Category: School for Housewives

China Flower Holders Table Trimming

KailaLeave a comment

This is the fourth article in February of the School for Housewives 1904 series published on Feb 28, 1904, and is a very short article on dressing tables with china flower holders.

School for Housewives – China Flower Holders Table Trimming

The hostess who likes to entertain informally and often will welcome the little table centrepieces in china which the shops are offering of late.

Thanks to these, it is now possible to arrange the flowers for a luncheon or little dinner in fives minutes’ time.

When a number of entertainments are given during a single season, anything that lightens the labor of preparation without detracting from the daintiness of the feast is of real interest.

This is especially true of hospitably inclined households where but one maid is kept.

Almost any variety of flowers can be suited in these new dishes. There are tall effects designed for chrysanthemums, iris or American Beauties; vases of moderate depth for carnations, narcissus and their ilk, while shallow basins, having just the necessary depth, suggest a decoration of violets or lilies of the valley.

Many of the new ornaments include human figures, those, for example, of nymphs, shepherdesses, fauns and children.

Sometimes the figures support baskets, basins or vases, which form the flower holders.

Other models are made up of blossoms, rocks and different natural objects, without human figures of any kind.

The illustrations show a number of the new dishes appropriately filled.

An especially pretty idea illustrated is that of the boutonniere centrepiece, to which many of the new ornaments lend themselves especially well.

A number of little bouquets, intended for distribution among the guests, are attached to strands of ribbon, and arranged in the dish. The ribbons fall over the sides, and escape contact with the water. At the conclusion of the feast each member of the party pulls a ribbon and obtains a bouquet.

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Around the Council Table – Some Interesting Talks with Housewives and Parents
Good Recipes by Contributors
Help Hints About the House

The Easiest Table Decorations to Make

KailaLeave a comment

This is the fourth article in February of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Feb 26, 1905, and is a short article on table decor.

School for Housewives – The Easiest Table Decorations to Make

No matter at what season of the year you elect to give a luncheon, roses are always to be had, and trim a table in the prettiest and most varied of ways.

A white luncheon may be given, with the whitest of roses gracing the centre, or those with just the merest touch of shell-pink tinting them. Or if pink is to be the color, a “wealth of exquisite blossoms come in the softest shades of pink; white for a red luncheon come buds and blossoms that make the cheeriest of decorations.

In June rose-luncheons are really the only seasonable ones to give; and then you might give a rose-luncheon every few days and have it different, using tiny June roses one day, wild roses another, and moss-roses, tea-roses, fragrant yellow briar-roses, and the delicate old-fashioned tea-roses – gathered from your own flower-plot – for the different days.

If expense doesn’t have to be considered, china with rose-patterns is extremely effective; and, as it snows skillful shading and coloring, it blends with almost any color of roses.

White is used almost entirely for table-linen – lace sets being highest in favor; but occasionally you see a rose-luncheon with a centrepiece embroidered with roses in their natural color.

A pretty decoration of roses – like that illustrated – was a central vase of cut glass (in the fashionable Colonial pattern) filled with pink roses and ferns.

LUNCHEON FOR SIX

The luncheon was for six, and set at intervals around the table were six little vases, each with its roses and ferns. At each place was laid a rose, apparently dropped carelessly there.

Candlesticks add greatly to the genera effect of a table, and a great many women get shades and candles of three or four colors, changing them according to the color of the luncheon they are giving.

Pink shades make, perhaps, the softest, most becoming light; red and green shades the most striking, but both red and green should be set closest to the centre, so that their direct light may not fall on the guests seated. Both lights are too strong to be becoming if they are close.

American Beauties make a most imposing luncheon. One was given with a tall vase full of the long-stemmed beauties for a centrepiece, wile from the base, raying out to each place, was a rose – the blossom coming just to the “stay-plate,” or beside it. The effect was stunning, and after the luncheon the hostess picked up the one nearest her, and every guest followed suit.

