50 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



domestic iDcpartnurtl. 



Shout Sermox for Parents It is said that 



when the mother of Washington was asked how she 

 had formed the character of her son, she replied that 

 she had early endeavored to teach him three things : 

 obedience, diligence, and truth. No better advice can 

 be given by any parent. 



Teach your children to obey. Let it be the first 

 lesson. You can hardly begin too soon. It requires 

 constant care to keep up the habit of obedience, and 

 especially to do it in such a way as not to break down 

 the strength of the child's character. 



Teach your child to be diligent. The habit of 

 being always employed is a great safeguard through 

 life, as well as essential to the culture of almost every 

 virtue. Nothing can be more foolish than an idea 

 which parents have, that it is not respectable to set 

 their cluldren to work. Play is a good thing ; inno- 

 cent recreation is an employment, and a child may 

 learn to be diligent in that as in other things. Eut 

 let them learn early to be useful. 



As to truth, it is the one essential tiling. Let 

 every thing else be sacrificed rather than that. With- 

 out it what dependence can you place in your child ? 

 And be sure to do nothing yourself which may 

 countenance any sjjccies of prevarication or false- 

 hood. Yet how many parents do teach their children 

 tlie fij.'st lesson of deception ! 



Preservation of Meat by Freezing. — Every 

 body knows, or ought to know, that meat will keep 

 perfectly sweet so long as it remains frozen. But 

 every body does not know that their meat will be 

 tender or tough, according to the m.ethod of thaw- 

 ing it. 



If frozen meat is brought into a warm room, and 

 thawed by heat — if you have not good teeth, and 

 the digestive powers of an ostrich, you had best 

 leave that part of the dinner for those who have. 

 Therefore, bring from the larder, the night before it is 

 wanted, the meat or poultry intended for dinner, and 

 plunge it into cold water. The next morning, a thick 

 coating nf ice Avill be found encrusting the whole 

 piece. Take it off, and change the water, and let it 

 remain until the hour for dressing it. If to be boiled, 

 put it over the fire in cold water ; if for a roast, put 

 it not before too brisk a fire, as there is always danger 

 that the heart of a large piece may not be completely 

 thawed, in which case it will be spoiled. 



Vegetables should be thawed in the same way, and, 

 with few exceptions, they will be better for having 

 been frozen. Potatoes, however, acquire a disagree- 

 able sweetness. 



Lemon Pies. — In this year of scarcity of fruit, it 

 may be desirable to know that a good j)ie can be made 

 simply of lemon and molasses. Press out the juice 

 of a lemon into two teacups full of molasses, grate 

 in the dried peal of another, cover a plate with a 

 layer of crust, spread over some of the mixture, lay 

 on a thin crust, spread another layer of the mixture, 

 and over that lay a top crust ; bake thoroughly, and 

 you will have an excellent and wholesome pie. One 

 lemon will make two pies. 



Muffins. — Take three pints of flour, one pint of 

 water lukewarm, one teacupful of baker's yeast, 

 one great spoonful of sugar, one teaspoonful of 

 salt ; n\akc them up in the morning for tea, or at 

 night for breakfast, and bake them in mulHn rings. 



lHoutl/s ?!Jcpartment. 



Live for Something. — Thousands of men breathe, 

 move, and live — pass ofi^ the stage of life, and arc 

 heard of no more. Why ? They did not a particle 

 of good in this world, and none were blessed by 

 them ; none could point to them as the instruments 

 of their redemption ; not a line they wrote, not a 

 word they spoke, could be recalled ; and so they 

 perislied ; their light went out in darkness, and they 

 were not remembered more than the insects of yes- 

 terday. AVill you thus live and die ? Live for some- 

 thing. Do good, and leave behind you a monument 

 of virtue that the storms of time can never destroy. 

 Write your name by kindness, love, and mercy, on 

 the hearts of the thousands you come in contact with 

 year by year, and you will never be forgotten. No ! 

 your name, your deeds will be as legible on the 

 hearts you leave behind, as the stars on the brow of 

 evening. Good deeds will shine as brightly on the 

 earth as the stars of heaven. 



The following advice was imparted to the late ex- 

 President Adams, by his mother, in 1778, m a letter 

 to him while he was in Eurojje : — 



" Great learning and superior abilities, should you 

 ever possess them, will be of little value and of small 

 estimation, unless virtue, honor, integrity, and truth, 

 are cherished by you. Adhere to the rules and 

 principles early instilled in your mind, and remember 

 that you are responsible to your God. Dear as you 

 are to me, I Avoidd much rather that you would find 

 a grave in the ocean which you have crossed, than to 

 see you an immoral, graceless child." 



€)ca[i\} Pcpartmcnt 



Hints on Diet. — " An oimce of pi-erention is better 

 than a pound of cure." A reasonable indulgence in 

 the abundant supplies of nature, converted by art to 

 the purposes of wholesome food, is one of the com- 

 forts added to the maintenance of life. It is an 

 mdiscriminate gratification of our tastes, regardless 

 of the consequences that may ensue from it, that is 

 alone blamable. But so great is our general apathy 

 in these respects, that even on the occurrence of dis- 

 eases, from which we are all more or less sufferers, 

 we scarcely ever reflect on our diet, as the princiijal, 

 if not the sole cause of them ; we assign them to 

 weather, to infection, to hereditary descent, to spon- 

 taneous breeding — as if a disease could originate 

 without a cause — or to any frivolous, imaginary 

 source, without suspecting, or being willing to own, 

 mismanagement of ourselves ? 



We derive the renewal of our blood and juices; 

 which arc constantly exhausting, from the substances 

 we take as food. As our food, therefore, is proper or 

 improper, too much or too little, so will our juices be 

 good or bad, overcharged or deficient, and our state 

 of health accordingly good or diseased. 



By aliment, or food, is to be understood whatever 

 Ave eat or drink, including seasonings, such as salt, 

 sugar, spices, vinegar, &c. — every thing, in short, 

 Avhich Ave receive into our stomachs. Our food, 

 therefore, consists not only of such particles as are 

 proper for the nourishment and support of the hum.an 

 body, but likcAvise contains certain active principles, 

 viz.,' oils and spirits, Avhich have the properties of 

 stimulating the solids, quickening the circulation, and 

 making the fluids thinner; thus rendering them 



