with the exception of a few bits left in the bottom of the box. These, when analyzed by the doctors, whose united skill saved the lives of the sufferers, were adjudged to contain arsenical green and other deadly drugs.

For many years the purchase of cheap candies has been sternly prohibited in the several households in which my word has the weight of lawful authority. Chocolate, which we more than suspected to be half American mud; lemon drops, so sour as to cut the throat of the infant that swallowed them, demonstrating to the initiated the active presence of sulphuric acid: green, red and yellow sticks and cubes that owed brilliancy to mineral dyes; brandy drops, sticky and cloying, redeemed from insipidity by alcohol—one and all of these fruits of juvenile speculations with pocket-money and windfalls of pennies—are ruthlessly confiscated and burned in the market place—alias, Grandmamma’s wood-fire, or the kitchen range. If a child fall ill suddenly of indigestion, the first query is—“Have you eaten shop candy?” If the answer be affirmative, the case is treated as one of poisoning.

This is not an idle tale, or an exaggeration of facts. I could make yet stronger the appeal to mothers to withhold hurtful sweets from their darlings were I to tell all I know of the infamous cheats foisted upon us by men who, after all, are no worse than their fellow money-makers.

These things being true, why do we not make our candies as well as can our fruit and vegetables? And this last is what we must do if we would not be done slowly to death by salicylic acid and more potent drugs.

Pulling candy on a frosty evening when a boy or two, and a girl or three, have dropped in, may be a puerile amusement in the sight of sophisticated younglings of the human species. I submit that it is better exercise for the moral muscles, as it assuredly is for the physical, than waltzing and “bridge.”

CLEANING THE KETTLE

Now, as to the modus operandi of the family and social entertainment: Cover the dining table with a clean white cloth, and set on this four large platters, and a large plate for each pair of “pullers.” Platters and plates are well-buttered, and saucers of cornstarch and pats of butter stand conveniently near the platters. The candy is cooked in the kitchen. If Bridget resent the invasion of her domain when an “acquaintance” may be with her, choose her “evening out” for the frolic. “Our” cooks have been uniformly tolerant of candy pulls, for we give them no additional trouble in the way of cleaning kettles and plates next day. As soon at the kettle is emptied it is filled with hot water and set on the side of the range to soak itself clean by the time the fun is over. The plates are piled in the sink, soaped, and covered with hot water when they are cleared.

To return to our candy! For a “molasses stew,” put into the kettle ingredients in the following proportions:

FOR “MOLASSES STEW”

To one quart of the best quality of molasses allow one cup of granulated sugar, a great spoonful of butter and half a cup of vinegar. Dissolve the sugar in the vinegar, mix with the molasses, and cook—slowly at first—until the mixture hardens when dropped into water. At this point stir in the butter, and when this is melted a teaspoonful of soda, dissolved in a little hot water. The boiling mixture will foam up furiously, so be on your guard against spatters of hot syrup. As soon as the effervescing ceases, take the kettle from the fire and empty into the buttered platters, dividing the contents equally between them.

Now, let the pullers gird them for the work by donning big white aprons, turning back sleeves, removing cuffs, and buttering the tips of the fingers. The adroit candymaker never touches the hot mass except with dainty finger-tips. It is a sign of awkwardness or ignorance if any other part of the hand is sticky.

The hot mass must be taken from the platter as soon as it can be handled. The butter will keep it from adhering to the sensitive skin, and a little fortitude enables one to bear the heat in consideration of the fact that the hotter it is when drawn out into a rope, the better the chance of working it speedily into excellent candy. If left to cool until tolerable to the touch, it will string, and give no end of annoyance. Let the practiced puller—who is almost surely a woman—manipulate the hot lump alone for a minute to get it into working order. When she can draw it into a thick rope, her partner must come to her help by grasping the other end of it. Henceforward the business is play, and graceful play. The fast-whitening rope is drawn out as far as may be without danger of parting, caught dexterously in the middle, first by one, then by another of the pullers, turned back upon itself to double its thickness, then drawn out again. The process, often and swiftly repeated, bleaches the dark yellow candy to cream white, if it is not allowed to cool too suddenly. In hardening it opposes more resistance to the arms and hands, until the strain is a test of agility and strength. Here is where skill and grace come into play.

It will be so brittle, by and by, that further pulling would snap the rope. Now, lay it carefully on the platter, coiling as you let it down. If you wish to braid it, do it on the platter, not when suspended in the air. Divide into three strands of equal length, and plait them evenly and fast. Set the platter in a cold place for a few minutes before breaking the candy into lengths. If properly cooked and pulled, it will be light, porous, of a pale straw color, and delicious to the taste.

DON’T STIR SUGAR CANDY

What is sold in the shops as old-fashioned molasses candy” is too often doctored with chemicals, and thickened with flour. The cornstarch of which mention was made just now is for the benefit of luckless pullers whose fingers have got sticky. A touch of the starch is safer than rebuttering. Too much butter will cause the rope to split into strings.

Sugar candy is made thus: To two large cups of granulated sugar allow half a cup of water. Do not stir it, but set over the fire to heat slowly while dissolving. When you have a clear liquid, dissolve a bit of cream-of-tartar not bigger than a lima bean in a teaspoonful of cold water, and pour into the sugared water, shaking the saucepan to induce mixing. Cook steadily until a teaspoonful, poured slowly from the tip of the spoon into cold water, hardens and threads in the air.

Proceed then as with the molasses candy.

Home-made candies, packed into paper-lined boxes, will keep for weeks. If the sugar be stirred at any stage of the process, it will soon granulate.

The above are warranted (truthfully) pure candies, that cannot hurt any healthy child. The taste for what English children call “sweeties” is normal and right. When founded upon wholesome domestic confections, it revolts at unholy combinations of white and colored earths, false essences, and froth—sold under the name of “French bon bons.”

Recipes for various home-made candies will be found in another column.

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Mrs. Sterling’s Ways – The Knack of Retrieving Failures No. XVIII

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This is the third article in June of the School for Housewives 1906 series published on June 17, 1906, and is an article on how to fix cooking failures.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the The Buffalo Sunday Morning News.

Mrs. Sterling’s Ways – The Knack of Retrieving Failures No. XVIII

“ONE may take devout satisfaction in considering how few irreparable failures there are in the word we have a bad habit of calling ‘crooked.’”

