injure the crop where wheat crops would be ruined. The fortunate owner of a chestnut grove can gather his nuts in the Fall, and the rest of the year, he can labor at whatever task he chooses. In all the countries of Southern Europe, chestnut flour is largely consumed, and the demand exceeds the supply. Bread, cakes, pies are made from the flour, and the nuts also boiled and eaten whole. The European nut is much larger than the American variety, grows on a larger tree, and is much more prolific. It will flourish here, as has been proved by trial, and the larger chestnut, which must be cooked to be palatable, is now found in most of our markets.—Christian Register. HALF A DOZEN COOKERY RECIPES. Almond Macaroons. Two egg, whites, one coffee cup level full of powdered sugar, one-half pound of sweet almonds. Pour boiling water over the almonds to take off the brown skin, then put them in the oven to dry; when cold pound them to paste. Beat up the eggs and sugar to a stiff froth and add them to the almond paste, mixing them thoroughly with the back of a spoon. Roll the preparation in your hands in little balls the size of a nutmeg and place them on a piece of white paper an inch apart. Bake them in a cool oven a light brown.-Philadelphia Press. Cream Cocoanut Pudding. Two cupfuls of grated cocoanut, four tablespoonfuls of cornstarch, one teaspoonful of vanilla, one pint of milk, four eggs, one-half cupful of sugar. Put milk in farina boiler, moisten cornstarch in a little cold milk, then add it to the boiling milk, stir until smooth, beat the whites of the eggs to a very stiff froth, add the sugar to the pudding, then the whites, beat well over fire for three minutes, now add cocoanut and vanilla and turn into mold to harden; serve with vanilla sauce.-Mrs. Thomas Edward Steele. To Stuff Chicken with Chestnuts. Roast one quart of large chestnuts, shell and mash. Take one-half and add a tablespoonful of butter, a teaspoonful of salt and dash of pepper; thoroughly mix and fill the chicken. With wooden toothpicks pin thin slices of salt pork to the breast of the chicken and place it in the pan; pour in one-half cupful of water and one-half teaspoonful of salt. In roasting allow one hour to four pounds, basting frequently. When done, remove the chicken and put in the pan the balance of the chestnuts. Add one-half pint of stock, salt and pepper to taste and stir until it boils. For roast turkey use double the quantity of chestnuts.-Parry's Treatise on Nut Culture. White Puree of Chesnuts. Take a hundred chestnuts and make a slit across the top of each to prevent their bursting. Melt two and onehalf ounces of butter in a clean stewpan. Put in the chestnuts, and fry them gently until the husks come off easily. Now remove all skin and brown them. Put them into a saucepan, with one quart of milk and water mixed together in equal proportions. Add one small onion, one stick of celery, the white part only, and one small cleaned carrot cut in half only. Simmer all these gently till the chestnuts are quite soft. Drain off all the liquid and remove the onion, celery and carrot. Pound the chestnuts till smooth, then rub them through a hair sieve. Add some of the liquid in which they were boiled as you put them through the sieve; it makes them work easier. When all is rubbed through, add any milk and water you may have left out and one other quart of milk as well. Reboil this, stirring all the time. Then let it simmer gently by the side of the stove and keep it well skimmed. Just before serving it season with pepper, salt, a few grains of sugar, and pour in half a pint of thick cream. Serve with fried bits of bread.-Philadelphia Inquirer. Nut Salad. Crack, pick kernels and chop enough mixed nuts to have a cupful of kernels; chop fine one stalk of celery (using only the white part, saving ends with leaves for garnishing); sprinkle some celery salt, pinch of table salt and mix all with three or four spoonfuls of prepared meat dressing (any brand you prefer), or mayonnaise or a slaw dressing. This can be served on salad or lettuce leaves, a small quantity being put on each leaf, or it can be garnished with the ends of the celery stuck upright in the salad bowl. The quantities given make sufficient for six persons.