Pink roses in the centre, with bunches of great, single violets at each lace – each bunch having its long violet pin struck through the stems – make a pretty color-scheme that is accentuated when all the guests pin the violets on, before the first course is served.

For a spring luncheon, daffodils and violets are charming; and daffodils and mignonette the most spring-like combination imaginable.

Marion Harland

My Knitting Work and the Day Dreams That It Calls to Mind – A Peaceful Reverie

KailaLeave a comment

This is the second written article in February of the School for Housewives 1902 series published on Feb 23, 1902, and is a longer article on managing the household.

School for Housewives – My Knitting Work and the Day Dreams That It Calls to Mind – A Peaceful Reverie

Just now it is a couvre-pied of shaded crimson, a gift for a dear old friend who, having everything that money can buy, will appreciate the tender memories of a forty years’ intimacy wrought into the warm-colored web. Her initials are to be embroidered on the central strip as a sure seal to set upon the sweet assurance that it was designed for her, her only. If the gift will have its story for her it has a hundred stories for me. Dickens tells us how the demoniacal Madame Defarge knit the names of the victims proscribed by the Republic into the work that went with her to the shop, the market place and the guillotine. A series of home-pictures glows under my eyes as I unfold, one after another, of the strips that will presently be crocheted together with rope-silk, after which the rug will be heavily fringed with shaded wools and silks. The setting and background of all are the same. The long, low library, lined with books; the rich glow of firelight and lamp, and on the other side of a Chippendale table that once belonged to Martha Washington, the reader whose well-modulated tones have given me within six months Lecky’s “Map of Life,” Justin McCarthy’s “Reminiscences” and “History of Our Own Times.” Just now we are deep in his “Four Georges.” It is a habit that goes well with the soothing continuity of knitting-work, to improve our acquaintance with out chosen author for weeks together. After many evenings of this close communion, we know him forever. My couvre-pied is better than a chronological table to me, an album of “snap-pictures,” visible to me alone. I could indicate the vey inch that grew into being under my fingers while Bradlaugh’s six months’ struggle to take the oath of membership was in telling, and the long, bright scroll on which is stamped in (to others) invisible characters the pathetic lingering of Queen Caroline’s last hours.

SOLVING A STOCKING’S MYSTERY

I learned to knit golf stockings while on the Scheldt, while our steamer was becalmed by the stillest, stickiest, thickest fog that has visited Holland in a century. We lay “As idle as a painted ship, Upon a painted ocean.” for three mortal days and nights, our dreads of famine imperfectly allayed by the purser’s assurance that we were victualed for a fortnight. An English matron, fair of face, ample of figure and low-voiced, was knitting golf stockings for her university son, and cordially offered patterns, wools and needles to me. Being English, she did not see the faint humor of the “situation” when I remarked that the transatlantic athlete would wear the stocking I had begun (if we ever saw land again) was 6 feet 2½ in his stockings, and that I expected to finish one pair before we got to Antwerp. I sent to London from Florence for pattern book and materials, and wrought six pairs than winter. They are written all over with scenes from “Romola,” “The Makers of Venice,” “The Makers of Florence,” Jamieson’s “Legendary Art” and Villari’s “Savonarola.” As they stride past me on bleak winter days, or when November stubble is russet brown. I have sometimes a queer constriction of heart and throat that means nostalgia. I could declare that I smell the violets which overflowed our table from October to March, and the roses so riotously abundant that black-eyed Lelinda strewed my chamber floor two inches deep with the damp petals to lay the dust before sweeping. Some woman, Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz, I think, once wrote a poem to her knitting work – “My Companionable Kitting Work” the called it in her verse. Mine is solace, and sedative, gentle diversion, and effective guard against ennui and impatience, the confidante of restless discontents and of unspoken dreams. Forty-odd years ago I was guilty of the vanity – pardonable surely in a girl who prided herself upon making all her presents – of displaying the results months of happy occupation that never approximated toil to “a superior woman.” She praised judiciously and satisfactorily, if more gravely, than I had expected, and when the last article had been inspected laid her hand upon my shoulder impressively: “Dear child, do you know what I have been thinking of while this display was going on? That by rights all these things should be dyed as red as blood – the blood of murdered time!” Stunned as I was, I had the presence of mind to offer a word of extenuation, as I would have raised an arm to ward off a blow. “But I have done it all in the gaps left by other things – real duties, you know. I began them more than a year ago. They have been what grandmamma called ‘holding pieces.’ If I had been busy with them I should have been doing nothing in the ‘betweenities.’ When I was hearing my little sister’s lessons, and waiting for the rest to come in to prayers or meals, and chatting with girl callers, and entertaining father and the boys in the evening, and in the long summer days in the country, when it was too hot to practice or to write or study. I have always had a bit of work in my basket that I could catch up at any minute. I can’t feel that I have murdered time. I have only used up odd quarter and half hours instead of keeping my hands folded.” She pursed her lips and shook her had. “The ‘betweenities,’ as you call them, might have been filled with better things, my love. But I was not born ??? the world right. Each of us must account for herself for the talents committed to her. Only – the napkin is a napkin even when covered with the finest of needlework and edged with lace!” I hope – and I try to believe now – that she meant well. She bruised my feelings terribly at the time, and left a raw place on my conscience that was long in healing. As I gained in life’s experiences I worked my way out of the fog she had shed about my perceptions of good and evil, and set up for myself a theory as to “fancy-work” utterly opposed to my mentor’s, and, to my apprehension, quite as dignified.

