INTRODUCTION 
My pear Miss Brap_Ley,—I promised that if you would 
write a book on Fruit Bottling I would write you an 
Introduction. May I make it take the form of an open 
letter addressed to yourself? : 
y promise was a rash one. For though I have 
practised the art and mystery of Fruit Bottling for 
many more years than you can have possibly done, still 
for the last fifteen years at least I have always looked 
on you as a master and myself as your humble disciple. 
You have, however, so often been kind enough to 
consult me, and I know your views on the subject so 
well, that perhaps I am more fitted to commend your 
book to the attention of the public than would at first 
sight appear. 
I am old enough to be able to see back very clearly 
to the late forties and early fifties of the last century. 
It was the beginning of the decadence of housekeeping. 
The elder folk of those days were true housewives and 
were teaching the younger ones, but many of these were 
already beginning to shirk. Every country house at that 
time had its Store-room, and bottled its own fruits, made 
its own jams, dried its own cherries, and so forthe How 
well I recall the exquisite raspberries and cream we 
always had at Christmas, and the dried cherries—one 
of which was worth a dozen of the pretty, sweet, 
flavourless things we now import from Grasse. The 
‘ladies of those days did not think it beneath them, or 
too much trouble, to see to this department themselves. 
In those far-away days I was a very delicate lad, and 
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