1870.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
345 
B^~ (.For other Household JtejTis, see " Basket " pages.) 
A Draped Center-Table or Stand. 
A friend who contrives to have things make a 
handsome appearance with a moderate outlay, gives 
us a drawing of the manuer hi which she arranged 
a center-table. The standard is such as are used 
for marble-topped tables, and was procured of a 
cabinet-maker. Instead of a marble top, one of 
pine was used, which was smoothly covered with 
green furniture rep, neatly tacked on. A curtain 
DKAPED CENTER-TABLE. 
of the same material, a quarter of a yard deep, and 
made a little full, has a fringe at its lower edge, and 
is tacked by its upper edge to the table top. Gimp 
of a color to match is used to cover and hide the 
edges and tacks. The curtain is caught up in plait- 
ed festoons every quarter of a yard. Other mate- 
rials may he used, and other colors to harmonize 
with the surroundings. By the exercise of proper 
taste and skill, one may make vary pretty chamber 
sets by draping very rough kinds of furniture. 
Nursing the Sick. 
BT FAITH KOCHESTER. 
No woman has all the womanly accomplishments 
who is unqualified to make her presence in the 
sick-room a blessing to the sufferer. All rules for 
behavior toward sick or well may be summed up 
by the Golden Rule — do as you would be done by — 
but in the absence of experience it is well to have 
some definite directions. 
Tou can hardly be too careful abont neatness 
and order. The siek-room should be kept perfect- 
ly fidy. Especially should all soiled garments and 
utensils be removed and cleansed before a second 
use. The towels and napkins should be clean, and 
the food offered should be arranged to please the 
eye. If any thing is askew about the curtains or 
table cover or rugs, straighten it at once, or the 
invalid will have to do it mentally over and over 
again. To prevent the patient from hunting out 
every case of bad matching in the figure of the wall- 
paper, or wearing the mind with observation of 
every defect in the furniture, bring in fresh bou- 
quets of flowers or other objects upon which the 
eye loves to linger. Think of this in arranging 
your dress. Avoid glaring colors and noisy fabrics, 
and put on your garments with care. The patient's 
bed should be kept as clean and orderly as possi- 
ble. Straighten the coverings ami smooth the 
pillows quietly, whenever they get disordered, and 
in making the bed at the regular periods, do it with 
care and thoroughness. If it is impossible to 
change the bed linen daily, try to have two sets and 
alternate their use, so as to have each set aired 
wpll when taken off at night and morning, 
Let all the work of the sick-room be done unos- 
tentatiously, so that, to the patient, everything will 
seem to be moving along smoothly and easily. 
Do not question invalids when you can avoid it. 
Get your directions from the physician in attend- 
ance, and carry them out without criticism. If 
you give medicine, be punctual, and say nothing 
about it until you have it neatly prepared, and after- 
wards put cups, spoons and phials out of sight. 
Keep medicine beyond the reach of children. 
In giving baths, be gentle but use so firm a 
hand that your patient will understand that you 
are self-possessed, and need feel no concern. In 
giving the patient a general sponge bath, wash 
only a part at a time — an arm for instance — and 
wipe it before proceeding further, keeping the rest 
of the bod}' covered. Do not use water that is un- 
comfortably cool to the invalid. If the feet are 
cool, a warm foot bath is very comforting, and 
may be given to the patient iu bed, by using a 
small, shallow tub, the sick person lying on the 
back with the knees bent — keeping the whole cov- 
ered with a blanket ; and after leaving the feet in 
the warm water about fifteen minutes, rub with a 
towel wet in cool water (to contract the relaxed 
pores to their natural state, aud so prevent catch- 
ing cold), and then wipe well with a dry towel. A 
jug filled with hot water and rolled up in flannel is 
the best foot-warmer to put in bed. 
If you know what healthful dishes will please 
your patient, prepare them promptly without pre- 
vious consultation. Observe the greatest delicacy 
iu all this. A nurse who would taste the invalid's 
food, or cool it with her breath, ought not to be 
tolerated. Never season an invalid's food highly, 
and remember that melted butter is one of the 
most indigestible things you cau offer. Cream is 
better than butter on toast or roasted potatoes. 
There is some danger of using toast too freely. It 
is more constipating than plain bread, and a per- 
son confined to the bed or to the room is more 
likely to suffer from this than one who has out-door 
exercise. Plain, subacid fruit, and bread or gems 
made of good Graham flour (minus a part of the 
bran) are the best articles of diet; but a variety cau 
be made by using sometimes the various delicate 
preparations of starch, tapioca, sago, rice, etc. It 
is hard for a sick person to wait long for food when 
hungry. Don't keep }'our patieut waiting for any 
thing if you can help it. Minutes seem like hours 
to an invalid at such times. Do not rattle your news- 
paper, nor creak your chair, nor wear noisy shoes. 
Speak in gentle tones, and do not talk too much. 
