456 
Here one finds an excellent suggestion for arranging the Christmas 
Supper table. ‘The china is blue and white, the centerpiece and place- 
mats also blue and white, the same color scheme being carried out by 
use of the Chinese porcelain vase. This is filled with sprigs of Mistletoe 
eight or ten minutes, when the saucepan should be removed 
while the well-beaten yolks of the eggs are added. ‘The 
mixture is again placed on the fire, but not allowed to boil, 
while sugar and seasoning are stirred in. Floating island 
may be served in individual dishes or in a large shallow 
one. A very pretty effect is produced when the islands 
appear in beds of Christmas greens. For decorations of 
this sort, sprigs of Cedar, Crowfoot or Arbor-Vitea make 
most effective wreathes, while the southern States afford 
for wreathing dishes the feathery Tamarisk. 
S for the table service, it is a pleasant custom which 
provides that the Christmas feast initiate those pieces 
of tableware that have been received as Christmas gifts by 
host and hostess, especially if a donor is one’s guest. 
OT less important than the viands upon a Christmas 
table are those adornments which are intended to illus- 
trate the Christmas spirit of gladness and good-cheer. 
Tradition and association have everything to do with these. 
In some of our states, garlands of English Ivy represent 
Christmas greenery, and Roses, Violets, Scarlet Upas berries, 
Hibiscus and Poinsettias, in their various localities, lent the 
essential vivid color touch to the whole. Other states adorn 
their tables with Spicy Fir, Balsam, Ground Pine and Holly, 
with crimson-berried Wintergreen and pearly Mistletoe, 
while certain localities use Laurel and Crowfoot for holiday 
garlands, and the Pacific coast indulges in a riot of bright 
semitropic berries and vines at Christmastide. 
HE spirit of the season is always much more fitly ex- 
pressed in native foliage and flowers; by bringing in 
boughs and garlands that Nature has placed in our door- 
yards, than in anything that hothouses can produce. Christ- 
mas is a festival when all that is forced or artificial seems 
out of place; when the simplicity of wreathes twined from 
the crimson-berried foliage that glows greeting to us any 
day from adjacent groves harmonizes with the simplicity 
that marked the coming of the Christ child. Poinsettias 
are appropriate because we know that they are flaming in 
many a forest in our land at Christmastide; they have come, 
of their own accord, in the vivid panoply of good-cheer to 
brighten the children’s feast. And so whomsoever would 
successfully adorn a Christmas table will select the color 
scheme that centuries of custom and tradition have sup- 
plied—green and scarlet and white—and so preserve the 
associations of Christmas, and will gather the branches 
that lie nearest the home and that most nearly express the 
beauty that belongs to Christmas garlands and the fragrance 
most suggestive of all the joyous season’s good-cheer. 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
December, 1911 
“ HOW TO MANAGE THE KITCHEN STOVE 
By Phebe Westcott Humphreys 
ENON ee Oe cee es) a en os 0 nea Se 
HETHER the kitchen range or cook stove shall 
be the housekeeper’s best friend and _ strongest 
ally, or whether it shall stand before her grim, black 
and implacable, capable of providing daily exaspera- 
tion and despair, depends entirely upon its manage- 
ment. No sensible housewife will be satisfied to ac- 
knowledge herself defeated in solving all the details 
of this kitchen problem, upon which so much of the 
happiness of the home depends. When temporarily or 
permanently without a cook, the housewife who under- 
stands the requirements of check drafts and oven damp- 
ers, the making and (still, more important) the keep- 
ing, and the intelligent using of her kitchen fire, can 
be reasonably sure of retaining the happiness of her entire 
household. A change of servants and a consequent change 
in culinary management has little terror for the homemaker 
who can instruct her help as to the best methods of build- 
ing a fre; how to keep a coal fire without rekindling from 
day to day; having it comparatively dormant to avoid waste 
of coal between meals, yet ready to spring into brisk activ- 
ity and steady heat when required for quick use; how to 
control the ashes and prevent waste in cinders and half- 
burned coal; how to bank the fire at night; how to secure 
good results in the management of the oven; to care for the 
firebrick; to prevent the formation of clinkers and avoid the 
danger of fire from over-heated chimney flues; and all the 
other details that enter into the problem of the proper man- 
agement of the kitchen range. 
BUILDING THE FIRE 
HEN a flood of blinding smoke pours out into the 
room on starting a fresh fire, and the dampers are 
open that provide direct draft for taking the smoke up 
the chimney, it will be important to have the chimney flue 
examined. A quantity of soot will sometimes be found to 
be lodged near the opening of the pipe damper, and this 
can be removed by the housewife from the little cleaning 
door set in the pipe or flue near the damper. When the 
difhculty is more serious, and the accumulation of soot is 
farther up the flue, out of reach from the kitchen side of 
the range, a thorough cleaning of the chimney will be im- 
portant; and when this is done by a man who understands 
his business, one cleaning, at the time that the smoke nuisance 
first asserts itself, should suffice for the entire season; for 
after that the housewife will be able to keep the soot from 
accumulating while fires are in constant use during the win- 
ter. When good drafts are assured, so far as absence of 
soot-choked chimneys is concerned, the management of 
dampers must be understood. If it has been necessary to 
clean out the range before starting a new fire, the ash dam- 
per at the bottom of the range must be closed after having 
opened it to encourage the fine ashes to go up the chimney 
instead of out into the kitchen during the raking and grate- 
dumping process. Then see that the oven damper is also 
closed, as both the ash damper and the oven damper, when 
open, will prevent a direct draft up the chimney so essen- 
tial for starting a fire.’ With only the pipe damper or the 
flue damper open, and the front door of the grate and the 
lower door below the grate (or the ash door) wide open, 
there will be a good draft through the grate to encourage 
a brisk fire from the start. With the problem of the dam- 
pers solved, and the grate free from cinders and ashes, the 
first layer of fire-starting material should be lightly crumpled 
paper; then several rolls of tightly twisted newspaper, and 
some shavings or fine kindling, before laying on the larger 
pieces of wood. ‘This material should be loosely arranged, 