The blessed woman said it with feeling. Evidently something deeper and of more vital importance than the subject in hand was in her mind. “At 70”—I have heard her say—“one learns to look under the surface of the things which are seen, and temporal, or one has lived to little purpose.”

We had been talking, of course, of the weather in general, and in particular of the disastrous effects of heat upon foodstuffs.

“Do what I will, my custards curdle before they are half done!” Mrs. White had lamented, “and yet, the milk is put into the refrigerator as soon as it is delivered, and the bottles are not opened until we are quite ready to use milk and cream.”

Then our hostess and mentor fell to moralizing, and produced the bit of practical wisdom I have cited. Recovering from her momentary reserve, she continued:

“My mother used to say (how naturally the phrase comes to every woman’s lips!)—my dear mother used to say that milk should have air and space. So I have my milk bottles emptied, as soon as they are brought in, into wide, shallow crockery bowls, and set in a compartment of the refrigerator where nothing but milk and butter are kept. As to cream—the ‘separated cream’ sold to us in small glass jars—of one thing you may rest assured – in nine cases out of ten it is doctored with some chemical preservative – I hope nothing worse than salicylic acid—before it is bottled.”

Mrs. Martin struck in impetuously here:

“That accounts for the bitterish ‘tang’ I detect in it sometimes! I thought it was incipient – corruption!” with an expressive grimace. “I’m relieved to know it is nothing worse than a vegetable ‘embalmer.’ But it is there, all the same, and account for much. For example, for the cream keeping—not sweet, perhaps, but without souring or thickening when the mercury touches the nineties.”

“But,” demurred Mrs. White—“I don’t like to mix your antiseptic drug with really pure milk, such as goes into my custards!”

“Drop into the milk a bit of baking soda, no larger than a green pea,” advised Mrs. Sterling. “Even cream twenty-four hours old may be boiled without clotting if this simple precaution be taken and the cream be brought slowly to a gentle simmer. I never omit the bit or pinch of soda when milk is to be cooked for any purpose. It arrest decomposition by neutralizing the acid generating in the milk. Old-fashioned people used to say, when this was faintly perceptible to the taste, that the milk, or bread, or meat was ‘just on the turn.’ There is nothing better or more harmless than soda for averting this evil ‘turn.’ Like the fire and water, kerosene and gasoline – and I might add mustard, cayenne and salt to the list—our bicarbonate of soda is a good and faithful servant, but a cruel master. The cook who has ‘a heavy hand with soda’ is not to be trusted to use it at all. I have save a ‘touched’ steak by a timely bath of soda and water. After leaving the suspected meat in it for an hour, I wiped it dry, washed it with lemon juice and proceeded to braise it with minced vegetables. We were in the country; the butcher had not come that day, and Mr. Sterling had!—bringing with him a couple of city men for dinner. Not another morsel of meat was to be had for love or money. My cook was sick in bed, and the waitress, a model in her own sphere, knew nothing of cooking, and ‘had never cared to learn.’ I had to cook the dinner. Whatever else was to be omitted from the bill of fare, I determined there should be no apologies. I had soup-stock, fresh vegetables, cake, berries and real cream, succulent lettuce for salad, and clear, hot, black coffee. The piece de resistance was the ‘high’ steak. It figured as ‘braised beef a la jardinière,’ was enjoyed by all. When I took my husband into my confidence after the guests had gone he assured me that it was ‘savory, tender and delicious, with never a suspicion of taint.’”

“Even your bicarbonate cannot redeem strong butter,” said Mrs. Black, mournfully.

“That depends upon the degree of ‘strength.’ I have washed butter that had entered upon the earlier stage of ruin in pure, cold water, working it with a wooden paddle, and not touching it with my hands. Then I kneaded it with the same spatula until not a drop of butter-milk was left in it. Finally, I buried in the heart of the lump a piece of charcoal wrapped in clean old linen. In twenty-four hours the work of redemption was complete. Another and a less hopeful case was treated to weak soda and water. The rinsing was done in clear iced water. The butter was left in this for an hour.”

“An old housekeeper once told me that cooking butter which was slightly rancid could be made tolerable by heating it slowly in a perfectly clean flying pan, adding, when it began to hiss, some pieces of raw potato, and cooking the two together for a few minutes, not allowing the butter to color. Then it was strained and put away for shortening, etc.”

This contribution was from Mrs. Bistre.

“I have corrected many a batch of sour dough by kneading into it a bit of saleratus dissolved in boiling water,” ventured Mrs. Black, who is not always ready to refer to the long ago in which she “did all her own work.”

Mrs. Sterling added encouragingly.

“Thank you! I was about to say the same of my early housewifely experiments. Coming down the hill—or up—it was only last week that my cook came to me in dire dismay to say that they ‘mayonnay’ (she always speaks of it in the singular number) had ‘gone back on her.’ That is, it had curdled and separated under the whip. We saved the day by beating smooth the yolk of a fresh egg and stirring it into the disintegrated mixture. It acted as a cohesive agent, and our salad was presentable. The study of redeemed failures is a large and interesting field of thought and adventure.”

“But”—said Mrs. White, whom irrepressible Mrs. Martin has nicknamed “Thomasine”—“nothing can be done with really sour bread when once baked—absolutely nothing.”

“I beg your pardon! Sliced and dried, then crumbled, it can be wrought into excellent puddings of divers sorts if soda be added judiciously. I made a most toothsome cheese fondu of such crumbs, some years ago.”

“Success along this line may be classed among the peaceable fruits of the discipline of failure.”

Marion Harland

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Mrs. Sterling’s Ways – The Hottest Day of the Season No. XVII

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This is the second article in June of the School for Housewives 1906 series published on June 6, 1906, and is an article on iced drinks for the hottest of summer days.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the The Buffalo Sunday Morning News.

Mrs. Sterling’s Ways – The Hottest Day of the Season No. XVII

“THE hottest day of the season” was upon us. We should use the same form of words once a week on an average until the 1st of October; but each of us repeated the phrase with the air of one conveying a fresh and thrilling bit of news.

Mrs. Bistre has “taken on flesh” within a few months, and the early summer heats tell upon her strength and morale. Her doctor hints darkly at nervous prostration, and advises, in unequivocal English, a sea voyage.

