DOMESTIC SCIENCE IN GRAMMAR GRADES WILSON TX 147 Wr4 LIBRARY Of CONGRESS. — Chap. ________ Copyright No Shelf.__ J :W7.4 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. DOMESTIC SCIENCE IN GRAMMAR GRADES A READER 'T&j&fe- DOMESTIC SCIENCE GRAMMAR GRADES a iseaoer BY L. L. W: WILSON, Ph.D. OF THE PHILADELPHIA NORMAL SCHOOL AUTHOR OF "DOMESTIC SCIENCE IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS I A MANUAL FOR TEACHERS " THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1900 All riglits reserved 2658 TWO COPlti ..REIVED, Library of CoisgrM* Office of the JUM 7-1900 Reglitor of Copy rlf Iff SECOND COPY, 64131 Copyright, 1900, By THE MAC MILL AX COMPANY. Xorfaoenti $3rrss J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A. TABLE OF CONTENTS THE HOME PAGK Housekeeping under Difficulties. Jane Welsh Carlyle . 3 The Vicar of Wakefield's House. Oliver Goldsmith . 5 Thoreau's House near Walden Pond, from " Walden." Henry D. Thoreau 7 Homes of Other Times The Egyptian House, from " Life in Ancient Egypt." Erman 12 Homes of Savages A Bushman's Home, from Ratzel's " History of Mankind " 14 Malay Homes, from Ratzel's " History of Mankind " . 15 Homes of the Half Civilized Home of the Indian, from Ratzel's " History of Mankind " 18 The Home of the Modern Eskimo, from " Fortnightly " . 19 Homes of the Civilized The Japanese House and its Customs, from "Japan and its Art." Marcus B. Huish 21 The Japanese Bath, from " Chambers's Journal " . . 23 THE KITCHEN Mrs. Poyser's Kitchen, from "Adam Bede." George Eliot 27 The Roman Kitchen 28 v VI TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE The Evolution of Fire 29 Ancient Forests and Modern Fuel, from " Temple Bar " 30 The Bundle of Matches. Hans Christian Andersen . 37 FOODS AND COOKING The Effects of Foods. Matthew Prior .... 43 The Proteids Foods of Combustion and Nutrition, from " History of a Mouthful of Bread." Jean Mace * Evolution of Methods of Cooking The Roast Pig. " The Essays of Elia." Charles Lamb 57 Cooking. " Lorna Doone." R. D. Blackmore The Salmon Eggs. " Old English Sayings and Rhymes ' E (,, °*s . . ..... The Lament of an Oyster, from " Punch " Oysters. King James I. of England Oysters. Seneca Oysters. Sallust 44 56 61 61 63 63 63 64 64 64 The Carbohydrates Starch 65 Rice in Japan, from R'atzel's ; ' History of Mankind " . 65 Rice Culture 66 Story of the Potato, from " All the Year Round " . .68 Legend of the Corn, from " Hiawatha." Henry W. Longfellow 69 Sugar 74 A Visit to a Sugar Refinery 75 Bread A Loaf of Bread 77 Crackers, from " Chambers's Journal " . . .78 * Reprinted by the kind permission of Messrs. Harper and Brothers. TABLE OF CONTENTS Vll PAGE Hot Cross-buns, from Chambers's " Book of Days " . 80 Mexican Bread — the Tortilla 82 Bread of the Zuni Indians . . . • • .83 Salads Recipe for a Salad. Spanish Proverb .... 83 Drinks Tea Culture, from "Society in China." Robert K. Douglas °" The Tea Ceremony in Japan, from the Catalogue of the Ceramic Collection of the South Kensington Museum. Dr. Frank 86 Coffee, from " Sylva Sylvarum." Lord Bacon . . 88 Chocolate 88 Condiments A Salt Manufactory, from " Gentleman's Magazine," 1897 89 A Salt Mine 93 Salt Superstitions 94 Pepper y ° THE DINING ROOM Dinners. " Lucile." Owen Meredith .... 99 An Egyptian Dinner 99 A Roman Dinner, from "Gallus, or Roman Scenes in the Times of Augustus." Professor Bekker . . 100 A Dinner at the House of Cedric the Saxon, from " Ivanhoe." Sir Walter Scott 102 The Eskimo Dinner, from Ratzel's "History of Man- kind" 107 The Death of the Famous Cook Vatel, from " Letters of Madame de Sevigne " 1° 8 Dining with a Mandarin, from "Belgravia" . . .110 Vlll TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE A Japanese Meal, from "Japan and its Art." Marcus B. JIuish 113 Christmas Dinner at Bob Cratchit's, from " Christmas Carol." Charles Dickens 113 THE BEDROOM AND VENTILATION An Old Riddle 119 Beds of Animals ........ 119 Mexican Bed — the Hammock 119 Bed and Bedding 120 (a) In Bible Times 120 (h) In Greece 121 (c) In Rome 122 (d) In England 122 (e) In Russia 123 The Aerial Ocean in which we live, from " Fairy Land of Science." Arabella Buckley 123 Dust, from " All the Year Round," 1895 . . . .127 Bacteria 129 THE LAUNDRY Washing, from " All the Year Round " . . . . 135 Laundry Work in Italy 139 About Common Water, from "New Fragments." Tyndall 140 Indigo 142 HOUSEHOLD PESTS AND HOUSE CLEANING House Cleaning, from "The Principal Household Insects of the United States." L. O. Howard and C. L. Marlatt 147 Carpet-beetle, from " The Principal Household Insects of the United States." L. O. Howard and C. L. Marlatt 118 Story of the Clothes-moth, from "Tenants of an Old Farm." Dr. Henry C. McCook * 149 * Reprinted by kind permission of Dr. Henry C. McCook. TABLE OF CONTENTS IX PAGE The House-fly. John Raskin 154 The House-fly 155 The Mosquito. William Cullen Bryant .... 156 The Mosquito, from "The Principal Household Insects of the United States." L. O. Howard and C. L. Marlatt 157 Cockroaches, from "The Principal Household Insects of the United States." L. O. Howard and C. L. Marlatt 162 The Silver Fish, from "The Principal Household Insects of the United States." L. O. Howard and C. L. Marlatt 165 The Cricket on the Hearth, from "The Cricket on the Hearth." Charles Dickens 167 SEWING Needles, from " Littell's Living Age "... Pins, from Chambers's "Book of Days" . The Cotton Plant, from " Chambers's Journal " The Romance of Cotton, from " Chambers's Journal " The Silkworm, from "History of Silk, Cotton, Linen The Flax. Hans Christian Andersen True Story of the Sewing-machine .... 173 174 175 177 180 184 188 THE HOME THE HOME HOUSEKEEPING UNDER DIFFICULTIES I had gone with my husband to live on a little estate of peat bog that had descended to me, all the way down from John Welsh, the Covenanter, who named a daughter of John Knox. That didn't, I am ashamed to say, make me feel Craigenputtock a whit less of a peat bog and a most dreary, untoward place to live at. In fact, it was sixteen miles distant on every side from all the conven- iences of life, shops, and even post office. Further, we were very poor, and further and worst, being an only child, and brought up to very great pros- pects, I was sublimely ignorant of every branch of useful knowledge, though a capital Latin scholar and a very fair mathematician. It behooved me in these astonishing circumstances to learn to sew. Husbands, I was shocked to find, wore their stockings into holes, and were always losing buttons, and /was expected to u look to all that." Also it behooved me to learn to cook! No capable servant choosing to live at such an out of the way place, and my husband having bad digestion, which complicated my difficulties. .The bread, above all, brought from Dumfries, " soured on his stomach," and it was plainly my duty, as a Christian wife, to bake at home. So I sent for Cobbett's u Cottage Economy " and fell to work at a loaf of bread. But, knowing nothing about 3 4 THE HOME the process of fermentation, or the heat of ovens, it came to pass that my loaf got put into the oven at the time that myself ought to have been put into bed. And I re- mained the only person not asleep in a house in the mid- dle of a desert. One o'clock struck! And then two!! And then three!!! And still I was sitting there in the midst of an immense solitude, my whole body aching with weariness, and my heart aching with a sense of forlornness and degradation. That I who had been so petted at home, whose com- fort had been studied by everybody in the house, who had never been required to do anything but cultivate my mind, should have to pass all those hours of the night watching a loaf of bread — which mightn't turn out bread after all ! Such thoughts maddened me, till I laid down my head on the table and sobbed aloud. It was then that some- how the idea of Benvenuto Cellini sitting up all night watching his Perseus in the furnace came into my head. Suddenly, I asked myself, " After all, in the sight of the upper Powers, what is the mighty difference between a statue of Perseus and a loaf of bread, so that each be the thing that one's hand has found to do ? The man's deter mined will, his energy, his patience, his resource, were the really admirable things of which his statue of Per- seus was the mere chance expression. If he had been a woman, living at Craigenputtock with a dyspeptic hus- band sixteen miles from a baker, and he a bad one, all these qualities would have come out more fitly in a good loaf of bread! I cannot express what consolation this germ of an idea spread over my uncongenial life during the years we lived at that savage place. — From " Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle." THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD'S HOUSE THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD'S HOUSE The place of our retreat was in a little neighborhood, consisting of farmers, who tilled their own grounds, and were equal strangers to opulence and poverty. As they had almost all the conveniences of life within themselves, they seldom visited towns or cities in search of superflui- ties. Remote from the polite, they still retained the primeval simplicity of manners ; and frugal by habit, they scarcely knew that temperance was a virtue. They wrought with cheerfulness on days of labor ; but ob- served festivals as intervals of idleness and pleasure. They kept up the Christmas carol, sent true-love knots on Valentine morning, ate pancakes on Shrove-tide, showed their wit on the first of April, and religiously cracked nuts on Michaelmas-eve. Being apprised of our approach, the whole neighborhood came out to meet their minister, dressed in their finest clothes, and preceded by a pipe and tabor; a feast was also provided for our reception, at which w r e sat cheerfully down ; and what the conversation wanted in wit was made up in laughter. Our little habitation was situated at the foot of a sloping hill, sheltered with a beautiful underwood behind, and a prattling river before ; on one side a meadow, on the other a green. My farm consisted of about twenty acres of excellent land, I having given a hundred pounds for my predecessor's good-will. Nothing could exceed the neat- ness of my little enclosures ; the elms and hedge-rows ap- pearing with inexpressible beauty. My house consisted of but one story, and was covered with thatch, which gave it an air of great snugness ; the walls on the inside were nicely whitewashed, and my daughters undertook to adorn them with pictures of their own designing. Though the same room served us for parlor and kitchen, that only b THE HOME made it the warmer. Besides, as it was kej)t with the utmost neatness, the dishes, plates, and coppers, being well scoured, and all disposed in bright rows on the shelves, the eye was agreeably relieved, and did not want richer furniture. There were three other apartments, one for my wife and me, another for our two daughters within our own, and the third, with two beds, for the rest of the children. The little republic to which I gave laws, was regulated in the following manner : by sunrise we all assembled in our own common apartment ; the fire being previously kindled by the servant. After we had saluted each other with proper ceremony, for I always thought fit to keep up some mechanical forms of good breeding, without which freedom ever destroys friendships, we all bent in grati- tude to that Being who gave us another day. This duty being performed, my son and I went to pursue our usual industry abroad, while my wife and daughters employed themselves in providing breakfast, which was always ready at a certain time. I allowed half an hour for this meal, and an hour for dinner : which time was taken up in inno- cent mirth between my wife and daughters, and in philo- sophical arguments between my son and me. As we rose with the sun, so we never pursued our labors after it was gone down, but returned home to the expecting family, where smiling looks, a neat hearth, and a pleasant fire were prepared for our reception. Nor were we without guests. Sometimes farmer Flam- borough, our talkative neighbor, and often the blind piper, would pay us a visit, and taste our gooseberry wine, for the making of which we had lost neither the receipt nor the reputation. These harmless people had several wa; s of being good company ; while one played, the other would sing some soothing ballad, — " Johnny Armstrong's Last Good-night," or "The Cruelty of Barbara Allen." The THOREAU S HOUSE NEAR WALDEN POND 7 night was concluded in the manner we began the morning, my youngest boys being appointed to read the lessons of the day, and he that read loudest, distinctest, and best, was to have a half -penny on Sunday to put into the poor's box. — From "The Vicar of Wakefield," by Oliver Goldsmith. THOREAU'S HOUSE NEAR WALDEN POND Near the end of March, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye ; but I returned it sharper than I received it. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up. The ice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces, and it was all dark colored and saturated with water. There were some slight flurries of snow during the clays that I worked there ; but for the most part, when I came out onto the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sandheap stretched away, gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to commence another year with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself. I hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight and much stronger than sawed ones. 8 THE HOME Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned by its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by this time. My days in the woods were not very long ones ; yet I usually carried my dinner of bread and butter, and read the newspaper in which it was wrapped, at noon, sitting amid the green pine boughs which I had cut off, and to my bread was imparted some of their fragrance, for my hands were covered with a thick coat of pitch. Before I had done I was more the friend than the foe of the pine tree, though I had cut down some of them, having become better acquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in the wood was attracted by the sound of the axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chips which we had made. By the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, but rather made the most of it, my house was framed and ready for raising. I had already bought the shanty of James Collins, an Irishman who worked on the Fitch- burg Railroad, for boards. James Collins's shanty was considered an uncommonly fine one. When I called to see it, he was not at home. I walked about the outside, at first unobserved from within, the window was so deep and high. It was of small dimensions, with a peaked cottage roof, and not much else to be seen, the dirt being raised five feet all around as if it were a compost heap. The roof was the soundest part, though a good deal warped and made brittle by the sun. Doorsill there was none, but a perennial passage for the hens under the door board. Mrs. C. came to the door and asked me to view it from the inside. The hens were driven in by my approach. It was dark, and had a dirt floor for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only here a board and there a board which would not bear removal. She lighted a lamp to show me the inside of the roof and walls, and also that the board floor extended under the bed, warning me not to step into the cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. In THOREAU'S HOUSE NEAR WALDEN POND 9 her own words, they were " good boards overhead, good boards all around, and good windows," — of two whole squares originally, only the cat had passed out that way lately. There w r as a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, gilt- framed looking-glass, and a patent new coffee-mill nailed to an oak sapling, all told. The bargain was soon con- cluded, for James had in the meanwhile returned, I, to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents to-night, he, to vacate at five to-morrow morning, selling to nobody else meanwhile ; I, to take possession at six. It were well, he said, to be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct but wholly unjust claims, on the score of ground rent and fuel. This, he assured me, was the only encumbrance. At six I passed him and his family on the road. One large bundle held their all, — bed, coffee-mill, looking- glass, hens, — all but the cat. She took to the woods, and became a wild cat, and as I afterwards learned, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last. I took this dwelling the same morning, drawing the nails, and removed it to the pond's side by small cartloads, spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach and warp back again in the sun. THOREAU'S HOUSE NEAR WALDEN POND ( Continued') I DUG my cellar in the side of a hill, sloping to the south, where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down through sumach and blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in any winter. The sides were left shelving, and not stoned ; but the sun having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place. Under 10 THE HOME the most splendid house in the city is still to be found the cellar where they store their roots as of old, and long after the superstructure has entirely disappeared, posterity remark its dent in the earth. The house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of a burrow. At length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my house. I began to occupy my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain, but before boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. I built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in the meanwhile out of doors on the ground, early in the morning ; which mode I still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeable than the usual one. When it stormed before my bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way. In those da}^s, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact, answered the same purpose, as the "Iliad." Before winter, I built a chimney and shingled the sides of my house, which were already impervious to rain, with imperfect and sappy shingles made of the first slice of the log, whose edges I was obliged to straighten with a plane. I have thus a tight-shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long, with eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying the usual price for THOREAU S HOUSE NEAR WALDEN POND 11 such materials as I used, but not counting the work, all of which was done by myself, was as follows, and I give the details because very few are able to tell exactly what their houses cost, and fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the various materials which compose them. Boards $8.03| Mostly shanty boards. Refuse shingles for roof and sides . . 4.00 Lathes 1.25 Two second-hand windows with glass . 2.43 One thousand old bricks .... 4.00 Two casks of lime 2.40 That was high. Hair . . . . . . . . .31 More than needed. Mantle-tree iron 15 Nails 3.90 Hinges and screws 14 Latch 10 Chalk 01 Transportation 1.40 \ l c ^ v ^ od P art In all .... $28.12£ These are all the materials except the timber, stones, and sand, which I claimed by squatter's right. I have also a small woodshed adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left after building the house. There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house, that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing, when they are so engaged ? But alas ! we do like cow- birds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter ? What does architect amount to in the experience of the mass of men ? 12 THE HOME T never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house. — Adapted from " Walden," by Henry D. Thoreau. HOMES OF OTHER TIMES THE EGYPTIAN HOUSE The pictures in the Theban tombs representing the small country houses of people of rank tell us much as to the outside of private houses of that time. One of these is a low, two-storied building, and like all the houses of this time, very bare on the outside. It has smooth, white-washed brick Avails, and the plain white surface is only varied by the projecting frames of the door and windows. The ground floor seems to have no win- dows, but the first story has, in addition to its two win- dows, a kind of balcony. The roof, above which we can see the trees of the garden behind, is very strange, — it is flat, but has a curious top, an oblique construction of boards which catches the cool north wind, and conducts it into the upper story of the house. In another picture we are shown in the open porch be- fore the house the vessels of wine, while the food is on tables adorned with garlands ; numerous jars, loaves, and bowls stand close by, hidden by a curtain from the guests who are entering. While the latter greet their host, a jar of wine with its embroidered cover is carried past, and two servants in the background, who seem to be of a very thirsty nature, have already seized some drinking bowls. The house itself lies in a corner of the garden, which is planted with dark green foliage, trees, figs, and pome- granates, and in which there is also an arbor covered with vines. The garden is surrounded by a wall of brownish HOMES OF OTHER TIMES 13 brick pierced by two granite doors. Though the house has two stories it strikes us as very small ; it has only one door, which, as was customary at that time, is placed at one side of the principal wall, and not in the middle. The ground floor seems to be built of brick and to be whitewashed ; it is lighted by three small windows with wooden lattice work ; the door has a framework of red granite. The first story is in quite a different style : the walls are made of thin boards, the two windows are large, their frames project a little from the wall and are closed by brightly colored mats. This story contains, probably, the principal room of the house, the room for family life. A curious fact confirms this idea : the window hangings have a small square piece cut out at the bottom, allowing the women to see out of the windows without themselves being seen. The houses in Egypt to-day have an arrange- ment like this. The roof of the second story rests on little pillars and is open on all sides to the air. Ventila- tion is much thought of also in the other parts of the house, for the whole of the narrow front is left open, and can only be closed by a large curtain of matting. The open porch was the place in which the Egyptians enjoyed the pleasures of life ; here they could breathe the sweet breath of the north wind, and enjoy the flowers and trees of the garden. — Adapted from " Life in Ancient Egypt, 1 ' by Erman. In Ancient Egypt, the people loved cleanliness, and therefore those who did the washing were highly honored. Among the high officers of the king's court were the "chief bleacher," the "washer of Pharaoh," and the "chief washer of the palace." In private houses, the great washing day was an impor- tant event. Pictures of this time show some workmen busy at small tanks, washing and wringing, while the 14 THE HOME chief washer is looking on to see that the worktnen do their work well. They beat the wet clothes with wooden staves, they sprinkle them, holding their arms up high. They fasten one end of the folded piece of linen over a post, put a stick through the other end and wring it with a good deal of force. This was the ancient substitute for the modern wringer. The men then stretch and fold up the linen, and the chief ivasher packs it up in a great bundle. But this was not all. In Egypt, wide robes with many folds of white linen were worn, and fashion required that these folds should be put in with great exactness and regu- larity. How this was done can only be guessed at. But there is in Florence a wooden instrument which it is thought was used to press these regular folds in the dresses. — Adapted from "Life in Ancient Egypt," by Erman. HOMES OF SAVAGES A BUSHMAN'S HOME A Bushman seeks his dwelling in caves and clefts of the rock, in sheltered spots beneath overhanging stones, or lies down in water-courses or in the deserted pit of an ant-bear. It is quite a sign of progress when he bends down the boughs of a shrub, and weaves them with other boughs and moss into a shelter from the wind, heaping up a lair of dried leaves and moss under it. Only in rare cases does he advance to hut building ; but when, owing to abundance of game, he selects some open district for a long stay, he con- descends to cover some poles with branches, rushes, or skins. The women then aspire even to the plaiting of coarse mats. But the Bushman's way of life never allows even these habi- tations to become permanent. As to household goods there is nothing to say, for what a HOMES OF SAVAGES 15 Bushman cannot cany with him he has no use for. Even domestic animals seem to him a burden, of which he gets rid as soon as possible. Pottery is almost entirely absent, perhaps only because ostrich eggs make good vessels. Water is carried in them and buried in the sand to cool it. For his food the Bushman needs no appliance but fire, which he produces by rubbing hard and soft wood to- gether. The pieces of meat are usually thrown into the fire for a short time only. Often the game is not com- pletely drawn. If he has no game, he puts up with any- thing; lizards, snakes, — even those, it is said, whose poison he has extracted for his arrows, — frogs, caterpillars, grubs, he eats with relish. Honey is one of his favorite articles of food, and he looks upon any bees'-nest which he has discovered as the property of his family or his party. Even when surface vegetation is quite dried up he finds bulbs and roots by the remains of the plant, or by the hollow sound of the ground when tapped. In spite of its bitterness, he eats the wild watermelon, and its juice is often his only means of quenching his thirst. How much more comfortably might he live if he would sedulously turn to account his acquaintance with nature, Avhose gifts he has thoroughly investigated. No doubt he would then have to give up some of his free existence. And here is clearly the thread which binds him to his life. — From Ratzel's " History of Mankind." MALAY HOMES The most conspicuous peculiarity of the Malay house is that it is built on piles. This style may be found even in the European settle- ment. For this reason one of their cities has been called the Venice of Borneo, and another the Venice of Sumatra. 16 THE HOME The reason for this style of building was to protect its inmates against the attacks of water, of man, and of beasts. So that now when there is greater public secur- ity, the pile dwellings have greatly decreased in numbers. Thus among one tribe of Borneo, all the houses formerly stood on piles of hard wood forty feet high. Nowadays there is free intercourse among the dwellers by all the rivers, and the houses have come down to the earth. At the most a small space is left between the ground and the bamboo flooring. By the sea, however, and on the banks of the larger riv- ers, pile dwellings have the same reason for existence as formerly. For they are a protection against floods and swamps, and they make it easier to get food from the water. In the Philippines there are houses of which the bamboo poles and wicker work are but little above the flood level of the water. These houses are set close together. There is only a narrow passage running between the rows ; and the village straggles far along the shore. When we find that some of the inhabitants of the inte- rior build their houses in this manner, then we know that they formerly dwelt by the rivers, and have continued to build in the same way. But there is a better reason still for building on piles. For when the tree stem with steps cut in it is hauled up, the building is like a castle with the drawbridge raised. This, in a head-hunting country especially, must add mate- rially to the safety of the home. Among the objections to pile building on dry land are want of cleanliness and defective stability. Safe dwelling places are also found in trees. The cen- tral shoot is cut off, and the surrounding branches remain. Or the stems alone of several neighboring trees sometimes serve as support for tree houses made from palm leaves and bamboo. HOMES OF SAVAGES 17 Many Malay tribes place prickly bamboo stems around their huts for security. They stick sharp arrows in the ground and make pitfalls. Sentries are posted day and night. When Spanish troops looked for a fugitive among them they could do nothing to capture them. The only thing that they could do was to burn their houses. This really did not matter much, for they could rebuild them easily in a single day. A further characteristic of Malay architecture is the steep roof, often fifty feet high and coming far down. The thatch is of palm leaves. In the more elaborate houses the walls are prettily wattled with palm fibres. The gable end often bears buf- falo heads carved in wood, and other emblems. In windy uplands the roofs are protected by poles from being blown off. The interior arrangements vary with the degree of civ- ilization. They depend also upon the character of the dwelling, whether occupied jointly or severally, whether the families occupy several apartments or one in common. In some cases the house is from two hundred and forty to two hundred and seventy feet in length. Forty or fifty families live here together, but in separate rooms. In another tribe four to six families only occupy the house, but they all live together in one room. Against the wall stands a large earthenware vessel or a large bamboo with the partitions of all the knots knocked out except the last. In one tribe the strength of the girls is measured by the number of such vessels that they can bring from the spring to the house. Mats and cushions lie in one corner. In another, women and girls are occupied in peeling fruit. Nets, hooks, fish- ing tackle, are piled up in another. Spears hang from the walls. The middle of the room is the reception room. Civilization is shown in a few stools without backs, of 18 THE HOME bamboo wicker work, for guests. The natives sit cross- legged on the floor. Strange as it may seem, this last paragraph is an exact description of the palace of one of their chiefs. Light enters in the daytime only through gaps in the wall. As a rule lights are not burned at night for fear of attracting ghosts, but some of the tribes have candles of resin, others shell lamps with rush wicks. Most of the Malays spend the greater portion of their life on the water, and build house-like boats for this reason. — Adapted from Ratzel's " History of Mankind." HOMES OF THE HALF CIVILIZED THE HOME OF THE INDIAN Among by far the greatest number of tribes the mov- able tent of leather or bark known as the wigwam served for a dwelling. The Algonquin women cut long shoots of birch and fir, the men cleared a round or square space with their snowshoes, and heaped up the snow wall so that the upper ends met at a slant and were covered with large pieces of birch bark ; an entrance was left to be covered with a bear skin. Inside, the floor was thickly strewn with twigs, if possible from the fragrant balsam, and the hut was ready. The whole work took on the average about three hours. In New England there were simple huts, semicircular in plan ; in California, of complete beehive buildings. Among the Iroquois, who were better builders, the walls consisted of logs bound firmly together, and the roof of rafters bound with branches. The whole was covered on the outside with bark, while all around the interior were benches spread with mats. Beneath the roof was the HOMES OF THE HALF CIVILIZED 19 store loft. But these were houses inhabited by the whole kindred. In the South the houses were more airy, in many places being only a roof to keep off the rain. This kind of an Indian house may still be seen in Central and South America. THE HOME OF THE MODERN ESKIMO We did not travel much that day, having sledged with- out a break for thirteen hours. We halted about seven o'clock on the north side of the Sound, where we built a cosey little snow hut in a suitable, well-sheltered drift. It w r as constructed in the usual Eskimo fashion, of large blocks cut out of the snowdrift, put together so as to form a solid cupola over the space below, sufficient to hold us all. The dogs always sleep in the open, winter as well as summer, and in all kinds of weather. They were, there- fore, simply tied to a walrus lance, rammed into the ground just outside the hut. We