-Philadelphia Press. Peanut Candy. One cup of granulated sugar, one cup of rolled peanuts. The peanuts are prepared by chopping or by rolling with a wooden pin. Heat the sugar in a hot oven; when it has melted remove to back of range and add the peanuts, mixing them thoroughly with the sugar. Spread on a tin and press into shape with knives. The tin does not need greasing. Cut into bars. It hardens immediately. Original in GOOD HOUSEKEEPING. WHILE ON THE WAY. For hoped-for coming time. How we welcome hours of sunshine, How we halt when comes in sight Is but a simple story Of record made on stone. Without praise or blame on marble, Original in GOOD HOUSEKEEPING. YULETIDE. Over the valleys and over the hills, Winter, chill winter, comes creeping. Sing ho for snow and the north wind's blow! Hark lads for the cling as the runners ring Down in the chimney the north wind's roar Ware ye, O you who are sleeping! So ring out the chime for the Christmas time Let your laughter and mirth at the world's new birth As the years have come, so the years will go, But let not this tide surge by, swept aside, So laugh while ye may in your blithesome way Heigho for snow and the blustering blow, Original in GOOD HOUSEKEEPING. of a dinner party, since long skirts are more easily and safely managed when the chairs are so placed. Cold or waiting plates-one for each person-are laid at first upon every well-spread table. Upon these are placed smaller ones containing raw oysters or other appetizers. These are brought in first before dinner is announced. If oysters are served the plates are first covered with crumbled ice and then on each plate are arranged five raw oysters and a quarter of a large lemon, or the half of a small one. The oyster fork is laid with its points resting upon the waiting plate and its handle lying across the knives at the right. This fork is removed with the oyster plates. When soup is to follow the oysters, the soup plates should be placed where they will become When warm before the time to send them to table. the oysters have been eaten, remove the plates, leaving the under ones to receive those containing soup, and, by the way, a soup plate should never be more than half filled. The pile of soup plates is then set before the hostess, the tureen of soup, with its cover removed to a side table, placed in front of them, and the hostess then ladles the soup into each plate, while the waiter, having first folded a little napkin over his thumb. places the plate upon a tray, carries it at once to the right of the person designated and sets it down upon the plate already at the place. The rules governing the passing of foods by a waiter, are quite simple. When there is no choice to be made by the person served, the waiter carries —Mrs. S. B. Howe, Jr. everything to his right side, and when the waiter is TABLE SERVICE. "To feed, were best at home; From thence, the sauce to meat is ceremony: A WELL-TRAINED waiter is a necessary factor in the success of any formal dinner, however small, since it is due to him that the serving is done with promptness and precision, and with no attendant clattering of plates or jingling of spoons; but it is a wise mistress who makes assurance doubly sure by a little definite preliminary instruction to the waiter, thus insuring deft service and the avoidance of all confusion or of any embarrassing waits between the courses. The temperature of the dining room should be about sixty-seven degrees when dinner is announced. Later on, if the room becomes too warm (as is likely to be the case with a number of persons present and the burning of many lights), the waiter should lower. a window or two, and see that the room is kept at the proper degree for the comfort of the guests. A new wrinkle in dining room arrangement is to place the chairs at an angle with the table-all turned the same way-thus allowing each person to stand between his chair and the table in such a way that the left hand may draw the chair into place. This mode is particularly favored by the feminine element to remove anything from before a person at table, he should lift it while standing at that person's right side. But when a person is to help himself from a dish, the waiter should carry the dish to his left side and should hold it very near to, or upon the table, while the person serves himself with a fork or spoon, or both, which should be placed upon the side of the food next to him. While the soup is being taken the waiter arranges the roast upon its platter (which should be of ample size and there should be a gravy spoon placed upon it), brings in the vegetables and gravy boat and places them upon a side table. Then he removes the soup plates, going to the right of each person, taking up the waiting plate with the soup plate upon it, and carrying both away together. Hot plates for the meat are now brought in. For the hosts convenience, these plates should be placed at his left side, unless he occupies a carver's chair, in which case they may be set directly in front of him. The host ascertains the preference of his guests for rare or well done cuts, and as soon as the first plate is helped the waiter, thumb napkin in place, lifts the plate and