“Americans rest nowhere expect on deck chairs upon an oceanliner.” Thus she reported his dictum, pantingly discarding her laced apology for a fan for the honest palm leaf offered by our hostess. “I believe he is right. We can really take leisure in no other circumstances.”

“Make believe that you are on shipboard for half an hour,” cooed our wise woman, in accents that brought a delicious intimation of reliefful rest to the imagination.

Somehow, one thought forthwith, dreamily, of a misty sea line, and waves tumbling lazily in the middle distance, and peace and coolness enwrapping strained limbs and worn bodies and tortured nerves. The room had much to do with the sweet make-believe. The shutters were bowed, admitting such vagrant breezes as had survived the torrid noon; the furniture was incased in play-gray linen covered bound and tied with white. There was a suspicion of rose-scent in the air—the coolest of odors. Honeysuckle or lilies would not have had the subtle effect imparted by the big bowl of Bon Silenes, set at the back of the long drawing room, quite away from the teatable about which we were gathered. Other odors blended harmoniously with the roses’ breath. For a tall glass pitcher of iced tea occupied the place where the silver teapot had stood all winter. When the table was jarred, ice crystals tinkled against the glass, like faraway sleighbells, and through the mist masking the outside of the flagon were golden gleams from bits of lemon stranded in the ice floe. One got a suggestion of the citron odor, but a more pronounced aroma stole upon the gratified senses from a mighty punch bowl set in the centre of the table and flanked by waiting tumblers. The surface, and, as we could see through the misty sides, half the depth of the bowl were another ice field, and here, too, one caught gleams of faint yellow lemon slices, stripped of rind. Around the brim of the bowl was a fringe of mint sprays, and others floated languidly upon the delicately tinted liquid.

Mrs. Sterling was ladling the mysterious mixture into the glasses, wafts of fragrance from the stirred mint, and the castanet accompaniment of the broken ice augmenting, in tantalizing, our midsummer thirst.

“The effervescence soon passes,” she said, while giving the tumblers into eager hands. “It is refreshing when the bubbles cease to rise, but not so good—so altogether satisfactory—as when they are at the liveliest.”

When thirst was quenched and grateful adjectives were failing us, she told us how to compound her Olympian nectar. She gave it a tamer name. And this is her formula for

Summer Punch.

“Put into your punch bowl a cupful of granulated sugar; add the juice of six lemons, and stir until the sugar melts. Put in three peeled lemons, sliced very thin, and leave in the ice until you are ready to use it. Add, then, a dozen sprays of green mint and a quart, at least, of pounded ice. Stir well for a minute, and pour from a height into it two or three bottles of imported ginger ale.”

“I here and now christen it ‘The Ne Plus Ultra of iced drinks,’” quotes Mrs. Green, when she was prevailed upon to accept a second glass, by Mrs. Sterling’s assertion that “half of the first was cracked ice.” “Now, I make an effervescent lemonade—very refreshing and more wholesome than plain iced sherbet. But it is not comparable to this, and not so pleasing to the eye. The pale amber tinge of the ‘No Plus Ultra’ lends a mystic charm to it.”

“But your effervescent lemonade?” urged Mrs. Martin. “Is it like ‘lemonade gazeuse’ with which we sometimes regale, and sometimes poison ourselves in foreign hot countries? I drank a bottle of it in Port Said, and nearly died that night of ptomaine poison—that’s how I diagnosed it!”

“I am always doubtful as to the wholesomeness of patented beverages,” commented Mrs. White. “I was once almost murdered by root beer.”

“Wait until you risk your life upon persimmon beer!” ejaculated the Virginian. “The most atrocious compound ever conceived of in a Voudoo cataletic trance! Warranted to kill at forty yards! Now, for your domestic sherbet gazeuse!”

Mrs. Greene was flattered by her persistence, and yielded up the recipe graciously.

“Roll, peel carefully and slice thin six lemons. Put into a pitcher or bowl with alternate layers of granulated sugar, two teaspoonfuls for each lemon. Leave on the ice until you are ready to serve; then add, at the last, a quart of chilled Apollinaris and a great lump of ice.”

Mrs. Brown was beginning to have serious doubts as to the prudence of taking any iced liquid into the stomach. “The dear professor says that is one cause of the Great American Dyspepsia. That is his way of stating the case.”

Mrs. Sterling lifted the brimming ladle from the half-emptied bowl, with a persuasive smile.

“The day is so trying!” she pleaded, and the Dietetic Disciple yielded weakly, smiling shamefacedly.

“I was about to offer an old family recipe for a summer drink,” she uttered, between satisfied sips. “My mother made gallons of it every year. It keeps well, and improves with age—like good people and good wine.”

“Put raspberries, red or black, into a stone vessel and mash them to a pulp. Add cider vinegar—no specious imitation, but the genuine article—enough to cover it well. Stand in the sun twelve hours, and all night in the cellar. Stir up well occasionally during this time. Strain, and put as many fresh berries in the jar as you took out; pour the strained vinegar over them; mash and set in the sun all day. Strain a second time next day. To each quart of this juice allow one pint of water; five founds of sugar (best white) for every three pints of this liquid, juice and water mingled.”

“Place over a gentle fire and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Heat slowly to boiling, skimming off the scum, and as soon as it fairly boils take off and strain. Bottle when warm and seal with corks with sealing wax or beeswax and rosin.”

“A most refreshing and pleasant drink.”

Marion Harland

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Mrs. Sterling’s Ways – Hot Water No. XVI

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This is the first article in June of the School for Housewives 1906 series published on June 6, 1909, and is an article on tea and hot water with specific attention on tannic acid.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the The Buffalo Sunday Morning News.

Mrs. Sterling’s Ways – Hot Water No. XVI

MRS. BROWN’S “Dietetic Department” took a new turn today. Not that most of us were surprised when she not only declined but denounced the tea which she had lauded, not three weeks ago, as “Tired Woman’s Sweet Restorer, Balmy Tea.” As I have already remarked, we knew the tannic acid stage must come in the natural course of her lectures.

