1886 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



887 



"HONEY IN TOO MUCH STYLE. 



AtRS. (HADDOCK ALSO GIVES US A SENSIBl^K 

 TALK UPON THE BEST GIKL. 



T WONDER if we are not getting our honey up in 

 (M. *°" mucli style. Style. is all right for rich peo- 

 ^l pie who are able to afford it; but it seems to 

 "*• me that, when we get our honey into pound 

 packages, and then sell it to people who are 

 too poor to eat on a table-cloth, and who care noth- 

 ing whatever for style, we are making them pay 

 for something that they do not want. 



Two or three weeks ago 1 sold a man a box of 

 honey. I drove up to his grocery and gave him the 

 box. and told him 1 would come back after I had 

 tied up the team, and attend to it. 1 did not get 

 back Qi/ite as soon as I expected, and when I did 

 I heard the conversation in the next room. The 

 man said. " May be she won't want you to cut it 

 out." 



"I don't care v.hat she wants," said the woman; 

 " we buy the honey, and pay for it. We can't eat 

 the boards, and we're not going to pay for them. 

 If we have got to eat boards for a living, we can go 

 to the lumber-yard and get some cheaper than 

 these." 



Here I went in, hoping to stop the desecration if 

 possible; but it was too late. 1 had been very care- 

 ful to get that nice honey all into good shape, 

 rejecting, as I prepared it for market, all the sec 

 tions that were not entirely sealed over, and leav- 

 ing out all in which a single cell was broken; and, 

 after all, to have it cut out and broken out and 

 punched out, with great big thumbs and fingers, 

 and dumped into a big bucket to settle down and 

 all run into each other, just to save paying for the 

 sections, was a little too much. 1 sustained my- 

 self as well as I could by repeating over to my- 

 self, "Cast not yonr pearls before swine," and, 

 " He that is filthy, let him be filthy still," and other 

 scriptural injunctions, but all would not do— J was 

 Hiad— not altogether from the money that the sec- 

 tions would bring, but the wooden-hoadedness of it 

 all. But I only said I'd know what kind of honey 

 to bring them in the future, and I'd cut it out at 

 home and bring it in in a bucket, and not have the 

 honey drip])ing all over town. Since then two 

 different parties have come here for honey, and 

 they both asked if I would not cut the honey out, 

 as the sections would be of no use to them. Just 

 then I thought of something, and said yes, I'd just 

 as soon cut it out as not ; and I went to one of those 

 60-lb. hives of drone-comb honey that I got when I 

 wann't following Mr. Hutchinson's method, and 

 vtd ottt all they wanted, charging them just the 

 same as if I had sold them the 1-lb. sections. Then 

 1 thought the matter ovei", and I have come to the 

 conclusion that, for a certain class of customers, 

 our honey is t<io fine, and next year I'm going to 

 have confdderahle of that hi() (lronc-f<hect hoiirn, and 

 I'm going to sell it to all the people who don't want 

 to i)ay for " the boards." I'll give them their 

 choice, and charge them the same price. May be 

 if I were as i)oor as some of these folks who ob- 

 ject to "the boards" I'd feel just as they do. 

 There's a great deal of human nature in folks any- 

 way. 



MHS. CHADDOCKS LOW PUICE OF HONEY. 



When I told in Gleanings what I was selling 

 honey for I little knew what trouble I wu" bringing 

 oil myself. First, I am scolded. Thi n i ■ i pie be- 



gin to send to me for honey, and I have to write 

 and tell them that I ha\e no honey to ship; I have 

 no honey to mil. I have some honey on hand; and 

 when people are sick, or have a wedding, and 

 come to me for honey, I always let them have a 

 little. Now, friends, kind friends, dear friends, 

 don't any of you send to me for honey. I might 

 write to all of you, and explain how it is; but 1 am 

 almost always out of stamps; sometimes I have 

 letters to send awa3-, and have to wait two whole 

 weeks till the hens lay enough eggs to buy the 

 stamps with. Of course, friendly letters, and com- 

 plimentary letters, are jtleasant things to get, 

 although from strangers; but nobody seems 

 strange to me; and if you ai-e willing to wait on 

 the hens I'll answer them all. Hut when I get a 

 letter wanting honey, that .soiuk/.s like business, 

 and I feel bound to answer it. I mentioned the 

 price I was selling honey at, in one of the papers 

 that I write for under a ?Jom de \iliunc, and I re- 

 ceived a note that had been sent to the editor, ask- 

 ing him as a great favor to tell him who that wo- 

 man was. I thought, now here is an editor who 

 admires my style, and wants to hire me to write 

 for his paper, and maybe he'll pay me a hundred 

 dollars a year; and I sat down and wrote him an 

 awful sweet letter, telling him who I was; and then 

 he wrote that what he wanted was to buy some 

 honey of me. I felt blank, anf" answered him rath- 

 er shortly, I am afraid. So, dear friends, I like you 

 all; but poverty prevents my saying so in letters. 



THE BEST GIUL. 



I read last week, in Harper's Bazar, a lament by 

 the editor. She says that our best young men don't 

 miwry our hcst girls. She says that the poor young 

 men of the present are the rich and influential men 

 of the future, and that is true; but that these same 

 poor young men don't marrj' the hcnt girls is not 

 true. She says the reason that the poor young men 

 don't marry the rich young women, whom she 

 calls the hcst girls, is because the poor young 

 men cannot afford to buy the ten-dollar bouiiuets 

 that custom demands him to give his partner at a 

 ball; therefore he stays away, and the /»«( girls 

 have to hunt up somebody else. I know \ery little 

 about society in New York. I've had very few 

 ten-dollar bouquets presented to me; but I know 

 that the hest girls are not the society belles of New 

 York or any other city. The host girls comprise the 

 army of school-teachers who, about the middle of 

 September or the first of October, begin their work 

 in colleges, graded schools, and little red school- 

 houses all over the I'nited States. The /icsf girls 

 are in that other army of clerks in all the stoi-es of 

 the country and city. The hest girls go in hundreds 

 to work in our factories, dress-making establish- 

 ments, printing-offices, and in the service of the 

 Government. The Ut:st girls out in Dakota do 

 housework, and get from sixteen to twenty-four 

 dollars a month, besides their board. The hcst 

 girls are the workimj girls who don't want a ten- 

 dollar bou(|net; and iUi)i mai-ry our best young- 

 men. MAHAI.A 11. ("HAI>I)0(K. 



Vermont. 111. 



Mrs. ('.. you ui<i> reiiieiubff that I have 

 written at different times about what we 

 call '• chiiiik honey ; " that is, when we have 

 honey that we can not <?et into good shape 

 any other way, we cut it out into tin pans or 

 basins, so much in a jjan, and it has always 

 fTone off pretty quickly, at about two or three 