A LABOR OF LOVE

Because it has a dignity of its own to keep up, I object to the compound word just used. The dainty devices that have grown under women’s otherwise idle fingers for a thousand generations merit a nobler classification. I do not speak of professional tasks done for money. That is labor. As soon as the work element informs the needles or crochet and netting hook, the graceful play ceases to be recreation and a benefaction. She who appoints for herself a certain number of rounds or a given space to be covered within a set time at once loses the best good of her diversion. But for her “holding piece” many a woman would have gone mad under the pressure of sorrow, the gnawing worry of sordid cares, the racking of suspense. Fancy-work lightens dark days and infuses poetry into the commonplace that but for this “maybe” would be one inexorable “must do.” Ah, the stories that are tragedies, stitched into the holding pieces bequeathed to us by our grandmothers and maiden great-aunts; the comedies, love-stories and poetry laughed and cried over and lived, while we fill in the blessed “betweenities” without which life would be all unparagraphed prose! Men and moralists who decry fancy-work as frippery and wasted time are ignorant of the sedative properties it possesses, so long – upon this I insist – as it is not allowed to degenerate into a task. The flash of the kneedle, the swish of the silk, the click of the knitter’s slender steels, the dart of the crocket hook in and out of the gossamer web it is weaving – symbolize mental and spiritual conductors. They carry off and dissipate harmlessly electric charges from nerves and heart. To secure similar ends our husbands smoke and play billiards, and – if rustic – whittle. Better a plethora of golf stockings, slippers and afghans than nicotine and shavings.

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
The Care of Children
The Housekeeper’s Exchange
Making a Neat, Comfortable Pair of Slippers for the Bedroom

Return of The Russian Samorar

Kaila1 Comment

This is the third article in February of the School for Housewives 1904 series published on Feb 21, 1904, and is a very short article on the samovar. Considering the eastern nature of many of the immigrants who moved to the west it would not surprise me that one or two samovars made the journey over for those who could afford the item and space.

School for Housewives – Return of The Russian Samovar

Among the various Russian and Japanese belongings which acquired a sudden vogue by the first rumors of war in the east is the Russian samovar.

This picturesque urn is so little seen in our country that many housekeepers have at best a very vague idea of its nature.

The accompanying picture will consequently by of general interest.

The photographer has so far conceded to American prejudices as to include a cream pitcher among the various articles of the outfit whereas your Russian tea drinker considers sliced lemon the only correct accompaniment.

With this single exception Russian tea drinking in America is carried on in true Muscovite fashion.