“No tea for me, dear Mrs. Sterling,” she murmured, a regretful glister in her eyes. “Against my will I am convinced that it is absolutely poison to one of my digestive idiosyncrasies. I have nothing to do with other people’s principles and practice in this respect, although I shuddered, this morning, in listening to the professor’s analysis of teas—even those for which we pay preposterous prices as the best and purest brands. We all know, of course, that green tea owns its color to Prussian blue, the base of which is prussic acid. But everybody does not suspect that tannic acid-a deadly poison—lucks in every cup, whatever may be the kind of tea used. After ten minutes maceration” (Mrs. Martin smiled openly at the technical term) “the diffusion is little better than diluted digallic acid.”

“Good gracious!” cried Mrs. Martin, helping herself to a slice of lemon and another lump of sugar, abstractedly. “How horribly and delightfully interesting! Do go on! It is such a comfort to know just what one drinks! And what does the digalltannic stuff do after we swallow three or four cups of it?”

Mrs. Brown was [] up without one ray of humor. She replied, promptly and gravely:

Tannin’s Ill Effects.

“Digallic acid is but another name for tannin. When taken into the human stomach it precipitates all starches and glutens (which is the best principle of bread, you know), all albuminous deposits (that is eggs), and if you have eaten jelly—sweet or aspic or meat jelly—it forms a most insoluble compound, almost like leather!”

“Good gracious!” ejaculated the fun-loving auditor anew—her eyes widened until her forehead was a gridiron of wrinkles. “You make me feel like a tannery! Yet it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a leather-lined stomach, when one comes to think of it!”

Mrs. Sterling interposed the usual buffer between ball and ball:

“But my dear Mrs. Brown, sensible people who have read of the properties of foods—and beverages—do not let tea steep for ten minutes! They know that stewed, or overdone tea, is an astringent, and that it must carry on the tanning process you have described.”

“I beg your pardon” returned the thoroughbred, with perfect temper. “There is not a leaf in the pot! As soon as the boiling water had stood upon the herb five minutes—or less—the tea was drawn off into that pot having been made in another, and set in a vessel of boiling water until I rang for the tea. Once here, the wadded cozy keeps it hot for an incredibly long time, and it loses none of its freshness. Neither,” smiling at the disconcerted reformer, “does it extract tannic acid while standing. Patent neither obtained nor applied for! The trick is free to all. Now, let me give you something to drink! What shall it be? Coffee? Lemonade? Milk?”

“A cup of freshly boiled water, please!” with what remnant of self-possession defeat had left her. “It stimulates and cleanses the mucous lining of the stomach.”

While the water was in boiling Mrs. Sterling went on talking naturally and easily. That a guest should suffer discomfort of body or spirit in her house is, to her notions, a breach of hospitality.

The Virtues of Hot Water.

“My sister, Mrs. Field, never wearies of descanting upon the virtues of hot water as a beverage. A cup—freshly boiled, as you say—is brought to her bedside every morning before she rises. She takes nothing else for sick headache and indigestion. When she is inclined to be bilious in the early warm weather, she adds the juice of a lemon without sugar, and insists that it does her more good than quinine ever did ‘in the dark ages when she pinned her faith to doctors and to drugs.’ If it be a delusion it is harmless—and clean. Here is your invigorator, at last! I thank you for not going away thirsty.”

After a few minutes of desultory chat, the hot water question came up again. It was, I think, Mrs. Green who asked, “What is a ‘bain marie?”

“One meets with the term often in recipes, especially for the preparation of French dishes,” she said. “I judge from the connection in which it is used, that is has to do with hot water.”

“It is rather a grand apparatus in hotel kitchens,” replied the hostess. “I have a simpler form—a very crude construction—in mine which I will show you, some day, if you wish. I had a []zinc box—or pan—made by a stove manufacturer, oblong, about six inches deep and with a deep, round cover. Any tinner could make one. It is about twice as large as an ordinary covered roaster. This stands as the side of the range all day long, or at the back, wherever it will be out of the cook’s way, and is always half or quite full of hot water. Dishes are set in it to heat before they are filled, and to keep the content hot after they are ready for the table. Coffee and teapots go into the same while they await [] convenience. Soups may be kept hot against the master’s coming for an hour without injury. Even the steak, done to a turn, does not lose flavor or juices after it is committed to the warm embrace of the ‘bain marie.’ The same may be said of fish and even oysters, and it is on record that an omlette was once saved from flat ruin by the ‘Cook’s Best Friend.’ That is the name it foes by in our household.”

Marion Harland

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In the Laundry – Washday

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This is the fifth and final article in December of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Dec 31, 1905, and is a “practical talk” on laundry and washday. There are some very interesting tidbits of information on preparing laundry, for instance I had to Google “javelle water” which I leaned is a mixture of sodium hypochlorite used as a disinfectant or bleaching agent. I’m also perplexed at the idea of pouring keresone into wash water or rubbing butter into mechanical grease stains!

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of The Washington Times.

In the Laundry – Washday

Number One of a Series of Practical Talks

Said a Down East woman to me, with energy that was almost vicious:

“I hev’ washed and I hev’ ironed, but, as I tell my husband – ther’s one thing I won’t never do, and that is keep a boa’din’ house!”

Unless I am mistaken in my estimate of the makeup of our constituency, a majority of my readers would reverse the order in which she set the least desirable branches of a woman’s work.

A wit of the eighteenth century declared that washday was instituted in commemoration of the day on which Job was born, the date of which he said: “Let it perish; let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let it not be joined unto the days of the year!”

Preparation.

A latter-day writer has given us gloomy statistics as to the proportion of human life spent in cleansing the house, clothing, and person, in fouling which the remaining time has been employed.

Our optimistic housewife does not waste time and lower her spirit-level in bemoaning the inexorable fact that clothes get dirty and must be cleansed. She bring to the tasks that fail to Job’s birthday cheerful philosophy and such knowledge of the best methods of doing the work as will achieve satisfactory results with the least expenditure of time and labor.

Let us reason together today concerning some of these.

The best excuse I know of for the appointment of Monday as washday is that mind and body have been reinvigorated by Sunday’s rest and comparative freedom from worldly cares. If our housemother be truly wise, she will forecast the morrow’s duties, so far as to put the “clothes” (all-embracing term!) in soak over night. In one household, at least, the bulk of this preparatory task is done on Saturday night, leaving only the body linen, laid aside on Sunday, to be added that evening.