will now peep inside. All the fissures to the roof and Avails are closed with snow, and the lamps are lighted. To get in, it is necessary to crawl through the little hole on the lee side. When of the Caucasian race, great care has to be exercised not to wreck the proud structure, for the opening is only intended for tiny Eskimo bodies. Inside a comparatively high temperature prevails. This causes the snow in the roof to melt, whereby the structure is strengthened, as the blocks then sink a little, freeze together, and form on the inside a hard polished dome of ice. The water thus formed by degrees, trickles slowly down the walls of the hut toward the floor. There it forms the most beautiful glittering ice taps. At night, when the cooking is over, the melting ceases, as the lamps then only burn with a faint flame. But as we enter, the cooking is in full swing. Under 20 THE HOME the little stone vessels the flames are made as long as the saucer-shaped lamps with moss wicks and blubber will allow. On the raised platform at the back we are in- stalled, whilst opposite sit the old man and his woman. All of us are airily dressed. It would be absurd to sleep in our stiff, wet garments when we can throw them off and crawl into soft, warm reindeer skins instead. The old woman mostly sees to the cooking. In order to find out whether the water for the tea boils she now and again puts her hand flat into it. This is a way of taking boiling temperature which at first I do not like. But at last I come to the conclusion that it is no worse than handling the meat Ave are to eat, and I reconcile myself to my fate. We had expected to find natives at this place, but all that we could discover in the gloom of midnight was a long-deserted, tumbledown snow hut. We set to work at once to repair it, while the old man and his woman began to dig in the snow under a huge boulder, hoping to find, according to the old charitable Eskimo custom, seal blubber for the aid of the needy traveller in general. Long and deep they dug, and blubber there was, sure enough, in plenty. The old man cut up some in bits for the dogs, whilst the old woman prepared other for our lamps, making the pieces soft by chewing them with her teeth before putting them on the lamp saucers. In a short time we were snugly at home under our snow roof, chatting of the events of the day, and eating the remains of our reindeer steak. In the midst of our merry group lay a huge piece of walrus meat, the somewhat " gamey " smell of which left no doubt of its respectable age. Beside it lay an axe, which was used whenever any man or woman wanted to HQMES OF THE CIVILIZED 21 satisfy their hunger, for the meat was frozen hard and wanted to be chopped. At the side of the meat stood a huge block of ice, clear as crystal, whence all obtained water. In the centre a hole had been cut. In the bottom of this a stone was placed, on which there burned with a good flame a piece of moss intersected with blubber. As the ice melted at the sides, the water collected at the bottom in a small clear pool, when it was consumed by the many parched mouths, by sucking it up through hollow reindeer marrow-bones. The whole party was throughout in the cheeriest and most talkative mood. No toasts were drunk nor speeches made, but the chatting and laughing of everybody pro- ceeded so merrily that the incident furnished another proof of the contentment of these people with their lot. — From "In the Land of the Northernmost Eskimo," By Eivind Astrup, First Officer in both the Peary Expeditions. The Fortnightly. HOMES OF THE CIVILIZED THE JAPANESE HOUSE AND ITS CUSTOMS The Japanese house differs from that of other nations chiefly in its want of substantiality. It is fixed to no foundations. It merely rests upon unhewn stones placed below. It usually consists of a panel work of wood, either unpainted or painted black on the outside. Its roof may be shingled, tiled, or thatched. But no chimney breaks its sky line, for fires are seldom used. The worst side of the house is turned toward the street, the artistic toward the garden. At least two sides have no permanent walls, but, like the inside partitions, are merely screens fitting into grooves. The rooms are for the most part small and low. They 22 THE HOME are without recesses except in the guest room, where there are two. In one of these are hung the pictures, and ris- ing up to meet them, the figure of a household god, an incense burner, or a vase of flowers. The other is used for a closet. Almost every Japanese house has a veranda. No expensive paint work stands ready to chip and scratch and look shabby. Everything remains as it left the car- penter's plane, usually smooth but not polished. If the workman thought the bark on the wood was pretty, he would leave even this. He would certainly make no attempt to remove any artistic markings caused by the ravages of a worm or larvae. Besides the guest room there was usually a special room set apart for the tea ceremony. This was not always in the building, but often in one apart from the house in the garden. No carpets, tables, bedsteads, wardrobes, or cupboards find a place in the Japanese house. Nor does the Japanese require chairs, for he is only comfortable when resting on his knees and heels on a cushion. But he must have his fire vessel and his tobacco tray. The portable fire vessel throws out slight heat, and also serves to light the pipes. It contains small pieces of charcoal. Whenever a caller comes, summer or winter, the first act of hospi- tality is to place one of these before him ; even in shops it is brought in and placed on a mat whenever a visitor enters. The only other articles of furniture are the square wooden frame which is placed over this stove, the pillow, and the lantern. No Japanese would think of sleeping without having this burning throughout the night. The consumption of lanterns in Japan is enormous with- out counting the export trade. Every house has dozens for use inside and for going out at night. The latter are HOMES OF THE CIVILIZED 23 placed in a rack in the hall. Each bears the owner's name or else his crest. — From " Japan and its Art," by Marcus B. Huish. THE JAPANESE BATH The Chinese do not like water at all, but the Japanese have almost a mania for it, especially when it is boiling hot. Every inn has a big tub perpetually on the boil. The tub is common property. You go into the bath-room, undress, throw a ladle of hot water over you, lather yourself with soap, throw more hot water over till all the soap is re- moved, and then you climb into the bath, and stay there for one hour or two hours if you like, or until somebody else wants to come in. It is hardly in accordance with our ideas to get into a bath where half a dozen people have been before you. But the Japanese think nothing of it. I always made inquiry, that I might be the first user of the bath that day. And here is a point that we might learn from the Japan- ese. The reason that we take cold after a hot bath in the daytime is that we do not take it hot enough. If only the water is as near boiling as possible, there is no danger of getting cold afterward. The Japanese revel in these hot baths. They take them three or four times a day. Once a Japanese called upon me and apologized in the beginning of the conversation for being so unmannerly and dirty. He had only had time to take two baths that day. — From " Next to Godliness," Chambers's Journal, April, 1809. THE KITCHEN THE KITCHEN MRS. POYSER'S KITCHEN The great barn doors are thrown wide open, and men are busy there mending the harness, under the superintend- ence of Mr. Goby, the " whittaw," otherwise saddler, who entertains them with the latest gossip. It is certainly rather an unfortunate day that Aleck, the shepherd, has chosen for having the whittaws, since the morning turned out so wet ; and Mrs. Poyser has spoken her mind pretty strongly as to the dirt which the extra number of men's shoes brought into the house at dinner-time. Indeed, she has not yet recovered her equanimity on the subject, though it is now nearly three hours since dinner, and the house floor is per- fectly clean again — as clean as everything else in that won- derful house-place, where the only chance of collecting a few grains of dust would be to climb on the salt-coffer, and put your finger on the high mantel-shelf on which the glit- tering brass candlesticks are enjoying their summer sine- cure ; for at this time of the year, of course, every one goes to bed while it is yet light, or at least light enough to dis- cern the outlines of objects after you have bruised your shins against them. Surely nowhere else could an oak clock-case and an oak table have got to such a polish by the hand ; genuine " elbow polish," as Mrs. Poyser called it, for she thanked God she never had any of your var- nished rubbish in her house. Hetty Sorrel often took the opportunity, when her aunt's back was turned, of looking 27 28 THE KITCHEN at the pleasing reflection of herself in those polished sur- faces, for the oak table was usually turned up like a screen, and was more for ornament than for use ; and she could see herself sometimes in the great round pewter dishes that were ranged on the shelves above the long deal dinner table or in the hobs of the grate, which always shone like jasper. Everything was looking at its brightest at this moment, for the sun shone right on the pewter dishes, and from their reflecting surfaces pleasant jets of light were thrown on mellow oak and bright brass ; no scene could have been more peaceful, if Mrs. Poyser, who was ironing a few things that still remained from the Monday's wash, had not been making a frequent clinking with her iron and moving to and fro whenever she wanted it to cool ; carrying the keen glance of her blue gray eye from the kitchen to the dairy, where Hetty was making up the butter, and from the dairy to the back kitchen, where Nancy was taking the pies out of the oven. — Adapted from "Adam Bede," by George Eliot. THE ROMAN KITCHEN Sometimes the Roman Kitchen was characterized by luxury and beauty scarcely equalled even in modern days. Its walls were frescoed with pictures ; its floor was of stones. All the cooking utensils were of the finest bronze lined with silver and with gold. And each instrument was made to represent some animal. Some gridirons, for instance, were representations in silver of skeletons of fish ; the frying-pans represented spiders, tortoises, and various other animals. The water kettle was often the head of an elephant using his trunk for a spout. THE EVOLUTION OF FIRE 29 THE EVOLUTION OF FIRE There are now no tribes so savage that they do not know how to make fire, and we have no evidence of a race in distant ages who did not at least know something of fire. And yet, though its use is so ancient, it is certain that once upon a time there did exist, people who knew neither the use of fire nor how to make it. How did they learn ? Nature taught him. In many regions, the hot streams of lava from the mouths of vol- canoes, as they descend the mountain side, are apt to set on fire the dry plants and trees. Lightning quite fre- quently kindles the dry trunks of trees which it strikes. When his first fear had subsided, he would regard this fire as heaven sent, and try by every means in his power to keep it burning. Even to this day there are tribes in Australia who know but little more, and send to other tribes for new fire if theirs goes out. The first fires were probably made by friction, a method still employed in many savage tribes. The Romans and Greeks, our own- Indians, the Eskimos, and some of the tribes of Asia and of Africa make their fires by striking stones and other objects violently to- gether. By some flint and steel, or, perhaps, flint and pyrites (one kind is called fool's gold), or two bits of quartz were used. Matches, the modern method of striking fire, are one of the triumphs of this century. Formerly boxes con- taining eighty-four cost a quarter. Now they are so cheap that their use has become universal, and it is cal- culated six matches a day is an average allowance for each person in the United States. 30 THE KITCHEN ANCIENT FORESTS AND MODERN FUEL A visit to a coal mine is not without value, especially to any one who has some little idea of mining operations. The descent through hot air, foggy with floating particles of coal, the darkness and gloom, but very imperfectly revealed by candles or lamps, the crowd of trucks, horses, and men at the bottom, and the incessant clanking of the machinery, all these prepare the visitor for his work. Once landed below, he is led past vast furnaces burning day and night to create a draught of air, on which the very life of all those employed underground depends ; he is told that air close to him, passing into the chimney a little above his head, over these fires, is highly explosive, so that a single spark would involve destruction ; he is introduced, first through broad and then into narrower paths, where the roof has once come down or the floor has been squeezed up ; he sees men working with difficulty, picking a deep groove in a black wall ; he hears, when away from the work that is going on, a dull singing noise of gas always oozing through the coal ; at one place, he is shown where tons of roof have recently come down, at another, cracks where hogsheads of fiery gas are issuing with rapidity, poisoning and rendering dangerous all the air of the mine ; lie is taken along miles of a vast black tunnel cut through the mineral; the way is to him a perfect labyrinth, though really designed and exe- cuted on an admirable system ; and at last he is brought somehow or other to a pit-bottom, whence he is lifted, greatly to his satisfaction, to the outer world ; and finally, he makes his way to a warm bath, and endeavors to remove as far as possible the marks of his visit from his skin and lungs. The floor of the coal — in other words, the earth on which we tread in a coal mine — is generally a bed of ANCIENT FORESTS AND MODERN FUEL 31 bluish clay; and if a specimen of this clay is brought up and examined, it will generally be found loaded with in- numerable, black, stringy markings, crossing each other in every direction. These were once the rootlets of plants that either grew in this clay as a vegetable soil, or were matted up with it into a rough mass before the plants had decayed. Overhead there is generally sandstone ; and on the roof, where the sandstone and coal were once in con- tact, we may often see long flat markings, the stems of ancient trees that had not entirely decayed, when the sands buried the whole mass. Thus the coal lies upon a clay on which plants grew, and is covered with material that con- tains innumerable marks of similar vegetation. It is impossible not to conclude from all the circum- stances connected with coal deposits, that this mineral is the remains of an ancient vegetation, growing on or near the place where we now find it. Even the coal itself, black and opaque as it seems, yields under the searching power of the microscope some evidence of its origin. When ground down to the thinnest possible slice, and examined under a high power, traces are seen here and there of spiral vessels, such as belong to woody fibre, and of some other marks, proving a complicated vegetable structure. Fruits, such as nuts of strange forms, and even delicate flowers have been detected. Examples of each of the two principal divisions of vegetable structure have been identi- fied from the mode of growth. Insects and other animals have been found, and proof exists in abundance that coal was formed near land, if not actually grown on the soil, with which it is now buried. From a pile of rubbish near the shaft of a coal mine, it would be difficult to take up a dozen specimens of that peculiar hardened blue clay called shale, that is so abun- dant in such places, without finding in them impressions of leaves ; and a very little examination and comparison 32 THE KITCHEN would suffice to enable any one accustomed to plants to refer these to some kind of fern. Why these should be so invariably fern leaves, instead of leaves of the forest trees, which one might have expected to form at least some part of the deposit, is perhaps the first question that would suggest itself to any one who was accustomed to find in the earth remains of a former world. A more thorough examination, and a visit to local mu- seums where such things are collected, arranged, and exhibited, would, however, show that, though not en- tirely absent, leaf fragments of other plants than ferns are so exceedingly rare, that they may be practically disre- garded in considering the important contributories of coal. Either of two causes may have brought about this result. The other plants may have been absent altogether or they may have been less easily preserved when buried, perhaps under water, in the conditions favorable for making coal out of wood. Experiment has shown that, in fact, the leaves of our forest trees do decay much more rapidly than fern leaves, and thus there may have been large accumu- lations of them that have disappeared or gone to make coal ; but the vast multitude of ferns seems of itself to show that these were really predominant and a further study of the trunks of the trees points to the same conclusion. ANCIENT FORESTS AND MODERN FUEL ( Continued) Let us now endeavor to reproduce an ancient forest, such as existed in and near our island at the time when the coal was in preparation, and, as far as the materials will justify, let us also people this forest with animal life. Such a forest certainly abounded with lofty plants of ANCIENT FORESTS AND MODERN FUEL 33 ferns, like those we now call fern trees, and to such an extent that in many places it probably contained little else. As, however, in Norfolk Island and other parts of the Antipodes where such vegetation now prevails, the out- skirts of the thick forests may have exhibited a consider- able admixture of other trees, and here and there groups where the ferns were absent. Pines of large dimensions were certainly among these occasional trees. Let us look a little more closely at the trees which seem to have been the chief agents in supplying material for coal. There are many portions of large trunks, many markings of the bark, many casts of the interior, and not a few frag- ments which show the texture of the wood, the springing of the branches, and the attachment of the roots. Occa- sionally, the structure of the wood can be examined under the microscope ; but this is a rare exception, for the stone is generally not in a state to admit of this minute exami- nation. There are three kinds of trees, exceedingly unlike one another, that appear to have combined to form a very large proportion of the actual coal. We can, in a general way, understand the appearance and nature of these three kinds of ancient forest trees. Crowds of lofty trunks, not scaled like pines, but fluted like the columns of a temple, rise before us in large groups, each trunk terminating in a magnificent crest of fronds, some drooping over the trunk, some curling in curious contortions toward the light. Whether of the dark green of some of our ferns, or the bright metallic tint of others, these ferns, forming the capitals of natural cokimns, must have presented a strange appearance. Thickly grouped, they must almost have excluded light from, the ground ; and thus there was, perhaps, only a small amount of other vegetation, except where an opening occurred. Rapid growth and equally rapid decay in a moist atmosphere 34 THE KITCHEN and under a clouded sky would accumulate a vast amount of vegetable matter in such forests in a short time, and it would be left to the insects to destroy the fallen wood. Should it happen that the land was swampy, and insects were not abundant, the trees might have accumulated to form a thick mass of half-rotten matter. Those parts of the singular tree we are now considering that were buried in the earth are not at all less remarkable than the trunk. Large circular roots pass off in every direction from the base of the trunk, like the spokes of a wheel. Each main root has its offsets of smaller size, and each one of these its leaflike long rootlets, spreading in every direction, and producing that complicated mass of tendrils found in the beds of blue clay that serve as floor to the coal. Thus this tree, instead of seeking food from the air by a complicated apparatus of branches, twigs, and true leaves, obtained what nourishment it required from the earth, and passed this food by circulation through the lofty vertical trunk to the fronds at the top. The roots and rootlets often remain in the clay. They seem to have been little changed even when the trunk and fronds were converted into coal and they have lost all traces of their form as well as texture. Another very different kind of tree demands our atten- tion. Lofty and having the proportions of pines and firs, such trees shoot up into the clouds on a mountain side, and yet present all the peculiarities of leaf vegetation of the club mosses. New Zealand and other moist insular cli- mates present us with club mosses, like dwarf trees, a few inches high ; and coal seems to show us these magnified into forest vegetation. There are great trunks twenty to fifty feet high, branching and forking in the manner peculiar to club mosses ; but the trunks are scarred like pines. The stem is like that of a fern, and grows by additions to the extremity ; the leaves, or whatever they ANCIENT FORESTS AND MODERN FUEL 35 may be called, — delicate, feathery filaments, pointed at the end, — shoot out from the stem (there are no twigs) ; the fruit grows at the extremity of the branches, and resembles the very long cone of a fir. Trees such as these are not rare ; but they do not seem to have been so numer- ous as the other kind we attempted to describe. Their remains are found in nearly the same localities. A third singular form of vegetation. is before ils, — a gigantic reed, made up like a bamboo, of numerous joints, hollow and cylindrical, now only to be seen crushed and flattened, and often only known by the markings it has left on stone. This tree was, perhaps, limited to swampy places ; but it was certainly exceedingly common. It is met with wherever coal is found and the varieties of detail are very great. Some naturalists have thought that it resembled those marsh plants called horse tail (Equisitum), so common in our own country. Leaves seem to have proceeded in a fringe-like form from each joint, and branches were given off at intervals. Nothing is known of the fruit. These trees were sometimes thirty or forty feet in height, and two or three in diameter. The trunk was deeply fluted, and at each joint there was a flat plate or diaphragm crossing the stem. With these plants, the remains of a few insects have been found, including among them a scorpion. There were also a number of small lizards. Little else is known of the inhabitants of the land at this distant period. There may have been many whose remains were not preserved. There may also have been many whose remains are safely buried, but have not yet been turned up. Judging from the number and variety of additions within the last few years, since attention was directed to the subject, the last hypothesis is probable enough. How have these ancient forests been converted into coal available for fuel ? How have they been buried under 36 THE KITCHEN such thick masses of stone and clay ? How have they been broken up into compartments and tilted at high angles, as they are found to be in our coal mines ? And lastly, how have they been brought into their present accessible position ? The essential difference between wood and coal con- sists in the replacement of the water always found in fresh vegetation, by gases never found there in a free state. It is almost impossible, perhaps quite impossible, to deprive wood by artificial drying so completely of moisture that the part still left behind shall not interfere seriously with the value of the material as fuel ; for, so long as any water is present, the whole of it has to be evaporated into steam before available heat is obtained, and the heat lost in this process must be deducted from the heat-giving power of the fuel. Coal contains no water ; but, on the contrary, it holds a certain proportion of hydrogen combined with carbon, and some oxygen gas ; but these help combustion rather than hinder it, and are useful for other purposes. There is also another difference between wood and coal, indicated by the closer texture of the latter. The cellular condition of the wood is in fact altered, and the water contents of the cells removed or decomposed before coal is produced. This chemical change has never been pro- duced artificially, either in the case of green wood, dried wood, the black wood obtained from fens and bogs or various deposits in the earth, nor with such vegetation as peat. All these still contain water ; they do not contain gas, and they are not dense and compact stony substances. Nature would seem to require a long period of time and certain conditions of heat and pressure to bring about the required result. The woody matter originally accumu- lated has been buried with clay and sand. The whole together has been sunk down into the earth, and has then been gradually covered up with newer deposits, until it THE BUNDLE OF MATCHES 37 has reached a depth where the temperature is high enough for the chemical change needed. For thousands and tens of thousands of years, the ancient forests have been thus exposed, and at length the work is done, and coal has replaced wood, sand has become sandstone, and clay shale. Who can say how long the beds may have remained after this change, or when the movements took place that have brought the whole again to the surface ? — From " Temple Bar. 1 ' THE BUNDLE OF MATCHES There was once upon a time a bundle of Matches, and they were very proud of their high descent. Their genea- logical tree — that is to say, the great fir tree, of which each of them was a chip — had been once a very stately old tree in the forest. But now these Matches lay upon the shelf between a Flint and Steel and an old iron Sauce- pan, and to them they told most wonderful stories about their younger days. " Ah, while we were still on the green bough, then were we indeed on the green bough ! " said they. " Pearl tea, morning and evening, — that was the dew ; the sun shone on us the whole day, when he did shine ; and all the little birds were obliged to amuse us with many songs or touch- ing stories. We could easily see that we were rich ; for the other trees were dressed in green only in summer, whilst our family possessed the means of wearing green both winter and summer. But the woodcutters came, that was the Great Revolution, and our family was divided and split up ; he whom we looked upon as our chief support got a place as a mainmast in a large ship that could sail round the world if it liked ; and the other branches were placed in various situations ; and now our d» THE KITCHEN vocation is to give light ; and therefore we, people of high pedigree as we are, have come here into the kitchen." " Ah, my fate has been very different," said the iron Saucepan, near which the Matches lay. " From the very moment that I came into the world I've been scoured and boiled, oh, how often ! I always side with the respectable and conservative ; and belong, in reality, to the very first in the house. My sole pleasure is to lie down, nice and clean, after dinner, and to have a little rational talk with my comrades ; but if I except the Bucket, that now and then goes into the yard, we live here in a very retired and quiet life. Our only newsmonger is the Coal-scuttle ; but he talks so demagogically about ' the people ' and ' the government,' that a short time ago an old earthen Pot was so shocked at his conversation that it dropped down and broke into a thousand pieces. Oh, he belongs to the Eadicals, let me tell you." " Now you are talking too much," said the Flint, and it struck against the Steel so that the sparks flew out. " Shall we not have a merry evening ?" "Yes; let us talk about who is of highest rank and most genteel," said the Matches. "No, I have no wish to talk about myself," said the earthenware Dish ; " let us have a refined and sentimental evening. We will all tell things we have seen and gone through. I will begin. I will relate a tale of everyday life ; one can fancy one's self so well in similar situations, and that is so interesting. " On the shores of the Baltic, beneath the Danish beeches— " "That is a splendid beginning!" said all the Plates. " That will certainly be a very interesting story ! " "There, in a quiet family, I passed my youth. The furniture was polished, the floor washed, and clean muslin curtains were put up every fortnight." THE BUNDLE OF MATCHES 39 " What an interesting story yon are telling us ! " said the Duster. " Yes, that is true, indeed," said the Water-pail, much moved, and in such broken accents that there was quite a splash on the floor. And the Dish went on with the story, and the end was as good as the beginning. All the Plates rattled with delight, and the Duster took some green parsley off the dresser and crowned the Dish, for he knew this would annoy the others ; and, thought he, if I crown her to-day, she will crown me to-morrow. "Now let us dance ! " said the Tongs, beginning imme- diately ; and, good heavens ! how she could fling her leg up in the air, — almost as high and as gracefully as Mademoiselle Ellsler. The old Arm-chair covering in the corner burst at the sight. "Am I not to be crowned now?" said the Tongs ; and so, forthwith, she got a laurel wreath, too. " What a low set ! " said the Matches to themselves. It was now the Tea-urn's turn to sing something ; but she said she had taken cold, — indeed, she could only sing when excited ; but that was nothing but pride, for she would only sing when standing on the drawing-room table among ladies and gentlemen. Behind, in the window, sat an old Pen, that the maid used to write with. There was nothing remarkable about it, except that it was too deeply immersed in ink ; but that was just what it was proud of, and made a fuss about. " If the Tea-urn will not sing," it said, " why, she must leave it alone ; but there is a nightingale in a cage ; she can sing. It is true she has been taught nothing. However, this evening we will speak ill of nobody." "I find it most improper," said the Tea-kettle, who was kitchen chorus-singer, and step-brother to the Tea-urn, 40 - THE KITCHEN" " I find it most improper that such a foreign bird should he patronized. Is that patriotic ? I will ask the Coal- scuttle, and let him decide the matter." "As to me, I am vexed," said the latter, "thoroughly vexed ! Is this the way to spend the evening ? Would it not be far better to turn the whole house upside down, and to establish a new and natural order of things ? In this way each one would find his proper place, and I would undertake to direct the change. That would be something like fun for us." " Yes ; let us kick up a row ! " cried all at once. At the same moment the door opened ; it was the house- maid. All were silent ; not one dared to utter a sound. Yet there was not a single grease-pot but knew what he could do, and of what consequence he was. " Yes, if I had chosen," thought they, " fine work there Avould have been this evening." The maid then took the Matches to get a light. Bless us, how they sparkled, and then stood all in a blaze. u Now may everybody see," thought they, " that we are first in rank. How we shine ! What lustre ! What light ! " — and so saying, they went out. — From "Fairy Tales," by Hans C. Andersen. FOODS AND COOKING FOODS AND COOKING THE EFFECT OF FOODS The strength of every other member Is founded on your stomach timber ; The qualms or raptures of your blood Rise in proportion to your food. That great Achilles might employ The strength designed to ruin Troy, He dined on lions' marrows, spread On toast of ammunition bread. But by his mother sent away Among the Thracian girls to play, Effeminate he sat and quiet, Strange product of a cheese-cake diet. Observe the various operations Of food and drink in several nations : Was ever Tartar cruel Upon the strength of water gruel ? But who shall stand his rage and force If first he rides, then eats his horse ? Salads and eggs and lighter fare Turn the Italian spark's guitar, And if I take Don Congreve right, Pudding and beef make Britons fight. — Matthew Prior. 