New “Findings” for the Woman Who Sews

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Following up the previous article is another one on the topic of sewing although in this case the focus is on a handful of sewing tips. This is the second article of the School for Housewives 1904 series published on Jan 10, 1904.

While this article is shorter than the previous one it does bring to mind the number of daily hardships women would have had to face such as sewing or pining ‘shields’ in blouses so that the main article of clothing could be protected from sweat and dirt.

School for Housewives – New “Findings” for the Woman Who Sews

The one to whom the family mending falls is perennially interested in new “findings” appertaining to this branch of her work.

There are little devices constantly appearing, any one of which may mean a saving of weary minutes over the workbasket.

The most expert shopper on the staff of the Woman’s Supplement recently made a little tour of inspection among the “motion counters” of the large shops with these findings in view.

She discovered a number of innovations in this line which had usefulness as well as novelty to recommend them. One of these was a very flexible skirt braid designed especially for the pliant materials used for this winter’s costumes. It is mercerized, making available for silk and the various silky fabrics in present use.

A new spooler, of which an illustration is give, keeps the different bobbins in full view and makes shifting them on and off a much easier matter.

The safety-pin shield released us some time since from the daily labor of sewing fresh shields into our blouses. But the ordinary safety used for this purpose had its drawbacks. It would not lie flat, and it was apt to make a disagreeable little lump under the arm. Now the inventor has come to our aid with a clasp intended to remedy this particular deficiency. It lies flat and creates no bulkiness whatever.

The skeleton collar material now sold by the yard is an immense help to the woman who is obliged to make her own blouses. Anyone who knows the difficulty of cutting and shaping the buckram foundation and covering this with silk for a collar on the old lines will appreciate the convenience and time saving of the new collaring.

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Feeding the Family – A Discussion Under the Direction of Marion Harland
Some Good Recipes

Familiar Talks with Cottagers and Flat-Dwellers – Our Maid’s Outings

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This is the second article in January of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Jan 8, 1905, and is a longer article in Marion’s series called Familiar Talks with Cottagers and Flat-Dwellers on the treatment of servants.

School for Housewives – Familiar Talks with Cottagers and Flat-Dwellers

Our Maid’s Outings

A young housewife writes: Do not, I beseech you, dismiss the subject of Bridget Thekla before giving us novices in domestic management a few helpful words as to our ‘girls’ afternoons and evenings ‘out.’ Now, here am I, who keep but one maid. We boarded for two years, and did not begin housekeeping until my baby was nearly a year old. Our flat has six rooms and a bath. I have a woman to wash on Monday, my maid of all work doing the ironing and housework, including cooking. She manages it well, and is generally satisfactory. But she wants every other Thursday afternoon and evening out, and every other Sunday afternoon and evening. That means I am to get up dinner and wash up dishes once a fortnight, alternately with the same work on Sunday, with the difference that we have a simple supper on Sunday, having dined at 1 ‘clock.

“My John says it is an imposition upon me – and I must say it does not seem quite fair to my way of thinking. Annie Hagan, who represents Bridget Thekla in my modest establishment, says ‘these are the privileges every gurrel looks to get where there’s but was gurrel kept.”

“Please enlighten me, with a host of others, upon this point. M.E.R.”

There is but one rule that holds good always, everywhere, and in all circumstances. I need not repeat it here – that Golden Rule which ranges all human creatures, of whatever blood and breeding, upon one equal plane.

Put yourself for half an hour, while we two reason together, in Annie Hagan’s place. She has never read Shakespeare, and her theatergoing does not take in Irving and Terry. But you will comprehend why I thought of Shylock as I read your letter. As that much-vilified Jew said of himself, Annie Hagan “has hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions. If you tickle her she will laugh; if you poison her she will die.”

ONLY HER WORKSHOP

I am as sure as if I had taken afternoon tea with you yesterday hat your flat is comfortable and prettily furnished. I hope that Annie Hagan’s niche in ??? clean, decently appointed, and as airy as in consistent with flat architecture. Her food is the same that is served for yourself and for John. You do not complain when a nice girl “acquaintance” drops in to call upon her in the evening. In fine, you wish Annie Hagan to feel at home in the steam-heated, gas-lighted six-rooms-and-a-bather.

The fact (one of several) remains that it is not her home. She has had a series of such – some worse, some better – in the five or ten years she has spent “in the country.” The roots of her local attachments are slender and lateral. There is no tap root running down from the heart into the new soil; and this is well and merciful. Your slice of a house is nine-tenths of the world to you, because John and the baby and all your best treasures are there. Annie Hagan’s friends, congeners, and blood kindred lie outside of your sphere. Your flat is her factory – her workshop. Cooking, cleaning, and ironing – even her turn at tending baby when you have your “outing” – are her spindles and loom.

TAKE HER VIEW OF IT

Her cousins, the Flanagan sisters, are shop girls, and never tire of taunting her for “taking service” and having but one evening a week to herself. They are free after 6 o’clock every afternoon – as free as any lady in the land. They can walk the streets until midnight, if they like, and have “followers” galore, to say nothing of dressing in colors never flaunted by any bow in the cloud since the first was appointed unto Noah for reassurance.

Annie Hagan has a steady head and right principles. Nevertheless, these things have weight with her, as they would have with you were you “in her place.” Keep these in imagination while we are talking. She may like cooking. She probably does if she cooks well. She may enjoy “redding up” for the pleasure of seeing things look clean and bright when all is done. She may “Take intrust” in baby. There are no better nurses in the world than Irish girls of the best sort. Her livelier and larger interest are in the sphere in which she was born and in which, please Providence and Larry Moran, she hopes to end her days. The same Larry fills as large a space in her dreams as John filled in yours three years agone.