For the sake of those to whom the outfit is totally unknown, it should be added that the samovar is a copper urn used in Russia, Siberia, Mongolia and elsewhere, in which water is kept boiling for use when required in making tea.

The heat is produced by filling a tube, which passes up through the urn, with live charcoal.

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Marion Harland’s Interesting Talks With Housewives and Parents – Members Gather ‘Round the Council Table to Give and Seek Advise on Many Subjects
Some Recipes for Good Nursery Foods

Providing For “Pinch Time”

KailaLeave a comment

This is the third article in February of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Feb 19, 1905, and is an article on fruits and winter fare.

School for Housewives – Providing For “Pinch Time”

The Period between Seasons When There Is Little in the Market for Any but the Wealthy

The term was as well known in Old Virginia as the name of any other season. It signified the weeks separating the dead of winter from the first advance of spring. Housekeepers looked forward to it with dread born of experience. Hardy vegetables which “kept over” from autumn to spring were losing their freshness. Potatoes had a bilious tinge and a rank “tang” to the palate; turnips were pithy; beets were hard; apples began to wither, toughen and rot.

To cap the climax of discontent, appetite were jaded by the monotony of winter fare and cried out for tempting variety.

Like conditions prevail to this day although in a mitigated degree, in families where forced fruits and vegetables are not to be had for money, or where money cannot be hard for the purchase of them. Growing children crave sweets, and account that meal a failure where these do not follow beats, bread and butter and the invariable potato. The longing is a law of nature. The saccharine which, the child says, “takes the greasy taste out of his mouth,” changes in the stomach to a digestive acid, acting beneficently upon said fatty matter. It is when these work upon an empty and tried stomach that they are injuries. With young people and mature sweet-lovers in my eye, I shall, today, talk of certain inexpensive methods of preparing dried fruits for the table that may cheat pinch time of its severity and lessen the grip upon the housewife’s purse that adds bitterness to the season.

By selecting dried fruits, pass by barrels and kegs of apples cured in the evil old way, to wit, in the open air, exposed to dust and bacteria and mold, to bees, ants and wasps. Took often, as our disgusted memories will testify, the hurdles of drying fruit set in the hottest sunshine temped the ease-loving cat to a siesta and chickens to picking and stealing. Our mothers, mindful of these things, washed dried fruits in several waters before putting them to soak. One housekeeper, a notable member of what in the blunt speech of the day was known as “the nasty-particular school,” used to wash her “cured” apples, peaches and pears with soap, trusting to many rinsings to remove the taste left by the process.

We have changed all that. The least “particular” of country housekeepers dries her fruit under mosquito netting raised a foot or so above the hurdle, to allow a free passage of air. All the same, unless you have put up your own fruit, buy the evaporated, desiccated in kilns and so quickly that flavor and juices have not time to escape.

APPLE PREPARATIONS

A compote of dried applies will find instant favor with the youngsters as a sequel to a bread-and-butter and milk supper.

Wash a cup of evaporated apples, drain and soak for three hours in clean water enough to cover them. Stew tender at the end of that time in the water in which they were soaked. When cooked soft they should have absorbed all the liquid. Turn out; sweeten well and run through a colander or vegetable press. Set away until cold. A stick of cinnamon, cooked with the fruit, flavors it pleasantly.

A conserve of dried apples. The fruit is washed and soaked as in the preceding recipe. Drain dry, then put the liquid thus strained over the fire; bring to a boil and add a cupful of sugar to a pint of the juice, also a handful of sultana raisins, washed to two waters. Cook gently for an hour; let the syrup get almost cold; put in the apples and simmer half an hour, or until a straw will pierce them easily. Be careful not to let them break. Take out with a perforated spoon and put into a bowl. Boil the syrup hard one minute and pour over the fruit. Eat cold.