Do not allow your patient to talk long at a time, 
and let the conversation take a lively turn. Better 
not discuss diseases. Do your best to keep long- 
faced visitors away. Have no whispering iu the 
room or just outside the door. Unless in extreme 
cases, have the room dark and quiet, aud cool at 
night. Look out for good ventilation, and air the 
mattrass and bedding frequently. Let in all the 
sunshine you can without hurting the invalid's 
eyes. Be as much of a sunbeam as possible your- 
self, without being frivolous, and with patience 
and faithfulness you may be able to do a great 
amount of good. 
The Bake-kettle, or Skillet. 
aT.D FOOT. 
When cooking stoves came in, the bake-kettle, or 
covered skillet, went out, ami with it w*ent a large 
part (^ what was good iu our American cookery. 
How many of your readers ever saw a bake-kettle? 
Probably only those who enjoy the blessing of a 
wood fire to cook by. Just send an artist down to 
the back woods of Maine or away "out west," aud 
have a drawing made of this most capital kitchen 
utensil. [We have had the drawing made, and did 
not have to go so far from home for it. — Eo.] 
"Pioneers" will know what I mean without a 
drawing. It is a shallow kettle with a lid, which has 
a turned-up edge, and upon which coals are placed; 
and the thing to be cooked is "between two fires." 
Those who are roughing it in log cabins or iu camp, 
k.uott- what a useful thing it is. In it the bread i6 
baked, meat roasted or fried, coffee browned, dish- 
water heated — in short, it is the one thing handy to 
have in the house. I say, much good cooking dis- 
appeared with the bake-kettle. It allowed food to 
be cooked as it seldom is by the stove — lon<*-eon- 
tinucd, slow cooking, with all the juices and flavors 
kept in. Were there ever such chicken and veal pies 
as our mothers used to make in the bake-kettle ? 
We have nowadays what is called roast veal — half 
burned and wholly spoiled iu the stove oven. But 
stuff a knuckle of veal 
and put it in the bake- 
kettle and let it " sizzle" 
with fire above and be- 
low for three or four 
hours. It cooks quietly 
^^s and slowly, all themoist- 
EARE- KETTLE. 
g ure is retained, and 
comes out not only a 
delicious, but a digest- 
ible morsel. The French who, say what you will, 
briug more skill and common sense to the subject 
of cooking than all the rest of the world, braise a 
certain class of dishes, and they have for the pur- 
pose a braisier, or braising-pan, which is really only 
the old bake-kettle Frenchified. Ducks, pigeons, 
and fowls, even if tough, may be admirably cooked 
in the bake-kettle. Our people have much to learn 
about the advantages of slow and long-continued 
cooking — a treatment which is hardly practicable 
in a stove oven, as that dries as well as cooks. The 
" modern improvements " in the way of stoves and 
ranges have resulted in a deteriorated cookery. Let 
us go back to the days of our grandmothers so far 
as to restore the bake-kettle to the kitchen — or, if 
it will be fancied better, we will call it a "braisier." 
Something abont Pickles. 
It is a little singular that a large share of the 
questions put to the Household Department at this 
season should be about au article of food which is 
not nourishing — pickles, which to the best stomachs 
are only appetizing and to the weakest positively 
injurious. Still people will eat pickles, aud what- 
ever our "physiological" friends may say, we do 
not doubt that things so generally craved have some 
use in the animal economy. When our boys in the 
army had the chronic diarrhoea, our army surgeons 
usually allowed them to eat pickles and other 
things, that under ordinary circumstances would 
be considered fatal, and to the surprise of every- 
body the hopeless patieuts often recovered. So 
without discussing the dietetics of the matter, we 
accept pickles as a fact. To look at the matter 
philosophically-, a pickle is a mere vegetable sponge 
to hold vinegar. Any vegetable tissue that is not 
so fibrous or tough as to be unpleasant to masti- 
cate, and which has no disagreeable flavor of its 
own, will answer for pickling. If the article pick- 
led has an acceptable flavor of its own, all the bet- 
ter. It is the possession of this that makes the 
cucumber the most popular of all pickles. Vege- 
tables which have no marked taste, such as green 
muskmelous, are made flavorous by the free use of 
spices — like the sailor's wonderful stone, which 
would make a nice soup when the farmer's wife al- 
lowed him to gather the odds aud ends of her kitch- 
en and garden to boil with it. It is customary to 
salt pickles before putting them into vinegar. Why 
do we ? — It is not for the purpose of flavoring them 
with salt, for this can be added to the vinegar. 
This matter of salting pickles brings up the ques- 
tion of osmose, which we cannot find space to dis- 
cuss. Briefly, when a fresh vegetable is placed in 
salt aud water, an interchange takes place between 
the juices contained in the tissues of the vegetable 
and the brine by which it is surrounded. The nat- 
ural juices pass out and the brine passes into the 
vegetable; tile brine being denser, it, according to 
a well-known law, passes in more slowly than Ihe 
juices of the vegetable pass out, and the salted 
things shrivel. When salted pickles are placed in 
water the case is reversed, their shriveled tissues are 
full of brine, much heavier than the water by which 
they are surrounded, the brine passes out, and ths 