Sort the various articles in making ready for soaking. Put table and bed linen in separate tubs, and keep soiled undergarments apart from both. You will save yourself much subsequent worry if you would “treat” stains before washing. Fruit, ink, coffee, chocolate, and tea stains may be wet with javelle water, or with a weak infusion of chloride of lime; left in this for five minutes and then rinse in pure water. Rub chalk upon grease spots and butter upon stains left by machine oil or axle grease, washing out the butter half an hour later with warm suds. When all are ready, put into the tubs and cover with tepid water – never hot – but just lukewarm. If the water be hard, stir a handful of powdered borax into each tubful.

On the morrow draw off the soaking water, wring each article hard; return each kind to its respective tub, and wash in warm suds, made with plenty of really good soap. Unless the water be soft, add borax again. It is perfectly harmless, softens the water, and tends to whiten the clothes.

Avoid Soda.

Abjure washing soda and all its works! The average laundress is so wedded to it that, if it be denied to her by employers, she will bring surreptitious parcels of the drastic destroyer into the laundry and add secretly. The owner of the maltreated linen never suspects the outrage until she finds it eaten into tiny holes, as if peppered with birdshot. There are other laundresses’ allies and housekeepers’ foes which have the same effect. They save the muscles of one class, rasp the sensibilities and deplete the pockets of the other. Borax is safe and efficient. One pound (powdered) will soften twenty gallons of water.

Clean at Last.

When the clothes are clean – the soiled places rubbed out, and all of uniform whiteness – rinse in clean, hot water, and put into a boiler half filled with tepid water, to which you have added shredded soap and a tablespoonful of kerosene, stirred in well before the clothes are put int. Never forget that boiling water “sets” dirt, and that dirt will make the contents of your boiler hopelessly dingy. Do not have the boiler so full that the water, in heating, cannot bubble freely between the clothes. Boil gently for an hour, lift out the wet linen with a wooden clothes stick, upon a wooden tray, or into a clean tub; again half fill the boiler, as before, and put in a second supply of clothes. Wash table linen first, and, as in soaking, do not mix it with bed or body linen. Be scrupulously particular in this separation, even after both kinds seem to be clean. Now comes the final rinsing. Have an abundance of clean, warm water, souse each article several times, shake hard, twist with a pair of strong hands, and put through the wringer. If there are buttons upon any article, turn them inside with a fold or two over them, that they may not be broken or torn off in the wringer.

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Christmas Chat & Christmas Candy

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This issue of School for Housewives was published in the San Francisco Call on Dec. 24, 1905. In the section entitled Christmas Chat, Marion remarks that a cross Christmas shopper is hard to come by where if we compare to today’s standards where many holiday shoppers are mowing down others for expensive gifts.

One aspect that puzzles me on the traditional Christmas tree is how ancestors prevented the tree from catching fire. You would think that the many candles would make it easy for a tree to catch fire if the flame was too close or too strong.

This year my Christmas funds are rather low I am inclined to make all of my gifts this year through art and sweets. While my skills are not as strong as the young woman mentioned in the section on Christmas candy I do look forward to make some delicious brownies, cookies, and other yummy goodies. A series of hand painted Christmas cards will help round out the gifts.

Christmas Chat

CHRISTMAS is the Children’s Day. I said that in my Thanksgiving Talk, but the thought is one that it is well to impress upon our minds as the holy season draws near. For, to enjoy this day of days in the true Christmas spirit, we must all be as little children. Just for a little while let us lay aside the thought of the toil and the stress, the getting and losing, the petty vexations and the still more petty jealousies of daily life. On this day we are all children together, thrilling with the joy of doing something to make others happy, with the delight of giving and with the eagerness to see all the good things that have come to every one else.

There is much talk – some of it decidedly wise, some of it heartlessly foolish – of the evil of gift-making. Without stopping here to go into the ethics of the matter, it may be well to call attention to the fact that at no other season is there so much good natured and unselfish jollity as during the holidays. Note the crowds coming home on street and railroad cars late in the evening, laden down with parcels of all sizes and description, footsore and weary, perhaps but merry and laughing. A cross Christmas shopper is an anomaly. For one such there are thousands of the happy kind. If one doubts the worth of this season, and is cynically tempted to ask. “What’s the use?” with regard to all the fuss and preparation let him simply read the papers and he will be answered. Is it nothing that in hospitals all over the country scores of children’s wards are graced by Christmas trees; that in countless institutions for the poor, the sick, the homeless, there are food and to spare, and gifts and joyous words; that there is one day in the year, when, to use worldly jargon, it is “fashionable” to be good to everybody? Let the sad faces brightened, the lonely made glad, the homeless that ???, answer the question. Is it nothing that on one day in the three hundred and sixty-five all Christendom follows the Golden Rule?

WHEN GIVING IS A TAX

But evil creeps in when the giving because a tax and ceases to be a pleasure. And it is the place of the housemother to see that this is not the case in her nest. The giving must not be dome “grudging nor of necessity,” if it would be gracious.

In one family there was in Lang Syne, a method of making presents which divided the burden (if it can be so called) equally among the members of the household. Several months beforehand a Christmas box or fund was started. Into this locked box were dropped, by each member of the family, such coins as he could spare. They accumulated gradually until a fortnight before Christmas, when there was held what was called “a family council.” All – the father and mother and the children – met to apportion to each person his or her gift. First, the father was told to go out of the room, and a vote was taken as to what should be given to him and the money for that was taken from the box. Next, the mother was banished and the father recalled, and her gift was chosen. Afterward, one child at a time left the room, and the others decided on what he or she should have. Of course, the parents’ gifts took more money than did those of the little children, for toys did not cost much, and in the arrangement the children concurred joyfully. Surely such a method was an illustration of the principle – “In honour preferring one another.”

In another home, where many friendless students – boys and girls far from home – spend Christmas, there is a tree, and on this is a gift for each person, and every one of the number who receives gives something to every other person.

