194 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Pomestic Department. 



To PKEVEXT :MiLK SOURING DURING THUNDER- 

 STORMS. — Wo have heard great complaints from 

 daii-y women, about their milk getting sour during 

 a thunder-storm, although perfectly sweet a short 

 time previous. The following plans, suggested by a 

 correspondent, will prevent this in a great degree : 

 All the pans containing the milk ought to be placed 

 upon non-conductors of electricitj^ such as blocks of 

 baked wood, pieces of glass, or wood that has been 

 well painted and varnished. The following articles 

 are most easily provided : Beeswax, feathers, and 

 woollen cloth, are also non-conductors, but incon- 

 venient to bo used. All these articles will insulate 

 the pans, and prevent the electric fluid from enter- 

 ing, which is the cause of acidity ; or is, in fact, the 

 principle of acidity itself. If glass basins were sub- 

 stituted for tin pans, the plan would be better still, 

 and there would then be no necessity for the practice 

 suggested above. The glass would preserve the milk 

 much longer sweet than pans, and the acid would 

 have no effect upon it. We are not aware of any 

 acid that has the least impression on glass, except 

 the fluoric acid. All iron vessels, or vessels com- 

 pounded of iron, as tin pans, attract the heat very 

 readily, and of course sour the milk ; and such is 

 the affinity of iron for an acid, that we doubt much 

 if it is ever washed out entirely. Iron vessels, we 

 arc confident, are the very worst that could be used 

 for the purpose ; they are even inferior to wood. — 

 Am. Agriculturist. 



A Mother's Voice. — The editor of the Cincin- 

 nati Atlas, after a visit to the Asylum for the Deaf 

 and Dumb, at Columbus, Ohio, relates the follow- 

 ing : — 



We inquired of an intelligent and modest young 

 lady, who had become deaf from sickness when two 

 years and a half old, whether she could recollect any 

 thing of sounds or words. She answered that she 

 could not. 



It occurred to us that there might have been at 

 least one sound which might be remembered even 

 from that tender age, and we ventured to inquire 

 whether she had no recollection of her mother's 

 voice. It will be long before we forget the sweet, 

 peculiar smile which shone upon her features, as, by 

 a quick inclination of her head, she answered, yes. 



What a v.'orld of thought and feeling clusters 

 around such a fact ! In all her memory there is but 

 one sound, and that is her mother's voice. For j'cars 

 she has dwelt in a silence unbroken from without, 

 but those gentle tones of love still linger in her 

 heart. There they can never die ; and if her life 

 should be prolonged to threescore 3'ears and ten, o'er 

 the long, silent track of her life, the memory of that 

 voice wUl come, in loveliness and beauty, reviving 

 the soul of weary old age with the fresh, lovely 

 sounds of her cradle hours. 



|loutl)*0 Department. 



Only one Step at a Time. — Horace is a round- 

 faced, white-headed little boy, three years of age. 

 One Sabbath morning, as we came from our chamber, 

 we overheard his mother say, " Here, Horace, my 

 dear, carry this book into your father's study, and 

 lay it on the table." The little fellow took the book, 

 went to the foot of the stairs, and there he stopped. 



We wish our little readers could have seen him, as 

 he stood gazing up that long flight, from the bottom 

 to the top. Such a look of discouragement surely 

 never before came over the countenance of a little 

 boy. He seemed to say, by his appearance, " How 

 can I go up all these long steps ? " 



The watchful eye of the mother immediately saw 

 his trouble, and with a sweet, encouraging A'oicc, she 

 said, " O my son, it is only one step at a time." 



And so the little boy found it. When he looked 

 at the long, steep journey, and thought of it all 

 together, it seemed a task too great for his tiny feet ; 

 but when he thought of it " only one step at a time," 

 it seemed an easy matter. And how many a " hill 

 of difficulty" would disappear, if we would think 

 of it "only one step at a time." The long Sabbath 

 school lesson, the hard sum in arithmetic, the errand 

 a mile off, the big pile of wood to be carried into the 

 house, the bed of strawberries to be weeded, all appear 

 easy to accomplish, when we remember it is only one 

 word, one figure, one step, one stick, one weed, at a 

 time. 



Whenever, then, little reader, you feel discouraged 

 at some task your mother has assigned you, think of 

 this mother's remark to her white-headed boy, " only 

 one step at a time." You must surely be a faint- 

 hearted little fellow, if one step frightens and dis- 

 courages you. Well, if you can take one step, you 

 can take the next, for that is only one step, and then 

 another, and so on to the top. Try it, and not be 

 chicken-hearted. — Well-Spring. 



Duty of Labor. — No man can rise from the 

 workmair's rank. Fall he may, and often does, from 

 that state, but to rise above the order the great God 

 has established to govern his world, is impossible. 

 Every man should be a workman, and fill up a work- 

 man's rank. He must fill that or a loafer's. He 

 who made tho world never made a spot on it for an 

 idler. He never made a man who has to live by his 

 brains alone, or such a one would have been all 

 brains. Body and soul, powers physical and mental, 

 are to be used, else they never would have been 

 given ; and whoever finds himself in possession of a 

 pair of hands, a set of bones and muscles, may rest 

 assured that he has a command to use them. 



^ealtl) Department. 



Health. — Horace Mann thus discourses of health, 

 in his new book, just about to be issued from the 

 press of Ticknor. Reed, & Fields : — 



" Appetite is Nicholas the First, and the noble fac- 

 ulties of mind and heart are Hung^aian captives. 

 Were we to see a rich banker exchanging eagles for 

 coppers by tale, or a rich merchant bartering silk for 

 scj-gc by the pound, we should deem them worthy of 

 an epithet in the vocabulary of folly. Yet the same 

 men buy pains whose prime cost is greater than the 

 amplest fund of natural enjoyment. Their purveyor 

 and market-man bring them home headaches, and 

 indigestion, and neuralgia, by hampers full. Their 

 butler bottles up stone, and gout, and liver com- 

 plaint, falsely labelling them sherry, or madeira, or 

 port, and the stultified masters have not wit enough 

 to see through the cheat. The mass of society look 

 with envy upon the epicure who, day by day, for 

 four hours of luxurious eating, suffers twenty hours 

 of sharp aching ; who pays a full price for a hot sup- 

 per, and is so pleased with the bargain that he throws 

 in a sleepless and tempestuous night as a gratuity. 

 English factory children have received the commis- 



