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GLEANINGS IN BEJi: CULTUHE. 



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summer (aye, It is reported to be already hero in 

 some isolated cases), and the circulating- medium- 

 money, with which business is ti-ansacted, consist- 

 ing- of gold, silver, nickel, copper, and, worst ol' all, 

 paper— is charg-cd with spreading- contagious dis- 

 eases? 



Many ot the thousands of fllthy "greenbacks " 

 now circulating- over the country have been in the 

 possession of diseased persons, and, of course, when 

 they pass into the hands and pockets of those in 

 good health, they endanger the lives of all into 

 whose hands they pass. Still we must live— we 

 must do business— we must have and use money. 

 In other words, we are compelled to take tlw rixk 

 daily, and yet but few, comparatively, ever catch 

 the contagioiril, 



In addition to Ernest's remarks, lest there 

 be some misapprehension I will say that we 

 have sent neither bees, queens, nor I'raines 

 of brood from our own apiary since foul 

 brood appeared. Neighbor H.has the im- 

 ported queens, and does all the queen-rear- 

 ing. — I want to add a little in regard to the 

 paddle for killing bees. I have for yeais 

 been in tlie habit of doing the same thing 

 whenever I had reason to believe that four 

 or five cross bees were making more troiilile 

 than their lives were worth ; but I do not 

 like a paddle so broad as the one friend 

 Doolittle mentions. It catches air too 

 much, and not only blows the bee away 

 without hurting hirn. but the resistance of 

 the air makes it hard to strike quickly. A 

 strip of wood 18 inches long, i inch thick, 

 and 2 inches wide, suits me better, and I 

 believe the bottom-bar of a Langstroth 

 frame is still better, after you have had suf- 

 ficient practice to strike' the bee on the 

 wing, and hit him the first clip. At our 

 county fair, which is just over, we had a 

 good deal of practice in this line. Tlie bees 

 came arotind our honey-stand ; but by 

 knocking them down with such a stick, just 

 as fast as they appeared, they soon stopped 

 coming. At such places, however, you 

 want to step on the bee and kill him at once 

 after you have knocked him down, or he 

 may crawl up somebody's clothing and 

 make it unpleasant for the honey-man. 

 Commence when the bee first makes his ap- 

 pearance around the honey, and follow him 

 up till you kill him, and you are master of 

 the situation. The same is true in regard 

 to the candy and lemonade stands. Let a 

 hundred or a thousand bees, however, get 

 to carrying oft' sweets, and there is a good 

 chance for a lawsuit or something worse. 



SWEETENING FRUITS WITH HONEY. 



MRS. CHADDOCK GIVES HER EXPERIENOK. 



T HAVE read Sophia A. Bradley's letter from 

 jM? Australia, and in reply I would say that I have 

 ^i tried honey for preserving- many kinds of 

 ■*■ fruits. About fifteen years ago, when I had 

 my first crop of honey. I could not sell it, so I 

 used it for canning and preserving- fruits. I put up 

 peaches and blackberries, all sweetened with honey. 

 I made raspberry and blackberry jams, and peach- 

 butter. We liked the fruit nlmoxt as well as that 

 sweetened with sug-ar; but honey is troublesome to 

 use,' because it burns so easily. I cook all my 

 fruit in milk-crocks; but in using honey to sweeten 

 with I had to put the crocks in water in skillets, 

 with nailsor pebbles underneath; and it took longer, 

 and was more trouble, than the old way. Then it 



makes so much juice in everything. This juice 

 does not jell for me as sugar and fruit-juices do, 

 but is always runny. 1 like honey for medicltlc bet- 

 ter than for fruits. We had a hired hand one year 

 who had sore eyes, and nothing seemed to help him. 

 I told him that I had read that honey was good for 

 sore eyes. I dropped a droj) in each of his eyes 

 every morning, noon, and night, and they were well 

 in a week. It hurts, though. Honey is good for 

 deafness. A good many people go through life 

 with dull hearing powers, on account of hardened 

 wax in the ear. I think honey loosens this wax. I 

 know all that 1 have tried it on get better. One or 

 two drops, dropped into the ear at one time, is suffi- 

 cient. Won't Mrs. li. Harrison try this and report'/ 



I also believe that honey and nothing else will 

 cure any common sore throat. Take a teaspoonful 

 every half-hour. 



Mr. Root asks if such a bad state of affairs could 

 happen at a camp meeting-. You make me smile. 

 W^hy, my dear friend, I saw just the same folks at 

 that camp-meeting that 1 saw at the various Sun- 

 day-school conventions that I have been attending 

 all summer. I saw the same faces at the Fourth-of- 

 ,Tuly celebration, and at the temperance convention 

 last Sunday, only at the camp-meeting there were 

 more of them. The day was broiling hot, and the 

 water-supply insufficient. The people were not so 

 much to blame, when we consider that no refresh- 

 ments of any kind were to be sold on the grounds. 

 It would seem that, if it were ungodly to sell lemon- 

 ade and watermelons on Sunday, it would have 

 been only common every-day Christianity to give 

 everybody all the cold water they wanted. Now, if 

 T had been running that camp-meeting I'd have let 

 all the watermelons come in— watermelons are so 

 good and cooling, and I'd have had great tanks of 

 cold water sitting all about, with half a dozen tin 

 cups chained to each one; then I would have used 

 all the rest of my strength in trying to prevent 

 smoking on the grounds. The tents, the tabernacle, 

 and three or four acres of horses and buggies wore 

 on top of a rising ground, the road leading from the 

 bottom lands. The road that all the people came in 

 by was new and narrow, crooked, and rough, with 

 saplings and hazel-brush growing thickly at the 

 sides. The young trees all over the ground, ex- 

 cepting just around the tents, were so close togeth- 

 er that it was difficult to drive among them. The 

 ground was covered with old dry leaves; the weeds 

 and grass were dead, and as dry as tinder. It need- 

 ed only a young man with a cigar and a match to 

 have started a conflagration that would have burn- 

 ed up hundreds of horses before they could have 

 been gotten out. Perhaps you will say that the 

 young man and the cigar and the match were not 

 present. He was there; he lighted the match, held 

 it to his cigar, then threw it down among the leaves, 

 and in a moment there was a blaze. They ran with 

 blankets and quilts and jugs of water, and trampled 

 and smothered and drowned it out before any dam- 

 age was done except to the blankets and quilts. 

 But this happened down on the creek, where there 

 was plentj' of room, and while people were eating 

 dinner, before the water gave out. Yes, if it had 

 been my camp-meeting I'd have gone up into the 

 tabernacle and selected a hundred of the strongest 

 of the brothers, and armed each of them with a club, 

 and stationed them all about the grounds, with or- 

 ders to arrest every man with a pipe or a cigar, and 

 march them otf the gi-ounds. 