In consideration of all this, she is right in calling the few hours she spends weekly in that world where she lives in heart and in thought, and has her real being, her “privileges.” She may not pronounce the word right, but she enters into its meaning more truly than can you, who make it a point of hygienic conscience to get the fresh air every day.

Why, let a mature manager ask don’t you have supper instead of dinner on Thursday, as well as on Sunday night? What country people know as a “hearty tea?” one John I know looks forward with zest to “the girl’s” evening out, because he always has Sally Lunn for supper.

Sally Lunn, such as you will find described in a recent recipe in our column. The maid set it at noon. All the mistress has to do with it is to put it into the oven and oversee the baking. Baked potatoes and baked beans (baked that forenoon and warmed over in the evening) reconcile this John to cold meat, a salad dressed on the table, crackers and cheese. A pudding or a pie and coffee fill him up satisfactorily.

If your sense of fitness rebels at the thought of washing up your dishes when you are dressed for the evening pile them in the sink, pour hot water, with a liberal dash of ammonia, over them, and leave until nearly bedtime, when you can slip on a wrapper and get them out of the way. Or Annie Hagan – if she be exceptionally appreciative of a good mistress – will ask you to “lave them be” for her to wash early in the morning.

Respect our maid’s “privileges” as you respect your own engagements. Decline invitations for her evenings out steadily. Unless you have mother or sister who can take your place in the home now and then when John has tickets for something he is not wiling to have you miss.

In addition to the outings nominated in the bond between you and Annie Hagan, contrive that she shall go regularly to church. If she is conscientious in the discharge of religious duties – and this from principle, not out of custom or superstition – the more likely will she be to be faithful in her obligations to you.

Once in a while give her an extra outing – a “treat” such as you relish when John gets those tickets unexpectedly. An uncovenanted mercy which belongs to the same category with Alice in Wonderland’s “unbirthday gifts.”

Annie Hagan may not be effusively grateful. Some people do not know how to say “Thank you.” She may even disappoint you by taking the uncovenanted grace as a matter of course and her rightful due. “Some do.” Do it next time as heartily as if she had felt and said the proper thing, and let conscious obedience to the Golden Rule be your rich reward.

Marion Harland

Miss Pauline Astor’s New Handshake

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This is the first article in January of the School for Housewives 1903 series published on Jan 4, 1903, and is short article on a ‘new’ handshake demonstrated by Pauline Astor. Pauline was the first daughter, and second child of four of William Waldorf Astor, 1st Viscount Astor. William Astor was an American who was raised in Europe and was one of the richest people in America in the late 1800s.

Miss Astor Brings a New Greeting Right from England

Though English-Born, This New Greeting Is American in Its Fervor

Not a Finger-Touching Greeting, but a Good, Hearty Striking of Hands

Miss Pauline Astor, daughter of William Waldorf Astor, of England, and heiress to untold millions, has introduced a new handshake in American society.

Briton though she be, the handclasp smacks of things American, for there is about it a degree of heartiness that is by no means typical of the Englishman.

It cannot be denied that there is some kind of charm about shaking the hand of a young woman who is destined to be the richest in the world. One needs no great stretch of imagination to realize that the dainty hand will some time have the power to sign a check that would ransom king or emperor.

Perhaps it is that fact that makes one observe with great care just how the dazzling handshake is delivered. At any rate, it is safe to assume that Philadelphia society is in a receptive good and that Miss Astor’s innovation meets with its entire approval.

The truth is society everywhere has a strong predilection for fads. It gratefully accepts whatever comes to it in this guise without taking the trouble to go into an analysis of its merits. So it was with Miss Astor’s handshake. It was a fad, and society liked it. But in addition to the fact that it is the introduction of one of the most polished young women in the world, there are other features to recommend it.

There is no denying that it is a distinct improvement over the highlighted, fastidious, finger-tipping touch with which society people have been won’t to greet each other for years.

The new handclasp is no characterless, light-fingered shake, but a hearty grasp. Its exponents show the warmth of old friends greeting each other after a long separation.

The arm is extended naturally in front of the body and the hands are brought sharply together in a strong, firm clasp. It is an honest handshake. There is no indecision about it, and there is no needless effusiveness about it, either, for the hand is instantly withdrawn. It is only natural and unaffected.

Miss Astor has been visiting her uncle, Mr. James W. Paul Jr., at his country home at Radnor. Philadelphia society leaders first witnessed the handshake, now its own by adoption, when she appeared in company with her cousin, Miss Ellen Drexel Paul, at the annual Radnor Hunt breakfast on Thanksgiving morning.

Miss Astor rode her cousin’s hunter Dumnorix in the Ladies’ Cup class for the best riding and jumping, but although she had style and a firm, light hand, she only captured fourth place, losing to Mrs. John R. Valentine, Mrs. Robert E. Strawbridge and Miss Josephine Mather, who won first, second and third, respectively.

It was when she was congratulating the winners that the society folk first noted the handshake, which was to them entirely now.

Miss Astor is naturally exclusive in her tastes. One indication of this is the fact that she never shakes hands with any person to whom she is first introduced. She reserves this favor for her intimate friends or when, as a good loser, she congratulates those who win from here.

The manner in which a person shakes hands is very often a strong indication of character. Miss Astor’s friends say that her method is typical of her – exclusive in general, but firm in her friendships.

She is only 20 years old and has been trained in an atmosphere of exclusiveness, which in her father’s home has been termed snobbishness. She is always accompanied by her French governess, Mme. Flory, who previously served as governess in the families of the French aristocracy.