43 44 FOODS AND COOKING THE PROTEIDS FOODS OF COMBUSTION AND NUTRITION Our food is divided into two very distinct sets : some, which are destined to be burned, and which are called foods of combustion; others, which are destined to nourish the body, and which are called foods of nutrition. The dishes on all well-regulated tables should be ar- ranged accordingly, — foods of combustion on one side, foods of nutrition on the other. It cannot be enough merely to give your guests a treat : you ought to provide them with everything necessary for the proper fulfilment of the claims within ; and if you give some nothing but combustibles, leaving the others no share of fuel, how will they be able to manage? Few think about this, however; not even cooks, to begin with, who as far as fire is con- cerned, find they have had quite enough to do with it in their cooking ; and as for the guests, when they have had their dinner they go away satisfied, as a matter of course, quite as well provided for as if the mistress of the house had made her calculations, pen in hand, while writing out the bill of fare, with a view to combustion and nutrition. Now how is that ? It is because the two sorts of foods are, for the most part, met with together in everything we eat, so that we swallow them at once in one mouthful, and have there- fore no need to trouble ourselves further on the subject. There is our bit of bread, for instance. What is bread made of ? Of flour. Bread, then, must contain all that was previously in the flour. Very good. Now I will teach you how to discover in flour the food of combus- tion on the one hand and the food of nutrition on the other. Take a handful of flour and hold it under a small THE PROTEIDS 45 stream of water; knead it lightly between your fingers. The water will be quite Avhite as it leaves it, carrying away with it a fine powder, which you could easily collect if you were to let the water run into a vase, where the powder would soon settle to the bottom. That powder is starch — the same starch as washerwomen use for starch- ing linen, and which our grandfathers employed in pow- dering their wigs. Now starch is an excellent combustible. People have succeeded, by means which I will not offer to detail here, in ascertaining almost exactly what it is made of, and they have found in it three of our old acquaintances, — ■ oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon, — com- bined together in such proportions that one hundred ounces of starch contain as follows : — Ounces Carbon 45 Hydrogen 6 Oxygen 49 100 I give you the calculation in round numbers, so as not to burden your memory with fractions, and I will do the same with the other sums I shall have to go through to-day, this being, let me tell you, an arithmetical day. Starch, then, is of course a first-rate combustible. Indeed, one may almost consider it the parent, as it were, of at least half our foods of combustion, for if it loses a portion of its carbon, so that there remain but thirty-six ounces of it in the hundred of starch, our starch is turned into something else ; now can you guess what that something is ? Neither more nor less than sugar! Witness the grand manufactories at Colmar, in France, where bags of starch are converted into casks of syrup by a process of nature alone ; so that the inhabitants of the neighborhood sweeten their coffee at breakfast with what might have been made into rolls, had it been left alone. 46 FOODS AND COOKING All this astonishes you. What would you say then if I were to tell you that your pocket-handkerchief is com- posed of entirely the same materials as starch, and in the same proportions too, and that if a chemist were to take a fancy, by way of a joke, to make you a tumbler of sugar and water or a small glass of brandy out of it, he could do so if he chose. Wonders are found, you see, in other places besides fairy tales ; and since I have begun this subject I will go on to the end. Know, then, that from the log on the fire, to the back of your chair, everything made of wood is in pretty nearly the same predicament as your pocket-handkerchief ; and if people are not in the habit of making casks of syrup out of the trees they cut down in the woods, it is only, I assure you, because such sugar would cost more to make than other sorts, and would not be so good in the end. Should some one ever invent and bring to perfection an economical process for doing it thoroughly well, sugar-makers will have to be on their guard ! To return to our flour. As soon as all the starch is gone out of it, there remains in your hand a whitish, elas- tic substance, which is also sticky or glutinous, so that it makes a very good glue if you choose ; and hence its name of gluten, which is the Latin word for glue. One hundred ounces of it contain as follows : — Ounces Carbon 63 Hydrogen 7 Oxygen 13 Nitrogen 17 100 Observe the last material named. It is a new arrival, of which I shall soon have something to say. You have probably never seen any one bled, which is a pity, as it happens; for if you had, you might have THE PROTEIDS 47 noticed (provided you had had the courage to look into the basin) that after a few seconds the blood which had been taken away separated itself of its own accord into two portions ; the one a yellowish, transparent liquid, the other an opaque red mass floating on the top, and which is called the coagulum of the blood or clot. This coagu- lum owes its color to an infinity of minute red bodies of which we will speak more fully by and by, and which arc retained, as if in a net, in the meshes of a peculiar sub- stance to which I am now going to call your attention. That substance is whitish, elastic, and sticky ; and when dried becomes brittle and semi-transparent. It keeps for an unlimited time in alcohol, putrefies very soon in water exposed to the air, and is easily dissolved in a wash of soda or potash. Finally, one hundred ounces of it contain as follows : — Ounces Carbon 63 Hydrogen 7 Oxygen 13 Nitrogen 17 100 This substance is called fibrine. It goes to form the fibres of those muscles which are contained in a half- formed state in the blood. You are laughing by this time I know, and I also know the reason why. I have told you the same story twice over. You have not forgotten my wearisome description of gluten, and here I am, saying exactly the same thing of fibrine ! You conclude I am dreaming, and have made a mistake ! But no, I am wide awake, I assure you, and mean what I say. And if these details are the same in the two cases, it is for the simple reason that the two bodies are one and the same thing ; gluten and fibrine being in reality but 48 FOODS AND COOKING one substance, so that were the most skilful professor to see the two together dried, he would be puzzled to say which came from the flour, and which from the blood. I mentioned that our muscles existed in a half-formed state in the blood. Here is something further. The fibres of muscles exist previously in full perfection, in the bread we eat ; and when you make little round pills of the crumbs at your side, it is composed of fibres stolen from your muscles which enable the particles to stick to- gether ; and I say stolen from your muscles, because they are the gluten which you ought to have eaten. I hope the thought of this may cure you of a foolish habit, which is sometimes far from agreeable to those who sit by you. This, then, is the first great food of nutrition, and you may make yourself perfectly easy about the fate of those who eat bread. If little girls should now and then have to lunch on dry bread, I do not see that they are much to be pitied. There is the starch to keep up their fire, and the gluten for their nourishment, and that is all they require. The porter above is the only one who finds fault. And in these clays porters have become more difficult to please than the masters themselves. FOODS OF COMBUSTION AND NUTRITION ( Continued) Then as to babies who drink nothing but milk, you per- haps wish to know where they get their share of fibrine. And I am obliged to own there is none in the milk itself ; but, I dare say, you know curdled milk or rennet ? The same separation into two portions has taken place there which occurs in the blood when drawn from the arm ; underneath is a yellowish, transparent liquid, — that is the whey ; above a white curd of which cheese is made, and which contains a great part of what would have made THE PROTEIDS 49 butter. By carefully clearing the curd from all its buttery particles you obtain a kind of white powder which is the essential principle of cheese, and to which the pretty name of casein is given because caseits is the Latin for cheese. I shall not trouble you now with details about casein ; but there is one thing you ought to know. One hun- dred ounces of casein contain as follows : — Ounces Carbon 63 Hydrogen 7 Oxygen 13 Nitrogen 17 100 Exactly like gluten and fibrine! Now, then, you can understand that no particular credit is due to the blood for manufacturing muscles out of the cheese of the milk which a little baby sucks. He has much less trouble than the manufacturers at Colmar have in turning their starch into sugar; because in his case the neAv substance is not only composed of the same materials as the old one, but contains them in exactly the same pro- portion also. We have a second food of nutrition, you see,- and I must warn you that it is not found in milk only. It ex- ists in large quantities in peas, beans, lentils, and kidney beans, which are actually full of cheese, however strange this may seem to you. It would not surprise you so much, however, if you had been in China and had tasted those delicious little cheeses which are sold in the streets of Canton. They cannot be distinguished from our own. Only the Chinese do without milk altogether. They stew down peas into a thin pulp. They curdle this pulp just as we do milk, and in the same way they squeeze the curd well, salt it, and put it into moulds — just as we do — and out comes a cheese at last — a real cheese, composed of E 50 FOODS AND COOKING real casein! Put it into the hands of a chemist, and ask him the component parts of a hundred grains of it, and he will tell you as follows : — Ounces Carbon 63 Hydrogen 7, etc. I stop there; for you surely know the list by this time! There is a favorite conjuring trick, which always amuses people, though it deceives no one. The conjurer shows you an egg, holds it up to the light that you may see it is quite fresh, then breaks it ; and — crack — out comes a poor little wet bird, who flies away as well as he can. This trick is repeated in earnest by nature every day, un- der our very eyes, without our paying any attention to it. She brings a chicken out of the egg, which we place under the hen for twenty-two days, instead of eating it in the shell as we might have done, and we view it as a matter of course. Yet we do not say here that the bird may not have come down from the conjurer's sleeve, or the hen may not have brought it from under her wing. It was really in the egg, and its own beak tapped against the shell from within and cracked it. How has this come about ? No one can have put that beak, those feathers, those feet, the whole little body, in short, into the egg while the hen was sitting upon it, that is certain. It is equally certain, then, that the liquid inside the egg must have contained materials for all those things beforehand; and if Nature could manufacture the bones, muscles, eyes, etc., of the chicken out of that liquid while in the egg, she would probably have found no more difficulty in manufacturing your bones, muscles, eyes, etc., from it had you swallowed the egg yourself. Here, then, is an undeniable food of nutrition. It is called albumen, which is the Latin word for white of egg. It is easily recognized b} r a very obvious charac- THE PROTEIDS 51 teristic. When exposed to a temperature varying from 165° to 180° of heat, according to the quantity of water with which it is mixed, albumen hardens and changes from a colorless transparent liquid into that opaque white substance which everybody who has eaten " boiled eggs " is perfectly well acquainted with. I will only add one trifling detail. One hundred ounces of albumen contain as follows : — Ounces Carbon 63 Hydrogen — You can fill up this number yourself, can you not ? And knowing the 7 of hydrogen, you may guess what follows! After what we have talked of last time, here is already an explanation of the chicken's growth. But let us go on. You recollect that yellowish liquid I spoke about, which lies underneath the clot, or coagulum of the blood? I Avill tell you its name, that we may get on more easily afterward. It is called the serum, a Latin word which, for once, people have not taken the trouble of translating, and which also means whey. Put this serum on the fire, and in scarcely longer time than it takes to boil an egg hard, it will be full of an opaque white substance, which is the very albumen we are speaking of. Our blood, then, contains white of egg; it contains, in fact, — if you care to know it, — sixty-five times more white of egg than fibrine, for in 1000 ounces of blood, you will find 195 of albumen, and only 3 of fibrine ; of casein, none. Nevertheless we eat cheese from time to time. And we generally eat more meat than eggs, and meat is principally composed of fibrine ! I should be a good deal puzzled to make you understand this, if we had not our grand list to refer to. Ounces Carbon 63 Hydrogen 7, etc. 52 FOODS AND COOKING Fibrine, casein, albumen, they are all the same thing in the main. It is one substance assuming different appear- ances, according to the occasion ; like actors who play- several parts in a piece, and go behind the scenes from time to time to change their dresses. The usual appear- ance of the aliment of nutrition in the blood is albumen ; and in the stomach, which is the dressing-room of our actors, fibrine and casein disguise themselves ingeniously as albumen ; trusting to albumen to come forward after- wards as fibrine or casein, when there is either a muscle to be formed or milk to be produced. Know, moreover, that albumen very often comes to us ready dressed, and it is not only from eggs Ave get it. As we have already found the fibrine of the muscle and the casein of milk in vegetables, so we shall also find there, and that without looking far, the albumen of the egg. It exists in grass, in salad, and in all the soft parts of vege- tables. The juice of root-vegetables in particular contains remarkable quantities of it. Boil, for instance, the juice of a turnip, after straining it quite clear, and you will see a white, opaque substance produced, exactly like that which you would observe under similar circumstances in the serum of the blood ; real white of egg, that is to say, — to call it by the name you are most familiar with, — with all its due proportions of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. I wonder whether you feel as I do, dear child ; for I own that I turn giddy almost when I look too long into these depths of the mysteries of nature. Here, for instance, is the substance which is found everywhere, and every- where the same — in the grass as in the egg, in your blood as in turnip-juice ! And with this one sole substance which it has pleased the great Creator to throw broadcast into everything you eat, He has fashioned all the thousand portions of your frame, diverse and delicate as they are ; never once undoing it, so to speak, to rearrange differently THE PROTEIDS 53 the elements of which it is composed. From time to time it receives some slight impulse which alters its appearance bat not its nature, and that is all. As the chemist found it in the bit of salad, so he will find it again in the tip of your nose, if you will trust him with that for examination. We are proud of our personal appearance sometimes, and smile at ourselves in the looking-glass ; we think the body a very precious thing ; but yet when we look deeply into it, we find it merely so much charcoal, water, and air. FOODS OF COMBUSTION AND NUTRITION {Continued) This reminds me that we have not yet made acquaint- ance with the new personage who was lately introduced upon the scene. Nitrogen, I mean. He plays too impor- tant a part to be allowed to remain in obscurity. You have already learnt that oxygen united with hydro- gen produces water. Combined with nitrogen it produces air ; but in that case there is no union of the two. They are merely neighbors, occupying between them the whole space extending from the earth's surface to forty or fifty miles above our heads; together everywhere, but every- where as entire strangers to each other as two Englishmen who have never been introduced ! I should be a good deal puzzled to say what nitrogen does in the air : he is there as an inert body, and leaves all the business to the oxygen. When we breathe, for instance, the nitrogen enters our lungs together with its inseparable companion, but it goes out as it went in, without leaving a trace of its passage. Nevertheless, as sometimes happens among men, the one who does nothing takes up the most room. Nitrogen alone occupies four-fifths of the atmosphere, where it is of no other use than to moderate the ardent activity of king oxygen, who would consume everything were he alone. 54 FOODS AND COOKING I can compare it to nothing better than to the water yon mix with wine, which would be too fiery for your inside if you drank it by itself. This is what nitrogen does. It puts the drag on the car of combustion ; as in society the large proportion of quiet people put the drag on the car of progress (let us for once indulge ourselves in talk- ing like the newspapers !) ; and such people are of definite use, however irritating their interference may appear in some cases. The world would go on too rapidly if there were nothing but oxygen among men. We have quite enough in having a fifth of it ! But what in the world am I talking about ? Let us get back to nitrogen as fast as we can ! We must not imagine there is no energy in this quiet moderator of oxygen. Like those calm people who become terrible when once roused, our nitrogen becomes extremely violent in his actions when he is excited by another sub- stance, and is bent on forming alliances. Sometimes the usually cold neighbor unites itself to oxygen in the closest bonds ; in which case the two together form that power- ful liquid, aqua-fortis, of which you may have heard, and which corrodes copper, burns the skin, and devours indis- criminately almost everything it comes in contact with. Combined with hydrogen, nitrogen forms ammonia, one of the most powerful bodies in existence, and one for which you would very soon learn to entertain a proper respect, if somebody were to uncork a bottle of it under your nose. Finally, nitrogen and carbon combined produce a quite foreign substance (cyanogen), resembling neither father nor mother in its actions and powers. This impertinent fellow, combining with hydrogen in his turn, produces prussic acid, the most frightful of poisons ; one drop of which placed on the tongue of a horse strikes it dead as if by lightning. You perceive that you must not trust our worthy friend THE PROTEIDS 00 too far. You have learnt, however, elsewhere, that it is not equally formidable in all its combinations. Those very sub- stances which, when paired off into small separate groups, destroy all before them, constitute, all four together, that precious aliment of nutrition of which we are formed. People are in the habit of estimating the nourishing power of our food by the amount of nitrogen it contains. In fact, nitrogen seems to be a substance especially inclined toward everything that has life. His three comrades wander in mighty streams, so to speak, through every part of creation ; but he, except in the vast domain of the atmosphere, where he reigns in such majestic repose, is rarely met with, except in animals, or in such portions of plants as are destined for the support of animal life. The animal himself can do nothing with it, unless it has been previously absorbed and digested by the vegetable, and the vegetable in its turn could get no good from it, were it to remain isolated and indifferent in the bosom of the atmosphere. It is only when it has formed one of those combinations I have been telling you about, and more par- ticularly the second, which produces ammonia, that it fairly enters upon the round of life. The vegetable kingdom, therefore, is simply the great kitchen in which the dinner of the animal kingdom is being constantly made ready ; and when we eat beef, it is, in fact, the grass which the ox has eaten, which nourishes us. The animal is only a medium which transmits intact to us the albumen extracted in his own stomach from the juices furnished to him in the fields. He is the waiter of the eating-house ; the dishes which he brings us have been given him already cooked in the kitchen. But to appre- ciate properly the service he renders us we must remember that the dishes to be obtained from grass are veiy, very small, and that it would be a great fatigue to the stomach if it could only get at such tiny scraps at a time ; as, alas ! 56 FOODS AND COOKING has sometimes happened to the famine-stricken poor, who have tried in vain to support life from the grass in the field. But these minute dishes are brought to us in the mass whenever we eat beef, and our stomachs benefit accord- ingly. Do not forget this, my child ; and when your mother asks you to eat meat, obey her with a good grace. EVOLUTION OF METHODS OF COOKING Without doubt the earliest method of cooking was roast- ing. Charles Lamb has suggested its possible origin in his essay on Roast Pig. After roasting, the idea of baking probably developed. Sir John Lubbock gives this account of the way that the Tahitians baked the hog. " They made a small pit in the ground, which they paved with large stones, over which they then lighted fires. When the stones were hot enough they took out the embers, raked away the ashes, and covered the stones with green cocoanut leaves. The animal having been cleaned and prepared was wrapped in plantain leaves and covered with hot embers, on which they again placed bread- fruit and yams, also wrapped in plantain leaves. Over this they spread the rest of the embers, and more hot stones, and finally covered all with earth. The meat thus cooked is very tender and full of gravy." Boiling food is said to be unknown to certain tribes even at the present day. The most primitive pots were made, not from metal, but skin, or bark, or wood. One of the Indian tribes were called in their own language " stone boilers," from the way in which they boiled their meat. A hole in the ground was lined with the skin of the ani- mal to be cooked. Into this they poured water, hot stones, and the meat. THE PROTEIDS 57 THE ROAST PIG Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, jnst as they do in Abys- sinia to this day. This period is not obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the second chapter of his "Mundane Mutations," where he designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, literally the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript goes on to say that the art of roasting, or rather broiling (which I take to be the elder brother), was accidentally discovered in the manner follow- ing. The swineherd, Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods, one morning, as his manner was, to collect beech- nuts for his hogs, left his cottage in the care of his eldest son Bo-bo, a great lubberly boy, who, being fond of playing with fire, as younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks escape into a bundle of straw, which, kindling quickly, spread the conflagration over eveiy part' of their poor mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with the cottage (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a building you may think it), what was of much more importance, a litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than nine in number, per- ished. China pigs have been esteemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost consternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake of the tenement, which his father and he could easily build up again with a few dry branches and the labor of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to his father, and wringing his hands over the smok- ing remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odor assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had before 58 FOODS AND COOKING experienced. What could it proceed from ? — not from the burnt cottage, he had smelt that smell before — indeed, this was by no means the first accident of the kind that had occurred through the negligence of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life, indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted — crackling ! Again he felt and fum- bled at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still lie licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at length broke into his slow understanding that it was the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so delicious ; and surrendering himself up to the new-born pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire entered amid the smoking raf- ters, armed with retributory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to rain blows upon the young rogue's shoul- ders, as thick as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded not an} T more than if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure which he experienced in his lower regions had rendered him quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sensible of his situ- ation, something like the following dialogue ensued : — " You graceless whelp, what have you got there devour- ing ? Is it not enough that you have burnt me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be hanged to you ! but THE PROTEIDS 59 you must be eating fire, and I know not what — what have you got there, I say ? " " O father, the pig, the pig ! do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats." The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed his son, and he cursed himself that he ever should beget a son that should eat burnt pig. Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rending it asunder thrust the lesser half by main force into the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, " Eat, eat, eat the burnt pig, father, only taste — O Lord ! " — with such like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as if he would choke. Ho-ti trembled in every joint, while he grasped the abomi- nable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the crac- kling scorched his fingers, as it had done his son's, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavor, which, make what sour mouths he would for a pretence, proved not altogether displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the manuscript here is a little tedious), both father and son fairly sat down to the mess and never left off till they had despatched all that remained of the litter. Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret escape, for the neighbors would certainly have stoned them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could think of improv- ing upon the good meat which God had sent them. Never- theless, strange stories got about. It was observed that Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down now more frequently than ever, nothing but fires from this time forward. Some would break out in broad day, others in the night-time. As often as the sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remarkable, instead of chastising his son, seemed to grow more indulgent to him than ever. At length, they 60 FOODS AND COOKING were watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, the ob- noxious food itself produced in court, and verdict about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the culprits stood accused, might be handed into the box. He handled it, and they all handled it ; and burning their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before them, and nature prompting to each of them the same remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the clearest charge which judge had ever given, — to the surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, stran- gers, reporters, and all present, without leaving the box, or any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty. The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the manifest iniquity of the decision, and when the court was dismissed, went privily and bought up all the pigs that could be had for love or money. In a few days his lord- ship's town house was observed to be on fire. The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be seen but fires in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew enormously dear all over the district. The insurance offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter and slighter every day, until it was feared that. the very science of architec- ture would in no long time be lost to the world. Thus this custom of firing houses continued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discovery that the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might be cooked (burnt, as they called it) without the necessity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the string or spit came a century or two later, I forget in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes the manuscript, do the most useful and COOKING 61 seemingly the most obvious arts make their way among mankind. Without placing too implicit faith in the account above given, it must be agreed that, if a worthy pretext for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses on fire (espe- cially in these days) could be assigned in favor of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse might be found in Roast Pig. — From "The Essays of Elia," by Charles Lamb. COOKING She knew that the gift of cooking was not vouchsafed by God to her ; but sometimes she would do her best by intellect to win it. Whereas, it is no more to be won by intellect than is divine poetry. An amount of strong, quick heart is needful and understanding must second it, in the one art as in the other. — From "Lorna Doone," by R. D. Blackmore. THE SALMON The salmon is a most beautiful fish. Even those who see it only in the markets cannot fail to mark its fine shape. It is plainly "built for speed." Like other fish its eggs are first laid and then fertilized in the water. For this reason it is quite possible to raise them by hand. The salmon mother averages from seven to eight hun- dred eggs to every pound of her oavii flesh. In about a month after they are fertilized, two little black eyes can be seen. But it is three months or more before the little fish bursts its shell. Even then the egg remains attached to its body for six weeks or so, until finally it is all ab- sorbed. 