GIFTS AT 25 CENTS APIECE

But there is one law that must not be disobeyed; no gift shall cost more than 25 cents. To depart from this would be considered unkind and unfair. One may pay as little as he wishes for a gift, but one cannot go beyond the sum named. The arrangement gives rise to much merriment. One girl whose hair was always falling down, as it was so heavy that it defied the stoutest pins, received a paper of hairpins elaborately tied with violet ribbon; another, who complained of cold hands and feet, received a tiny doll’s hot water bag and muff; the old-maid aunt, who had tea in her room every day, had a cheap, but pretty, Japanese teapot; to the youth whose dandelion-down moustache was struggling to face the world, was given a gorgeous shaving mug. It may all seem silly to the cool-headed and practical observer – silly and childish. But who would be practical, and who would not be a child at Christmas time?

One woman this year has (so far as her own practice is concerned) reversed the usual custom of giving to those who expect her to do so, or to when she has been in the habit of making gifts. She is now preparing gifts for those from whom she expect nothing, and who cannot send her anything. One great comfort in remembering the poor is the fact that one may not be accursed of giving in the hope of a return in kind.
As this is the home fest, let greens and other decorations be such as can be arranged by the members of the family. To many of us the odour of evergreen brings back a rush of memories of bygone Christmases, of happy faces, of cheering greeting. Let us not deny our children such memories for their future days. Have the prevailing colour green and red, the former much in evidence, the latter added to give a touch of brightness here and there; an exclamation point, as it were, to the general scheme. Get great boughs of cedar and of pine. Suppose each bough does drop its needles all over the floor – just now we will not pause to consider that. Over the mantelpiece bank the boughs, and fasten one across the top of each window.

PRETTY WINDOW DECORATIONS

A pretty idea is to frame each window in green. For this purpose use the ground pine or running cedar, tacking it with tiny brads to the window casing so that one looks out upon white world through a green frame. If one is whore holly and mistletoe grow, use both in abundance. But, if they must be bought at fancy prices, use them sparingly. Instead of the red of the holly, have wreaths and festoons tied with bows of bright scarlet baby ribbon. Of cotton-back ribbon, suitable for this purpose, one may buy a roll of ten yards for 12 cents. If holly is very expensive, be satisfied with having a sprig of it at each cover at the table, to be used at a boutonniere by each diner. Even if one can only have a small piece of mistletoe, hang this, in time honoured fashion, in the middle of the drawing room, and let each member of the family caught beneath it pay the penalty. The grandfather and grandmother will be younger for the merry joke, and the little folk always experience a thrill of excitement when thus aught and kisses. Anything that promotes mirth, or that produces a laugh, is to be advocated.

The questions of the Christmas tree is perennial. In many families the grown people still cling to the dear old emblem. Even when Santa Claus has grown to mean only the Spirit of Christmas, and the dressing of the tree is no longer a mysterious rite performed after each of the younger members of the household is in bed, “while visions of sugar plums dance in his head” – still we hate to part with the tree. Of course, a great deal of work, and a great deal of disorder later. If there are children in the family, put aside these considerations, and trim the tree, large or small. It means more to the little ones than we can imagine, unless we have very distinct recollections of our own youth.

A TINY TREE ON A TABLE

A pretty expedient, when a large tree is out of the question, is a tiny one o stand in the centre of the dining table. Have this fastened firmly in a wooden stand, and wind over the stand strands of running cedar. Then trim the tree. It must be made a veritable fairylike structure. At any toy shop one may buy tiny candles an inch or two long, with holders. Fasten these all over the tree. A pretty notion is to hang on this bush of evergreen a tiny scarlet box of bonbons for each person at the table. At the end of the meal, these are taken off and the contents eaten with, or after, the coffee. Tiny coloured beads, and strands of tinsel hang from the miniature branches. From the chandelier over the little tree suspend a red tissue paper Christmas bell, such as one sees for sae at thousands of shops at this season, and from the edges of this bell fasten yards of green smilax or other vine to meet the top of the tree. Streamers of ground pine wound with narrow scarlet ribbon can run to the four corners of the table. Sprigs of cedar dropped here and there upon the cloth add to the “Christmassy” effect.

All these things should be but the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual joy – a brightness that must make the whole year more glad because of the Gift of Gifts that came to the world on the first Christmas Day.

Marion Harland

Christmas Candy

A GIRL, who was famous among friends and family for her skill in candy making, found herself facing the problem one Christmas of an almost empty purse and a long Christmas list.

There was only one thing for it – either to give some of her candy, or to abandon the idea of Christmas presents at all. Somehow, Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without giving, so the candy won the day.

Fortunately, she knew plenty of kinds to make. For days before Christmas she was busy getting the numerous things ready. Nuts had to be shelled and blanched; harmless colouring matter secured, and the prettiest little boxes and baskets made of crinkled tissue paper and pasteboard, or of heavy watercolour paper, decorated prettily with watercolour paints.

The day before Christmas she shut herself up in the kitchen, with pans and kettles and plates – anything and everything ready “to her hand” for the work.

Her fudges were many and varied. Some made exactly like chocolate fudge (with the chocolate left out), were a delicious invention of her own, the result of an experiment one day when she wanted to make candy and found she had no chocolate. Two cups of sugar, one of milk, and a good tablespoonful of butter were put in a double boiler and allowed to boil for five minutes then taken off the fire and beaten until the top began to glaze ever so slightly. Into the mixture was poured a cupful of finely chopped nuts and half a teaspoonful of vanilla; it was stirred again quickly and turned out to cool.

A TASTY CHOCOLATE FUDGE

Leaving out the nuts and adding half a cake of bitter chocolate made the most delicious chocolate fudge. When some of her chocolate fudge turned out an apparent failure, she dumped into it a cup of molasses, put it all on to a boil up for five minutes, and turned out a batch of caramels.
Maple sugar fudge she made by boiling two cups of crushed maple sugar with one of cream. But it was a wonder o get just right, and unlike the chocolate fudge, stayed a failure when it turned out that way.

Chocolate fudge poured over a thick layer of chopped marshmallows made a fudge variation that was immensely popular, partly because the marshmallows offset the cloving sweetness of the fudge.

But the newest form of fudge was made with honey and cream, using equal proportions and beating “extra hard.”

Fudge biscuit she made for the girls who were at boarding schools, and who couldn’t get home for the holidays. She packed them in small cracker tins. They were simply small crackers, spread thickly with fudge, with another cracker laid on top.

