GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



December, 1921 



MOST of us 

 can look 

 back on 

 certain delight- 

 ful little inter- 

 ludes in our 

 lives, which 

 came to us by 

 accident. Such a 

 good time re- 

 cently came to the busiest man I know and 

 his wife. 



In order to have certain work done on our 

 home we had to leave it for a couple of 

 days, and so we went down to our summer 

 cottage on a little lake a few miles from town, 

 altho it was in November with stormy 

 weather predicted. At the last minute our 

 fourteen-year-old daughter decided she was 

 so busy siie would stay in town with cousins, 

 and after one night at the cottage our older 

 son decided he had an urgent reason (femi- 

 nine, I suspect) for going away for a day or 

 two. That left the family reduced to its 

 lowest terms, for our younger son is in col- 

 lege and I let my young assistant go back to 

 town. 



My, but it was cold that Saturday after- 

 noon, for our little cottage is on a high bank 

 above the lake and a perfect gale blew thru 

 the great oaks above it, whistled under it 

 and around it. The fireplace was balky and 

 smoked a trifle, the range in the kitchen did 

 little to raise the living-room temperature, 

 the bedrooms had an icy chill, the lake was 

 a cold gray, flecked with little whitecaps, 

 and the wind was trying to strip the last 

 dry leaves from the oaks. 



The busy man spent the day in the office 

 back in town, of course, but late in the 

 afternoon he drove back to the cottage. You 

 know some men can always make a fire- 

 place behave. Well, he is one of them. In 

 five minutes the fireplace had braced up and 

 so had his wife. And then the busy man took 

 a big saw and an axe and went out into the 

 grove to replenish our woodpile from certain 

 fallen trees. In a short time a log nearly 

 three feet long and a foot in diameter was 

 blazing in the fireplace with smaller sticks 

 around it, and we were enjoying a hot sup- 

 per on a little round table close to the fire. 

 The fire crackled and blazed and glowed red, 

 the wind roared outside, and we decided a 

 summer cottage is not a bad place in the 

 winter even ii the ducks were the only ones 

 who were tempted to go in bathing. 



After supper we sat in easy chairs and 

 enjoyed the fire for a time, and then the 

 busy man had to go out and cut more wood 

 for the night while I washed dishes and put 

 the kitchen and living room in order. 



We went to bed ridiculously early because 

 nothing and no one prevented it and we 

 were sleepy, and the two logs which had 

 been left on the fire made a flickering light 

 which could be seen thru the transom over 

 the bedroom door. 



Very early in the morning the busy man 



rose 

 gate 

 tion 

 and 



to investi- 

 the condi- 

 of his fire 

 make sure 



the water pipes 

 had not frozen. 

 He found a great 

 bed of coals in 

 the fireplace, and 

 his fuel being 

 gone he dressed and went out and I could 

 just hear him in the distance cracking the 

 Sabbath as well as the log. He came in and 

 reported that it was a wonderful morning, 

 clear and bracing and starlighted. In a short 

 time there was another brisk fire in the fire- 

 place, and I smelled something which warned 

 me I must dress if I did not care to miss a 

 good breakfast. It happens the busy man can 

 cook some things quite as well as his wife 

 can, and enjoys displaying his skill — occa- 

 sionally. However, he never contributes any 

 recipes to this page. We had fruit, crisp 

 bacon, griddle cakes with honey, and coffee, 

 and we kept the hot things in that condition 

 by putting them on the stone hearth close 

 to the fire. 



The busy man says he likes to go to the 

 cottage because he can forget business for 

 a few hours, but I don 't believe he ever be- 

 fore did such successful forgetting as during 

 those cold November hours when our only 

 neighbors were the gray squirrels in the oak 

 trees; 



A' 



LTHO most of us like 'to play at pio- 

 neering or roughing it we would not be 

 willing to give up permanently many 

 of the conveniences or refinements of civili- 

 zation siich as telephones, automobiles, elec- 

 trically equipped homes, steam heat, run- 

 ning water, and (shall I say it?) package 

 foods. You see when the senior editor of 

 Gleanings advises people to buy foods in 

 bulk rather than in packages, because the 

 latter are more expensive, it behooves the 

 food editor to be a little careful what she 

 says. 



Granting that package foods may have 

 raised the cost of living a little and that 

 many foods are sold in packages which 

 might as well be sold in bulk, there is much 

 to be said in favor of package foods, and I 

 am going to say some of it right here and 

 now. 



In the first place, the package is the man- 

 ufacturer 's or producer's guarantee of clean- 

 liness and purity. His reputation depends 

 upon his keeping up the standard of the food 

 in the package on which is his name. 



Sanitary packages which are insect and 

 moisture proof tend to prevent waste and 

 may be kept almost indefinitely before open- 

 ing, while many bulk foods will deteriorate 

 if not spoil under similar conditions. 



The package is one of the reasons why 

 we are able to enjoy such a variety of foods 

 produced in all parts of the country from 