62 FOODS AND COOKING When it is two years old, it only measures nine or ten inches in length. Up to this time the whole of its life has been passed in a river. But jnst as soon as it is long enough and strong enough, it seeks the sea. Here it lives on the fat of the water for several years. But finally it remembers the quiet spot where it was born, leaves the sea for the river, and there deposits its eggs. Now, or rather a little ear- lier, is the time to catch it, for on its return voyage it is a lean and lank individual which it is almost impossible to recognize as the plump and fat salmon who ascended the stream. If it reaches the sea again, it speedily recovers its fat, only to lose it again on its next yearly pilgrimage to the spawning ground. These singular journeys are undertaken by other food fishes, notably the mackerel, shad, and herring. For many years the United States government by her Fish Commission has kept up the supply of salmon by artifi- cial breeding. The adult fish are caught just as they reach the spawning field. The roe and milt are mixed together in sea water. The eggs are then placed in a narrow trough of running water. They are in wire cloth trays one above the other and about four deep. Just as fast as they hatch, they wriggle through the holes of the wire into the space below the tray. Here they remain until all are hatched. They are now placed in rearing tanks, fed with boiled corn meal, chopped meat, fly maggots, etc., until they are a year old. Then they are planted in likely streams and live the usual life of salmon who have not received so much intel- ligent care in their babyhood and yet have managed to survive. COOKING 63 EGGS An egg and to bed. much after an < " Old English Sayings." You must drink as much after an egg as after an ox. He that buys land buys stones ; He that buys flesh buys bones ; He that buys eggs buys many shells ; But he that buys good fresh milk, why he buys nothing else ! — Adapted from an Old English Rhyme. The egg was held in great veneration by the Egyptians, to whom it symbolized the world. Ostrich eggs were hung in their temples and were a part of the tribute exacted by them from conquered nations. The Persians, too, regarded it in the same way, and during a yearly festival held in the spring, it was customary for friends to exchange eggs. Egg cups, much like those that we use to-day, were found in the excavation of Pompeii. The Romans, however, roasted their eggs, following in this, after all, the usual custom of ancient times. For, as many have noticed, the heroes of Homer ate roasted, not boiled, meat. In our own day the egg is still used in many religions as a symbol of a new life. From this has originated the custom of giving eggs for Easter presents. THE LAMENT OF AN OYSTER 'Tis the voice of the oyster, I hear him complain : I can't live in this place, Here's the sandstorm again. I was sitting to rest 'Mid the rocks and the tiles They had made for a home, 64 FOODS AND COOKING But this sand, how it riles ! It gets into my shell And the delicate fringe That I use when I breathe, And I can't shut my hinge When the grit lodges there. So the crabs come at will, Since my poor mouth is open, They feed and they kill. I've complained to a friend, Who quite" understands, But he can't undertake To abolish the sands. Thus the native made moan, Though I took up the brown Bread and butter and lemon And swallowed him down ! — From "Punch." He was a very valiant man who first ventured on the eating of oysters. — King James I. (of England). Oysters and mushrooms are things which cannot prop- erly be called food, but mere provocatives of the appetite, causing those who are already full to eat more, a some- thing, no doubt, very pleasant to gluttons. — Seneca. What is the composition of oysters ? Was Seneca right or wrong ? The poor Britons, there is some good in them after all — they produce an oyster ! — Sallust. FOODS — THE CARBOHYDRATES 65 FOODS — THE CARBOHYDRATES STARCH We are all familiar with flour, potatoes, Indian corn, and therefore we know to some extent what starch is, for all these things contain starch, along with water and a few other ingredients. But the starch of one plant differs from that of another in size and shape. For instance, the hardness of rice is due to the fact that the rice granules are very small, with sharp corners which fit closely together ; but potato starch is large and round, with spaces between the grains filled with water, and so forms a rather soft mass. The granules of starch are each surrounded with a sac of a material hard to digest. Much cooking, however, results in the rupture of this coat. The material thus set free is changed into sugar by the saliva, the pancreatic, and the intestinal juices, and is therefore an excellent fuel food. It should not, of course, make the exclusive diet of any one. Even when . it occupies the subordinate position which belongs to it, it must be thoroughly cooked. The starches are used in several important manufactures. Dextrine or British gum is made by putting starch to a great heat, and is preferred to gum arabic, because it is not so liable to curl up the stamps or other paper prepared with it. Starch is used, too, to make glucose or grape sugar. This is made by acting on the starch with sulphuric acid. Linen rags are used for the same purpose. It is wonder- ful how few things are altogether useless at the present day. RICE IN JAPAN Rice sets the tone so completely in the diet of the Japan- ese that the chief meals are called morning, noon, and even- 66 FOODS AND COOKING ing rice. Poor people in the mountains who have to feed on buckwheat, wheat, and barley at least use rice as food for children, for the old, and for the sick. The Japanese hold rice to be the best form of nourish- ment, and the white radish or the fruit of the egg-plant as a seasoning for every meal. Where rice thrives, the people are fortunate. North Japan passes for poor, because it has to buy its rice. — From Ratzel's "History of Mankind." RICE CULTURE Rice lands were originally always on the banks of rivers, first, because in this way it was easy to flood the fields as required and, second, because of the cheapness and conven- ience of river transport in sending the grain to the mill. Nowadays, especially in Mexico, rice is easily grown in the interior, for it is now so easy to irrigate any land at will. The rice plantations of Georgia and South Carolina are surrounded by a dam. This has flood gates and trunks through which the river water reaches the fields. The seed, carefully selected, is soavii from April to the middle of May. It is then lightly covered with soil, and the field flooded with water. In less than a week the seed begins to sprout. The water is then drawn off. When the plants appear like needles above the ground, the " sprout flow " is turned on. In less than a week it is again drawn off. When the plants are six weeks old, and again ten days later, they are lightly hoed. The hoeing scene is very picturesque. The men have on the fewest clothes and broadest hats possible. The women are dressed in short, scanty skirts, leggins, and either a broad-brimmed hat or a kerchief. Both men and women are smoking a primitive pipe made from a stick on FOODS — THE CARBOHYDRATES 67 which is a piece of punk. This is done to keep away the sand-flies. After the completion of this hoeing comes the " stretch" flow. The young plants, which are now several inches high, are nourished and strengthened by the water, which silts off all the weeds. When the water is allowed to subside, the upper leaves of the plant, now longer than the height of the water, float upon its surface, making lovely waving lines of exquisite green, a harmony of color and form never forgotten by those who have seen it. After the water has been entirely drawn off, the ground is allowed to dry out. Then comes the time of the deep hoeing. The last hoeing is given when the plant shows the joint which indicates its membership with the great Grass Family. Then for the last time the water is turned into the fields again (the harvest flow), and there it remains for about two months, until the grain is fully ripe. A few days before the harvesting the field is drawn dry and the ditches cleaned. The fields are harvested by hand with sickles, dried, tied into bundles which are piled upon platforms, and finally taken to the threshing mills. The barge that arrives at the mills first receives a prize. The careful master of olden times used to give them all a cup of grog, and require them to bathe and change their clothing. One of the greatest enemies of the rice field is the bird known to Northerners as the bobolink, in the Middle States as the reed-bird, and in the South as the rice-bird. They are extremely fat, and such very delicious eating that we can scarcely blame the rice planter for killing as many as he can, for they are also very destructive of this, his main crop. 68 FOODS AND COOKING STORY OF THE POTATO It has been said that Christopher Columbus was the first European who ever tasted a potato. This was in 1492, when he reached the West Indies. He brought samples home with him. It happens, however, that the white potato is not a native of these parts, and could not have been there when he landed. What he tasted and brought home with him was " batatas," or sweet potato, a very different article. But it gave its name, batatas, — potatoes, — to our tuber. The real potato is a native of Chili, and did not exist in North America before the arrival of the Europeans. How, then, could Sir Walter Raleigh bring it home with him from Virginia? Before Sir Walter went to Virginia, the Spaniards had brought the' real potato from South America. They had sent it home to Spain and planted it in North America. But did he bring it? There are some who say that it was Sir Francis Drake who brought the roots and pre- sented them to Sir Walter. He planted them on his estate near Cork ; but there are others who say that he knew so little of the virtues of the plant he was naturaliz- ing that he had apples, not potatoes, cooked and served upon his own table. During the whole of the seventeenth century the potato was found only in the gardens of the gentry in England. It was by many said to be poisonous. This early dislike of the potato may have been due to the fact that people did not know how to cook it, and possibly ate it raw ; for it is certainly not wholesome unless cooked, and it may be poisonous. Then again it belongs to a family of ill repute — that of the deadly nightshade. To this same family belong also the mandrake, tomato, jimson weed, cayenne pepper, and to- FOODS — THE CARBOHYDRATES 69 bacco. Even the tempting appearance of the tomato did not win it favor when first introduced into Europe, and even now it is not eaten as freely there as we eat it. It is not only as a food plant that the potato has se- cured the respect of mankind. Starch is made from it both for the laundry and for the manufacture of farina, dextrine, etc. The dried pulp from which starch has been extracted is used for making boxes. Raw potato is a cooling application for burns. And in Norway a liquor is distilled from it called brandy. Carried around in the pocket it is said to be a charm against rheuma- tism and toothache. Mr. Andrew Lang mentions an instance of faith in this cure which he came across in a London drawing-room. He thinks that this belief is a survival of the old superstitions about the mandrake, and that it is similar to the habit of African tribes who wear roots around their necks as a protection against wild animals. — Adapted from "All the Year Round. " LEGEND OF THE CORN And he saw a youth approaching, Dressed in garments, green and yellow, Coming through the purple twilight, Through the splendor of the sunset, Plumes of green bent o'er his forehead, And his hair was soft and golden. Standing at the open doorway, Long he looked at Hiawatha, Looked with pity and compassion On his wasted form and features, And, in accents like the sighing Of the South Wind in the tree-tops, Said he, " O my Hiawatha! 70 FOODS AND COOKING All your prayers are heard in heaven, For yon pray not like the others; Not for greater skill in hunting, Not for greater craft in fishing, Not for triumph in the battle, Nor renown among the warriors, But for profit of the people, For advantage of the nations. " From the Master of Life descending, I, the friend of man, Mondamin, Come to warn you and instruct you, How by struggle and by labor You shall gain what you have prayed for, Rise up from your bed of branches, Rise, O youth, and wrestle with me ! " Faint with famine, Hiawatha, Started from his bed of branches, From the twilight of his wigwam Forth into the flush of sunset Came, and wrestled with Mondamin. At his touch he felt new courage Throbbing in his brain and bosom, Felt new life and hope and vigor Run through every nerve and fibre. " 'Tis enough ! " then said Mondamin, Smiling upon Hiawatha, " But to-morrow, when the sun sets, I will come again to try you." On the morrow and the next day, When the sun through heaven descending Like a red and burning cinder From the hearth of the Great Spirit, Fell into the western waters, Came Mondamin for the trial, For the strife with Hiawatha ; FOODS — THE CARBOHYDRATES 71 Came as silent as the dew comes, From the empty air appearing, Into empty air returning, Taking shape when earth it touches, But invisible to all men In its coming and its going. Thrice they wrestled there together In the glory of the sunset, Till the darkness fell around them, Till the heron, the shuh-shuh-gah, From her nest among the pine trees, Uttered her loud cry of famine, And Mondamin paused to listen. Tall and beautiful he stood there, In his garments, green and yellow ; To and fro, his plumes above him, Waved and nodded, with his breathing, And the sweat of the encounter Stood like drops of dew upon him. And he cried, " O Hiawatha ! Bravely have you wrestled with me, Thrice have wrestled stoutly with me. And the Master of Life, who sees us, He will give to you the triumph ! " Then he smiled, and said, " To-morrow Is the last day of your conflict, Is the last day of your fasting. You will conquer and o'ercome me ; Make a bed for me to lie in, Where the rain will fall upon me, Where the sun may come and warni me ; Strip these garments, green and yellow, Strip this nodding plumage from me, Lay me in the earth, and make it Soft and loose and light above me/' 72 FOODS AND COOKING On the morrow came Nokomis, On the seventh clay of his fasting, Came with food for Hiawatha, Came imploring and bewailing, Lest his hunger should o'er come him, Lest his fasting should be fatal. But he tasted not, and touched not, Only said to her, " Nokomis, Wait until the sun is setting, Till the darkness falls around us, Till the heron, the shuh-shuh-gah, Crying from the desolate marshes, Tells us that the day is ended." He meanwhile sat weary waiting For the coming of Mondamin, Till the shadows, pointing eastward, Lengthened over field and forest, Till the sun dropped from the heaven, Floating on the waters westward, As a red leaf in the autumn Falls and floats upon the water, Falls and sinks upon its bosom. And behold ! the young Mondamin, With his soft and shining tresses, With his garments, green and yellow, With his long and glossy plumage, Stood and beckoned at the doorway. And as one in slumber walking, Pale and haggard, but undaunted, From the wigwam Hiawatha Came and wrestled with Mondamin. Suddenly upon the greensward All alone stood Hiawatha, Panting with his wild exertion, Palpitating with the struggle ; FOODS THE CARBOHYDRATES And before him, breathless, lifeless, Lay the youth, with hair dishevelled, Plumage torn, and garments tattered, Dead he lay there in the sunset. And victorious Hiawatha Made the grave as he commanded, Stripped the garments from Mondamin, Stripped his tattered plumage from him, Laid him in the earth and made it Soft and loose and light above him ; And the heron, the shuh-shuh-gah, From the melancholy moorlands, Gave a cry of lamentation, Gave a cry of pain and anguish ! Homeward, then, went Hiawatha To the lodge of old Nokomis, And the seven days- of his fasting Were accomplished and completed. But the place was not forgotten, Where he wrestled with Mondamin ; Nor forgotten, nor neglected, Was the grave where lay Mondamin, Sleeping in the rain and sunshine, Where his scattered plumes and garments Faded in the rain and sunshine. Day by day did Hiawatha Go to wait and watch beside it ; Kept the dark mould soft above it, Kept it clean from weeds and insects, Drove away with scoffs and shoutings, Kahgahgee, the king of ravens. Till at length a small green feather From the earth shot slowly upward, Then another and another, And before the summer ended 74 FOODS AND COOKING Stood the maize in all its beauty, With its shining robes about it, And its long soft yellow tresses ; And in rapture, Hiawatha Cried aloud, " It is Mondamin ! Yes, the friend of man, Mondamin ! " Then he called to old Nokomis And Iagoo, the great boaster, Showed them where the maize was growing, Told them of his wondrous vision, Of his wrestling and his triumph, Of this new gift to the nations, Which should be their food forever. And still later, when the Autumn Changed the long green leaves to yellow, And the soft and juicy kernels Grew, like wampum, hard and yellow, Then the ripened ears he gathered, Stripped the withered husks from off them, As he once had stripped the wrestler, Gave the first Feast of Mondamin, And made known unto the people This new gift of the Great Spirit. — From " Hiawatha," hy Henry W. Longfellow. SUGAR Many plants contain sugar, but commercially, its chief source is the sugar and the beet root. Under the fostering intelligent care of our Agricultural Department, sorghum, a relative of the sugar-cane, is likely to be an important sugar producer in the future. In Asia the date palm, and in our own country the maple, add to the supply, and south- ern California has succeeded in making it from the water- melon. Grape sugar, or glucose, may be made from an FOODS — THE CARBOHYDRATES 75 old handkerchief, and is made in great quantities from starch. Milk sugar, chiefly used in medicines (homoe- opathic pills among other things), is made, as its name indi- cates, from milk. The sugar-cane is one of the most beautiful members of the great grass family, resembling somewhat in appearance its near relatives, the Indian corn, the sorghum, and the broom corn. These are all like each other in the fact that their stems are not hollow, but pithy, and in this pith is stored an abundant sweet juice. Sugar-cane needs plenty of moisture and a warm climate. The soil is a matter of less importance, for sugar-cane, like corn, seems to make small demands on the soil, and often grows for a dozen years without exhausting the soil. In Louisiana, the cane begins to grow in February, and is ready for harvesting between October and January. It is cut down with a hatchet. The top is chopped off, the leaves stripped from the stalk, and the bare canes carried on nar- row donkey rails to the plantation mill. Here the cane is crushed, and its juice extracted. This is then purified and cooked into molasses and sugar, which are shipped to one of the large Eastern refineries for better manufacture. The cane, from which the juice has been extracted, is used either for fuel, in the plantation mill, or else as a dressing for the cane fields. A VISIT TO A SUGAR REFINERY The great refineries are usually located along a water front, so that they may receive the crude sugar from the South with the greatest ease and the least expense. Now that the duty on sugar has been restored, the first handling of the West India sugar is by the employees of the United States government, who weigh and sample it as it is 76 FOODS AND COOKING swung from the ships. It is at once weighed again by a city weigher, whose salary is paid by the refineries. When at last the sugar reaches the factory, it is at once emptied into the mixer, great pans containing the almost boiling water in which the bags have been washed. After an hour's heating the scum of impurities at the top is skimmed off. Other impurities, " settled " if need be by adding lime water, are left on the bottom, while the clear liquid in between is raised to the top of these enormously high buildings. Here are the purifying tanks, in which on the addition of bullock's blood, or some other form of liquid protein, the sugar is further cleansed from impurities. The principle is the same as that by which we add the white of an egg to coffee. The albumen of the egg diffuses itself slowly and coagulating somewhat with the heat forms a mesh in which the solid particles are caught and carried to the bottom. The sugar is then filtered through bags of coarse cotton cloth. It is now a clear brown liquid. It has been freed from all insoluble impurities, but as its color shows it still contains some that are soluble. To get rid of these it is passed down through bone black (animal charcoal), and is now a perfectly colorless liquid. To turn this into sugar it is only necessary to cook it. This requires skill, judg- ment, and good apparatus, but all these are at the sugar refiner's command. When cooked sufficiently, it falls again. This time either into the centrifugal machine, which makes out of it granulated sugar, or else into cone-shaped moulds, from which come the beautiful, brilliant, white cones of sugar which were familiar to your mothers, wrapped in blue paper and ornamenting a grocer's shelf. From these cones, lump sugar is sawn, under cover, to prevent the loss of sugar dust. From the dust, by further grinding, pulverized sugar is made. FOOD — BREAD 77 FOOD — BREAD A LOAF OP BREAD If an ordinary grain of wheat be sliced through the middle, you will find it to consist of several layers : the outer, a fruit coat, chiefly woody fibre and useless for food. Then comes the hard seed coat of matter very rich in gluten, the part of the wheat that really nourishes us. In the centre there is a white powdery mass which is pure starch. In making flour by the new process, the outer layer, which forms what we call bran, is usually removed, leaving the gluten and the white starchy flour of the centre. Formerly little but the starch was used for flour. Then followed graham flour, in which every part was saved. The present method is to use all the seed, but not the woody fruit coats. To be fit for digestion starch must be softened by boiling or baking ; so we bake our bread because cooked starch is more easily acted on by the digestive juice than raw starch. Let us see what changes take place in making the flour into a loaf of baked bread. The necessary quantity of flour is put into a pan with half its weight of water, some salt and yeast, and mixed up into what is known as the "sponge." This is mixed up and left for some time in a warm place, after which it is kneaded with the rest of the flour and again left to rest. The dough is then divided into small parts and put in tins, and set aside until they have risen to twice their previous size. It is the yeast that causes the raising of bread. The flour contains a small quantity of a ferment which changes some of the starch into sugar; the yeast then attacks the sugar, changing it into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The little bubbles of this latter try to escape from the mass of the dough, but get tangled up in the gluten <5 FOODS AND COOKING and gum which the flour contains ; and thus every part of the dough becomes full of little cavities. If this went on without a stop being put to it, the bubbles of gas would find their way out in the end. The dough would " fall," and the bread would be heavy. But the baker guards against this by putting it, at the proper time, into a hot oven, the heat of which first increases the fermentation. In a few minutes, however, the heat becomes great enough to kill the yeast, — the fermentation, therefore, stops ; the starch granules are burst by the heat, and the mass keeps the porous form. During the baking, the starch of the outer parts of the bread has been browned by the heat and changed into a sugar known as dextrin. Maybe this is the reason why some people are so fond of the crust. The heat of the oven has changed the outside of the bread into sugar, and the starch in the inside has in fact been boiled in the steam of the water which the dough contained, so that it has become ready to be converted into sugar by the action of the saliva and intestinal juices. The porous nature of the bread helps in this change, for the juices easily penetrate through the whole mass. It must be remembered that the starch of bread does not give us nourishment. It produces heat ; and, just like the coal of the engine, the starch or sugar is burned up inside us to keep up the temperature of the body. It is the gluten, the sticky material of the grain, which is the flesh-forming material. CRACKERS Crackers are probably of very ancient date. Some are inclined to think they find an allusion to them in the first book of Kings, where Jeroboam sends his wife to consult the prophet Ahijah about his son who has fallen sick, bidding her take with her " ten loaves, and cracknels, and a cruse of honey." All the countries of Europe have F0( >D BREAD 79 been cracker making from time immemorial, and most of them have a name for the things, indicating that they originally underwent a double process of cooking. The English call them bis-cnit, meaning " twice cooked." Even the old Romans had their " twice-baked bread," and there is at least one kind of cracker still made by a double cook- ing. The cracknel is first plunged into boiling water and then baked; though whether the "cracknels" of the modern factory at all resemble the " cracknels " of King Jeroboam's time, one cannot say. The original form of the thing was simplicity itself. It was just a mixture of flour and water spread out thin and baked till all the moisture was driven out of it. It was their extreme dryness that permitted of their being stored for eighteen months, or two years, if necessary, without spoiling, and it was in order to get them as dry as possible that they were made thin, and cooked twice, and thrice, and sometimes four times over. Not only was the moisture of the dough thus driven out of them, but the water originally embodied in the flour Avas evaporated also, so that ten pounds of flour would make only about nine pounds of crackers. They were, no doubt, in the first instance, merely a form of unfermented bread, espe- cially adapted for storage, and particularly on board ship during long voyages. Hence the Roman "sea-cracker." That was pretty certainly the original form of the thing — just a thin, well-baked cake of flour and water, as dry as a chip, and so hard that a hatchet was often required to chop it up. But the arts of modern confectionery have developed this rather unappetizing germ into a marvellous variety of knickknacks; and, by catering to every variety of taste all over the world, a really great industry has been developed, quite apart from the enormous trade in ship crackers. The baking of crackers has been reduced to an art of 80 FOODS AND COOKING the greatest precision and nicety. No one ever sees an underdone or an overdone cracker, at least, not from any factory of repute; and if you open a box of them you will find that all the crackers of the same kind are of pre- cisely the same shade of color. From the mode of manu- facture, up to the mouth of the oven, it will be seen that in each batch the little cakes are bound to be all alike in composition, in shape, and in thickness; and if they are all exposed to exactly the same heat, for exactly the same length of time, they are found to come out exactly the same complexion. This equal baking is secured in an extremely simple way. The ovens are not of the ordinary baker's type. They are really hot chambers, through which battalions of crackers, spread out in orderly array on tins, continue all day long to pass in at one end and out at the other, endless chains, especially constructed, bearing them along at a speed carefully regulated accord- ing to the time any particular kind of cracker will take to properly bake. The lighter kinds may run through the fiery chamber in about four minutes. The heavier sorts, of course, receive longer baking, and they travel more slowly. An ingenious piece of mechanism permits of the speed being regulated with the greatest possible nicety to the requirements of each kind. Nothing re- mains but to convey these entirely machine-made crackers to the vast floors where they are sorted and packed. The whole factory from end to end, so far as the great bulk of the business is concerned, has scarcely anything in common with the cracker bakeries of fifty or sixty years ago. — Adapted from " Modern Biscuit Making," Chambers' 1 s Journal. HOT CROSS-BUNS A superstition regarding bread baked on Good Friday appears to have existed from an early period. Bread so FOOD — BREAD 81 baked was kept by a family all through the ensuing year, under a belief that a few gratings of it in water would prove a specific for any ailment. We see a memorial of this ancient superstition in the use of what are called hot cross-buns, which may now be said to be the most promi- nent popular observance connected with the day. In London, and all over England (not, however, in Scotland), the morning of Good Friday is ushered in with a universal cry of " Hot Cross-Buns ! " A parcel of them appears on every breakfast table. It is a rather small bun, more than usually spiced, and having its brown sugary surface marked with a cross. Thousands of poor children and old frail people take up for this day the business of disseminating these quasi-religious cakes, only intermitting the duty during church hours; and if the eagerness with which young and old eat them could be held as expressive of an appropriate sentiment within their hearts, the English might be deemed a pious people. The ear of every person who has ever dwelt in England is familiar with the cry of the street bun- venders : — "One a penny, buns, Two a penny, buns, One a penny, two a penny, Hot cross-buns ! " Whether it be from failing appetite, the chilling effects of age, or any other fault in ourselves, we cannot say, but it strikes us that neither in the bakers' shops nor from the baskets of the street venders can one now get hot cross- buns comparable to those of past times. They want the spice, the crispness, the everything, they once had. Older people than we speak also with mournful affection of the two noted bun houses of Chelsea. Nay, they were royal bun houses, if their signs could be believed, the popular legend always insinuating that the king himself had 82 FOODS AND COOKING stopped there, bought, and eaten the buns. Early in the present century, families of the middle classes walked a considerable way to taste the delicacies of the Chelsea bun houses, on the seats beneath the shed which screened the pavement in front. An insane rivalry, of course, existed between the two houses, one pretending to be The Chelsea bun house, and the other the Ileal Old Original Chelsea bun house. — Adapted from Chambers's "Book of Days." MEXICAN BREAD — THE TORTILLA The equipment of Mexican kitchens is very simple. There is simply a wall of adobe (sun-dried brick) about two feet high and two feet wide. It usually extends the whole length of the room. There are numbers of depres- sions in the bank, and in these burn the fires of charcoal or wood, in which are placed the pot and pans for cooking. Sometimes the bank of adobe is only a high cone, shaped like a mound, and with only one depression. In some parts of Mexico the cooking is done out of doors. Then when it rains there is no dinner. This matters less than it would with us, for the bulk of their food is fruit. Everywhere in Mexico the corn-cakes are eaten. The corn meal from which they are made is first softened by soaking it in lime Avater. When the hull can be separated from the grain, it is pounded and rolled upon a flat stone. For this a cylinder of stone, something like a rolling-pin, or a flat stone, or one slightly rounded, is used. With this rude tool the woman pounds and twists for hours. When the corn has thus been turned into sufficiently fine meal, water is added to it, and it is worked into dough. This is then rolled and patted with the hands until it is almost as thin as the blade of a knife. In the meantime the iron griddle has to be made hot by DRINKS 83 putting it over a fire. On it is placed the circular cake, which cooks in a very few minutes. These are white in color, usually without salt, and therefore rather tasteless. Still, they have the sweet of the grain, and are very much liked by all who eat them for any length of time. BREAD OF THE ZUNI INDIANS The Indians of New Mexico make their bread from corn meal. When the corn is shelled, grains of the same color are put together. Strange as it may seem, there are thus separated various tints of pink, blue, green, and yellow. Meals of different colors are made from these. Each is mixed separately with water until it forms a fine paste. This is then smeared over a hot stone slab with a quick mo- tion of the hand. The dough is so thin and the stone so hot that it takes but a moment to bake. Its surface is as highly polished as writing paper. In flavor, it has a delicate fresh bread flavor, and is said to be very delicious, particularly when eaten with salt. FOODS — SALADS Four persons are needed to make a good salad : — A counsellor for salt, A miser for vinegar, A spendthrift for oil, and A madman to stir it up ! — SpcuiisJi Proverb. DRINKS TEA CULTURE Next to silk, however, the product which we most nearly associate with China is tea, which proclaims its 84 FOODS AND COOKING nationality by the two names tea and clia, by which it is known all over the world. Te is the Amoy pronunciation of the word which is called clia in the central, western, and northern provinces of the empire. The Russians, therefore, who have always drawn their supplies through Siberia, call the leaf igne\" DINING WITH A MANDARIN Of all the repasts that can be imagined combining the greatest amount of ceremony with the least of anything eatable, commend us to a state banquet with a Chinese mandarin. When he is about to give an entertainment, he sends three invitations to all those whom he wishes to be his guests. One is sent