Dried apple and raisin pudding. Wash and soak the fruit as directed; cook tender as for the compote; lavishly sweeten; mash smooth and for each cupful allow half a cupful of seeded and halved raisins. Flavor with mace and cinnamon, and let the mixture get cold before adding a cupful of breadcrumbs soaked in one of milk, and two eggs beaten light. Lastly, stir in a half-teaspoonful of soda wet in a little boiling water. Beat all together very hard, and bake in a buttered dish. Send to table in the bake dish. Eat with hard sauce.

This pudding is nice boiled in a covered mold and turned out upon a hot platter.

OTHER DRIED FRUITS

A dried peach pudding is made in the same way, but the raisins are omitted.

A compote of dried pears and rice. Wash and soak the pears for four hours. Cook tender in the water in which they were soaked. Take out with a split spoon and lay in a bread platter. For each pint of the liquid left in the saucepan allow a cupful of sugar, and boil until it begins to thicken. Pour now over the pears; cover and let all stand together until lukewarm. Return to the fire and simmer for half an hour.

Having ready in a heated deep dish a mound of rice boiled so that each grain is separate from the rest; pour he hot fruit and syrup over it and send to table.

A charlotte of dried figs. Separate the figs from one another; wash them in three waters, rubbing each to make it pliant and lump. Soak for three hours in enough water to cover them well; stew in the same water until tender; add a cupful of sugar for each pound of figs and simmer slowly for half an hour. Turn out; cover closely, and when cool set on the ice or in a very cold place. When ready to serve them, put into a glass dish and heap high with whipped cream. They will be found delicious.

A prune charlotte. Sew a dozen and a half large prunes; when cold, remove the stones and chop fine. Whip a pint of cream very stiff with three tablespoonfuls of sugar, then whip the minced prunes into this. Line a glass dish with lady fingers, or thin slices of sponge cake, and fill the centre with the prune cream. Set in the ice box until time to serve.

A prune soufflé. Stone and chop eighteen stewed prunes. Beat the yolks of four eggs light with two tablespoonfuls of sugar. Cook together in a saucepan one tablespoonful of butter and two of flour, and when they are blended pour upon them a scant gill of hot milk. Cook, stirring, to a thick white sauce; beat this gradually into the yolks and sugar, and add the minced prunes. Beat hard for five minutes and set aside to cool. When cold add the stiffened whites of the four eggs, beat for a minute and turn into a buttered pudding dish. Bake in a hot oven for half an hour.

A FINE SAUCE

The sauce to be eaten with this pudding is made by heating the prune liquor, adding to it sugar and, when this is dissolved, a dash of lemon juice.

An Italian charlotte. Shell and boil Spanish chestnuts, remove the skins and rub the nuts through a colander. Sweeten to taste and neat to a soft paste with a little cream. Form the mixture into a pyramid in the centre of a chilled platter and heap sweetened whipped cream around it.

Marion Harland

Both Sides of the Vexed Question, Who Should Manage the Home, Husband or Wife

KailaLeave a comment

This is the first written article in February of the School for Housewives 1902 series published on Feb 16, 1902, and is a longer article on managing the household.

School for Housewives – Both Sides of the Vexed Question, Who Should Manage the Home, Husband or Wife

Who is the head of the house?

The question is seldom put so baldly indulge husbands yield the point in verbal gal-miry. Polite wives make it a matter of conscience and etiquette to speak of their husbands as owners of house and contents and ??? ??? in all entertaining ???. At heart, the complainant Benedict knows his will to be potent, if not supreme in home and family. The added Beatrice is secretly conscious hat she can wind her boastful Benedict about her paper ??? and he will not suspect.

Dismissing classical figures of speech, the case stands thus as nearly as I can judge of it, and set it down:

John pays for house, food and servants, and often works hard for the money that secures these for his family. Upon general principles he has a right to know that the money is wisely spent and husbanded; a right to be well lodged and fed, and made comfortable when at home as his means will allow. If he sees furniture based, provisions ??? – hence, unwholesomely – cooked, and needless waste in any department, he has as unquestionable a right, to direct his wife’s attention to the existing state of things, and insist that ??? be amended. On the other hand, in giving his wife his name, he has made her managing, as he is the financial partner of the firm matrimonial.