Miss Astor, in her natural qualities, resembles her mother, who was the beautiful Miss Mary Dahlgren Paul, of Philadelphia. The young girl has often said that she would prefer to be an American and live in America, but her father is filled with Anglomania prejudice, and hates everything “Yankee,” as he sneeringly calls it.

Miss Astor could not be counted as pretty, but she possesses a subtle charm that wins the hearts of all with whom she associates. She is fond of outdoor life and loves the beautiful thoroughbreds in her father’s great stables. She has been reported many times to be engaged. Among others, the rich Duke of Roxburghe has sued for her hand but he failed, and the nearest Miss Astor has ever come to falling in love was with Captain H. Frazer, the “tallest and handsomest” guardsman in England.

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Housewife’s Corner
The Parents’ Corner
Recipes for Four Dainty Dishes

American Women Learn Torchon Lace Making

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This is the first article of the School for Housewives 1904 series published on Jan 3, 1904, and is a short column on the sprouting popularity of Torchon Lace in America.

Now what exactly is torchon lace?

Torchon is one of the simplest lace making methods to learn although its popularity in mainland Europe did not spread to England until the late 19th century. In the television series Lark Rise to Candleford the main character’s mother, Emma Timmins, made and sold torchon lace as a reliable form of income until the popularity of machine made lace made her work redundant and comparatively expensive.

I can imagine that the pioneer women of the Mowat district would have had to create their own lace decorations for dresses and other cloth items by hand as they would not have had much money to buy embellishments. It would be interesting to see a comparison of all the different patterns the pioneer women might have known and brought with them from their home countries.

School for Housewives – American Women Learn Torchon Lace Making

One of the most thoroughly serviceable laces for general purposes is torchon, especially in its simpler forms.

It is only of late that women are discovering how easy some of these attractive patterns are to do.

Since the discovery has been made several little classes with an enthusiastic patronage have sprung up in our different large cities.

There are so many purposes to which a good strip of torch on can be put!

It makes a pretty and durable finish for the various articles comprised in the lingerie trousseau, and no experience housekeeper needs to be reminded of its many uses in connection with household linens.

Another good point is the inexpensiveness of the work. There is the first moderate outlay for the cushion and bobbin outfit. After that the only expense is for the thread.

It will be seen by the illustrations that torch on is a pillow lace, distantly related to Valenciennes and other favorites.

The number of bobbins for the less elaborate patters (such as the strip pictured) is about thirty-six.

The legend concerning the origins of the lace is pretty one. Some torchon maker may like to con it over as she twists her thread and manipulates her bobbins.

At a time when lace-making was yet an unknown industry, says tradition, there lived in Venice a pretty girl betrothed to a fisherman. During his enforced absences at sea she was accustomed to sit and think of him along the seashore.

One day as she sat day-dreaming of the beloved one, and idle wave washed up to her a mass of some exquisitely fine seaweed. It lay out before her in nature’s wonderful designs.

The maiden, to relieve her ennui, attempted to copy the pattern. She used for a foundation the meshes of a fisher’s net. Thus was lace-making begun.

But the story has variations. According to another version, the primitive fisher maidens used to embroider portions of nets to serve as bridal veils. From these head draperies developed lace.

As a matter of fact, nets, passementeries, broideries and their life are as old as civilization and as the first solicitude of woman for her coiffure.

However, it is not known how and from which of these garnitures sprang lace, the loveliest of them all. No trace of it is discoverable previous to the Middle Ages.

Some authorities will have it, and it is reasonable to believe, that the women of the Venetian lagoons themselves hit upon the plan of improving with fanciful designs upon the meshes of the fishing nets.

Again, the mariners of the Adriatic may have brought back with them from the Orient bobbin laws on the order of those that were recently excavated in ancient ruins of the east.

The lace which are lineal descendants of the decorated fishing net are made with hook or shuttle for the foundation mesh, and with hook or shuttle again or occasionally the needle for the decoration.

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Good Recipes
Helps and Hints Around the House
Household Topics of Much Interest Discussed With Housewives by Marion Harland – Letters From Members of a Great and Widespread Organization of Women Who Love Their Homes

A New Year’s Preachment for the Council

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This is the first written article in January of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Jan 1, 1905, and is one of Marion’s yearly messages.

School for Housewives – A New Year’s Preachment for the Council

Start Right at the Beginning of This Practical Rather than Sentimentally Reminiscent Conferences

When we were young and green in judgment we were not afraid of “big contracts.”

Much that passes with youth for courage, and which is condemned by elders as “foolhardiness,” is rashness born of ignorance. The skater who has never broken through thin ice, and never heard of “breathing holes,” strikes out fearlessly.

When we were young we reviewed the year behind us, and made good resolutions for that before us – all on New Year’s Day. The retrospect was a moonlighted track, where memory blended sorrow and joy into a kind of gentle pensiveness. The prospect was bright with the sunlight of hope.

Ah, well! we all know what came of the New York exercise enjoined by custom and conscience; how surely the thin ice cracked under our stride; how good resolves were drowned in the black breathing holes.

Now that the years, in flying, have dropped white down upon our heads, if their “multitude” have taught us it should, we take short views of life. We go to school to the coral builders, to the ants, the bees and the flowers of the field, with their perpetual parable of, first, the blade, then the stalk, the bud, the blossom – the seed. We form letter by letter, set stitch by stitch and draw one breath at a time.

A PRACTICAL CONFERENCE

This is our New Year’s talk, a cozy four-feet-on-a-fender conference between reader and editor on the threshold of 1905. A conference I would make practical rather than sentimentally reminiscent.