out on each of the two days pre- ceding, and the last just before the feast. These are received by the invited with much humility and ceremony. Unless it is owing to the most pressing and important considerations, an invitation is never refused. When the guests arrive, the master of the house points to a chair, making at the same time a deep bow. He wipes it with his gown. He opens the conversation by express- ing his delight at the great and unmerited honor that his guest has conferred upon the unworthy house. He ex- presses the hope that the never-to-be-sufficiently-honored wife and beautiful children are well in health. To this his guest responds in the same strain. He expresses his gratitude that he has been able to bring his vile body into this magnificent abode. He says that his unworthy wife and miserable offspring are only living that they may be assured of his lord's health. And so on. While each guest is thus exchanging the compliments of the day, all of the others are walking about the room, DINING WITH A MANDARIN 111 audibly and extravagantly admiring the furniture and ornaments. Not to do so is considered very impolite. When the compliments have been finished, the guests seat themselves in a beautiful dining room. The walls are covered with inscriptions, sometimes gilt, and adorned with banners and tapestry. A mandarin of royal blood hangs his walls with yellow silk embroidered with fierce dragons. The blue silk robes and white satin boots of the guests form a strong contrast of color to the surroundings. The numerous Chinese lanterns suspended from the ceiling throw a sufficient but subdued light on a very picturesque scene. The table is usually of a horse-shoe form. In the centre of it a play is sometimes acted during dinner. It is covered with little saucers piled one upon the other. Some are uncovered and contain sea slugs, ginger, a peculiar small orange, and pickles and preserves of all sorts. The first course is generally shark's fin and birds'-nest soup, which to foreigners resembles glue and lime wash. To these succeed roasted crab, boiled and stewed man- darin fish served with an acrid sauce, resembling molasses and alum in flavor. Pork, roasted, stewed, and boiled, forms the main part of this dinner, with stuffed wild fowl, and very rarely stewed mutton. The vegetable world is represented by yams and sweet potatoes. Huge dishes of curry conclude the more solid portion of the dinner. It must not be supposed that all these delicacies follow each other in the order above stated. All the food is placed on the board at the same time. It is minced into small por- tions so as to give the guests the least possible trouble. The number of separate saucers containing eatables 112 THE DINING ROOM placed before a stranger shows the honor in which he is held. When all are seated, their entertainer gives the signal to hegin. Each lifts his chopsticks, carries his food to his mouth, and lays them clown, all exactly at the same moment. This same order is preserved to the end, an officer beating time to keep them uniform. The dinner lasts three or four hours, but it is not neces- sary to eat all the time. It is sufficient to carry the chop- sticks to the mouth. Moreover, there is usually a pause in the middle of the dinner. It is at this moment that the best view of the scene is obtained. Leaning back in their chairs, the >fat old man- darins await with satisfaction the arrival of " sainshu," a drink distilled from rice. This and tea are the only liquids consumed. Behind each of the mandarins sits a geisha, whose duty it is to enliven the dessert with music. In between times they crack nuts and peel oranges for the guests. At last the feast is over, at a signal from the hostHhe assembly breaks up. All the guests make two profound bows toward their entertainer and each other. The master of the house now abuses the whole affair. But the guests assure him they have been sumptuously entertained. The remains of the feast are divided into equal portions, and sent to each of the guests. The next day he sends a formal note of thanks for the entertainment that has been given him. And this is the last ceremony connected with the man- darin's dinner. — Adapted from ' ' Belgravia. ' ' CHRISTMAS DINNER AT BOB CRATCHIT'S 113 A JAPANESE MEAL Each person is separately served on a small table or tray. For his solid food he uses chopsticks, bnt his soup he drinks from a small lacquered bowl. Upon his table will be found a small porcelain bowl of rice, and dishes upon which are relishes of fish, etc. ; a teapot, for the contents of which a saucer instead of a cup is used. The stimulants will be either tea or r rice beer. The tea is native green, and no milk or sugar is used. It is drunk on every possible occasion, and is even served when one visits a shop. The tea apparatus is always in readiness in the living room. A laborer going to work carries with him a box of lacquered wood for his rice, a kettle, a tea- caddy, a teapot, a cup, and chopsticks. Rice being the principal article of food, a servant kneels near by with a large panful. She replenishes the bowls as they are held out to her. Bread is seldom used. Other favorite foods are gigantic radishes, lotus roots, young bamboo shoots, cucumbers, of which a single per- son will often eat three and four in a day, and the egg- plant. With fruits the Japanese is scantily supplied, but the persimmon, a brilliant, orange-colored fruit, the size of an apple, is common enough. — "Japan and its Art," by Marcus B. Huish. CHRISTMAS DINNER AT BOB CRATCHIT'S Such a bustle there was ! You might have thought a goose was the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course. In truth, it was something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a 114 THE DINING ROOM little saucepan) hissing hot. Master Peter washed the potatoes with incredible vigor. Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce. Martha dusted the hot plates. Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table. The two Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forget- ting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons in their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause ; Mrs. Cratchit, look- ing slowly all along the carving knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast. But when she did, and when the long- expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all around the board. Even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife and feebly cried, Hurrah ! There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there was ever such a goose cooked. Its tender- ness and flavor, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family. Indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (survey- ing one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at last ! Yet every one had had enough. And the youngest Cratchits in particular were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone — too nervous to bear witnesses — to take the pudding up and bring it in. Suppose it should not be done enough ! Suppose it should break in turning out ! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back yard and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose — a supposition at which the young Cratchits became livid ! All sorts of horrors were supposed. CHRISTMAS DINNER AT BOB CRATCHIT's 115 Hullo ! a great deal of steam. The pudding was out of the copper, a smell like washing day ! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating house and a pastry cook's next door to each other, with a laundress next door to that ! That was the pudding ! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered — flushed, but smiling proudly — with the pudding like a speckled cannon ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half a quartern of ignited brandy, and bedecked with Christmas holly stuck into the top. Oh, a wonderful pudding ! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly, too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing. At last dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovelful of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew around the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning: half a one. At Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass, two tumblers and a custard cup without a handle. These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done ; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sput- tered and cracked noisily. Tiny Tim sat close by his father's side, upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his as if lie loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him. Then Bob 116 THE DINING ROOM proposed : " A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us ! " Which all the family reechoed. " God bless us every one ! " said Tiny Tim, the last of all. — From "Christmas Carol," by Charles Dickens. THE BEDROOM AND VENTILATION THE BEDROOM AND VENTILATION AN OLD RIDDLE Formed long ago, yet made to-day, I'm most in use whilst others sleep ; What few would wish to give away, But fewer still would wish to keep. God bless the man that first invented sleep. — Laurence Sterne. BEDS OF ANIMALS The beds of birds are often luxurious and always beauti- ful. Some are lined with hair, others with velvet moss, or woven feathers, or softest thistledown. The cocoons of many insects are built of silk. Others sleep on beds of leaves, or wood paper. The wild rabbit makes a soft couch of withered leaves and her own fur far down in her burrow. The deer loves to rake together dead leaves and fern stalks. MEXICAN BED— THE HAMMOCK Hammocks were invented by the Indians of Spanish America. These were made of cotton or plaited grass. They were suspended from the boughs of a tall tree by ropes of the same material. The Indians used them for 119 120 THE BEDROOM AND VENTILATION chairs as well as beds. The height at which they were swung insured not only the enjoyment of every puff of air, but also safety from snakes and insects and the night dews. They were soon adopted by the Spanish sailors, who previous to this had slept on dam}) planks wrapped in a blanket. But the advantages of the hammock, yielding as it did to every movement of the ship and at the same time taking up scarcely any space during the day, led to their general adoption in sea service. BEDS AND BEDDING IN BIBLE TIMES " The first bed was in Eden," so says Milton, in his " Paradise Lost," and beautifully has he pictured it as decked " In close recess, With flowers, garlands, and sweet-smelling herbs." But this was a bed of Nature's making ; and so was Jacob's on the road to Padan-aram. The artificial bed is what we have now to trace through its historical changes. The earliest beds were, no doubt, very simple, like those still used in the East — mere mattresses which were spread out when needed, and afterward folded up and laid by. They were sometimes laid down in the open air, particu- larly on the flat tops of houses, where, beneath a covering, it was pleasant to spend the night with the cool breezes playing round, and bright stars shining overhead. Beds such as these are meant when we read in the Bible of Christ's calling upon the sick, at the moment of healing, to take up their beds and walk. All will remember the bedstead of Og, King of Bashan, a bedstead of iron, nine cubits long and four cubits wide. BEDS AND BEDDING 121 In Esther we read of beds of gold and silver. In Judith, a bed with a tester is mentioned. The bedding in those days consisted of padded quilts, one for a mattress, and another for a covering. Pillows were sometimes used. A veil was thrown over the face of the sleeper to keep off gnats and mosquitoes. IN GREECE In the heroic age of Greece, beds were very simple. The poor slept on skins or heaps of leaves. A piece of coarse woollen sometimes economically served the double purpose of a cloak by day and a blanket at night. Cloth of a softer and more costly kind was used by persons of higher rank, both as a cushion for the chair and a covering for the bed. So full is the information given in the Greek classics that we can easily picture a bedroom in Athens. Before the door hangs a costly carpet. The bedstead is of maplewood, veneered, or may be of bronze, or, at a later period, of tortoise shell. At the top there is fastened an ornamented board to support the head. Girths are stretched across to sup- port the mattress, which is covered with linen, and sometimes with cloth or leather. The stuffing is of wool or leaves. A striped cushion filled with feathers forms the pillow. Blankets are used surmounted by a splendid coverlet. In cold weather, furs are used ; stuffed cover- lets, too, somewhat like the eiderdown beds of France and Germany. The feet of the bedstead peep forth from under the rich coverlet, and are of carved ivory. The floor is covered with an Asiatic carpet, the East being then, as it is now, famous for such articles. A table of veneered maple, with three goats' feet of bronze, is 122 THE BEDROOM AND VENTILATION placed just by the bedstead, and in one of the corners of the apartment is a tripod containing a copper coal pan, to warm the room in chilly weather. Stools of ebony with colored cushions complete the furniture of the com- fortable and elegant chamber. IN ROME In the early days of the republic the beds and beddings of the Romans were probably of the same kind as those used by the Greeks. But later these, as other things, far exceeded those of their ancestors in splendor. The Roman bed of those later days was in form similar to our own brass or iron bedsteads. But it was made of more costly material. Tortoise shell and ivory were frequently used, and the feet were sometimes even of silver and gold. The mattress was white, striped with violet and spotted with gilt stars. The cushion-like pillow was of violet. Feather beds and counterpanes were in use among the Romans, and were often of purple richly embroidered. Canopies and curtains were sometimes used. On the toilet table might be seen combs, earrings, gold pins, mirrors, and lamps, in short, all the articles of use and ornament which are now used by the modern fine lady. IN ENGLAND Illuminated manuscripts give us pictures of old Anglo- Saxon beds. Some had testers and footboards ; some had posts with a canopy resembling the roof of a house ; others had large thick hanging curtains attached to ponderous rings. Bedclothes and sheets were things especially prized. An Anglo-Saxon lady gives to one of her chil- dren two chests and their contents, he?' best bed curtain, THE AERIAL OCEAN IN WHICH WE LIVE 123 linen, and all the clothes belonging to it. To another she leaves two chests and all the bedclothes that to one bed belong. — Adapted from "Leisure Hour." IN RUSSIA In Russia the servants are in the habit of lying anywhere, in the passages, on the floors, on mats at the room doors, or even on the carpets in the sitting room. The houses are kept so warm that great quantities of bedclothing are not needed. The emperors themselves used to sleep on a leather sofa, and without removing the underclothing. THE AERIAL OCEAN IN WHICH WE LIVE Did you ever sit on the bank of a river in some quiet spot where the water was deep and clear, and watch the fishes swimming lazily along ? When I was a child, this was one of my favorite occupations in the summer time. There was one question which often puzzled me greatly, as I watched the minnows and gudgeon gliding along through the water. Why should fishes live in something, and be often buffeted about by waves and currents, while I and others lived on top of the earth and not in anything ? I do not remember ever asking any one about this.- If I had, in those days people did not pay much attention to children's questions, and probably nobody would have told me, what I now tell you, that we do live in something quite as real, and often quite as rough and stormy as the water in which the fishes swim. The something in which we live is air. The reason that we do not perceive it is that we are in it and that it is a gas, and invisible to us ; while we 124 THE BEDROOM AND VENTILATION are above the water in which the fishes live, and it is a liquid which our eyes can perceive. But let us suppose for a moment that a being, whose eyes were so made that he could see gases as we see liquids, was looking down from a distance upon our earth. He would see an ocean of air all around the globe, with birds floating about in it, and people walking along the bottom, just as we see fish gliding along the bottom of a river. It is true, he would never see even the birds come near to the surface, for our atmosphere is at least one hundred miles high. So he would call us all deep-air creatures, just as we talk of deep-sea animals ; and if we can imagine 4hat he fished in this air ocean, and could pull one of us out of it into space, he would find that we should gasp and die just as fishes do when pulled out of the water. He would also observe very curious things going on in our air ocean. He would see large streams and currents of air, which we call winds, and which would appear to him as ocean currents do to us, while near down to the earth he would see thick mists forming, and then disappearing again, and these would be our clouds. From them he would see rain, hail, and snow falling to the earth. From time to time bright flashes would shoot across the air-ocean, which would be our lightning. Nay, even the brilliant rain- bow, the northern aurora borealis, and the falling stars, which seem to us so high up in space, would be seen by him near to our earth, and all within the aerial ocean. But as we know of no such being living in space, who can tell us what takes place in our invisible air, and we cannot see it ourselves, we must try by experiments to see it with our imagination, though we cannot with our eyes. First, then, can we discover what air is ? At one time it was thought that it was a simple gas and could not be separated into more than one kind. It has been proved many times, even in schoolrooms, that air is made of gases THE AERIAL OCEAN IX WHICH WE LIVE 125 mingled together. One of these gases is called oxygen and is used up when anything barns, while the other, nitrogen, is not used and only serves to dilute the oxygen. It is now known that there is still another element always present in air, namely, the lately discovered argon. I have here a glass bell -jar, with cork tightly fixed in the neck. I place this jar over a pan of water, while on the water floats a plate with a small piece of phosphorus upon it. You will see that by putting the bell-jar over the water, I have shut up a certain quantity of air, and my object now is to use up the oxygen out of this air and leave only the nitrogen behind. To do this I must light the piece of phosphorus, for you remember that it is in burning that oxygen is used up. I will take out the cork, light the phosphorus, and cork up the jar again. See ! as the phosphorus burns white fumes fill the jar. These fumes are phosphoric acid, which is a substance made of phosphorus and oxygen. Now phosphoric acid dissolves in water, just as sugar does. In a few minutes these fumes will disappear. Thejr are beginning to dissolve already, and the water from the pan is rising up in the bell- jar. Why is this ? Consider for a moment what we have done. First the jar was full of air, that is, of mixed oxygen and nitrogen. Then the phosphorus used up the nitrogen, making white fumes. Afterward, the water sucked up these fumes. And so, in the jar nitrogen is the only gas left and water has risen up to fill all the rest of the space that was once taken up with the oxygen. But notice that the water at the most only occupies about one-fifth of the space in the jar. From this we conclude that oxygen is only about one-fifth of the atmosphere. We can easily prove that there is no oxygen left in the jar. Take out the cork and let the lighted taper down into the gas. If there were any oxygen, the taper would 126 THE BEDROOM AND VENTILATION burn, but you see it goes out quickly. This proves that all the oxygen has been used up by the phosphorus. It is the oxygen which we use up when we breathe. If I had put a mouse under the bell- jar, instead of phosphorus, the water would have risen just the same, because the mouse would have breathed in the oxygen and used it up in his body, joining it to carbon and making carbon diox- ide, which would also dissolve in water. Then when all the oxygen was used, the mouse would have died. Do you see now how foolish it is to live in rooms that are closely shut up, or to hide your head under the bed- clothes when you sleep ? You use up all the oxygeff, and then there is none left for you to breathe. Besides this, you send out of your mouth a gas which you cannot see, it is true, but which if you rebreathe it, instead of oxygen, will make you ill. Perhaps you will sa}", if oxygen is so useful, why is not the air made entirely of it ? But think for a moment. If there was such an immense quantity of oxygen, how fear- fully fast everything would burn. Our bodies would soon rise above fever heat from the quantity of oxygen we should take in, and all fires and lights would burn furiously. In fact, a flame once lighted would spread so rapidly that no power on earth could stop it, and everything would be destroyed. So the lazy nitrogen is very useful in keeping the oxygen atoms apart, and we have time, even when a fire is very large and powerful, to put it out before it has drawn in more and more oxygen from the surrounding air. Often, if you can shut a fire into a closed space, as in a closely shut room, or the hold of a ship, it will go out, because it has used up all the oxygen in the air. If we examine ordinary air very carefully, we find small quantities of other gases in it besides oxygen and nitrogen. First, there is carbon dioxide. This is the gas that we give out of our mouths after we have burnt up the oxygen DUST 127 with the carbon of our bodies inside our lungs. This car- bon dioxide is also given out from everything that burns. If only animals lived in the world, this gas would soon practically poison the air. But the plants get hold of it, and in the sunshine they break it up again, using up the carbon. In consequence a great deal of oxygen is thrown back into the air for us to use. Secondly, there are also very small quantities of ammonia in the air. This, too, is useful to plants when finally it is washed down into the soil. But in addition to these two impurities, the air of towns particularly contain other injurious products, thrown off by sewers or a necessary consequence of certain manufac- tures. This is especially true of the narrow streets of the crowded portions. In the open spaces and wide streets the impurities are not nearly so great. — Adapted from "Fairy Land of Science," Arabella Buckley. DUST Dust is ever with us. With every breath we inhale more or less of it, and are exposed to its many dangers. In houses and workshops, on the highways and in the streets, everywhere there is wear and tear of things, and the product is always dust. The wearing and cleansing of our clothing is continu- ally breaking up its fibres into minute particles. The friction of the clothing on the skin carries away the scales that are constantly being shed and renewed. Every touch of human feet, horses' hoofs, and the wheels of vehicles with paving and road materials wears away particles of iron and stone. The effects of the weather wear off all exposed surfaces. To these particles which form the dust, invariably pres- 128 THE BEDROOM AND VENTILATION ent in houses and in the streets, there must be added the innumerable germs floating in the air. Dust, therefore, consists of portions of all substances which decay by natural processes and are reduced to powder by any means whatever. These can scarcely be recognized by the naked eye. It must call the microscope to its aid. An important problem of modern hygiene is the ques- tion of protection against this ever present enemy, dust. If houses are to gain in healthfulness, they must be much more carefully cleansed than is usually done. Especially is this true of the homes of the poorer classes. They are, it is true, daily, or almost daily, cleaned and swept, besides being occasionally damp- wiped or sprinkled, but all this is done but superficially at the best. Dust is removed from the more prominent articles by dry dusting; floors are swept dry, — moisture would injure the furni- ture. The coarsest elements of the dust are by this pro- cess certainly removed from houses, but the finer and more dangerous are merely whirled up into the air to settle again into places not reached every day. There they accumulate until the "big cleaning." And even then they are sometimes only whirled up again. The carpets, curtains, and various hangings of the modern house provide favorite resting places for dust. For its proper removal certain conditions are necessary. These are, first, a daily airing of the rooms, second, damp wiping of all furniture and other articles, and third, the cleansing of the floor with the help of water. But even should the cleansing of the dwellings be most carefully carried out, there still remains the question of disposing of the refuse. Instead of being burned on the spot, as it should be, it is put into open vessels, and from these into dust-bins, and from the dust-bins to the open wagons, which then wend their way through the public BACTERIA 129 streets. Every gust of wind wafts away a portion of their contents and carries it into the houses. Closed portable vessels should be placed in each house, and carried away at least twice a week in carts with mov- able iron covers. Moisture should be liberally employed, so that the refuse may be kept too damp to be scattered by the wind. These precautions are still more necessary in cleaning streets. The cheapest means of doing this is water and the revolving brush of the street-sweeping machines. With both together, on a large enough scale, with abun- dance of water and plenty of hands, the best possible would be done. But usually the watering is insufficient, there are too few sweepers. In hot weather, when the need is greatest, water is so sparingly sprinkled that it has dried up before the sweeper comes on the ground. This work is, there- fore, almost worse than useless. The cost of town and city cleansing can hardly be too great, for there is no better way to spend public money. It means the prevention of sickness, and sickness is very costly. — Adapted from "All the Year Round." BACTERIA What are bacteria ? Perhaps some of you will answer at once, " disease germs." And yet the closing sentence of one of the best popular books on the subject, Conn's " Story of Germ Life," is : " Once in a while they may sweep off a hundred or a thousand individuals ; but it is equally true that without them, plant and animal life would be impos- sible on the face of the earth." These wonderful little plants are so tiny that their exist- 130 THE BEDROOM AND VENTILATION ence even was not suspected until after the invention of the microscope, and it was not until our own time, indeed, that anything except their appearance and name were known. It was the great French scientist, Louis Pasteur, who first discovered many of the vital facts with reference to them, and first paved the way for the discoveries of others. Bacteria have been compared to billiard balls, lead pencils, and corkscrews. For these three forms represent all the different shapes that they assume. Under the microscope they are always colorless. Nevertheless, many of them when growing naturally, millions of them in a single spot, are quite vivid in color. The most familiar example of this is the red that often appears upon starchy food, such as the potato, and was supposed by ignorant peasants to be a miraculous appearance of the blood of Christ. Bacteria are found everywhere in the earth, in water, in the air. But in most places they are dormant. Give them food and they at once spring into life, multiplying marvellously. It has been estimated that one bacterium in a single day will produce something like sixteen and a half million descendants. It is this wonderful power of multiplication which makes bacteria so important. One reason why they multiply so rapidly is that, unlike most plants, they feed, not on mineral matter, water, and gases, but on food which has been made from these and is already to be used. In eating even this, however, it takes from it just what it wants, leaving the rest behind. This is like pulling one card from a card house, — the whole falls to pieces and is no longer a house, but merety a pack of cards. For example, the bacterium that lives on the apple juice gets what he wants from the juice. The other in- gredients separate from each other and the result is cider. Other bacteria feed on the cider, and it in turn is broken up into vinegar. Whenever in the manufacture of any article you read BACTERIA 131 that in its natural state it was first exposed to the weather, then you may know that the manufacturer is merely call- ing to his aid bacteria. It is for this reason that the parts of the plants from which flax, jute, hemp, and cocoanut fibre are made are soaked in water, heated, and exposed to the air; that cider is exposed to the air in order to change it to vinegar; that the leaves of indigo are placed in a large vat of water ; that the cacao fruit is put in the ground ; that tobacco leaves are left in heaps to cure. It is indeed only by exposing these materials to the air, always rich in bacteria, under favorable conditions of warmth and moisture, that the bacteria get the opportu- nity to do their work. But the changes brought about by the bacteria of the air are not always so helpful to man. Who likes to have milk sour on her hands ? Yet bacteria serve excellent purposes in dairying. To them we owe the fine flavors of butter and cheese. THE LAUNDRY THE LAUNDRY WASHING Cleanliness is next to godliness ; some people even say that cleanliness is godliness. A clean mind and conscience in a clean body is the nearest approach to purity we can fancy here below. The two great human ills which mainly cause men to fear misfortune and poverty are the conse- quent hunger and dirtiness which they entail. When that heroic impostor, Cagliostro, at last fell into the rat-trap of a Roman prison, he implored of his jailers two favors only — the visits of his wife and a supply of clean linen. Different nations differ greatly in their notions of per- sonal cleanliness, as do also different classes in the same nation. It lias been said that the people of modern Rome, the direct descendants of the conquerors of the world, receive two complete washings from head to foot, not dur- ing their lives, but one as soon as they are born and another as soon as they are dead. Some Orientals by their singular habits quite neutralize the effect of their frequent ablutions by wearing a silken shirt which they rarely change, or which they wear perhaps till it falls to pieces. They may be said to be clean only while they are in their bath. To have clean linen, we must know how to clean it. A few hints on washing may be welcome. If the subject be humble, at least it is useful. And, after all, the state of a man's shirt comes home to his feelings quite as much as 135 136 THE LAUNDRY the state of the starry firmament ; the spots which we find upon our linen are quite as interesting, though not so big, as the spots discovered on the sun. In the first place, what is the best tiling to do with linen when soiled ? A proper answer would be, " Wash it." But, as there always must be an interval between the soil- ing and the washing, how is it best disposed of during that interval ? Except in cases of absolute necessity, as in besieged towns, or on board ship during long sea voyages, linen (and other articles of clothing) should neither be kept long unclean nor massed in large quantities, and that for im- portant reasons. In many parts of France, it is customary for families to have an immense stock of linen, so as to wash only once in six months, when they hold what they call a monster washing. All the hedges on the farm, all the grass on the estate, are hung and spread with white for days together. The comfort in the house during this washing bout and the consequences to the linen itself may be imagined without any effort. A good housekeeper will contrive to keep her soiled linen as short a time as possible. The sooner she washes it, the less trouble she will have. The stains will be easier to remove ; the gums composing them will not have time to dry, nor the oils to thicken. One cause of un healthiness to her