carries it to the person mentioned by the host. Then, while more meat is being carved by the host, the waiter places upon his tray one vegetable dish and the gravy boat, and carries them to the left of the person who has been served to meat. After the person has helped himself from these dishes the waiter sets the tray upon the side table and carries another cut of meat where the host directs, following it, as before, with the vegetable and gravy. When all present have been thus helped, another vegetable is passed round, also upon a tray, and this is followed by a third, if there are so many, also served in the same manner. Olives and like relishes are now passed, usually from one person to another at a table arranged for the service of one waiter. Often celery and grated cheese are also offered to the guests, though celery is not usually passed until after the dessert. The cheese, with a spoon upon it, is first passed, each person helping himself to a spoonful of the cheese which he places in the tiny plate at the left of his place. Next comes the celery to be eaten with the cheese, into which the ends of its stalks are dipped. When celery, for decorative effect, is kept upon the table during the entire dinner hour a pretty effect is obtained by heaping it up on a canoe-shaped glass dish, having the bottom of the dish first covered with crumbled ice with sparkling lumps of the ice scattered through and weighting under the crisp white stalks. When the meat course is finished the waiter places the carving knife, fork and gravy spoon securely upon the platter and carries it away. Then the plates (with the knives and forks laid securely across them), are deftly removed, one in each hand, and the salad next brought in. The mistress usually serves the salad and French dressing for the same should be prepared at the table. After the salad course, the tray cloths are removed, all eatables (except fruit and nuts), are taken away and the table brushed free of crumbs. Finger bowls placed on little doilies upon dessert plates are now brought to the table. If these plates are to be used for the dessert, the bowls and doilies must be drawn away to the left; but if a pudding is served, the finger bowl and plate must be set at the left side of the guest by the waiter and the pudding set down from the right side. Finger bowls should not be quite half filled and the water should not be perfumed; though, if desired, a slice of lemon or a sweet geranium leaf may be afloat on the top Coffee is served last, in small cups brought in on a tray and passed about to the guests. The sugar and cream are placed near the hostess and passed to whoever needs them. Sometimes liquors are offered in place of coffee. The tiny glasses are carried round the table upon a pretty tray, and there is just a sip in each of them, merely enough to leave an agreeable flavor in the mouth. More than three wines are seldom served at a dinner, and the preference is often given to but one. When more than one is used, as a rule, sherry is served with the fish, claret with the meat, and champagne with the dessert. Wineglasses should never be more than two thirds full. In serving it, the waiter stands at the right hand of each person and mentions the name of the wine in a low voice. The person addressed responds by a nod of acceptance, or by motioning the bottle quietly aside with the right hand if he wishes to refuse it; but the most approved course is to allow a little of the wine to be poured into the glasses even if one does not drink it-and surely no one needs to be reminded that it is in the worst possible taste to discuss the propriety of drinking wine at a table where wine is served. When only one wine is provided the preference is usually given to claret, and the glasses are filled by the waiter as soon as they are emptied. All wines should be brought to a proper temperature before drinking, and claret especially (being but chilly stuff when first brought from a cool cellar), requires gentle warmth to develop the bouquet. Only the coarsest wines will stand being suddenly heated,. and to place a delicate wine before a hot fire is destructive of its refinement. Perhaps the best plan for claret is to bring the bottle up some two or three days beforehand, and to keep it for that length of time at a temperature of between sixty and seventy degrees. And in decanting all sediment must be excluded, even at what may seem an extravagant. proportion of the wine. Original in GOOD HOUSEKEEPING. -G. H. WHEN WE LONGED FOR CHRISTMAS TIME. When the mistletoe and holly Grace the cottage and the hall; When we longed for Christmas time. Lighting up each eager face, Hide them, they are at the door. Seem to brighten on thy