She is not his hireling.

Failure to comprehend this vital truth weeks the happiness of more married couples than incompatibility of temper, fickleness and intemperance all put together.

A reasonable good wife earns so much more than her own living that the surplus ought to go to her credit. If not in money, in a hundred other ways. When John stoops to captures surveillance of her methods, and personal inspection of her work he degrades her to the position of a suspected menial and sinks his manhood into Bettyishness. “Bettyishness” according the lexicographers is the synonym for “womanishness” and for John to be “womanish” is to be unmanly. Mary would rather have him savage now and then.

THE MAN WHO MEDDLES

I saw a spotless reputation discounted the other day and many rare, amiable traits of disposition shrivel as water paper in the fire under a single sarcastic utterance of a society woman who had her own reasons for disliking the person under discussion. “Yes,” she said, dubiously, to the praise an elderly matron had given an excellent sun and brother. “But, then, he is such a ladylike person.” he either was apt. Not one of us could deny it. Every woman present, while she laughed, would have preferred to have her husband called a brute.

John takes ugly risks when he tempts his hitherto loyal spouse to name him to her confidential self “Bettyish,” “Miss Nannyish,” or a “Mollycoddle.” They all mean the same thing. As a sloven he may be forgiven, in consideration of the solid manliness back of personal carelessness. We wink at rusty shoes, and collars awry, and tousled hair, and missing sleeve links. For the same reason we condone crossness, and even a touch of savagery. When he comes home in a temper, he has had a trying day down town, or he is hot, or headachy, or hungry. Womanly ingenuity is set to work to soothe down the inclement mood and womanly love springs to the front with the mantle of tenderest charity to hide the fault from others, and put it out of our own minds when it is past.

I know a man – squarely built, robust and keen-eyed – who carries the keys of the storeroom, and lends them to his wife at night and morning to give out the supplies needed for the daily meals. He registers his day book and ledger every pound of butter and box of crackers and quart of vinegar brought into the house, with the date of purchase.

I know another who ceased from his labors 10 years ago who visited kitchen, pantries and storeroom several times every week to see that everything was clean and orderly. He used to smell milk pans, run a critical finger around the inside of kettles and pots and inquire into the destination of scraps – and all without a blush or misgiving. In each case it was of course, impossible to keep servants who could get any other place. Wives belong to the class that cannot give warning.

If either of these men would have tolerated the apparition in his counting room or office at stated or irregular periods of his wife, bent upon inspection of accounts and sales, the clerks undergoing examination, or standing as witnesses of his humiliation – then he was justified to his conscience for his policy of home rule.

Many would go to prison for her John and to the scaffold with him. She springs to arms in his defense if her nearest of kin dare to intimate that he is not the pink of perfection she would have them believe. His grossest eccentricities are graces so long as they are masculine.

But let him prowl into the pantry, peep into the bread-box, criticize the arrangement or derangement of china shelves, pull open linen drawers, spy out dusty rungs of chairs, take down, sort and hang in better order the contents of clothes hooks and hatracks – and he may shift for and shield himself. With lofty scorn the wife of his immaculate shirt bosom heaves him to the fate he deserves.

WHEN BRIDGET REBELS

In which course there is some reason and a little unreason. For which of us does not ??? upon John’s sympathies in her domestic distress. He must not undertake the management of Bridget, or Dalphine, or Marie. These be womanish matters in which a man should not inter-meddle. It may be the most temperate of suggestions, such as, “My dear, I don’t like to find fault, but if you would speak to Margaret about meddling with the papers upon my table wen she dusts the library?” It is a distinct trespass upon wifely preserves. Margaret is under the protection of her mistress’ wing. The interests and credit of the two are identical. But here comes a day when the league snaps in two, like scorched twine. The maid gives warning, and company is expected, and the mistress “did think she had a right to expect better things from Margaret after all the kindness she has shown her in sickness and in health and the excellent wages she has given her, and here, at the most inconvenient time she could have chosen, the creature is deserting her.”