family will be avoided ; and her stock of linen — a valuable portion of her household capital — will be exposed to much fewer chances of spoiling. The small quantity which she is obliged to keep, instead of being thrown in a heap, will be hung on a rope stretched in a dry and airy place. Even in an economical point of view, the washing ques- tion is interesting. The humblest establishment is obliged to make it enter, in some form or other, into its budget. Even if the wife wash at home, there is at least the WASHING 187 expense of soap, soda, and fire. Every French soldier used to cost eight cents per week for washing ; improved meth- ods have now reduced it to two cents or a trifle less. To this very considerable payment for washing should be added another, which is still more important, namely, the deterioration of the tissues. We are only too well aware how quickly washerwomen wear our linen out. Every time it comes from the wash, the diminution of its value is greater than the cost of the operation. This second outlay, coming on top of the first, falls particularly heavy on the laboring classes. The workman, as long as he has employment, is generally able to meet his current expenses with tolerable ease. Among these is that of washing. Extraordinary expenses press harder upon him. The re- newal of a worn-out stock of linen becomes a very serious business. To discover less expensive modes of washing, and modes less injurious to the linen, is therefore a problem of equal economical and hygienic importance. It is known that the operation of washing, when ill performed, is unhealthy even for those who perform it. The solution of the problem will, as its immediate consequence, allow the working classes to possess more linen, and to wash it more frequently; and, setting aside foolish and ignorant preju- dices, sanitary professors know how favorable a frequent change of linen is to the health, especially for those who toil and perspire. For greasy matters, substances must be employed which enable water to carry them off. Tf any fatty body, as tallow or oil, remain in contact with an alkali, as soda or potash, for a certain time and at a certain temperature, there is formed by their union another body, soap, which possesses the remarkable quality not only of being dis- solved itself in water, but also of dissolving greasy bodies in its own solution. Take this familiar illustration : You smear your hands with oil. You wash them in the softest 138 THE LAUNDRY rain-water in vain. The oil will not quit your skin by combination with the water, as syrup, salt, or treacle would. You therefore take soap. The outer surface of the soap soon becomes dissolved in the water, and into this solution the oil will enter, and your hands come out of their trouble clean. Similarly, to remove from linen the greasy matter which, in spite of the application of water, retains dirt in it, we must either dissolve that grease in soapy water, or we must transform the grease itself into a soap by means of an alkali, in order to be able subsequently to dissolve the new-made soap in water, and so get rid of all the impurities at once. Soap's property of forming a solution with which oil and grease will combine is shared by a few other substances ; by yolk of egg^ for instance, and cer- tain vegetables. The stems of common soapwort, if crushed and beaten up with water, cause it to froth exactly like soap, and render like services for washing purposes. There is a double-flowered variety which is pretty enough to be encouraged, if it were not so weedy and troublesome. When once established on a bank or other spot where there are many matted roots, it is next to impossible to get rid of it. Besides this, there is a hot- house plant, the soap tree, which bears fruit the size of a walnut. Crushed upon linen it has the same effect as soap, producing a white, thick froth, which takes out grease wonderfully well, the proof of which is its success in purifying negro clothing. In default of genuine and actual soap, these substances, which give water the power of dissolving grease, are at least worth bearing in mind for the removal of grease-spots from tissues and stuffs. Soap, therefore, is a peacemaker, a means of union between two antagonistic substances, oil and water. It is a neutral ground, on which those very inimical substances are able to come to an understanding and work together. LAUNDRY WORK IN ITALY 139 Its value consists in that we have in it a great cleansing power compressed into a very small space. The applica- tion of soap as a cleansing agent is not of high antiquity. Soap, at first, was merely a cosmetic for smoothing the hair and brightening the complexion. When once its valuable cleansing powers were discovered, — doubtless by accident, — its employment spread rapidly; numerous soap manufactories sprang up in Italy, notably in the little sea- port town of Cavona, near Genoa, whence the French name of soap, sdvon. The manufacture spread in Spain and France. Marseilles became famous for its marbled soaps. — Adapted from "All the Year Round." LAUNDRY WORK IN ITALY The Italians wash, not in their houses, but in convenient lakes or streams. They carry the clothes there in a long basket fitted to their backs, broad at the top, but narrow at the base. On each side are long handles through which they slip their hands. They present a most picturesque appearance, walking along with erect heads and carrying the washboard easily in one hand. Their equipment con- sists of a board with side pieces, wider at the upper than at the lower end. Therefore, when they rest it on the ground, it slopes toward the water. At the top is a cross- piece which helps to keep their dresses from being spat- tered. They kneel on a cushion and rub the soiled places with a brush in shape resembling our scrubbing brush. Then, leaning over the board, they sling the clothes back and forth. Again they scrub and again they rinse them in the stream. When this process has been repeated several times, they twist them dry and spread them over the stones along the shore or, perhaps, on the bushes near by. 140 THE LAUNDRY ABOUT COMMON WATER I propose now to talk to you for half an hour about water in its more common and domestic forms. On the importance of water it is not necessary to dwell, for it is obvious that upon its presence depends the life of the world. As an article of human diet, its importance is enormous. Not to speak of fruits and vegetables and confining ourselves to flesh, every four pounds of boneless meat purchased at the butcher's shop contain about three pounds of water. I remember Mr. Carlyle once describ- ing an author, who was making a great stir at the time, as "a weak, watery, insipid creature." But, in a literal and physical sense, we are all " watery." The muscles of a man weighing one hundred and fifty pounds weigh, when moist, sixty-four pounds, but of these nearly fifty pounds are mere water. It is not, however, of the water compacted in the muscles and tissues of a man that I am now going to speak, but of the ordinary water that we see everywhere around us. Whence comes our drinking water? A little reflection might enable you to reply, " If you go back far enough, you will find that it comes from the clouds which send their rain down upon the earth." " But how," it may be asked, " does the water get up into the cloud region ? " Your reply will probably be, " It is carried up by evapora- tion from the waters of the earth." Let it then be admitted that water rises into the air by evaporation ; and that in the air it forms the clouds which discharge themselves upon us as rain, hail, and snow. If you look for the source of any great American river, you will find it in some mountain land, where, in its infancy, it is a mere stream. Added to, gradually, by other tribu- tary streams, it becomes broader and deeper, until finally it reaches the noble magnitude of the Mississippi or the ABOUT COMMON WATER 141 Ohio. A considerable portion of the rain-water sinks into the earth, trickles through its pores and fissures, coming here and there to light as a clear spring. We have now to consider how spring-water is affected by the rocks, or gravel, or sand, or soil, through which it passes. The water drawn from my well comes from what geolo- gists call the greensand. Within sight of my balcony rise the well-known South Downs, which are hills of chalk cov- ered with verdure. Now, if a bucket of water were taken from my well, and a similar bucket from a well in the South Downs, and if both buckets were handed over to a laundress, she would have no difficulty in telling you which she would prefer. With my well-water, it would be easy to produce a beautiful lather. With the South Downs well-water, it would be very difficult to do so. In common language, the one kind of water is soft, like rain- water, while the other is hard. We have now to analyze and understand the meaning of "hard water," and to examine some of its effects. Sup- pose, then, three porcelain basins to be filled, the first with pure rain-water, the second with greensand-water, and the third with chalk-water, — all three waters at first being equally bright and transparent. Suppose the three basins placed on a warm hob, or even exposed to the open air, until the water of each basin has wholly evaporated. In evaporation, the water only disappears ; the mineral mat- ter remains. What, then, is the result ? In the rain-water basin, you have nothing left behind ; in the greensand- water basin, you have a small residue of solid mineral mat- ter ; in the chalk- water basin, you have a comparatively larsfe residue. The reason of this is that chalk is soluble in rain-water, and dissolves in it, like sugar or salt, though to a far less extent ; while the water of my well, coming from the greensand, which is hardly soluble at all, is almost as soft as rain-water. 142 THE LAUNDRY The simple boiling of water is sufficient to precipitate a considerable quantity of the mineral matter dissolved in it. One familiar consequence of this is that kettles and boilers in which hard water is used become rapidly in- cr listed within, while no such incrustation is formed by soft water. Hot-water pipes are sometimes choked by such incrustation ; and the boilers of steamers have been known to be so thickly coated as to prevent the access of heat to the water within them. Not only was their coal thus wasted, but it has been found necessary, in some cases, to burn the very spars in order to bring the steam- ers into port. — Adapted from "New Fragments," by Tyndall. INDIGO In all the Eastern states, in sandy soil, may be seen a much branched herb with abundant yellow flowers and small bluish green leaves which blacken when dried. It is so abundant and so bushy that in New England it is often picked to put over the heads of horses to protect them from flies. It belongs to the Pea family and is called wild indigo. It was from a shrub very similar to this that the best quality of indigo was formerly obtained. The plant itself is a native of Hindostan, but it was introduced into the United States from the West Indies. This is the interesting and curious story of its intro- duction. George Lucas was a governor in the West Indies and at the same time the owner of a South Carolina plantation. His daughter Eliza, coming from the West Indies to South Carolina, noticed the luxuriance with which the wild indigo flourished in her new home. Knowing the commercial INDIGO 143 value of the plant from her life in the West Indies, it occurred to her that it might be quite worth while to try to cultivate the indigo in this country. She sent to her father for seed. The first crop planted in March was destroyed by frost ; the second, in April, was cut down by a worm, but the third attempt proved successful. Governor Lucas then sent to her aid from the West Indies an expert indigo-maker. He built several large vats and made some indigo from Eliza's plant, but it was of poor quality. The truth of the matter was that he feared to injure this industry in his own country. So he threw in too much lime. But Miss Lucas detected the fraud and at once engaged some one else to help. She was so successful in these experiments that the cultivation of indigo rapidly spread. The American indigo, too, was found to yield an excellent product, though less abundantly than the imported species. " In- digo either tame or wild enables them to give a beautiful blue to their homespuns," was said of the American women in the time of the Revolution. Fine qualities sold for large prices, and fortunes were made in its cultivation. It was a veritable gold mine to South Carolina. Ramsay, in his " History of South Carolina," says, " A larger number of children were sent to England for education from South Carolina than from any of the colonies, and this on account of the greater wealth of the colony, owing to the superiority of her products — rice and indigo — which gave her abundant means." In the meantime Eliza Lucas married Charles Pinckney, who was afterward chief justice of Carolina, and their son was the illustrious Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who said, " Millions for defence, but not one cent for tribute ! " After the Revolution, however, the indigo trade declined, 144 THE LAUNDRY and other crops took its place, — first rice, and then, after the invention of the cotton-gin, cotton. Nevertheless it was still made in small quantities for domestic use. It is to this period that the story of the following famous recipe belongs : — " Take a clean new cedar or cypress piggin ; fill it three- thirds full of clean spring water ; put into it a lump of indigo as big as a hen's egg^ and, if good, it will sink or swim, I have forgotten which ! " Nowadays the indigo bag of our grandmothers has given way to the " bluings," almost all of which are made from Prussian blue. These are much cheaper, but it is abso- lutely necessary that the clothes should be rinsed free from soap before using them. Otherwise the bluing will be decomposed and its iron give rise to the mysterious spots, iron rust. HOUSEHOLD PESTS AND HOUSE CLEANING HOUSEHOLD PESTS AND HOUSE CLEANING HOUSE CLEANING The practice of annual house cleaning, so often care- lessly and hurriedly performed, is peculiarly favorable to the development of the carpet beetles. Two house clean- ings would be better than one, and if but one, it would be better to undertake it in midsummer than at any other time of the year. Where convenience or conservatism demands an adherence to the old custom, however, we have simply to insist upon extreme thoroughness and a slight variation in the customary methods. The rooms should be attended to, one or two at a time. The carpets should be taken up, thoroughly beaten, and sprayed out of doors with benzine, and allowed to air for several hours. The rooms them- selves should be thoroughly swept and dusted, the floors washed down with hot water, the cracks carefully cleaned out, and kerosene or benzine poured in the cracks and sprayed under the baseboards. The extreme inflammabil- ity of benzine, and especially of its vapor when confined, should be remembered, and fire carefully guarded against. Where the floors are poorly constructed, and the cracks are wide, it will be a good idea to fill the cracks with plaster of Paris in a liquid state ; this will afterward set and lessen the number of harboring places for the insect. Before relaying the carpet, tarred roofing paper should be laid 147 148 HOUSEHOLD PESTS AND HOUSE CLEANING upon the floor, at least around the edges, but preferably over the entire surface, and when the carpet is relaid, it will be well to tack it down rather lightly so that it can be occasionally lifted at the edges and examined for the pres- ence of the insect. Later in the season, if such an exami- nation shows the insect to have made its appearance, a good though somewhat laborious remedy consists in laying a damp cloth smoothly over the suspected spot of the carpet and ironing it with a hot iron. The steam thus generated will pass through the carpet and kill the insects immedi- ately beneath it. These strenuous measures, if persisted in, are the only hope of the good housekeeper, so long as the system of hav- ing carpets covering the entire floor surface is adhered to. Good housekeepers are conservative people ; but we expect eventually to see a more general adoption of the rug, or of the square of carpet, which may at all times be readily examined and treated, if found necessary. Where the floors are bad, the practice of laying straw mattings under the rugs produces a sightly appearance, and, while not as cleanly as a bare floor, affords still fewer harboring places for this insect. — Adapted from "The Principal Household Insects of the United States," by L. O. Howard and C. L. Marlatt. CARPET-BEETLE All the year round, in well-heated houses, but more fre- quently in summer and fall, an active brown larva, a quarter of an inch or less in length, and clothed with stiff brown hairs, which are longer around the sides and still longer at the ends than on the back, feeds upon carpets and woollen goods, working in a hidden manner from the under surface, sometimes making irregular holes, but more fre- STORY OF THE CLOTHES-MOTH 149 quently following the line of a floor crack and cutting long slits in a carpet. The adult insect is a small, broad, oval beetle, about three-sixteenths of an inch long, black in color, but is covered with exceedingly minute scales which give it a marbled black and white appearance. It also has a red stripe down the middle of the back, widening into projec- tions at three intervals. When disturbed, it " plays 'pos- sum," folding up its legs and antenna} and feigning death. As a general thing, the beetles begin to appear in the fall, and continue to issue in heated houses throughout the winter and following spring. In Europe, the insect is not especially noted as a house- hold pest, and we are inclined to think that this is owing to the fact that carpets are little used. In fact, we believe that only where carpets are extensively used are the condi- tions favorable for the great increase of the insect. Carpets once put down are seldom taken up for a year, and in the meantime the insect develops uninterruptedly. Where polished floors and rugs are used, the rugs are often taken up and beaten, and in the same way, woollens and furs are never allowed to remain undisturbed for an entire year. It is a well-known fact that the carpet habit is a bad one from other points of view, and there is little doubt that if carpets were more generally discarded in our more northern states, the " buffalo bug " would gradually cease to be the household pest that it is to-day. — Adapted from "The Principal Household Insects of the United States," by L. 0. Howard and C. L. Marlatt. STORY OF THE CLOTHES-MOTH " Permit me to add my contribution to the museum," said the mistress, entering the room. She bore in her 150 HOUSEHOLD PESTS AND HOUSE CLEANING hands a rug, which she hung over the back of a chair close to the light. The little napless patches showing here and there, like islands in an ocean, revealed the presence of that enemy of the housewife, the clothes-moth. " Ah ! here we have something interesting," I ex- claimed. " There is no one of all the Lepidoptera whose habits better repay study than this little fellow." " What a pity," interrupted the mistress, " that so many very interesting people and things in this world have the misfortune to be such miserable transgressors ! Now, here are these little wretches who play such havoc with our carpets, furs, and clothes, so attractive in their char- acters that you natural philosophers all go off into enthu- siasm over them. How do you account for such a seeming contradiction ? " " I allow that the little fellows are great rogues, and suppose it must be Nature's way to reconcile us to their mischief by bestowing upon them such cunning habits. Besides, what right have we to complain ? We slaughter birds and beasts for feathers and furs ; we kill the silk- moth to get us a gown, and then think it hard if this poor worm makes a few raids for food and clothing upon our stolen fineiy ! No, no ! We must be just, at least. However, let us look at this rug closely, and I think we shall conclude that we have been well repaid for all our loss here. "These moths belong to a family named Tinea by entomologists, such as the tapestry-moth {Tinea tapet- zella), the fur-moth {Tinea pellionelUi), cabinet-moth {Tinea destructor), and clothes-moth {Tinea vestianella). The species which has been at work upon this rug is probably Pellionella, the only ' clothes-moth ' known in the United States the larva of which constructs a case for its occupancy. " The moths themselves are very small, expanding their STORY OF THE CLOTHES-MOTH 151 wings not more than eight-tenths of an inch. They are thus well fitted for making their way through minute holes and chinks. If they cannot find such a tiny avenue into wardrobe or bureau, or fail of the opportunity of an open drawer or door, they will contrive to glide through the key- hole. Once in, it is no easy matter to dislodge them, for they are exceedingly agile vermin, and escape out of sight in a moment. The mother insect deposits her eggs on or near such material as will be best adapted for the food of the young, taking care to distribute them so that there may be a plentiful supply and enough of room for each." " Isn't that a bit of pure maliciousness ? " queried the mistress. " The mother, I suppose, scatters her eggs so that her ravenous caterpillars may do all the damage pos- sible by attacking many parts of a garment at the same time." " That is a bit of pure maternal instinct," I answered. " The mother moth wisely arranges that all her offspring shall have a fair outset in life — enough to eat and wear. When one of this scattered family issues from the egg, its first care is to provide itself with a domicile, or, if you please, a dress. It belongs to that class of caterpillars that feed under cover. I once placed one upon a desk covered with green cloth, and set myself to watch it. It wandered about for half a day before it began operations. At last, having pitched upon a proper site, it cut out a filament very near the cloth, in order, I suppose, to have it as long as possible, and placed it on a line with its body. It then immediately cut another, and placing it parallel with the first, bound both together with a few threads of its own silk. The same process was repeated with other hairs till the little creature had made a fabric of some thickness, and this it went on to extend till it was large enough to cover its body. Its body, by the way, as is 152 HOUSEHOLD PESTS AND HOUSE CLEANING usual with caterpillars, is employed as a model and meas- ure for regulating its operations." " That's a very human trait," said the mistress. " My mother invariably used part of her body as a yardstick, measuring light material with outstretched arms, or with one full-length arm, counting from chin to fingers." " Mother Bond does that still," ventured Harry. " Ah, well," I said, " perhaps by and by we may find some starting-points for a bond of sympathy between the ladies and even a clothes-moth ! But to proceed. My caterpillar made choice of longer hairs for the outside than for the inside, and the covering was at last finished within by a fine and closely woven tapestry of silk. I could only see the process of its work by looking into the opening at either of the ends, for the covering was quite opaque and concealed the larva. In weaving this lining, the creature turns around by doubling itself and bringing its head where the tail had been, the interior being left just wide enough for this purpose. " Its dress being in this way complete, the body quite covered, the larva begins to feed on the material of the cloth, which, you see, is its ' bed and board,' and ward- robe besides. Soon, like a growing boy, our young Pel- lionella outgrows its clothes. As it has no father's or big brother's worn suits to furnish material, and no mother who has learned the art of Burns's Scotch cotter who l gars auld claes look amaist as weeFs the new,' it proceeds to enlarge its own garments. It sets to work as dexterously as any tailor, slitting the coat or case on the two opposite sides, and then adroitly inserting between them two pieces of the requisite size. It manages all this so as not to expose its body, never slitting the whole length of the coat at once." " Why," exclaimed Abby, " the worm has learned the mystery of a gore ! Here is certainly a fair beginning for STORY OF THE CLOTHES-MOTH 153 that bond of sympathy of which you spoke between the clothes-moth and the dressmaking part of womanhood ! " " Shall we congratulate the moth or the mantua-maker on the connection ? " I asked. " Really, I am not quite so sure with an answer as I would have been a few moments ago. .My respect for the little wretches has vastly increased. I don't know how I shall muster courage to kill them hereafter ! " "By taking advantage of this peculiar genius for patch- ing," I continued, " or for gores, as Abby puts it, clothes- moths have been forced to make their tubular coats of divers colors and patterns. By shifting the caterpillars from one colored cloth to another, the required tints are produced, and the pattern is gained by watching the creature at work and transferring it at the proper time. For example, a half-grown caterpillar may be placed upon a piece of bright green cloth. After it lias made its tube, it may be shifted to a black cloth, and when it has cut the longitudinal slit and has filled it up, it can be transferred to a piece of scarlet cloth, so that the complementary colors of green and scarlet are brought into juxtaposition and ' thrown out ' by the contrast with the black. In this way the little worm, by friendly human manipulation, may by and by find itself arrayed, like the favorite son of Jacob, in 'a coat of many colors.' " The moth-worms pass the summer within these silk- lined rolls, some carrying them about as the} T move along, and others fastening them to the substance they are eat- ing. Concealed within these movable cases, or lint-cov- ered burrows, they ply their sharp reaping-hooks amid the harvest of napery throughout the summer. In the fall they cease eating, make fast their habitations, and lie torpid during winter. Early in spring they change to chrysalids within their cases, and in about twenty days thereafter are transformed to winged moths, which fly 154 HOUSEHOLD PESTS AND HOUSE CLEANING about in the evening until they have paired and are ready to lay eggs. — Adapted from "Tenants of an Old Farm," by Dr. Henry McCook. THE HOUSE-FLY I believe we can nowhere find a better type of a per- fectly free creature, than in the common house-fly. Nor free only, but brave and irreverent to a degree which, I think, no human republican could by any philosophy exalt himself to. There is no courtesy in him ; he does not care whether it is a king or clown whom he teases ; and in every step of his swift, mechanical march, and in every pause of his resolute observation, there is one and the same expression of perfect egotism, perfect independence and self-confidence, and conviction of the world's having been made for flies. Strike at him with your hand ; and to him, the mechanical fact and external aspect of the matter is, what to you it would be, if an acre of red clay, ten feet thick, tore itself up from the ground in one massive field, hovered over you in the air for a second, and came crash- ing down with an aim. That is the external aspect of it ; the inner aspect, to this fly's mind, is of a quite natural and unimportant occurrence — one of the momentary con- ditions of his active life. He steps out of the way of your hand, and alights on the back of it. You cannot terrify him, nor persuade him, nor govern him, nor convince him. He has his own positive opinion on all matters ; not an unwise one, usually, for his own ends ; and will ask no advice of yours. He has no work to do — no tyrannical instinct to obey. The earth-worm has his digging, the bee her gathering and building, the spider her cunning net- work, the ant her treasury and accounts. All these are comparatively slaves or people of vulgar business. But THE HOUSE-FLY 155 your fly, free in the air, free in the chamber, — a black incarnation of caprice, — wandering, investigating, flitting, flirting, feasting at his will, with rich variety of choice in feast, from the heaped sweets in the grocer's window to those of the butcher's back yard, and from the galled place on your cab-horse's back to the brown spot in the road, from which, as the hoof disturbs him, he rises with angry republican buzz. What freedom is like his ? — John Ruskin. THE HOUSE-FLY There are at least five species of flies that are found in the house. One of these, a fly closely resembling the true house-fly in appearance, but differing from it in that it bites, should be called the stable fly. Another is the cluster-fly found most frequently in the spring and fall. This is darker and rather larger than the true house-fly and much less active. Then there is the bluebottle, which is also called the blow-fly or meat-fly, because it often breeds in meat. And last of all there is the small fly with an almost translucent body, which most people believe is a baby fly. The true house-fly lays its eggs in manure. In a day these hatch out into headless maggots that are active for about a week. These are then transformed into pupae, in which state they rest for another week. The adult, unlike most insects, has only a single pair of wings. Its mouth is adapted to sucking, and it is said to hear with its feelers. It has been found that flies cannot walk on a smooth wet surface or one that has been powdered with flour. From this we conclude that the almost constant rubbing together of the under side of their feet is mainly for the 156 HOUSEHOLD PESTS AND HOUSE CLEANING purpose of keeping them clean, in order that they may be in a fit condition for walking. The fly lays about one hundred and twenty eggs, which explains why they are so abundant. The only remedies against them which can be employed by private individuals are screens, fly-papers, cleanliness, and living a long distance from any stable. THE MOSQUITO Fair insect ! that, with threadlike legs spread out, And blood-extracting bill and fillip wing, Does murmur, as thou slowly sail'st about, In pitiless ears full many a plaintive thing, And tell how little our large veins would bleed, Would we but yield them to thy bitter need. Calm rose afar the city spires, and thence Came the deep murmur of its throng of men, And as its grateful odors met thy sense, They seemed the perfumes of thy native fen ; Fair lay its crowded streets, and at the sight Thy tiny song grew shriller with delight. Thou'rt welcome to the town — but why come here To bleed a brother poet, gaunt like thee ? Alas ! the little blood I have is dear, And then will be the banquet drawn from me. Look round — the pale-eyed sisters in my cell, Thy old acquaintance, Song and Famine, dwell. Try some plump alderman, and suck the blood Enriched by generous wine and costly meat ; On well-filled skins, sleek as thy native mud, THE MOSQUITO 157 Fix thy light pump and press thy freckled feet Go to the men for whom, in ocean's halls, The oyster breeds, and the green turtle sprawls. — William Cullen Bryant. THE MOSQUITO Although mosquitoes are out-of-door insects, they may be considered appropriately under the head of household pests, for the reason that they enter houses to torment the inhabitants all through the summer months, and many of them pass the winter in cellars. In fact, it is probably safe to say that no distinctive household pest causes as much annoyance as the mosquito. We are accustomed to think and speak of the mosquito as if there were but one species ; yet, to our knowledge, there are no less than eight species, for example, which are common in the District of Columbia ; and the writer has noticed at New Orleans, Louisiana, certainly four differ- ent species at the same season of the year, while at Christ- mas time a fifth species, smaller than the others, causes considerable trouble in the houses of that city. The writer, in the course of certain observations, has carried a common American species of the mosquito through two generations in the early part of the season. The operation of egg-laying was not observed, but it prob- ably takes place in the very early morning hours. The eggs are laid in the usual boat-shaped mass. We say boat-shaped mass because that is the ordinary expression. As a matter of