face. -Lewis Worthington Smith. Original in GOOD HOUSEKEEPING. THE HOME-MADE RAG RUG. IT may explain the secret of the fascinating power of this work over woman, to say that she is drawn to it, not only by the poetic beauty of its mechanism, but through its inherent element of duration or permanence. A celebrated divine has written a memorable sermon upon "The Transient and the Permanent." What is a woman's whole year, yea, often her whole life of years, but feeble essays upon the futility of the "Transient ?" This rug, it may be said, is, mechanically speaking, merely the ingenious handiwork of a woman's fingers; its warp and woof the refuse remnants gathered from the waste places of the house. It is, after all the painful labor, a mere rag rug! Is this indeed all? In this work, a woman becomes something more than a mere household drudge. She is a designer, an artisan, a poet and an artist. She becomes, through this art, a writer of history, of biography, of autobiography. You may call her a domestic economist, if you will, in that lofty way in which you speak of political economists. How, and with what an artistic eye, she sorts and arranges and blends her colors! "All faded out," did you say the old things were? Still by the law of contrast, how she heightens and harmonizes and blends them into beauty. Our rug maker is a turner in colors. See her skyblue tints and her sunset hues! You wonder at the brilliancy of the coloring; it all seems a miracle. Let me whisper the secret. The effect is not all produced by the law of contrast and skill in blending. Each day, as she has wrought lovingly, though painfully, have you not observed, at its close, that something has gone out from cheek and lip? Well! She has transfused something of her own life blood into those worn and faded shreds. Did ever a turner use a more costly dye? But this fabric, so painfully and lovingly wrought, is not merely a warp and woof of refuse rags. What memories, what associations, what affections, what poems, histories and biographies, are here incorporated. Written in hieroglyphics which only some Champollyon may decipher? It is all legible and clear as sunlight to her who has wrought and written. Let us glance at the history of just one refuse garment, woven into this fabric. It was the mother's best dress for many a year, almost religiously set apart for church and state occasions. How many times has it risen phoenix-like from its ashes, and reappeared "as good as new!" She has worn it so long, that it seems a part of herself; not her body, merely, but of her soul. For how long a time had it represented her afternoon rest and freedom from toil, and lastly, ended its service with her morning duties? Ended, did I say? One property of all matter, says natural philosophy, is indestructibility. Our rug makers' art is a verification of this law of physics. Of this species of matter, when its annihilation seems sure, through her art of resurrection it takes hold of immortality. Whenever I see one of these artistic pictures upon the floor, I always feel like turning aside and asking, as did the deacon of Dr. Lyman Beecher's wife, when he saw her first carpet, "But where shall I step?" These floor pictures are for you, her liege lord. You may feast your eye upon them and thoughtlessly tread them beneath your feet, as you may often have done her finest feelings and best affections. Yes, these are wrought by woman to protect the costly carpet made by the swift loom and the strong arm of man. Let us walk upon the bare carpet, be it tapestry or Brussels, with a “conscience void of offense," but let us not thoughtlessly place our foot upon this costlier fabric, whose warp is woman's labor, and whose woof is the embodiment of her tender memories, her affections, her concep tions of beauty, her aspirations after immortality, and whose harmonious colors are imbrued with her life blood. Through the rug the woman takes hold of the abiding; she feels herself related to the rocks and the everlasting hills; "to the sea and Him who made it." It is said by an eminent philosopher that "the first fact that strikes us, is our delight in permanence. All great natures are lovers of stability and permanence as types of the eternal." May we not give, as one of the reasons why woman's nature is so narrowed down, that she is so seldom original in thought or creative in art, that she has so long and so constantly been obliged to do service in that which is in its nature so transitory? It may be answered, that she can rear children for immortality, that her efforts may be enstamped upon the human soul. And yet, how many mothers' lives are worn away in attending to the daily recurring material wants of their children! The mother's