ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 36 



have seen a dexterous housewife whip the bed-spread aside, 

 and bring forth, not what we feared, but a loaf-cake ! 



It is a dirty trick to wash children's eyes in the pudding 

 dish ; not that the sore eyes, but subsequent puddings, will 

 not be benefited; to ^vipe dishes and spoons on a hand- 

 towel ; to wrap warm bread in a dirty table-cloth ; to make 

 and mold bread on a table innocent of washing for weeks; 

 to use dirty table-clothes for sheets^ a practice of which we 

 have had experimental knowledge, once at least in our lives. 



The standing plea of all slatterns and slovens is, that 

 " everybody must eat a peck of dirt before they die." A 

 peck? that would be a mercy, a mere mouthful, in com- 

 parison of cooked cart-loads of dirt which is to be eaten in 

 steamboats, canal-boats, taverns, mansions, huts and hovels. 



Tobacco Tricks. — It is a filthy trick to use it at all ; and 

 it puts an end to all our affected squearaishness at the 

 Chinese taste, in eating rats, cats, and bird's nests. It is a 

 filthy trick to let the exquisite juice of tobacco trickle 

 down the comers of one's mouth ; or lie in splashes on one's 

 coat, or bosom ; to squirt the juice all over a clean floor, 

 or upon a carpet, or baptismally to sprinkle a proud 

 pair of andirons the refulgent glory of the much-scouring 

 housewife. It is a vile economy to lay up for re-mastica- 

 tion a half-chewed cud ; to pocket a half-smoked cigar ; 

 and finally to be-drench one's self with tobacco juice, to so 

 be-smoke one's clothes that a man can be scented as far off 

 as a whale-ship can be smelt at sea. 



It is a shiftless trick to snuff a candle with your fingers, 

 or your wife's best scissors, to throw the snuff on the car- 

 pet, or on the polished floor, and then to extinguish it by 

 treading on it ! 



To borrow a choice book; to read it with unwashed 

 hands, that have been used in the charcoal bin, and finally 

 to return it daubed on every leaf with nose-blood spots, 

 tobacco spatter, and dirty finger-marks — ^this is a vile 

 trick ! 