Whether or not Thomas Carlyle obeyed his own injunction to “do the duty which lieth nearest thee, which thou knowest to be a duty,” it is certain that the utterance is instinct with sound wisdom.

Turning the pages of the book, my eye falls upon another pregnant paragraph:

“Don’t object that your duties are ‘so insignificant.’ They are to be reckoned of infinite significance and alone important to you. Were it but the more perfect regulation of your apartment, the sorting away of your clothes and trinkets, the arranging of your papers – ‘Whatsoever they hand findeth to do, do it with they might,’ and all thy worth and constancy.”

After dwelling upon “duties that have a higher, wider scope” – those done to kindred and kind – our author adds a sentence I would like to engrave upon the fleshy tablets of every heart:

“That is the sure and steady disconnection and extinction of whatsoever miseries one has in this world.”

If I could, as our boys (and some of our girls) would phrase it, “put you next” to that “sure and steady disconnection and extinction,” I should deserve your everlasting gratitude and a niche in the Temple of Fame.

THE DUTIES NEAREST US

“Don’t trample on the gentians while you are hunting for the edelweiss, which, after all, may not be up there!” cried one Alpine traveler to another, who, on tiptoe at the edge of a glacier, was searching eagerly every crevice that might hold the coveted snow flower.

Beneath her feet, in the very drip of the melting mass of ice, July suns had spread a carpet of gentians as blue as the heavens – as brave as he everlasting hill they draped.

Take we, then, our “nexts” the duty nearest us – the everyday tasks we rate as humble – to be our gentians, and stoop to gather them. They grow thick, and they grow fast for each of us. Who has not his or her edelweiss to win which would be honor, and, we think, happiness? We mothers have our ambitions. Yours may be music, it may be literature, it may be travel and all the good it implies.

You have so dove-tailed your takes – the must-be-dones – that make the necessary routine of the day so wisely that you have two hours for the piano, or one hour for the book you have longed for a month to read, or you wish to attend a concert, or to visit a friend whose society would be a spiritual and mental uplift.

Just as the dear joy is within your reach the cook taps at the door with the tale of a happening – to you a catastrophe – which upsets the cherished plan. Or a visitor – always a bore, now a nuisance – “shakes all your buds from blowing.” Or John comes home with one of his nasty headaches and you cannot leave him. Or Johnny has examples to prepare for tomorrow’s session that terrify him almost to tears. Or Susie asks permission to bring a few of the girls and a boy or two in for an evening’s innocent frolic. Or the report of a charitable society must be written by you because the regular officer, whose business it is, has neglected it. Or the twins have been afield and torn their trousers so horribly that your work basket is hurried to the front, and the reading the review, the companionship for which you are athirst and a-hungered, must be postponed indefinitely.

GRAND PRACTICES IN PATIENCE

Trifles? Yes! To the masculine philosopher who has no household hindrances, and whose time is his own because he “will not submit to interruptions.” So are toothache, and a boil upon the tip of one’s nose, and gravel in one’s shoe, and the loss of one’s dinner. We women know which class of these miseries is the lighter.

Plainly, there is but one salve for disappointment in any or all of these cases, and in a hundred others of daily occurrence. That is, to force oneself to hold out a friendly hand to the hindrance, accepting it as a duty, and, since it is done for another, as a privilege. This is a “disconnection” of the chain of small “miseries.” When recognition of duty as a privilege becomes habitual, “disconnection” becomes “extinction.”

It is grand practice in patience – this brave conversion of an enemy into a friend. In the days when there were giants of oratory upon the earth I heard Wendell Phillips define Patience as “that passion of noble souls.” We rise to the sublime height of that passion step by step. Whenever, n the yea to come, we crush back the irritable retort; when we smile when we would rather frown; when we esteem another’s happiness or comfort a worthier object than our own personal ease; when we beat down pride, envy, unworthy ambitions – whatsoever means our brother to stumble – in short, by so much as the Mind of the Master in use prevails above self-love – we climb!

Shall we begin the ascent together, dearly beloved, the Great Family with whom I have walked in peace and mutual affection all these years?

God keep our feet in the upward way, granting us by this sure, if arduous, pass a happy New Year!

Marion Harland

The Sensible Family Picnic

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AS A preface to our familiar talk of today we will dismiss incontinently all thought of the public picnic, heralded by flaming placards, or by pulpit notices, and accompanied by national and society fags. Young eyes glisten gleefully in the prospect; graver and older folk groan in anticipation, and sigh in relief at the memory thereof. We did not mind “roughing it a bit” when we were young. In fact, there was a relishful spice of the unusual and the forbidden in the al fresco frolic that lasted all day and set at naught all the conventionalities of Sunday clothes and table manners associated with other and indoor convivialities. An old ballad sung in our grandmothers’ day invited one to “take tea in the arbour”-

With roses and posies to scent up your noses;
and lilies and billies and daffydownlillies.