life often becomes monotonous and discouraging from its very tread-mill nature. What her hand has done to-day with so much carefulness and precision, is required of her to-morrow with the same merciless exactitude. While treading this ceaseless round of mechanical life, her soul is often uplifted with visions of beauty, of poetry, of work that has in it the element of stability. She would also, with man, become inventive, creative. Her heart desires that the work of her hand shall become permanent and abiding. She, too, would fain do something that shall live. And so she sits down, and with artistic hand weaves her visions of beauty and of poetry into the immortality of a Rag Rug! Henceforth, will you dare to put your sacrilegious foot upon it? -Mrs. L. J. K. Gifford. A marriageable girl is a kind of merchandise that can be negotiated at wholesale only on condition that no one takes a part at retail.-Alphonse Karr. Original in GOOD HOUSEKEEPING. ON CHRISTMAS EVE. The dusk of winter steals into my room White stars are flashing out their icy light, Original in GOOD HOUSEKEEPING. When dishes have place in the pantry it is very nice to have them fill the side next the dining room wall. This china closet portion may then have doors opening into the dining room and thus be equally accessible from dining room or kitchen. Careful housewives will keep all pantry doors closed as much as possible, thus shutting out dust from the work room. Platters of sizes not frequently used may be stood upright on the shelves on one side of the pantry -Hattie Whitney. against the wall if a strip of wood is nailed along the shelf near the wall, allowing just enough incline of the platters to prevent their falling. Other things may be upon the shelves in front of these upright dishes, yet they may always be easily taken down and form often an ornamental background for other things. In the china closet in the dining room, where the finest china is kept, choice plates may thus be ranged at the backs of the shelves. PRACTICAL HOUSEKEEPING For Modest Beginning. IV. THE PANTRY. E often find that the tance because there are so many things. Here also it is important, in further compliance with the old maxim, that "everything" be kept "in its place." But much depends upon the place chosen for each article. Whatever is in constant use must be most ready to the hand. It is surprising how many people reach daily to a high shelf for what should be much nearer. So far as possible, pans and dishes of the same size should stand alone; several kinds ought not to be piled upon one another. No matter what is wanted in the kitchen, it is nearly always desired at a hurry time, when it is trying to move a number of things to obtain one which may be underneath. Bread and cakes, if kept in this room, should have their own covered receiver, which will preserve from dryness and dust alike. And this receptacle, whether of tin or earthenware, will need cleansing, scalding and drying to keep it sweet and pure. An airing in the open air and sunlight is a good finishing for such a cleansing. One of the most convenient bins for flour when closed looked like one of the square doors in the pantry. It is so adjusted that the knob and "catch are at the top and it opens downward from the top. The interior is wedge-shaped, its wooden sides thus gradually diminishing in size toward the bottom. In good working order, such a flour bin is a boon; and when the quantity of flour grows less with use the decreasing size of the bin admirably suits its contents. In the pantry a case of drawers for minor articles which collect and are needful and a closet with closing doors for cold and broken food will complete a satisfactory pantry. The farther shelved side may hold the common work dishes used about the cookery, and, unless there is another pantry, space must be allowed for kettles, skillets, etc. It is better when these utensils have plenty of room in a little closed offset of their own very close to the cooking stove. Tasteful coverings for the shelves, neatness and care in all its appointments will make the pantry almost a thing of beauty and of joy. Compiled for GOOD HOUSEKEEPING. -Mrs. H. B. Boulden. BITS OF NOVEL-WRITTEN WISDOM. It was a wise man who said it was hard to love a woman and do anything else. To the soul in torment there is no such thing as time.Hall Caine, in "The Christian." It's wonderful what a lot of things you may learn about yourself if you'll only read the papers. Upon the well-being of women, especially of working women, the whole welfare of society rests. To know you lie, to be known to lie, and yet to go on lying-that is the whole art of life with fashionable shepherds and their fashionable flocks. |