With fondant as a foundation, all sorts of interesting cream candies and bonbons were made. To make this fondant, she put two cups of granulated sugar, half a cup of water and a pinch of cream of tartar into a double boiler, letting it boil until a little dropped in cold water formed into a soft ball between her fingers. This was hard to do, for the moment when it is just cooked enough to form, instead of separating, is the moment when it must come off, or be too stiff. She let it cook, and then stirred it until it grew creamy, then turned it out and worked it, like a batch of bread, until every lump was out of it and it was a smooth lot of cream.

EVOLUTION OF A CONFECTION

Some of it she flavoured with vanilla and rolled into little balls (some with a nut in the centre) and dipped into chocolate, using a long wire with a loop on the end for dipping. The chocolate was the ready sweetened kind, melted and kept soft by being stood in hot water.
These were the beginnings. From them sprang all sorts of pink and violet-tinted bonbons, dipping balls of the cream in the tinted cream. Peppermint cream and chocolate covered peppermints were made by adding a few drops of oil of peppermint to the fondant, and wintergreen drops by the addition of essence of wintergreen.

Everton taffy came out crisp and delicious. Half a pound each of butter and granulated sugar were boiled for fifteen minutes, and poured out in buttered tins.

Her fondant ran short before she came to the dish of English walnuts, which had been carefully shelled to keep the halves unbroken. So she stirred confectioner’s sugar and cream together until it was of the consistency of the fondant, flavoured it with vanilla and put half an English walnut on each side.

It was a long, hard day’s work, with results in the shape of burns and blisters, a face very much flushed, and aching muscles; but when the various kinds were sorted, and packed in their pretty receptacles, her gifts “loomed up well, after all,” as her small sister (and general helper) observed.

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Christmas Bells & Simplicity Marks the Modern Maid’s Wedding

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This is the third article in December of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Dec 10, 1905.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of The Washington Times.

When I transcribe these articles from newspapers, it is sometimes difficult to determine what is supposed to be the main article by Mrs. Harland. In this instance, I thought possibly the poem Christmas Bells as Marion was an author of a number of publications outside her cookbooks and syndicated articles.

As it turns out, I was incorrect as this is actually a reprint of a poem by Sarah Webb Vilas entitled My Shrine. I found an earlier publication in The Home-Maker – An Illustrated Monthly Magazine Vol. 3 October 1889 to March 1890 edited by Marion Harland.

This has led me to believe that her article may possibly be “Simplicity Marks the Modern Maid’s Wedding” which I have also transcribed for reading pleasure.

Christmas Bells

FLUSHED warmth within’ without white cold;
In library-chamber vast and old,
I, basking in the fragrant red
By logs of birch and cedar fed –
So still the night – heard, toll on toll,
The distant belfry call to soul
Belated, or distraught with sin,
To pray the holy Christmas in.
From carven mantel, grim and brown,
The Virgin and her Son looked down;
At right and left knelt martyr-saint;
Tulips and roses, fashioned quaint,
Bloomed at their feet, and cherubs’ eyes
Surveyed them with a glad surprise.

Was’t midnight-bell
That wrought the spell,
Or incensed glow
That, flickering slow,
Showed caravan shapes instinct with life?
While, breaking forth in tuneful strife,
Like fall of streams and hymns of birds,
Weird music throbbed and soared in words –
(The while the far-off rhythmic beat
Of towered bell chimed low and sweet).
The story of the ages grew –
Tales of the tempted and the true;
Of vanquished Self, and Vice withstood,
And Evil beaten down by Good;
How saints had lived; how martyrs died
By sword, and rack, and scourge, and tide;
Had found in dungeon trysting-place,
Had clasped the stake in rapt embrace.

And evermore,
And o’er and o’er
Angelic tongues
Blended the songs,
Harmonious billows of one sea –
“This have we done, dear Christ, for Thee!”
Now far and faint, now near and clear –
“All hail to Thee! O Christ most dear!”
The bell made answer straight and strange;
On chime and voicings fell a change,
From age-browned oak on me were bent
Regards of griefful wonderment.

“And thou? and thou?
Art silent now?
For sun and showers,
Fruit and flowers,
For watch and ward by night and day;
For dangers ’scaped in darksome way;
For hourly grace and passion reined;
Foes reconciled and friends retained;
For ransom paid and debt forgiven;
For love and life and hope of heaven –
Hast thou no need of praise to bring?”
“And thou? And thou?” The voiced ring
Still calls my humble soul to prayer,
While flares and falls the perfumed glare
On carved saint and child divine –
To me, this Christmas tide, a Shrine!

Simplicity Marks the Modern Maid’s Wedding

A sort of reaction is taking place against the elaborate weddings so long in vogue, with the result that several brides have had the simplest sorts of ceremonies, carrying out the idea of simplicity in decoration, and even in the wedding dress itself. When present-giving is carried to the extent that it was with one bride, who returned just her duplicates to one well-known firm of silversmiths and had a credit there of something over a thousand dollars, it becomes something most unpleasantly overdone.

The exchanging of presents too, by brides for presents to send to other brides, has been carried on to the same way as the exchange of euchre prizes which became so annoying that several stores were forced to refuse such exchanges. For not only was the original purchase returned, and something else taken out, but that second purchase probably was returned, and its equivalent brought back until there was no end to it.

It seems dreadful that anything so closely connected with sentiment as a wedding gift should be put to so prosaic a use, but it is done every day.

One bride who declare that an invitation to a wedding reception was a “hold-up” for a present, refused to have a reception on that very account, contenting herself with announcements, and comparatively few of these. A good many persons were annoyed at seemingly being over overlooked but the reason leaked out and the tide of feeling changed.

Another bride refused to have bridesmaids because she couldn’t afford to give them their dresses and she felt it unfair to put them to that expense. It’s a pretty hard thing for a girl to have to refuse to be bridesmaid for her dearest friend, but many a girl has had to, and then, for the life of her, not been able to avoid a pretty sorry feeling of discontent.

But one might go on indefinitely quoting the little prettiest little acts of consideration. There was the girl who planned just simple summer dresses for her bridesmaids; and the other who asked her nearest and dearest friends to sit in the front pews of the church so as to be near her, and to give them a pretty little distinction, asked them to wear their white dresses. She herself sent them the flowers they wore – the richest, most velvety of roses.