fact, however, the egg masses are of all sorts of shapes. The most common one is the pointed ellipse, convex below and concave above, all the eggs per- pendicular in six to thirteen longitudinal rows, with from three or four to forty eggs in a row. The number of eggs 158 HOUSEHOLD PESTS AND HOUSE CLEANING in each batch varies from two hundred to four hundred. As seen from above, the egg mass is gray brown ; from below, silvery white, the latter appearance being due to the air-film. It seems impossible to wet these egg masses. They may be pushed under water, but bob up apparently as dry as ever. The egg mass separates rather regularly, and the eggs are not stuck together very firmly. After they have hatched, the mass will disintegrate in a few days, even in perfectly still water. The individual eggs are slender, broader, and blunt at bottom, slenderer and somewhat pointed at top. The tip is always dark grayish brown in color, while the rest of the egg is dirty white. Repeated observations show that the eggs hatch, under advantageous conditions, certainly as soon as sixteen hours. Water buckets containing no egg masses, placed out at night, were found to contain egg masses at eight o'clock in the morning, which, as above stated, were probably laid in the early morning, before daylight. These eggs, the third week in May, began to hatch quite regularly at two o'clock in the after- noon of the same day, on warm days. In cooler weather they sometimes remained unhatched until the second day. The larvae issue from the under side of the egg masses and are extremely active at birth. When first observed, it is easy to fall into an error regarding the length of time which they can remain under water, or rather with- out coming to the surface to breathe, since, in striving to come to the surface for air, many of them will strike the under side of the egg mass and remain there for some minutes. It is altogether likely, however, that they get air at this point through the eggs or through the air-film by which the egg mass is surrounded, and that they are as readily drowned by continuous immersions as are the older ones, as will be shown later. One of the first peculiarities which strikes one in observ- THE MOSQUITO 159 ing these newly hatched larvre under the lens, is that the tufts of filaments, which are conspicuous at the mouth, are in absolutely constant vibration. This peculiarity, and the wriggling of the larvae through the water and their great activity, render them interesting objects of study. When nearly full grown their movements were studied with more care, as they were easier to observe than when newly hatched. At this time the larva remains near the surface of the water, with its respiratory siphon at the exact surface, and its mouth filaments in constant vibra- tion, directing food into the mouth cavity. Occasionally the larva descends to the bottom ; but, though repeatedly timed, a healthy individual was never seen to remain voluntarily below the surface more than a minute. In ascending, it comes up with an effort, with a series of jerks and wrigglings with its tail. It descends without effort, but ascends with difficulty. After seven or eight days the larva transforms to pupa. In this stage the insect is lighter than water. It remains motionless at the surface, and when disturbed does not sink without effort, as does the larva, but is only able to descend by a violent muscular action. It wriggles and swims as actively as does the larva, and soon reaches the bottom of the jar or breeding place. As soon as it ceases to exert itself, however, it floats gradually up to the sur- face of the water again. The fact, however, that the larva, after it is once below the surface of the water, sinks rather than rises, accounts for the death of many individuals. If they become sick or weak, or for any reason are unable to exert sufficient muscular force to Avriggle to the surface at frequent intervals, they will actually drown, and the writer has seen many of them die in this way. It seems almost like a contradiction in terms to speak of an aquatic insect drowning, but this is a frequent cause of mortality among wrigglers. This 160 HOUSEHOLD PESTS AND HOUSE CLEANING fact also explains the efficacy of the remedial treatment which causes the surface of the water to become covered with a film of oil of any kind. Aside from the actual insecticide effect of the oil, the larvse drown from not being able to reach the air. In general, the adult insects issue from the pupse that are two days old. The individuals emerging on the first day were invariably males. On the second day the great majority were males, but there were also a few females. The preponderance of males continued to hold for three days ; later the females were in the majority. In con- finement, the males died quickly ; several lived for four days, but none for more than that period. The females, however, lived for a much longer time. Some were kept alive without food, in a confined space of not more than four inches deep by six across, for three weeks. The extreme shortness of this June generation is signifi- cant. It accounts for the fact that swarms of mosquitoes may develop, upon occasion, in surface pools of rain-water, which may dry up entirely in the course of two weeks, or in a chance bucket of water left undisturbed for that length of time. It is a well-known fact that the adult male mosquito does not necessarily take nourishment, and that the adult female does not necessarily rely upon the blood of warm blooded animals. They are plant-feeders, and have also been recorded as feeding upon insects. Dr. Hagen men- tions taking a species in the Northwest feeding upon the chrysalis of a butterfly; while scattered through the seven volumes of " Insect Life " are a number of records of ob- servations of a vegetarian habit, one writer stating that he has seen them with their beaks inserted in boiled potatoes on the table, and another that he has seen watermelon rinds with many mosquitoes settled upon them, and busily en- gaged in sucking the juices. Mosquitoes undoubtedly feed THE MOSQUITO 161 normally on the juices of plants, and not one in a million ever gets an opportunity to taste the blood of a warm- blooded animal. When we think of the enormous tracts of marsh land into which warm-blooded animals never pen- etrate, and in which mosquitoes are breeding in countless numbers, the truth of this statement becomes apparent. The males have been observed sipping at drops of water, and one instance of a fondness for molasses has been re- corded. Mr. E. A. Schwartz has observed one drinking beer. The literature of popular entomology is full of instances of the enormous numbers in which mosquitoes occasionally occur, but a new instance may not be out of place here. Mr. Schwartz tells the writer that he has never seen, even in New Jersey, mosquitoes to compare with those at Cor- pus Christi, Texas. When the wind blows from any other direction than south, he says hundreds of thousands of millions of mosquitoes blow in upon the town. Great herds of hundreds of horses run before the mosquitoes in order to get to the water. With a change of wind, how- ever, the mosquitoes blow away. Remedies in use in houses are the burning of pyre- thrum powder and the catching of the mosquitoes on the walls with kerosene in cups. Altogether, the most satis- factory ways of fighting mosquitoes are those which result in the destruction of the larva? or the abolition of their breeding places. In not every locality are these measures feasible, but in many places there is absolutely no neces- sity for the mosquito annoyance. The three main pre- ventive measures are the draining of breeding places, the introduction of small fish into fishless breeding places, and the treatment of such pools with kerosene. These are three alternatives, any one of which will be efficacious, and any one of which may be used where there are rea- sons against the trial of the others. The quantity of 162 HOUSEHOLD PESTS AND HOUSE CLEANING kerosene to be practically used, as shown by the writer's experiments, is approximately one ounce to fifteen square feet of Avater surface, and ordinarily the application need not be renewed for one month. Since 1892 several dem- onstrations on both a large and small scale have been made. Tavo localities Avere rid of the mosquito plague under the supervision of the writer by the use of kerosene alone. — Adapted from "The Principal Household Insects of the United States," by L. O. Howard and C. L. Marlatt. COCKROACHES Roaches are among the commonest and most offensive of the insects Avhich frequent human habitations. They were well known to the ancients, avIio called them lucifuga, from their habit of ahvays shunning the light. The com- mon English name for them, or, more properly, for the common domestic English species, is "black beetle." In America this name has not been adopted to any extent for this insect, Avhich Avas early introduced here, and the term " roach " or " cockroach " is the common name for all the domestic species. The little German roach, however, is very generally known as the Croton bug, from its early association Avith the Croton Avater-Avorks system in New York City. The popular designations of this insect in Germany illustrate in an amusing Avay both sectional and racial prejudices. In north Germany, these roaches are known as " Schwaben," a name which applies to the in- habitants of south Germany, and the latter section " evens up" by calling them " Preussen," after the north Ger- mans. In east Germany, they are called " Russen," and in Avest Germany " Franzosen." The roach is one of the most primitive and ancient COCKROACHES 163 insects, in the sense of its early appearance on the globe, fossil remains of roaches occurring in abundance in the early coal formations, ages before the more common forms of insect life of the present clay had begun to appear. The house roaches of to-clay were undoubtedly very early associated with man in his primitive dwellings, and through the agency of commerce have followed him wherever navigation has extended. In fact, on shipboard they are always especially numerous and troublesome, the moisture and heat of the vessels being particularly favorable to their development. In houses, roaches are particularly abundant in pantries and kitchens, especially in the neighborhood of fireplaces, on account of the heat. For the same reason they are often abundant in the oven-rooms of bakeries or wherever the temperature is maintained above the normal. They conceal themselves during the day behind baseboards, furniture, or wherever security and partial protection from the light are afforded. Their very flat, thin bodies enable them to squeeze themselves into small cracks or spaces where their presence would not be suspected, and where they are out of reach of enemies. Unless routed out by the moving of furniture, or disturbed in their hiding- places, they are rarely seen, and if so uncovered, make off with wonderful celerity, with a scurrying, nervous gait, and usually are able to elude all efforts at their capture or destruction. It may often happen that their presence, at least in the abundance in which they occur, is hardly realized by the housekeeper, unless they are surprised in their midnight feasts. Coming into a kitchen or pantry suddenly, a sound of the rustling of numerous objects will come to the ear, and if a light be introduced, often the floor or shelves will be seen covered with scurrying roaches, hastening to places of concealment. The domestic roaches are practically omnivorous, feed- 164 HOUSEHOLD PESTS AND HOUSE CLEANING ing on almost any dead animal matter, cereal products, and food materials of all sorts. They are also said to eat their own cast skins and egg cases, and it is supposed that they will attack other species of roaches, or are, per- haps, occasionally cannibalistic. They will also eat or gnaw woollens, leather (as of shoes or furniture), and fre- quently are the cause of extensive damage to the cloth and leather bindings of books in libraries and publishing houses. Like the crows among birds, the roaches among insects are apparently unusually well endowed with the ability to guard themselves against enemies, displaying great intel- ligence in keeping out of the way of the irate housekeeper and in avoiding food or other substances which have been doctored with poisons for their benefit. Their keenness in this direction is unquestionably the inheritance of many centuries, during which the hand of man has ever been raised against them. The means against these insects, including always vigi- lance and cleanliness as important preventives, are three ; namely, destruction by poisons, by fumigation with poison- ous gases, and by trapping. A common remedy suggested for roaches consists in the liberal use of pyrethrum powder, and when this is persisted in, considerable relief will be gained. It is not a perfect remedy, however, and is at best but a temporary expedient; while it has the additional disadvantage of soiling the shelves or other objects over which it is dusted. When used it should be fresh and liberally applied. Roaches are often paralyzed with it, when not killed outright, and the morning after an application, the infested premises should be gone over, and all the dead or partially paralyzed roaches swept up and burned. There are many proprietary substances which claim to be fairly effective roach poisons. The usefulness of most of THE SILVER FISH 165 these is, however, very problematical, and disappointment will ordinarily follow their application. The only one of these that has given very satisfactory results is a phospho- rous paste, also sold in the form of pills. It probably con- sists of sweetened flour paste, containing phosphorus, and is spread on bits of paper or cardboard and placed in the run- ways of the roaches. It has been used very successfully to free desks of Croton bugs, numbers of the dead insects being found in the drawers every day during the time the poison was kept about. Various forms of traps have been very successfully employed as a means of collecting and destroying roaches. These devices are all so constructed that the roaches may easily get into them, and cannot afterward escape. The destruction of the roaches is effected either by the liquid into which they fall, or by dousing them with hot water. Traps placed in pantries or bakeries will unquestionably destroy great quantities of roaches, and keep them perhaps more effectively in check than the use of the troublesome insect powders or the distribution of poisoned bait, espe- cially as the latter are so often ineffective. — Adapted from "The Principal Household Insects of the United States," by L. 0. Howard and C. L. Marlatt. THE SILVER FISH This insect is often one of the most troublesome enemies of books, papers, card labels in museums, and starched clothing, and occasionally stored food substances. Its peculiar fishlike form and scaly, glistening body, together with its very rapid movements and active efforts at conceal- ment whenever it is uncovered, have attached considerable popular interest to it, and have resulted in its receiving a number of more or less descriptive popular names, such as 166 HOUSEHOLD PESTS AND HOUSE CLEANING silver fish, silver louse, silver witch, sugar fish, etc. This insect is a common one in England, but also occurs in this country, and, like most other domestic insects, is now prac- tically cosmopolitan. It has a number of near allies, both in appearance and habits. One of these has certain pecu- liarities of habit which will be referred to later. The peculiar appearance of the common silver fish early drew attention to it, and a fairly accurate description of it, given in a little work published in London, in 1665, by the Royal Society, is interesting enough to reproduce : — " It is a small, silvery, shining worm, or moth, which I found much conversant among books and papers, and is supposed to be that which corrodes and eats holes through the leaves and covers. It appears to the naked eye a small, glittering, pearl-colored moth, which, upon removing of books and papers in the summer, is often observed very nimbly to scud and pack away to some lurking cranny, where it may better protect itself from any appearing dan- gers. Its head appears big and blunt, and its body tapers from it toward the tail, smaller and smaller, being shaped almost like a carrot. " On account of its always shunning the light, and its ability to run very rapidly to places of concealment, it is not often seen, and is most difficult to capture, and being clothed with smooth, glistening scales, it will slip from between the fingers, and is almost impossible to secure with- out crushing or damaging. It is one of the most serious pests in libraries, particularly to the binding of books, and will frequently eat off the gold lettering to get at the paste beneath, or, as reported by Mr. P. R. Uhler, of Baltimore, often gnaws off white slips glued on the backs of books. Heavily glazed paper seems very attractive to this insect, and it has frequently happened that the labels in museum collections have been disfigured or destroyed by it, the glazed surface having been entirely eaten off. In some THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 167 cases, books printed on heavily sized paper will have the surface of the leaves a good deal scraped, leaving only the portions covered by the ink. It will also eat any starched clothing, linen, or curtains, and has been known to do very serious damage to silks, which had probably been stiffened with sizing. Its damage in houses, in addition to its in- jury to books, consists in causing the wall-paper to scale off by its feeding on the starch paste. It occasionally gets into vegetable drugs, or similar material left undis- turbed for long periods. It is reported also to eat, occa- sionally, into carpets and plush-covered furniture, but this is open to question. " The silver fish belongs to the lowest order of insects, is wingless, and of very simple structure. It is a wormlikc insect about one-third of an inch in length, tapering from near the head to the extremity of the body. The head carries two prominent antenna?, and at the tip of the body are three long, bristle-shaped appendages, one pointing directly backward, and the other two extending out at a considerable angle. The entire surface of the body is cov- ered with very minute scales, like those of a moth. Six legs spring from the thorax, and while not very long, they are powerful and enable the insect to run with great rapidity." — From "The Principal Household Insects of the United States," by L. 0. Howard and C. L. Marlatt. THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH The kettle began it! Don't tell me what Mrs. Peery- bingle said. I know better. Mrs. Peerybingle may leave it on record to the end of time that she couldn't say which of them began it, but I say the kettle did : I ought to know, I hope ? The kettle began it, full five minutes by the 1G8 HOUSEHOLD PESTS AND HOUSE CLEANING little waxy-faced Dutch clock in the corner, before the cricket uttered a chirp. And here, if you like, the cricket did chime in with a chirrup, chirrup, chirrup ! of such magnitude, by way of chorus ; with a voice so astoundingly disproportionate to its size, as compared with the kettle (size ! you couldn't see it !), that if it had then and there burst itself like an over- charged gun ; if it had fallen a victim on the spot, and chirruped its little body into fifty pieces, it would have seemed a natural and inevitable consequence, for which it had expressly labored. The kettle had had the last of its solo performances. It persevered with undiminished ardor ; but the cricket took first fiddle and kept it. Good Heaven, how it chirped ! Its shrill, sharp, piercing voice resounded through the house, and seemed to twinkle in the outer darkness like a star. There was an indescribable little trill and tremble in it, at its loudest, which suggested its being carried off its legs, and made to leap again, by its own intense enthu- siasm. Yet they went very well together, the cricket and the kettle. The burden of the song was still the same ; and louder, louder, louder still, they sang it in their emu- lation. There was all the excitement of a race about it. Chirp, chirp, chirp ! Cricket, a mile ahead. Hum, hum, hum-m-m ! Kettle making play in the distance like a great top. Chirp, chirp, chirp ! — Cricket round the corner. Hum, hum, hum-m-m. Kettle sticking to him in his own way ; no idea of giving in. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket fresher than ever. Hum, hum, hum-m-m. Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp ! Cricket going in to finish him. Hum, hum, hum-m-m ! Kettle not to be fin- ished. Until at last, they got so jumbled together in the hurry-skurry, helter-skelter, of the match, that whether the kettle chirped and the cricket hummed, or the cricket THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH 169 chirped and the kettle hummed, or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer head than yours or mine to have decided with anything like certainty. But of this there is no doubt : that the kettle and the cricket, at one and the same moment, and by some power of amalgamation best known to themselves, sent each his fireside song of comfort streaming into a ray of the candle that shone out through the window, and a long way down the lane. And this light, bursting on a certain per- son who on the instant approached toward it through the gloom, expressed the whole thing to him, literally in a twin- kling, and cried: " Welcome home, old fellow ! Welcome home, my boy." — From " The Cricket cm the Hearth," by Charles Dickens. SEWING SEWING NEEDLES In the Lebanon, high up among the defiles and rocky platforms, which succeed each other till the celebrated cedars are reached, there is a village nestling among mul- berry groves and orchards, called Eden, and believed by many people in the East to be the real first home of Adam and Eve. We did not, when we were there, see anybody sewing fig leaves together ; but we mention that place, not only because it is a widespread belief that the first sewing ever done was done there, but because we had, a little while before going there, seen a piece of sewing of extremely old date. The work that we saw was a piece of darning, with the threaded needle still sticking in it, after the lapse of several thousand years. The old Egyp- tians had a custom of burying, in their handsome, roomy rock tombs, specimens of the works and possessions of the deceased; and the cotton fabric that we saw, with the pretty unfinished darn (more like herring-bone stitch than our ordinary darning) and the needle sticking in it, was, no doubt, the property and handiwork of the lady in whose tomb it was found. It may be seen in Dr. Abbott's collection of curiosities at Cairo. Those old Egyptians seemed to have known the use of steel. They used it for armor, but not, we suppose, for needles ; for this needle — the one remaining needle from the world of over five thousand years ago — is of wood. The wood is hard, and 173 174 SEWING the needle is made as small, probably, as it can be, but it is sadly clumsy. It is a curious thing, to glance back through all those thousands of years, to the Egyptian lady, sitting in her elegant chair, mending her muslin garment (whatever it might be), while surrounded by her children, one of whom was playing with her doll (still in mummified existence), with a face and hair uncommonly like the Sphinx, and another, a baby, handling — not a woolly bow-wow dog, like those that yelp in our nurseries — but a little snapping crocodile, of wood, with a loose under jaw. And then — what a long step it is over space and time ! — to the place where we have seen another sort of needle, with its thread, — the green shores of Mack- inaw, in Lake Michigan, where, in some of the long row of wigwams, there are, at this day, Indian women sewing with a needle of stout porcupine quill and thread of the sinews of the deer. Again, among those that we have not seen, there are the fish bones that the Greenlanders and the South Sea Islanders use : the women of the one race sitting in their snow burrow, stitching by the light of their oil lamps ; and the women of the other race wearing while at work a great palm-leaf on their heads for shade, and cooling themselves occasionally by a swim in the calm water within the coral reefs. — Adapted from "Littell's Living Age." PINS When pins were first invented and brought into use, about the beginning of the sixteenth century, they were a New Year's gift very acceptable to ladies, and money given for the purchase of them was called "pin money." Pins made of metal in their present form must have been THE COTTON-PLANT 175 made some time previous to 1543, in which year a statute was passed, entitled, "An Acte for the true making of Py nnes," in which it was enacted that the price charged should not exceed $1.75 a thousand. Pins were pre- viously made of boxwood, bone, and silver for the richer classes ; those used by the poor were of common wood — in fact, skewers. — Adapted from " New Year's Gifts," in Chambers's " Book of Days." THE COTTON-PLANT The cotton-plant is an annual, which shoots above ground in about a fortnight after sowing, and Avhich, as it grows, throws out flower-stalks, at the end of each of which develops a pod with fringed calyces. From this pod emerges a flower, which, in some varieties, will change its color from day to day. The complete bloom flourishes for about twenty-four hours, at the end of which time the flower twists itself off, leaving a pod or boll, which grows to the size of a large filbert, browns and hardens like a nut, and then bursts, revealing the fibre or wool encased in three or four cells within. This fibre or wool is the covering of the seeds, and in each cell will be as many separate fleeces as seeds, yet apparently forming one fleece. Upon the characteristics of this fleece depends the com- mercial value of the fibre. The essential qualities of good and mature cotton are thus enumerated by an expert : "Length of fibre, smallness or fineness in diameter; evenness or smoothness ; elasticity ; tensile strength and color ; hollowness or tubelike construction ; natural twist; corrugated edges, and moisture." The fibre of Indian cotton is only about five-eighths of an inch long ; that of Sea Island about two inches. Then the latter 176 SEWING is of a sort of creamy white color ; and some kinds of Egyptian cotton are not white at all, but golden in hue, while others are snow-white. Cotton is largely produced in the " cotton belt " of the United States, an area stretching for about two thousand miles between its extreme points in the Southern states. Over this area soil and climate vary considerably. The cotton belt lies, roughly speaking, between the thirtieth and fortieth parallels of north latitude. As an expert says : " Cotton can be produced with various degrees of profit throughout the region bounded on the north by a line passing through Philadelphia ; on the south by a line passing a little south of New Orleans ; and on the west by a line passing through San Antonio. This is the limit of the possibilities." The cotton-plant likes a light, sandy soil, or a black, alluvial soil, like that of the Mississippi margins. It requires both heat and moisture in due proportions, and is sensitive to cold, to drought, and to excessive moisture. The southern cotton -fields are still worked by negroes, but no longer slaves, as before the war ; and in fact the negroes are now not only free, but some of them are con- siderable cotton-growers on their own account. On the other hand, one finds but little nowadays of the old system of spacious plantations under one ownership. Instead, the cultivation is carried on mainly on small farms or allotments, not owned but rented by the cultivators. The cotton agent is the go-between of the grower and the exporting agent in Galveston or New Orleans, or other centre of business. After the crop is picked by the negroes, — men, women, and children, — and the har- vest is a long process, — the seeds are separated from the fibre by means of a " cotton-gin," and then the cotton is packed into .loose bales for the agent, while the THE ROMANCE OF COTTON 177 seeds are sent to a mill to be crushed for cotton-seed oil and oil-cake, for cattle feeding. The loose cotton-bales are collected by the agent into some such central town as Memphis, where they are sorted, sampled, graded, and then compressed by machinery into bales of about four hundred pounds each. The cotton then passes into the hands of the shipping agent, who brands it and forwards it by river steamer to one of the southern ports, or by rail to New York or Boston. — Adapted from " Chambers's Journal." THE ROMANCE OF COTTON The Father of History, in writing about India, made the following remarkable statement: — " They possess," he said, " a kind of plant, which, in- stead of fruit, produces wool of a finer and better quality than that of the sheep, and of this the natives make their clothes." This was the vegetable wool of the ancients, which many learned authorities have identified with bys- sus, in bandages of cloth made from which the old Egyp- tians wrapped their mummies. But did Egypt receive the cotton plant from India, or India from Egypt, and when ? However that may be, there is good reason to believe that cotton is the basis of one of the oldest indus- tries in the world, although we are accustomed to think of it as quite modern, and at any rate is practically un- known in Europe before the last century. As a matter of fact, nevertheless, cotton was being cultivated in the south of Europe in the thirteenth century, although whether the fibre was then used for the making of cloth is not so cer- tain. Its chief use then seems to have been in the manu- facture of paper. The beginning of the Oriental fable of the vegetable 178 SEWING lamb is lost in the dateless night of the centuries. When and how it originated we know not ; but the story of a plant-animal in western Asia descended through the ages, and passed from traveller to traveller, from historian to historian, until in our time the fable has received a prac- tical verification. Many strange things were gravely recorded of this plant-animal: as, that it was a tree bear- ing seed-pods, which, bursting when ripe, disclosed within little lambs with soft white fleeces, which the Scythians used for weaving into clothing. Or, that it was a real flesh-and-blood lamb, growing upon a short stem, flexible enough to allow the lamb to feed upon the surrounding grass. There were many versions of the marvellous tale as it reached Europe. One traveller vouched for the flesh-and- blood lamb growing out of a plant, and declared that he had both seen and eaten it — whereby he proved himself a somewhat greater romancer than usual. Nevertheless, he has a germ of truth amid his lies, for he relates of " Bucha- ria " that in the land are " trees that bear wool, as though it were of sheep, whereof men make clothes and all things that are made of wool." And again, of the mysterious kingdom of Abyssinia, he related: "In that country and in many others beyond, and also in many on this side, men sow the seeds of cotton, and they sow it every year ; and then it grows into small trees which bear cotton. And so do men every year, so that there is plenty of cotton at all times." Here, then, we have evidence that, eighteen cen- turies after Herodotus, cotton was still being cultivated, as the basis of a textile industry, both in western Asia and in Africa. It is said that in the sacred books of India there is clear evidence that cotton was in use for clothing purposes eight centuries before Christ. The expedition of Alexander the Great from Persia into the Punjab was a .good deal later, about three hundred THE ROMANCE OF COTTON 179 and thirty years before Christ. On the retreat down the Indus, Admiral Neorchus remarks "trees bearing, as it were, flocks or bunches of wool," of which the natives made "garments of surpassing whiteness, or else their black complexions made the material seem whiter than any other." At the beginning of the Christian era, we find cotton in cultivation and in use in Persia, Arabia, and Egypt, but whether native to these countries, or carried west- ward during the centuries from India, we know not. Thereafter, the westward spread was slow ; but the plant can be traced along the north coast of Africa to Morocco. The Moors took the plant or seeds to Spain, and it was being grown on the plains of Valencia in the tenth cen- tury; and by the thirteenth century it was, as we have said, growing in various parts of southern Europe. Yet although the Indian cloths were known to the Greeks and Romans a century or two before the Chris- tian era, and although in the early centuries Arab traders brought to the Red Sea ports Indian calicoes, which were distributed in Europe, we find cotton known in England only as material for candle-wicks down to the seventeenth century. The first mention of cotton being manufactured in England is in 1641; and the "English cottons," of which earlier mention may be found, were really woollens. And now we come to a very curious thing in the romance of cotton. Columbus discovered America in 1492 ; and when he reached the islands of the Caribbean Sea, the natives who came off to barter with him brought, among other things, cotton yarn and thread. Vasco da Gama, in 1497, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached the Zanzibar coast. There the natives were found to be clothed in cotton, just as Columbus found the natives of Cuba to be, as Pizarro found the Peruvians, and as Cortes found the Mexicans. These Europeans, proceed- 180 SEWING ing from the Iberian peninsula east and west, found the peoples of the new worlds clothed in a material of which they knew nothing. Cotton was king in America, as in Asia, before it began even to be known in western Europe. It is curious that when Africa was discovered by Europeans, the Dark Continent was actually produc- ing both the fibre, and the cloth for which African labor and English skill were afterward to be needed. The cot- ton plantations of southern America were worked by the negroes of Africa, in order that the cotton mills of Lanca- shire might be kept running. And yet both Africa and America made cotton cloth from the vegetable wool long before England knew of it otherwise than as a traveller's wonder. Even in Asia, the natural habitat of the cotton-plant, the story has been curious. Thus, cotton has been in use for clothing for three thousand years in India, and India borders upon the ancient and extensive Empire of China. Yet cotton was not used in China for cloth making until the coming of the Tartars, and has been cultivated and manufactured there for only about five hundred years. This was because of the " vested interests " in wool and silk, which combined to keep out the vegetable wool from general use. _ Adapted j rom „ Chambers's Journal." THE SILKWORM Silkworms proceed from eggs which are deposited during the summer by a white moth. These eggs are about equal in size to a grain of mustard seed ; their color when first laid is yellow ; but in three or four days after, they acquire a bluish cast. In temperate climates, and by using proper precautions, these eggs may be preserved during the winter and spring. The period of their hatch- THE SILKWORM 181 ing may be hastened or retarded by artificial means, so as to ao-ree with the time when the natural food of the insect o shall appear in ample abundance for its support. All the curious changes and labors which accompany and characterize the life of the silkworm are performed within the space of a very few wrecks. The three suc- cessive states of being put on by this insect are, that of the worm or caterpillar, of the cocoon, and moth. In addition to these more decided transformations, the prog- ress of the silkworm in its caterpillar state is marked by five distinct stages of being. When first hatched, it appears as a small, black worm, about a quarter of an inch in length. Its first indication of life is the desire which it shows for obtaining food, in search of which, if not immediately supplied, it will show more power of motion than at any other period. So small is the desire of change on the part of these insects, that of the most of them it may be said, their own free will seldom leads them to travel over a greater space than three feet throughout the whole length of their lives. Even when hungry, the worm still clings to the skeleton of the leaf from which its food was last taken. It will sometimes wander as far as the edge of the tray wherein it is confined, and some few have been found sufficiently venturesome to cling to its rim ; but the smell of fresh leaves will instantly bring them back. It would add greatly to the labors and cares of their attendants if silk- Avorms had a more rambling disposition. The silkworm increases its size so greatly, and in so short a space of time, — its weight being multiplied many thousand-fold in the course of one month, — that if only one skin had been given to it, which should serve for its whole caterpillar state, it would with difficulty have dis- tended itself sufficiently to keep pace with the insect's growth. 