56 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Jan. 



and some salt. Place your toast in a deep dish, 

 and cover it with this gravy. Thin cream, omit- 

 ting the butter, makes a nicer dish for those who 

 are so fortunate as to have it to use. 



Beef Pie. — Make a nice crust, a little richer 

 than for biscuit ; chop up pieces of the boiled 

 round of beef, when you have them cold ; season 

 •with salt, pepper and butter, and onions if j'ou 

 like ; line the basin with crust, rolled about half 

 an inch tliick ; fill the beef, moistened with gravy 

 or water ; dredge in a little flour, cover, bake half 

 an hour. 



Cure for Earache. — An exchange paper re- 

 commends the following as a certain cure for the 

 earache : Take a small piece of cotton batting, 

 or cotton wool, make a depression in the centre 

 with the end of the finger, and fill it with as much 

 ground pepper as will rest on a five cent piece, 

 gather it into a ball and tie it up ; dip the ball into 

 sweet oil and insert it in the ear, covering the lat- 

 ter with cotton wool, and use a bandage or cap to 

 retain it in its place. Almost instant relief will 

 be experienced, and the application is so gentle 

 that an infant Mill not be injured by it, but expe- 

 rience relief as well as adults. 



A distinguished physician, who died some 

 years since in Paris, declared : "I believe that 

 during the twenty-six years I have practiced my 

 profession in this city, 20,000 children have been 

 carried to the cemeteries, a sacrifice to the absurd 

 custom of exposing their arms and necks." 



YOUTH^S DEPARTMENT. 



THE TOOLS GREAT MEM" -WORK \VITH. 



It is not tools that make the workman, but the 

 trained skill and perseverance of the man himself. 

 Indeed, it is proverbial that the bad workman 

 never yet had a good tool. Some one asked Opie 

 by what Monderful process he mixed his colors. 

 "I mix them with my brains, sir," was his reply. 

 It is the same with every workman who would ex- 

 cel. Ferguson made marvellous things — such as 

 liis wooden clock, that accurately measured the 

 hours — by means of a common ])enknife, a tool in 

 everybody's hands, but then everybody is not a 

 Ferguson. A pan of water and two thermometers 

 were the tools by wliich Dr. Black discovered la- 

 tent heat ; and a prism, a lens, and a sheet of 

 pasteboard, enabled Newton to unfold the compo- 

 sition of light and the origin of color. An eminent 

 foreign savant once called upon Dr. Wollaston, 

 and requested to be shown over his laboratory, 

 in which science had been enriched by so many 

 important discoveries, when the doctor took him 

 into a study, and, pointing to an old tea-tray on 

 the table, containing a few watch-glasses, test- 

 papers, a small balance, and a blow-pipe, said: 

 "There is aU the laboratory I have !" Stothai'd 

 learnt the art of combining colors by closely study- 

 ing butterflies' wings ; he would often saj' that no 

 one knew what he owed to these tiny insects. A 

 burnt stick and a barn-door served "Wilkie in lieu 

 of pencil and canvas. Bewick first practiced draw- 

 ing on the cottage-walls of his native village, 

 ■which he covered with sketches in chalk ; and 



Benjamm AVest made his first brushes out of the 

 cat's tail. Ferguson laid himself down in the fields 

 by night in a Islanket, and made a map of the 

 heavenly bodies, by means of a thread with small 

 beads on it, stretched between his eye and the 

 stars. Franklin first robbed the thunder-cloud of 

 its lightning by means of a kite made with two 

 cross-sticks and a cross handliercliief. Watt made 

 his first model of the condensing steam-engine 

 out of an old anatomist's syringe, used to inject 

 the arteries previous to dissection. Giffbrd Avorked 

 his first problem in mathematics, when a cobbler's 

 apprentice, upon small scraps of leather, which he 

 beat smooth for the purpose, while Rittenhouse, 

 the astronomer, first calculated ecUpses on liis 

 plow-handle. — Smiles' Self-Hel]}. 



EVIL SPEAKING. 



One night, I remember it well, I received a se- 

 vere lesson on the sin of evil speaking. Severe I 

 thought it then, and my, heart rose in childish an- 

 ger against him who gave it ; but I had not lived 

 long enough in this world to know how much mis- 

 cliief a cliild's thoughtless talk may do, and how 

 often it hapjjens that talkers run ofi" the straight 



line of truth. S did not stand very high in 



my esteem, and I was about to speak further of 

 her failings of temper. In a fcAV moments my eye 

 caught a look of such calm and steady displeasure, 

 that I stopped short. There was no mistaking the 

 meaning of that dark, spealdng eye. It brought 

 the color to my face, and confusion and shame to 

 my heart. I was silent for a few moments, when 

 Joseph John Gurney asked very gravely : 



"Dost thou know any good thing to tell us of 

 her?"_ 



I did not answer, and the question was more se- 

 riously asked — 



"Think, is there nothing good thou canst tell us 

 of her?" 



"0, yes, I knoAv some good things ; but — " 



"Would it not have been better, then, to relate 

 those good things, than to have told of that which 

 would lower her in our esteem ? Since there is no 

 good to relate, would it not be kinder to be silent 

 on the evil? For charity rejoiceth not in iniquity." 



A MOTHER'S KISS. 



A day or two since, a ragged and dirty-looking 

 boy, fourteen years of age, pleaded guilty in the 

 Superior Criminal Court to having fired a building. 

 For two years past, since the death of liis mother, 

 he had wandered around the streets a vagTant, 

 without a home or human being to care for him, 

 and he had become in every respect a "bad boy." 

 A gentleman and a lady interested themselves in 

 his behalf, and the latter took him one side to 

 question him. She talked to liim kindly, but with- 

 out making the slightest impression upon his feel- 

 ing, and to all she said he manifested the greatest 

 indifference, until slie asked him if no one had ever 

 kissed him. This simple inquiry ])roved too much 

 for him, and bursting into tears he replied — "no 

 one, since my mother kissed me." That one thought 

 of his poor dead mother, the only being, perhaps, 

 who had ever spoken to liim Idndly before, touched 

 liim to his heart, a hardened young criminal though 

 he was. The little incident caused other tears to 

 flow than his. 