The charmed visitors sough the arbour eagerly and saw the other side of the situation. Among other drawbacks to the pastoral,

A big daddy longlegs fell plump in my cup; the summer house floor was damp and the revellers caught cold, etc. When I was forty years younger, I laughed with others of the party when a New Jersey farmer from whom we had received permission to picnic on the banks of a purling stream flowing through his meadow, appeared as we were unpacking our baskets, with-

A FRIENDLY OFFER

“I say, why don’t you young folks bring all them victuals up to my house and eat them in the dining room, like Christians, where there’s no flies, and where you can set on comfortable chairs and eat out of plates? My old woman seen you from the winder, and how uncomfortable you all was, a sprawling on the damp grass, and sent me down to ask you up to the house. It shan’t cost you a cent.“
We declined civilly and gratefully, and waited until he was out of hearing before we had our laugh out.
I reminded a surviving member of the merry party the other day of the incident.
“How odd it seems now,” she said, reflexively, “to think that you and I ever enjoyed sitting on the ground and eating our luncheon out of pasteboard boxes!”
That summed up what the picnic is to her sophisticated self. I confess secretly i pack the boxes that are to thrill the soul of grandchildren with pure delight, when, in the hottest of the solstitial noontide, they will devour sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs and innumerable cookies in the woods, seated upon stumps and hummocks, spending eight hours in the open air and coming home at evening hungry as hunters, and so tired that they fall asleep as soon as their heads touch the pillows. It is weeks before the tan fades from their cheeks. The glamour of the innocent festa never leaves the memory.
For these and for sundry other reasons- all good and sufficient- I advise the family picnic to dwells in town and country. Get out of the rut at least two or three times while the prodigal summer is abroad upon he earth; set convention at defiance; forget for a few hours the claims of business, forego the attractions of cut-and-dried “functions” in the shape of indoor luncheons, dine and reception, and get at one with Mother Nature.
If the mother of the household does not “feel like going,” insist that she shall be the honoured guest of the day, the one for whom the festival is given. If there are daughters in the family, let them assume the major part of the preparations for luncheon. Do you, our loving and dutiful juniors, dream of the steady strain, the unceasing stress that housekeeping all the year round is to the faithful head of your home? When one and another remarks hastily that “mother’s appetite is falling,” and from the farther down to the youngling of the flock each taxes is invention to suggest and to pro side some delicacy that may tempt it- ices it occur to one of you that her malady may be “kitchenitis”?
By the coined word I would describe the listlessness that befalls appreciation of tempting foods when one knows, for twelve months at a time, exactly what is to be served three times a day; how it will look and taste- and smell! Give the mother a respite for one little day and let her find the lost relish for her daily fare in the out-of-door world. I am putting the girls in her place in the surprise-party that is her holiday.

Sandwiches

Are associated in the mind with picnics as firmly as sugar and cream with tea and coffee.
Cut the bread thin and either round, triangular or oblong- never square. Trim off the crusts; spread evenly with warmed butter, ad fill neatly. The filling should never project beyond the trimmed edges of the bread.

Some Fillings

1. Mince olives fine and work into cream cheese until you have a smooth paste freckled with green. Salt slightly.
2. Prepare as just directed, adding to the paste finely minced pecan-nut kernels.
3. After buttering the bread, spread rather thickly with cream cheese, and lay between the slices thus prepared a crisp leaf of lettuce dipped in French dressing. Wrap these sandwiches in tissue paper.
4. Mince cold veal or chicken, season tot sate with salt and paprika; butter the bread; cover with this mixture and lap crisp lettuce dipped in mayonnaise dressing between the filled slices.
5. Skin sardines; take out the backbone and rub the fish to a paste, adding butter and a little lemon juice. You may, if you like, add a dash of paprika. Spread between skies of bettered bread.
6. Pound the yolks of hard-boiled eggs to a powder. Rub to a paste with better, paprika and a dash of French mustard. Mince the whites of the boiled eggs as fine as possible and blend with the yolk paste. Butter thin skies of whole wheat or of graham bread and fill with this mixture.
Pack each variety of sandwich in a box of its own. Save candy boxes for this purpose. Line them with tissue paper and fold it over the contents.

Salads

Tin biscuit-boxes lined with the oiled paper that comes in candy boxes are useful for holding salads. Or you may line pasteboard cases and other green stuffs in lightly, and take e mixed dressing along in wide-mouthed bottles or in small fruit jars.
A fruit salad will be popular on a hot day. Peel and strip the white skin from the pulp of four or five oranges; separate the lobs gingerly, not tearing them, and cut each into four pieces with a sharp silver knife. Have at hand a cupful of the kernels of English walnuts which have been scalded, then left to get cold and crisp before they are cut into bits. (While they are hot, strip off the bitter skin.) Mix with the fruit and put into a glass jar with a tight top. Take along mayonnaise dressing for this.
A welcome item in the preparation for a picnic is ice. Cut a piece that will fit easily into a stout basket; wrap in canton flannel and then in several folds of newspaper. Wrap and bind tightly to exclude the air.
Finally, the oilcloth about the parcel and put into the basket. Cover all with stout paper and fit the cover upon the basket. Ice thus protected will keep eight or ten hours if the basket be not exposed to the sun. Commission a strong-armed boy to carry this, and should the journey be made by train or carriage, tuck the basket under the seat.
It is better to distribute the eatables among the party, arranged in parcels of in baskets of convenient size, than to pack all into one big hamper. If mother cannot enjoy her midday meal without her “Comfortable cup of tea,” she need not go without it. Hot-scalding hot-tea may be kept at the same temperature all day in the modern and invaluable vacuum bottle. It is not an expensive luxury and beyond price to traveler and excursionist. Hot soups, bouillon and broths may be secured at any hour of the day or night by the ingenious contrivance, and hot tea and coffee- freshly made before bottling, poured into the bottle and instantly corked and shut up in the airtight cover- will lose neither heat nor flavour in twelve hours.
Mother need not fear lest the excursion may deprive her of her tonic beverage. In a special basket may be stored tea, sugar and cream with her very own cup and saucer.
Lemonade may be made on the ground and drunk out of paper cup packed with wooden plates, paper napkins and centrepiece. It is a convenience, but not a necessity, to have also a tablecloth. But linen is heavy and one can do without other napery than what I have named. Pack the Japanese napkins in the lemonade pitcher, and in other ways economize every inch of space. A dress-suit case or two-or three-may be utilized to great advantage by our family of picnickers. They are roomy and light and attract no attention on train of trolley. Bestow your eatables at discretion within them, and let each boy assume the charge of one.
Wooden plates and paper napkins may be burned on the ground when they have served their purpose. And the suitcases may be utilized on the return trip as repositories for woodland treasures- odd fungi, roots and blossoms, oak-galls and mosses and last year’s bird rests.
Above all and before all and through all the outing maintain an cheerful spirit. Make the best of misadventures and turn disasters into jests. The perversion of the title of the frolic into “pleasure exertion” is a stale joke. It contains a biting satire upon the way some people take their pleasure. Perhaps five out of ten know how to enjoy a holiday- as such. See to it that your family outing is genuine recreation. The corn roast, games- in fact, anything to make the picnic a success is suggested. To this end don’t make a toil of what should be a delight.