182 SEWING At the end of the first week it refuses food, and three days after begins to cast off its skin. To facilitate this moulting, a fluid is thrown off by the worm, which, spreading between its body and the skin about to be abandoned, moistens their surfaces, and causes them to separate the more readily. The insect also sends out silk from its body, which, sticking to the spot where it rests, serves to keep the skin to its position. These steps seem to call for some considerable work, as after them the worm remains quiet for a short space of time, to recover from its fatigue. It then proceeds, by rubbing its head among the leafy fibres surrounding it, to remove itself from the scaly covering. Its next effort is to break through the skin nearest to the head, which, as it is there the smallest, calls for the greatest effort, and no sooner is this accomplished and the two front legs disengaged, than the remainder of the body is quickly drawn forth, the skin being still fastened to the spot in the manner already described. This moulting is so complete that not only is the whole covering of the body cast off, but that of the feet, the entire skull, and even the jaws, including the teeth. In two or three minutes from the beginning of its efforts, the worm is wholly freed, and again puts on the appearance of health and vigor ; feeding with renewed appetite upon its leafy banquet. After four such moultings, the silkworm attains its full growth, and is a slender caterpillar, from two and a half to three inches in length. At the period above men- tioned, the desire of the worm for food begins to decrease ; the first symptom of this is the appearance of the leaves nibbled into small portions and wasted. Soon it does not even touch the leaves ; it appears restless and uneasy, erects its head, and moves about from side to side with a circular motion, looking for a place wherein it can com- mence its labor of spinning. Its color is now light green THE SILKWORM 183 with some mixture of a darker hue. In twenty-four hours from the time it stops eating, the material for form- ing silk will be digested in its glands ; its green color will disappear ; its body will have become glossy and partially transparent toward its neck. Before the worm is quite prepared to spin, its body will have greater firm- ness and be a little lessened in size. When the worm has fixed upon some angle or hollow place whose size agrees with the size of its intended silken ball or cocoon, it begins its labor by throwing forth thin and irregular threads. During the first day, the insect forms upon these a loose structure of an oval shape, which is called floss silk, and within which covering, in the three following days, it forms the firm yellow ball ; the laborer, of course, always remaining on the inside of the sphere which it is forming. At the end of the third or fourth day, the worm will have completed its task ; and we have then a silk cocoon, with the worm imprisoned in its centre ; the cocoon being from an inch to an inch and a half long, and of a yellow or orange color. When the insect has finished its labor of unwinding, it smears the entire internal surface of the cocoon with a peculiar kind of gum, very similar in its nature to the matter which forms the silk itself ; and this, no doubt, acts as a shield against rain or the humidity of the atmos- phere for the chrysalis in its natural state, when, of course, it would be subject to all varieties of weather. The silken filament, of which the ball is made up, is like- wise accompanied throughout its entire length by a por- tion of gum, which serves to give firmness and consistency to its texture, and assists in rendering the dwelling of the chrysalis impervious to moisture. This office it performs so well that when, for the purpose of reeling the silk with greater ease, the balls are thrown into basins of 184 SEWING hot water, they swim on the top with all the buoyancy of bladders. When the ball is finished, the insect rests awhile from its toil, and then throws off its caterpillar skin. If the cocoon be now opened, its inhabitant will appear in the form of a pupa, in shape somewhat resembling a kidney- bean, but pointed at one end, having a smooth brown skin. Its former covering will be found lying beside it, — Adapted from u The History of Silk, Cotton, Linen," etc. THE FLAX The flax had just opened its pretty little blue flowers, as delicate as the wings of a moth. The sun shone, and the rain watered it. This was just as good for the flax as it is for little children to be washed and then kissed by their mother. They look much prettier for it, and so did the flax. One day some people came who took hold of the plant and pulled it up by the roots. This was painful. Then they laid it in water, as if they intended to drown it ; and, after that, placed it near a fire, as if it were to be roasted. " We cannot expect to be happy always," said the Flax. "By experiencing evil, as well as good, we become wise." And certainly there was plenty of evil in store for the flax. It was steeped, and roasted, and broken, and combed. At last it was put on a spinning-wheel. " Whirr, whirr," went the wheel, so quickly that the flax could not collect its thoughts. " Well, I have been very happy," he thought in his pain, " and must be con- tented with the past." And contented he remained until he was put on a loom, and became a beautiful piece of white linen. " How wonderful it is that, after all I have suffered, I THE FLAX 185 am made something of at last. I am the luckiest person in the world — so strong and fine ; and how white, and what a length ! This is better than being a mere plant and bearing flowers. Then I had no attention, nor any water unless it rained. -Now I am watched and taken care of. Every' morning I am turned over, and I have a shower-bath from the watering-pot every evening. Yes, and the clergyman's wife, noticed me, and said I was the best piece of linen in the whole parish. I cannot be happier than I am now." After some time the linen was taken into the house, placed under the scissors, and cut and torn into pieces, and then pricked with needles. At last it was made into garments which everybody wears. " See, now, then," said the Flax, " I have become some- thing of importance. This was my destiny ; it is quite a blessing. Now I shall be of some use in the world. I am now divided into twelve pieces, and yet we are all one and the same in the whole dozen. It is most extraordi- nary good fortune." Years passed away ; and at last the linen was so worn it could scarcely hold together. " It must end very soon," said the pieces to each other ; " we would gladly have held together a little longer, but it is useless to expect impossibilities." And at length they fell into rags and tatters. They were then torn to shreds, and steeped in water, and made into a pulp and dried, and they knew not what besides, till all at once they found themselves beautiful white paper. " Well, now, this is a surprise, a glorious surprise, too," said the Paper. " I am now finer than ever, and I shall be written upon, and who can tell what fine things I may have written upon me. This is wonderful luck." And sure enough the most beautiful stories and poetry were written upon it, and only once was there a blot, which was 186 SEWING very fortunate. Then people heard the stories and poetry read, and it made them wiser and better ; for all that was written had a good and sensible meaning, and a great blessing was contained in the words on the paper. " I never imagined anything like this," said the Paper, " when I was only a little blue flower growing in the fields. How could I fancy that I should ever be the means of bringing knowledge and joy to men ? I cannot under- stand it myself, and yet it is really so. Heaven knows that I have done nothing myself but what I was obliged to do with my weak powers, for my own preservation ; and yet I have been promoted from one joy and honor to another. Each time I think that the song is ended, and then some- thing higher and better begins for me. I suppose now I shall be sent on my travels about the world, so that people may read me. It cannot be otherwise ; indeed, it is more than probable ; for I have more splendid thoughts written upon me than I had pretty flowers in olden times. I am happier than ever." But the paper did not go on its travels ; it was sent to the printer, and all the words written upon it were set up in type, to make a book, or rather many hundreds of books ; for so many more persons could get pleasure and profit from a printed book than from written paper ; and if the paper had been sent out into the world, it would have been worn out before it had got half through its journey. " This is certainly the wisest plan," said the written Paper ; "I really did not think of that. I shall remain at home and be held in honor, like some old grandfather, as I really am to all these new books. They will do some good. I could not have wandered about as they do. Yet he who wrote all this has looked at me, as every word flowed from his pen upon my surface. I am the most honored of all." THE FLAX 187 Then the paper was tied in a bundle with other papers, and thrown into a tub that stood in the wash-house. "After work, it is well to rest," said the Paper ; "and a very good opportunity to collect one's thoughts. Now I am able, for the first time, to think of my real condition, and to know one's self is true progress. What will be done with me now, I wonder ? No doubt I shall still go forward. I have always progressed hitherto, as I know quite well." Now it happened one day that all the paper in the tub was taken out and laid on the hearth to be burnt. People said it could not be sold at the shop to wrap up butter and sugar because it had been written upon. The children in the house stood round the stove, for they wanted to see the paper burn, because it flamed up so prettily, and after- ward, among the ashes, so many red sparks could be seen running one after the other, here and there, as quick as the wind. They called it seeing the children come out of school, and the last spark was the schoolmaster. They often thought the last spark had come, and one would cry, " There goes the schoolmaster " ; but the next moment another spark would appear, shining so beautifully. How they would like to know where the sparks all went to ! Perhaps we shall find out some day, but we don't know now. The whole bundle of paper had been placed on the fire, and was soon alight. " Ugh ! " cried the Paper, as it burst into a bright flame ; " ugh ! " It was certainly not very pleasant to be burning; but when the whole was wrapped in flames, the flames mounted up into the , air, higher than the flax had ever been able to raise its little blue flower, and they glistened as the white linen never could have glistened. All the written letters became quite red in a moment, and all the words and thoughts turned to fire. 188 SEWING " Now I am mounting straight up to the sun," said a voice in the flames ; and it was as if a thousand voices echoed the words, and the flames darted up through the chimney, and went out at the top. Then a number of tiny beings, as many in number as the flowers on the flax had been, and invisible to mortal eyes, floated aboi^e them. They were even lighter and more delicate than the flowers from which they were born ; and as the flames were extin- guished, and nothing remained of the paper but black ashes, these little beings danced upon it ; and whenever they touched it, bright red sparks appeared. " The children are all out of school, and the school- master was the last of all," said the children. It was good fun, and they sang over the dead ashes : — " Snip, snap, snurre, Basse lurre ; The song is ended." But the little invisible beings said : " The song is never ended ; the most beautiful is yet to come." But the children could neither hear nor understand this, nor should they ; for children must not know every- thing. — Adapted from Hans C. Andersen. TRUE STORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE In the first half of the nineteenth century there were three minds trying to work out the idea of sewing by machine. One of these inventors lived in England, another in France, and the third in America. The Frenchman perfected his idea, brought it into practice, showed how the work might be done, and then, having taught the lesson, died, and left others to profit by his toil. The Englishman grasped the idea and was slowly TRUE STORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE 189 working it out. But lie stopped when the end was almost gained, and rested content with an imperfect machine. The American perceived the want, set about to supply it, rapidly and accurately perfected his idea, and with in- domitable perseverance carried it through, and gave the world a new invention. The ingenuity of the Frenchman, the painstaking labor of the Englishman, each by itself had not been enough. A share of both in the American mind, aided by the vigor and energy proper to a new country, succeeded. Let us try to obtain some notion of these three men and their labors. In 1793 was born one Barthelemy Thimonier. He was the son of a working tailor, and later followed his father's trade, but not successfully. His work was not very well done, and so employment fell off. The reason for this idleness was that all his mind was given to one idea. In his trade it was the custom to give out work to the country girls round about, who took it home, and brought it back when it was finished. Perhaps with the queer cracked tailor these sempstresses were rather unruly. At any rate, the trouble that they gave him made him wish that sewing could be done by means more tractable. From the wish he got to thinking of the means by which it might be done, and at last he convinced himself that it was quite possible. So he went about thinking always how to make iron and steel perform the work done before by human fingers. When he ought to have been cutting out a blouse, or putting a patch on a pair of trousers, he was shaping odd-looking bits of wood with his knife, or trying some experiment with an old crochet-needle and a reel of thread. Masters sent him away, and told him to come back with his machine when it Avas finished. Wise friends shook their heads, and thought that no good would come of such idle goings on. For all this the poor tailor 190 SEWING could do nothing. Whatever money he could get he lavished on the object of his affections, the strange engine with clumsy wooden works. This he kept in a corner of his garret, working on it every moment that he could. At last, after four years, the machine was really finished, and Thimonier managed by its aid to sew two pieces of cloth together. The gossips were astonished. So really, there had been something in the mad tailor and his sew- ing-engine, after all ! They crowded the before lonely garret, watched the machine slowly and laboriously — so we would say — doing the work that had before taken so many nimble fingers to accomplish. One day, there came to his shop an engineer, who at once perceived what Thimonier had scarcely thought of — its vast capabilities. A patent Avas soon obtained, and, not long after, the engineer and the inventor started as a firm which was to work the machines and carry on by means of them a large tailoring business. The work flour- ished, and the poor tailor saw his machine returning to him tenfold the money and toil that he had spent upon it. At last, in 1841, eighty machines were at work on army clothing. But those were troublous times. A band of workmen smashed the machines, which they felt were tak- ing bread from their mouths, and Thimonier had to fly for his very life. Once more he set up a factory, but his machines were again destroyed by workmen. At last he died a pauper. The machine on which he had spent so much labor worked a chain stitch with a single thread. The needle was hooked. It made about two hundred stitches a minute. So much for the earliest inventor who really made a sewing-machine that would work. We may now go back to that great country which has done as much for machin- TRUE STORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE 191 ery in her century of life as the Old World in all her ages. With most people Elias Howe has the credit of being the very first maker of any sewing-machine. At any rate, he it was who made the first lock-stitch ma- chine. It was in 1839 that the idea of a sewing-machine was first suggested to Howe. Two men were showing the model of a knitting-machine to an instrument-maker in his shop in Boston. "Why do you not make your machine sew?" asked he. "Sew!" answered they. "Any one who could do that would make a fortune ! " This set the young man behind the counter thinking. His name was Elias Howe. He was the son of a poor miller. Brought up among machinery, he had from the beginning a mechanical genius. And because of this he had sought employment with the instrument-maker, after making a failure of farming. But he was not successful in this em- ployment either. He was apparently lazy, but he had the faculty of seizing hold of an idea, turning it over and over in his mind, putting all of his thought on it, until at last something came of it. This is what he did with the idea of the sewing-machine. He thought about it for four years before he finally began to work it out practically. In a little more than a year after this he had made a rude machine that would sew. The idea was finished, but to perfect it required money. It was all Howe could do to support his family. But he was fortunate enough to find a man who had lately come into some money and was willing to risk it on the machine. He supported Howe and his family till a perfect model could be finished. In 1845 this was done. Two suits of clothes were made, one of which was worn by Howe and the other by his good friend. Still fortune seemed as far off as ever. The tailors 192 SEWING would not have it. It would throw them out of work, they said, and at any rate, they did not believe that it could sew. Howe hired a big room, and sewed whatever was brought. He made a match against five of the best workers in Boston. Each was given a seam, and the machine five seams. The girls sewed faster than ever before, but the machine sewed faster still. But it was all of no use. Howe almost gave up. He turned engineer on a railway, but the work was too hard for him. So he turned again to his machine. He succeeded in getting it introduced into England. But when he returned home, he found that several invent- ors had heard of his machine, and were making others that were infringements of his patents. Among these was the well-known Isaac Singer. During the year 1850 he saw one of Howe's machines, and after examin- ing it, went home and made a drawing containing several improvements. With great difficulty he obtained fifty dollars and set to work to make a model. Day and night he worked at it, hardly stopping to get a few hours' sleep, for eleven days. " The first attempt to sew was unsuccessful," he wrote, " and the workmen, who were tired out with almost unremitting work, left me one by one, saying that it was a failure. I continued trying the machine, with Zieber to hold the lamp for me. But, in the nervous condition to which I was reduced by incessant work and anxiety, I was unsuccessful in getting the machine to sew tight stitches. About midnight I started with Zieber to the hotel where I boarded. Upon the way we sat down upon a pile of boards, and Zieber asked me if I had noticed that the loose loops of thread were on the upper side of the cloth as it came from the needle. It flashed across me that I had forgotten to adjust the TRUE STORY OF THE SEWING-MACHINE 193 tension upon the needle thread. Zieber and I went back to the shop, I adjusted the tension, tried the machine and sewed five stitches perfectly, when the thread broke. The perfection of these stitches satisfied me that the machine was a success. I stopped work, went to the hotel, and had a sound sleep." Few more curious pictures than this can be found in all the varied histories of invention — the man trying his machine at dead of night, with his comrade holding the light; refusing to give up till at last the case seemed hopeless even to him ; then going away, but after a few steps seizing the true idea, and rushing back to his work- shop to sew those magic five stitches that told him the work was done. In New York, Singer did what Howe had never done. He forced his machine on the public. He advertised it, exhibited it, worked night and day, till at last it began to get widely known. Singer was told that he was infring- ing Howe 's patent. The case seemed plain, but he deter- mined to fight it. To do this he had to find some earlier inventor than Howe. Strangely enough, he succeeded in doing this. A letter came into his possession which spoke of a machine made by one Walter Hunt in 1832. Hunt had anticipated Howe's idea, but had he antici- pated the working of it? An old machine that he had sold in 1834 was brought out, and Hunt was set to work upon it. But he had half forgotten his original idea, and was unable at once to reproduce it. The old machine would not sew, and the courts, after a long-suit, decided in favor of Howe, and the matter was at an end. Nature Study in Elementary Schools A MANUAL FOR TEACHERS By LUCY LANGDON WILLIAMS WILSON, Ph.D. Philadelphia Normal School !2mo. Cloth. Price 90 cents. This course of Nature Study may be pursued with profit to teacher and pupil in any one of the first four years of school life, and in any school however poorly equipped. It is planned chiefly to meet the needs of the ordinary grade teacher in the public schools and does not presuppose special training on her part nor special facilities for the collection of material. It does, how- ever, take for granted a strong desire on the teacher's part to do this work, a lively belief in its efficacy, and an earnest effort to become better acquainted with the familiar, yet to most of us unknown face of nature, Prof. W. L. Poteat, Wake Forest College, North Carolina. " Mrs. Wilson's ' Nature Study ' impresses me as a very timely and a very sensible book. Any live teacher must be grateful for its suggestive helpfulness. I shall take pleasure in recommending it for the course of reading prepared for the public school teachers of this State." Dr. R. K. Buehrle, Superintendent, Lancaster, Pa. " Mrs. Wilson's little manual affords excellent assistance to those who mean to equip themselves for the best kind of work. It is a good book for every teacher to have and to study when preparing to give lessons in Nature Study." Charlotte E. Reeve, State Normal School, New Paltz, N. Y. " I am exceedingly well pleased with the book. The subject of Nature Study is so comprehensive that I think most teachers feel dis- couraged at the thought of it. The Wilson manual presents such carefully selected subject-matter that the teaching of it becomes a delight rather than an added burden. I shall endeavor to make our pupil teachers feel that it is one of die books they must own." THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK FIRST NATURE READER i6mo. Cloth. 35 cents The original matter in this series of Readers has been written, and the selections chosen, with the desire of putting into the hands of little children, literature which shall have for their minds the same interest and value that really good books and magazines have for grown-up people. It is the author's aim to prepare the ground and even thus early to plant the seeds of that which may develop into a love for art, for literature, and for nature. COMMENTS ON FIRST READER George HowellS, Superintendent of Schools, Scranton, Pa. " Since receiving ' First Nature Reader' by Mrs. Wilson I have read every line in the book, and I wish to say that I have seen nothing in the line of Nature Study as good as this little volume." Addison Jones, Principal of Public School, Westchester, Pa. " We are using in our primary schools ' Nature Study in Elementary Schools' and the reader by the same author. These books aid us in doing excellent work in the line of elementary science." THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK SECOND NATURE READER i6mo. Cloth. 35 cents NATURE MYTHS, STORIES AND POEMS For elementary teachers who wish to give a course of nature study based on the phenomena of the changing seasons. It is* suitable for use with children in their second and third year of school work. The sentences are short, the language simple; yet the aim in choosing the selections and writing the part which is original has been to give the children reading which shall have for them the same value and interest as good literature has for older minds. The author seeks to prepare the ground and even thus early to plant the seeds which may develop into a taste for good art or literature. The book is excellently illustrated from nature and the masterpieces of art, and the selections are by the best writers, whose books are within the children's com- prehension, Shakespeare, Keats, Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Jean Ingelow, Robert Louis Stevenson, and many others. COMMENTS ON NATURE SERIES Julia Richman, Principal Public School, 77 New York City. " We have used Mrs. Wilson's ' Nature Study in Elementary Schools' since June, and my teachers are unanimous in their verdict that it is the best guide to their Nature work that has come to our notice. It is hard to select a special merit in a work so full of good things, but its suggestion and its correlated language work have been of the greatest value. No teacher should be without a copy." Charlotte E. Reeve, State Normal School, New Paltz, N. Y. " I am exceedingly well pleased with the book. The subject of Nature Study is so comprehensive that I think most teachers feel dis- couraged bv the thought of it. The Wilson manual presents such carefully selected subject-matter that the teaching of it becomes a delight rather than an added burden. I shall endeavor to make our pupil teachers feel that it is one of the books that they must own." A. J. Davis, Principal State Normal School, Clarion, Pa. " I am verv much pleased with the plan of ' Nature Study,' and shall gladly bring it to the attention of our science teacher and of the superintendent of the Model School." THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK Handbook of Nature Study FOR TEACHERS AND PUPILS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS By D. LANGE, Instructor in Nature Study in the Public Schools of St. Paul, Minn. i2mo. Cloth. $1.00 The purpose of the book is to furnish to teachers material sugges- tions with which to make their pupils acquainted with the plant and animal life around them. The subject-matter is arranged according to seasons and life communities, and the author, a teacher of wide ex- perience, has taken special pains to show some of the relations existing between the vegetable and animal kingdoms, animate and inanimate nature, and between man and nature. Brief directions are given con- cerning field lessons. Sixty illustrations are included in the text. COMMENTS Education " He has made a delightful book which one takes up with pleasure and lays down with regret." Northwest Journal of Education " The intelligent teacher with this manual at hand cannot fail to do Nature Study work that will rouse keenest interest in pupils. The arrangement, the illustrations, and the language are all worthy of much commendation." Wisconsin Journal of Education " The style of the book is fresh and inspiring ; its descriptions clear and full ; and its illustrations numerous." Our Native Birds HOW TO PROTECT THEM AND ATTRACT THEM TO OUR HOMES By D. LANGE i2mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price $1.00 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK JUN 7 1900 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS