1909 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



257 



I look at it. These walks were all made in or- 

 der that the work of " keeping house" might be 

 lightened, and I have my reward in seeing Mrs. 

 Root well and happy, with no more care and 

 work than she cares for.* 



Perhaps 1 should explain that, after the pine 

 strifs, 1X3, were staked on edge just two feet 

 apart we pounded broken stone between them 

 within about an inch of the top On this we put 

 concrete made of about one part cement to six 

 coarse sand to fill the spaces between the broken 

 stone, and, lastly, about an inch or less of one of 

 cement to two parts sand for the top. The top 

 is finished a little crowning so rain water will not 

 stand on it. Two sacks of cement (60 cts. per 

 sack) and a barrel of sand made a wa'k 30 feet 

 long. In the North, where there is freezing and 

 thawing, a deeper and more expensive foundation 

 is needed. Good roads, good walks, not only 

 on the streets but around the houses, hard-wood 

 and hard-finished floors, with movable rugs, are 

 (think God) now doing much toward giving the 

 mothers neat and tidy homes and lessening the 

 labor of keeping them so. 



Now, my friend, can you not think of some 

 mother whose cares you can lighten and whose 

 face you can brighten by helping to make her 

 burdens easier' and, please don't forget that, /// 

 so doing, God's holy word declares " thy days 

 may be long in the land." 



GAMBLING IN HOMES. 



We are all aware, or at least ought to be, that 

 new short cuts and inventions are coming up 

 daily, to rob and defraud, as well as to do good 

 and benefit mankind; and what troubles me just 

 now is that so many of our good people are care- 

 less and indifferent in regard to the matter. They 

 ought to learn, however, by sad experience; and it 

 is the province of our home journals to protect 

 hard-working honest people by holding up a 

 warning. As an illustration, it is a splendid 

 thing to encourage young people, especially 

 young married people, in making a home of their 

 own, to put their money into a little lot, and, 

 later on, building a house. But even in so good 

 an undertaking as this the greedy schemers — I 

 would say grafters, only I do not like the word — 

 have been getting in their work. Read the fol- 

 lowing, which I clip from the Woman's Home 

 Companion: 



A party of teachers from a city college started one Saturday on 

 a botanizine trip. They found themselves aboard a ferry boat 

 with an excursion party and a band, all bound for a newly plot- 

 led suburb. Street cars decked with bunting awaited the party. 

 The professors forgot their interest in botany, and, actuated solely 

 by curiosity, they followed the crowd to the scene of real-estate 

 operations. 



On the ground owned by the promotion company surveyors 

 were dashing around with interesting-looking blue prints in 

 their hands. Half a hundred Italian laborers were grading streets 

 and planting young trees. At the real-estate office, a pretty bun- 

 galow affair, smiling waiters dispensed light drinks and sand- 

 wiches. The band played, the crowd gathered around, and the 

 aactioneer got busy. Lots started of? right merrily at four hun- 

 dred dollars. When they dropped to one hundred dollars each 

 the professors became interested. They put their heads together 

 and decided that here was a chance to start a suburban colony for 

 their own kind. They would buy the lots and sell them at an 

 advance to associates who had missed this wonderful excursion. 



It was pretty bard work for a man of almost seventy, and it 

 made me sweat more than I have for a long time; but, like 

 " Nell Beverly," I felt all the better after I got a little used to it. 



In spite of the fact that these men were presumably posted on 

 current events, they did not know a fake real-estate auction when 

 they saw it. 



From the above you will notice there was a 

 group of college professors — men who are em- 

 ployed to teach humanity, and, we might sup- 

 pose, warn them against the very things that the 

 whole crowd dropped into. I wish to call par- 

 ticular attention to the paragraph that says they 

 would " buy the lots and sell them at an ad- 

 vance," etc. Without knowing it, these teach- 

 ers, good honest men, have been duped into a 

 gambling scheme. They had got a litile of the 

 craze for getting something for nothing in the 

 way of speculation. 



The Sunday School Times has recently been 

 giving us some excellent editorials in regard to 

 the difference between "investment" and specu- 

 lation. I wish everybody might read them. 



Poultry 

 Department 



Conducted by A. I. Root. 



NOTHING to do BITT GATHER THE EGGS. 



Any short cut in managing poultry, or even in 

 hatching chickens, that saves time and expense, 

 helps us toward that ideal poultry establishment 

 where the owner has " nothing to do but gather 

 the eggs." Since I have been turning my atten- 

 tion to the matter of selecting the fertile eggs 

 when starting an incubator, or selecting eggs 

 that will be mostly fertile, I have been scanning 

 the poultry journals for every thing I could find 

 on the subject. 



Several poultry journals have seen fit to give 

 place to the following advertisement: 



Poultry Sbcret — With my system you are able to detect in 

 a minute a fertilized or non-fertilized egg before putting in the 

 incubato'. After a little practice you recognize at a glance a 

 strong or weakly fertilized egg. A non-fertilized egg has so dis- 

 tinctive points that you can not make mistakes. Price $1.00, 

 with your written promise to reveal it to nobody else. A. Hofl- 

 bauer, Hornell, N. Y. 



Just as soon as I saw it, oflfwent the dollar, but 

 I explained that I had several reasons for object- 

 ing to putting my name to any promise not to 

 reveal any thing I have gotten hold of that may 

 be of benefit to my neighbors. I told the adver- 

 tiser if he could not send the secret without the 

 promise not to reveal, he was to return the mon- 

 ey Of course I got the secret promptly, as 1 al- 

 ways have done. 



As the secret is somewhat lengthy, and the 

 owner of it has used illustrations, I need nt t copy 

 it. He directs using a tester like that of Mrs. 

 White, and says you can see the germs in a new- 

 ly laid egg, which is true; for in testing Mrs. 

 White's secret I maiked a dozen eggs with a pen- 

 cil, all of which showed the germ very plainly. 

 Some of these eggs produced chickens, and a few 

 of them did not. The proportions were jcst 

 about the same as the number of fertile ones in 

 my whole 70. Therefore the presence of visible 

 germs proves nothing. But this Hoffbaner claims 

 he has made the discover*' that there is a peculiar 

 mark, something like an X, on the ou'side of the 