Marion Harland

Soft Summer Drinks

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Ho boy! The weather outside is currently hot and humid after we’ve had some overcast and summer storms. I though the “soft” drinks written about below might be fun to try out while attempting to cool off. This article was found in a July 1908 issue of a Montana newspaper.

Raspberry lemonade is one of my favourite drinks but it would be nice to mix it up once in a while and I’m especially excited to try my hand at the orange sherbet.

School for Housewives – Soft Summer Drinks

In the old times, the thirsty soul – or body – solaced itself with plain water or with lemonade. The chief variation upon his was iced tea and, once in a while, iced coffee. These were the only beverages open to the drinker of temperate habits.

We have improved upon that sort of thing and have introduced “soft” punches, in which our old friend, lemonade, while still serving as a foundation, would not recognize itself. Tea, too, is metamorphosed, although hardly improved, and other mixtures of which we did not dream earlier days are taken as a matter of course.

We may call ourselves old-fashioned and make fun of these innovations – but we cannot help acknowledging that some of them are very good. Especially are they a delight to the palates of our thirty girls and boys who come in after a tramp across the golf links, or a bout at tennis, or a game of baseball. Even the seniors of the party may be beguiled into taking a second glass. The house where the pleasantest welcome and the best and most refreshing thirst-quenchers are offered is likely to be the one which the young people will flock, and we need not fear that our boys and girls will wander off to undesirable associations while they know that good things, both spiritual and physical, await them at home.

None of the drinks I have given below contains liquor of any sort. Those who have tried it, know that alcohol not only fails the relieve thirst, but also raises the temperature of the body in warm weather as in cold. Be our principles what they may, common sense urges us that when we wish to be cool we should take cooling drinks, and I do not hesitate to recommend those I have given as means to the end of lowered temperature, without and within.

Ice Tea

Just as there is a popular fallacy that everyone can make a cup of good hot tea, so there is an impression that any one can make good cold tea. The one idea is as mistaken as the other. You cannot make good iced tea of the dregs of the teapot, after the water has stood on the leaves all through the meal by the simple expedient of filling up the teapot with boiling water.

There are two right ways of preparing tea for iced tea. One is the Russian fashion of making the tea hot with freshly boiling water and pouring it still hot upon cracked ice in tumblers. When this is done, the tea must be pretty strong in the first place, as the melting ice weakens it. The other way is by making the tea fresh some hours before it is to be used, and then pouring it off the leaves and setting it aside to cool. In one country house, where I am always a happy guest, iced tea is served as a beverage at luncheon, and in place of the regular 5 o’clock function of afternoon tea, all during the hot weather. The hostess makes the breakfast tea from the boiling kettle that swings on the crane at her elbow, and, when she has poured out her own morning cup, fills the teapot from the still bubbling kettle and strains the tea into a big pitcher, to be set aside until it is needed. Then it is poured into the ice-filled glasses and is a drink to cast nectar into the shade.

Such is iced tea at its best, and there is no reason why it should ever fall below perfection. Let me parody Bishop Butler: “Doubtless a better drink could have been made, but doubtless it never was.”

Iced Tea Punch

Make iced tea and turn it into a punch bowl, on a big lump of ice. Add to a quart of the strong tea a tablespoonful of lemon juice, a bottle of Apollinaris water and sugar to taste. Cut thin splices of lemon, and let them float on the surface of the punch. When they are in season, a few strawberries or cherries or a bit of pineapple may be added. Ladle out and drink in tumblers.

Ginger Ale Punch

Squeeze the juice of six lemon upon a cupful of granulated sugar and leave on the ice for an hour. When it is to be served, put two cupfuls of cracked ice in a punch bowl with the lemon and sugar, a quart of water and the contents of two bottles of ginger ale. Have ready long sprays of fresh mint, bruise their stems between the fingers, then thrust them into the punch.

Mint Punch

Make a lemonade foundation of lemon and sugar, as directed in the preceding recipe, by putting together lemon juice and sugar, and add to this a double handful of mint sprays, which have been bruised, with a couple of tablespoonfuls of white sugar. Let these stand in a cool place for an hour; put into a punch bowl with a block of ice and pour upon them two bottles of “charged” water, or the contents of two siphons of seltzer. This is very refreshing.

Orange Sherbet

Peel and squeeze eight large oranges and two lemons. Put the juice of the lemons and the pulp and juice of the oranges into a bowl with a small cup of granulated sugar. After it has stood ten minutes and the sugar is well melted, add a tablespoonful of minced pineapple, and after standing a few minutes longer pour upon a block of ice in a punch bowl. Just before serving turn in a quart of Apollinaris.

Fruit Punch

Make a foundation of a good lemonade, allowing five lemons to a quart of water and sweetening to taste. To each quart of the lemonade allow half an orange, sliced; a tablespoonful of pineapple, cut into dice; a small banana, sliced; and a handful of cherries or strawberries or raspberries. Let all stand half an hour before serving, and turn into a punch bowl or large pitcher with plenty of ice. Stir up well from the bottom before pouring out.

Iced Coffee

Make your coffee clear and strong, and add to it plenty of cream and no milk. The best plan is to have the clear coffee in a pitcher and add cream and sugar as it is needed. To those who have never tried it, let me say that there are many worse drinks on a hot day than good, clear coffee, served with plenty of ice and without cream or sugar. But the coffee must be of the best and freshly made – not the leftovers of the breakfast beverage.

Pineapple Lemonade

Boil two cups of sugar and a pint of water ten minutes and then set it aside to cool. When it is cold add to it a juice of three good-sized lemons and a grated pineapple. Let this stand on the ice for two hours. When ready to serve add a quart of water, either plain or “charged” and pour on a piece of ice in a punch bowl or in a large pitcher.

Currant Punch

Make a syrup of sugar and water as in the preceding recipe and set aside to cool. Crush together four cups of red or white currants and a cup of red raspberries. Put them through a press and put with them the syrup and three pints of cold water. Add the juice of a lemon and let all stand for a couple of hours before serving. Throw a handful of stemmed currants and of raspberries into the bowl or pitcher from which the punch is served.

Strawberry Punch

Make as the currant punch is compounded, substituting a pint of strawberry juice for that of the other fruits, and add the juice of three lemons instead of one. Put a handful of the hulled berries into the punch when made. While this punch is especially good when made with the fresh fruit, it may be made from the fresh strawberry syrup when the berries themselves are out of season. The addition of a half cupful of red raspberries to this punch is an improvement.

Raspberry Shrub

For a foundation for this beverage one must have the old preparation of raspberry vinegar or raspberry royal. To five teaspoonfuls of this a quart of cold water must be allowed, and the mixture must be served with plenty of ice. If red raspberries to float on the surface of the punch cannot be procured, in their place may be used a cupful of shredded pineapple or a banana cut into dice.

Marion Harland

Glove Cleaning: A New Occupation for Women

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This is the second article in June of the School for Housewives 1904 series published on June 19, 1904, and is a brief article on the new profession of glove cleaning.

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

Glove Cleaning: A New Occupation for Women

AMONG the many new avocations undertaken by the clever modern woman, when suddenly thrown upon her own resources, is that of professional glove cleaner.

It is work that any girl of average intelligence can do, and for which there is always good demand.

A trade is usually obtained by cleaning gloves for one’s wealthy friends, gradually widening the circle among mutual acquaintances and the outside world.

The glove cleaner calls once a week or once a fortnight, according to arrangement, at the house of the customer.

She goes armed with a small work case, which contains all the furnishings necessary for repairing torn kid, and with a bottle of some good liquid cleaner.

An expect worker gives the following rules for the work:

The fluid is poured into a large bowl, and two pairs are cleaned at a time, using enough to cover the gloves well.

Wash the cleaner pair first, treating them just as if washing with water.

Rub one glove with the other, with special attention to the seams.

Have a little cloth for scrubbing spots.

Clean the fingers by dipping them into the fluid, then rubbing hard on a clean towel.

Wooden glove hands in the different sizes are invaluable for this work.

The gloves should be dried by squeezing, not wringing.

Before hanging out to dry inflate with a bellows. Dry in the wind.

Be careful, if your cleaning fluid contains any explosive, not to use it near a light.

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Around the Council Table with Marion Harland
The Bread Luncheon – A Menu with a Moral
Delicious Turtle Soup in One Lesson – By an Experienced Chef
Good and Tired Recipes for Our Council Members

The Maid of All Work

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From time to time I will post interesting articles from early issues of the Dauphin Herald to examine what pioneers of Canada’s western province, Manitoba, read and found interesting themselves. Specifically I will look at articles that target women of the age. The first article I will post is from a quaint series entitled, “School for Housewives” by Marion Hartland who published a number of books for women as well as a number of syndicated articles such as this one published across Canada and the USA. The Maid of All Work was published in the Dauphin Herald on 22 Oct 1908.

I stumbled across this series of articles last year as I browsed copies of the Dauphin Herald for weekly information from the town of Fork River. I became interested in what Marion Harland (Mary Virginia Terhune) had to say on how housewives should run their home in the early 1900s. I wonder how many women of Dauphin and beyond followed Marion’s advise and I am curious on how many house servants were employed in Dauphin.

School for Housewives – The Maid of All Work

Some one has aptly called the general housework servant a “Pooh-Bah in petticoats.” All branches of household toll are included in her province.

This does not mean, however, that she discharges them all. When she is engaged she doubtless agrees to do cooking, chamberwork, waiting on table and very likely washing and ironing as well. Sometimes she does all these things, but it is usually when she is very competent and the family is very small. Gone are the old days when one maid was considered sufficient for a good-sized family. This is a period of specialization, and we must have a maid for nearly every variety of work. The higher wages these specialists command make it an object with the general housework servant to seek promotion from her solitary state as soon as possible.

Whether it be the result of this same specialization or an outcome of more elaborate methods of living, there is no doubt that a good maid-of-all-work is hard to find and to keep it goes without saying that her wages have gone up, like everything else. The fact that she does not pay rent or food or fuel bills does not militate against her demanding more pay for the same work that as done ten years ago at a smaller wage.