Thus runs the torrent of talk swashed into the ears of a man who left much worse complication behind him in his office when he set his face toward home and imaginary peace. Had he found fault with Margaret a week ago he would have been a “Molly.” Should he withhold sympathy from the mistress to-day, to the extent of commending the ingrate’s past services and wondering if there many not be possible palliation somewhere for her present behaviour – he is unfeeling, and a man! When a woman brings out the monosyllable in that accent she may as well go a semitone further and say, “monster.”

To be explicit, John must dance when his spouse puts the pipes to her lips and not presume to mourn but at her lamenting. As her sister, my sympathies topple dangerously toward her. As an impartial chronicler, I cannot deny that he has a show of reason on his side, even when he is convicted of womanish meddling. He is but a passenger upon the domestic craft in fair weather, a paying passenger, who is expected, nevertheless, to be smilingly content with his accommodations, to eat as he is fed, sleep upon the bed as it is made, and to complain of nothing until the sea gets rough, and another and a stout hand is needed on deck and in the rigging.

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Marion Harland’s Recipes
Some Primary Lessons in Obedience
Value of Kindness to Dumb Animals

Pretty Rooms For the Cottage Home

KailaLeave a comment

This is the second article in February of the School for Housewives 1904 series published on Feb 14, 1904, and follows the previous article on cottages.

School for Housewives – Pretty Rooms For the Cottage Home

The illustrations suggest a baker’s half-dozen of charming plans for the cottage home.

The little dining room shown is in Flemish or weathered oak, with wallpaper in pale buff shade.

The wall has also a deep wainscoting of carbon paper or burlap in dull green and the carpet or rugs covering the floor tone in with the general effect. Either dull green or leaf brown would make a desirable choice.

One of the bedrooms is very fresh and dainty, although exceedingly inexpensive. The furniture, which is suggestive of one of the French periods, is enameled in white. Wallpaper, carpeting, etc., are in pink, and flowered muslin draperies round out the scheme.

Everything about the living room pictured suggests the fact that it is intended for use and comfort. The sturdy chair supply is supplemented by oaken seats radiating outward from one of the corners of the room. Cushions undressed leather, the new art lamp and other minor furnishings are all selected in accordance with the fundamental colors of the scheme.

Another one of the bedrooms is distinguished by several attractive features. The high shelf encircling a portion of the room is one of these, the odd little chest of drawers another.

The broad sunny window in the hall makes this little apartment unusually bright and cheery.

A hall so furnished can take the place of a reception room or parlor for entertaining guests.

The study is that of the worker, not the dilettante. A simple and artistic desk, a few good pictures and accessible bookcases comprise its outfit.

The ideal library is, more than half of it, composed of nooks formed by bookcases of every rank and degree, pictures and other interesting art objects.

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Marion Harland Talks with the Council Members
A Mincemeat Symposium

A “Valentine High Tea”

KailaLeave a comment

This is the second article in February of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Feb 12, 1905, and is a fun article on a Valentine’s Day party. I do remember from past Valentine’s day parties that we also played the cake game where your “fortune” was told by what item was found in your piece.

School for Housewives – A “Valentine High Tea”

Plenty of Fun, Little Ceremony and Far Less Trouble than a Formal Dinner

A high tea is less than a dinner, a trifle more ceremonious than a general “At Home” with tea, sandwiches and cakes.

Our young mistress, with the help of a maid-of-all work, may accomplish successfully a little dinner of four, or at most six, “covers,” as the English put it. We say “four or six people at table.” The hostess may be a clever manager, her maid expect in her part. Nevertheless, the dinner is an “undertaking.” Some day we will talk it over, for such functions must needs be, once in a good many whiles.

For one-fourth of the expense and one-third of the work our housewife may entertain three times as many guests and win golden opinions of her ability as caterer and entertainer. She scores not one but several good points in seizing upon an “occasion” to be “improved” by the festive gathering.