As to the wedding itself, there’s room for a deal of consideration to be shown there It isn’t every family to whom a big affair doesn’t come as a severe tax. And, for that matter, any sort of elaborate display of decoration seems a little out of keeping with the solemnity which belong by rights to the ceremony.

The simplest sort of a church wedding was given by a girl who felt (as so many girls feel) that her wedding wouldn’t be quite real unless she had it in a church. Only the altar was decorated, and that simply, but prettily, with white flowers and foliage and plants. There were no invitations issued at all, but all of her friends were told about it, and whoever wanted to come, came. There was none of the usual crowd curious to see the dresses; only the people she wanted about her, and who really wanted the pleasure of being present on her one great day. From the standpoint of sentiment it was an ideal wedding.

Another bride held no reception – she was like the other girl, and held that receptions meant presents – but word was passed along somehow, and everybody drifted home with her from the church. Her presents had been put out, so that a survey was made, everybody had a chance to wish her joy, and in the dining room was a great wedding cake with its three mystic tokens hidden away somewhere in its interior, and ices.

It is hard to plan things on a modest scale for the one important occasion of your life, but so much less strain attends that sort of thing, and there’s so much more time in the last few days in which to get close to your family that it pays. And the bride who has the courage to considerate at the expense of a little of her own pleasure has a quality about her that is like a talisman to insure future happiness.

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Christmas Dinner Suggestions
Housewife’s Exchange
Recipes by Marion Harland
Recipes for Candy Makers
Told by the Cheeks

A Foreword of New Year

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This is the second article in December of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Dec 10, 1905, and is about ringing in the new year with a clean house and a clean score!

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of The Washington Times.

A Foreword of New Year

The Real Resolution

IF EVERY reader of this page were called upon for a candid expression of opinion as to the observance of New Years Day those who have never given the latter much thought would be surprised to learn how many are disposed to regard the anniversary as a bore, and the festivities connected with it as a mistake.

Christmas frolics have left us jaded, and blunted our appetites for pleasure. Christmas giving has depleted our purses. We have no money left for Near Year presents, and if we had, the impression is so general that these are the “Arriere pensee” of conscience stricken donors, recalled by the receipt of Christmas gifts to the fact that sundry of their dear 500 friends were overlooked by themselves at Yuletide – that there is scanty grace in giving.

Memory and Tears.

As to the patent and pious resolutions enjoined as a conventional ordinance by ancient and goody-goody appointment the most serious-minded of us dismissed the habit of formulating them when age and experience had showed us the emptiness and inefficiency of spasmodic righteousness.

The dawning year, as a true poet of the last century sang –

“Is a time for memory and for tears.”

Each heart knows for itself the bitterness and the sweetness of memories that crowd upon it at this season, and to each his own griefs are scared. I have no sermon today for my dearly-beloved and loyal constituency – only a word of cordial good cheer, a hearty “god-speed,” and then a brief practical conference with my fellow-housewives.

A pleasing custom prevails in some families of having the house swept, scrubbed and garnished before the coming of the blessed Christmas Day.

As one youngling phrased it: “It would be a shame for Santa Claus to come to a dirty house!”

Another put it more aptly:

“Everything should be in order upon Our Savior’s birthday!”

I confess to the same feeling with regard to the Near Year that the thrifty housemother has as to the “shiftlessness” of carrying the week’s wash over into the next Monday, and leaving Saturday’s mending incomplete when workbasket and thimble are laid aside for the rest of Sunday. There may be a tinge of superstition in my aversion to the thought of seeing the sunshine on New Year Day through dingy windows. The impulse to clear decks for action during the last week of the old year is natural and commendable. As the warm-hearted, hot-headed heroine of “hitherto” longed, in her unhappy childhood, to “rub out and begin all over again,” we would, if possible, forget the mistakes, and rid ourselves of the drawbacks of the past year, and press forward to cleaner – therefore, better – things.

Begin with your bookshelves. Unless you are given to periodical weedings of your library you have no right conception of the quantity of “trash” you have accumulated in a twelve-month. Books that are not worth a second and even a third reading are not worth keeping. If you can get rid of them in no other way, sell them by the pound to a junk dealer or old clothes ma. If you do not mean to have your magazines bound, sort and ship them to a hospital or soldiers and sailors’ home – or, failing these, send to me (inclosing stamp always) for the address of some one of the many who hunger for reading material they have not the money to buy. Sufficient unto the year is the rubbish thereof. And whatever may be the title of a book which nobody reads, and which nobody ever will read, that book is rubbish, be it bound in calf or in paper.

Next, attack closest and drawers, and rid your house and would of what you have kept for months – maybe for years – because they were not fit to give to anybody, were of no earthly use to yourself, and yet were adjudged by some abstruse law of economics to be too good to throw away. Were your thrifty soul to depart from the workaday world tomorrow, the entire collection of cracked and broken china, out-of-date collars and cuffs, scraps of unmatchable stuffs, remnants of forgotten gowns, and mortified bonnets would be consigned to the flames by your heirs and assigns. Spare them trouble and spare your memory from disgrace by cremating the ungainly and unprofitable assortment before the bells ring out the false and ring in the true.

If, in the course of righteous work, you happen upon some forgotten article that would be of real service to the poor widow you visited at Christmas, consider that you have found a bit of her property and restore it to the owner.

I promised not to preach; but you will not take it amiss if I counsel you to carry the New Year cleaning up and clearing out work into a higher sphere than that of pantry and bookshelf? Get rid of old grudges and family feuds, of unholy enmities, mean jealousies – all you would not have cling to your soul were you sure this year would be your last on earth. “Rub out and begin again!” Don’t resolve to do it, but do it – and at once! One right deed is worth ten thousand inactive resolutions.

If there be in God’s world one fellow being to whom you would not hold out a helping hand, if he or she were in need convict yourself at the bar of conscience of sin, and repair the fault.

Begin the New Year with a clear score. Don’t wait to be dunned by remorse.

Let the midnight bells that tell the death of the past, and the birth of the future, ring in for you –

“The larger heart, the kindlier hand.”

And so, as Tiny Tim – happiest of the household, although a sickly cripple – has taught us to say:

“GOD BLESS US, EVERY ONE!”

MARION HARLAND.

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Four Dollars a Week Enough
Housemothers in Conference With Marion Harland
Little Talks With Discontented People – No. 1
The New Shades for Lamps and Candles