None the less, since a competent maid is a rarity, it behooves the possessor of one to consider her so far as she can. The average mistress accepts it as a matter of course that she should lend a hand in the cookery on Monday and Tuesday, besides washing the dishes and making the beds. On other days she probably does the dusting and assumes small duties about the house. Yet, while she is ready to take a share of the work she should have it clearly understood with the maid that certain duties fall upon the servant’s shoulders and that when the mistress performs them she does it not of merit on the maid’s part, but of free grace on that of the employer.

Because the woman who have remained general housework servants until middle age are generally either not competent for higher work or are so “set in their ways” as to be difficult to manage, it is sometimes well for the mistress who has the time and the strength to take a young and comparatively inexperience girl and train her to her hand. I know there is a strong probability that so soon as she is of a real value in the household she will seek another home where she will get higher wages; but she would be likely to do that anyhow. And there is always a chance that she may have either the common sense or the loyalty to stand by her first employer.

The maid engaged with the understanding, always to be borne in mind in such conditions, that she is “to turn her hand to anything,” the mistress should set about training her in the way she means to have her follow steadily. When the new servant has become accustomed to her work and to the ways of the house, she may introduce variation, but for the time it is better that she should adhere to a fixed schedule.

A regular hour of rising should be one of the first rules laid down by the mistress, and it should be early. In a house where breakfast is at 7:30 or 8, 6 is none too early an hour for the maid to rise. This gives her time to take half an hour for dressing and brings her downstairs by 6:30. In a house where a coal or wood range is used, her first duty will be to start the fire, fill the kettle, put it on to boil and place the cereal over the fire. These two duties may be done if gas is used as fuel, and gives the maid more time for her other work. In winter she may have to go down to the furnace, open the draughts and put on fresh coal.

The next step is to go into the living rooms and open them to air; after that the front hall may be brushed off and a touch given to the front steps and the sidewalk, unless there is an outside man engaged to do this. The dining room and drawing room may also be brushed up, if they need it, and the furniture straightened – dusting done, too, if this is one of the maid’s duties. In any case, the dining room should be put in spotless order for the morning meal.

When the maid is brisk about her duties, all this can be done before it is time for her to put the kettle over. Should the cereal be one needing long cooking, it should have been se over a low flame when the maid first came downstairs.

The amount of work a maid can do before breakfast depends, as a matter of course, upon the kind of breakfast to be prepared. In households where thee is a simple meal of fruit, cereal, bacon and eggs, toast and coffee, her work is comparatively light, but in a home where hot bread must be made, potatoes and meat cooked, she can hardly be expected to get through with much before the morning meal.

In households where only one maid is employed she is not expected to do any waiting at breakfast beyond removing the plates as they are used. By the time the family reach the last stage of the breakfast she should either eat her own breakfast or go to the upstairs work. If the beds have been stripped to air by their occupants on rising, the task of getting the rooms in order is taken in hand. Beds may be made, the furniture put in order, the floor gone over with a carpet sweeper, soiled water emptied, the utensils cleaned. This too, is the time to put the bathroom in order.

In a good-sized family this care of the bedrooms generally devolves upon the women of the household. In this case the maid can set to work putting her kitchen to rights, washing the dishes used in preparing the breakfast, looking over the pantry to see what supplies are needed and the like. By the time the family has finished eating the maid is ready to come in and clear the table, take the dishes to the kitchen, arrange and darken the dining room and after this to wash the dishes. When this is done, if she has not had time to finish her upstairs work properly, she should go back to it. Before she leaves the kitchen she should rinse out her dish towels and put them over to boil.

By this time, or earlier, the mistress should have come in to see what there is in the larder and to decide about the meals for the day. This is the time when she sees that the refrigerator is clean and if there are left-overs which should be used at once.

The general work of the house should be divided up on the different days, so that there will not be a hard pull one day and a lazy time another. Monday and Tuesday are taken for granted for washing and ironing, if the ironing hangs over into Wednesday, it may be necessary to crowd most of the sweeping and cleaning into the last of the week; but when the laundry work is out of the way by Tuesday night, part of the sweeping may be done on Wednesday – the dining room or parlor, rather than the upstairs rooms, since there is usually some baking to be done on Wednesday, and it is well for the maid to have work which will not take her too far from her kitchen.

Thursday’s work may be silver cleaning, brass polishing and window washing. The maid’s weekly or fortnightly “afternoon out” usually falls on Thursday unless special arrangements are made otherwise. Friday is the day to do the upstairs sweeping and cleaning, and Saturday brings in baking, odds and ends and general preparation for Sunday.

The week’s work having been outlined, let us look again at the daily vocations. The midday luncheon, at which the table is spread as at breakfast, is one which requires little waiting. The mistress should endeavor so to plan the work that there will be no heavy or dirty work to be done in the afternoon. If the maid and mistress agree in judicious discharge of the daily duties, there is no reason why the afternoon should not be comparatively free, or filled only with light tasks, until the time comes to make the dinner ready.

At dinner time the maid is expected to do more waiting than at either of the preceding meals. She is not to stay in the room after the dishes are passed, but she should be ready to come at sound of the bell. Her work after dinner is practically the same as that after the other meals. If she is forehanded about her work and washes the dishes of one course while the subsequent course is eaten she can get through her work early, and after she has turned down the beds, the evening will be her own. I wish I could say she would be likely to do this, but having managed to induce but one maid to follow this course in all my housekeeping career, I cannot speak encouragingly on the matter.

There are as many different kinds of maids as there are mistresses, and one can never tell how either will turn out until after trial has been made. When a maid-of-all-work is competent and willing, I really believe that it is easier living than with two maids or more. But as I have said, a maid of that sort is far off and hard to find. When she is once secured, it is worth her employer’s while to pay a good price and make some concessions to keep her.

Marion Harland