A “Valentine High Tea” sounds note of good, gay cheer, predisposing the prospective guests to hilarity. The idea is not hackneyed; the fact that they are bidden by other young people insures freedom from strict conventionalities. For it goes without saying that the guests must all be youthful – comparatively – and single.

St. Valentine has no dealings with the wedded. Mating is his business, and he sticks to it. There must, also, be an equal number of young men and maidens – ten or twelve of each, if our flat or cottage will hold so many. The decorations of table and rooms must be spring flowers. These need not be elaborate, for daffodils and hyacinths are expensive. Married Mary is fortunate if, in anticipation of the “festa,” she has raised a dozen hyacinths in glasses from budding bulbs bought six weeks ago. This inflexible needles of pine and spruce, even the more graceful running calendar, and inadmissible; the rubber plant would be a vile solecism. She many, however, wreathe pictures and candelabra with the complaisant smilax.

Before the Valentine rush begins let her provide herself with several sizes and patterns of heart-shaped cake cutters and molds. The day before the affair let her make bounteous store of small cakes, cut and molded with these. For reasons I will show presently, a liberal proportion of these should be sponge, therefore butterless, hearts.

THE FUN OF SURPRISE-FORTUNES

When all are baked, have written ready upon slips of paper a given number of proper names, masculine and feminine; fold each neatly once across, not to take too much room; lay upon he underside of a heart, wash the inner edges of the cake with white of egg and fit another heart of the same size upon the first, inclosing the folded bit of paper. Have an equal number of masculine and feminine names thus hidden, keeping the sexes carefully separated as you go on. When each heart is “mated” and made fast to its companion, frost it all over, and let it dry. That there may be no confusion at the last, let the icing of one set of cakes by white, the other pink. When dry, heap those containing the men’s names in one dish, the women’s in another.

Split carefully and extract the kernels from as many English walnuts as there are gusts, tuck into each hollow nut a folded paper on which is written the date of a future year – “1906-1907-1910,” etc.; fit the sides together, lecture in place with mucilage or sealing wax and pile in a nut dish, wreathed with smilax. Another set of walnuts, similarly prepared, should contain couplets prophetic of the destiny of him or of her who may open it. These need not be wise. They will not be poetical. A little knack of stringing rhymes together and a keen sense of fun will make them amusing. When bashful Robert, who has found the name of “Elizabeth” between the two halves of his cookey, and learned from the open walnut that he will be married in 1906, is bidden by the second nut –

Brace your courage, sighing swain!
Eliza longs to heal your pain –

As Dr. Primrose said of the party at the parsonage – “here was not much wit, but there was a great deal of laughter, and that did almost as well.”

There are sharp edges to wit in which honest, happy funmaking is, happily, wanting.

Cut your sandwiches, also, into heart shapes. Recipes for a variety of these will be found in another column. Bonbons, fashioned into hearts, darts and arrows, are abundant at this season, and pink-and-white Cupids, that will swing airily from the central chandelier and balance themselves dizzily upon the pinnacle of ice cream “forms.” If you choose to order ices molded into hearts, any confectioner will supply them on Valentine’s Day.

A silver thimble, signifying bachelorhood or spinsterhood; a gold ring, foretelling matrimony; a dime, promising wealth, may be hidden in a large white fruit cake and cut for at random by the merrymakers.

SERVE REFRESHMENTS INFORMAL

Mrs. John’s fertile fancy will suggest twenty variations of and improvements upon he foregoing outline. Hearts may be interwoven in an intricate pattern upon the damask cloth with ivy or geranium leaves. A big bowl of salad may have a like device sketched upon the surface in the minced whites and powdered yolks of eggs.

Set the table in the dining room, but do not range chairs about it. Let the guests stand or sit where they like in parlor or drawing room, overflowing into the hall if crowded, the young men doing the waiting.

For beverages, have cafe au lait and milled chocolate. For formulas for these and for white fruit cake see recipe column.

Marion Harland