1879 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
65 
sugar dough, made with powdered sugar and mu¬ 
cilage of Gum Tragacanth. To make the mucilage ; 
take an ounce of the whitest Gum Tragacanth, 
and pour over it a pint of boiling water. Let this 
stand in a warm place, occasionally stirring, for a 
day. Tragacanth docs not dissolve, it only swells 
to a paste ; if not thin enough, add more boiling 
water and stir. The lumps must be strained out 
by squeezing through a coarse fabric. Use this 
strained mucilage and powdered sugar, mix and 
beat together—a mortar would be convenient, but 
it may be done on a moulding board, with a plenty 
of powdered sugar to keep it from sticking—as 
much sugar as a given quantity of the mucilage 
will take up and form a stiff dough that can be 
roiled out thin. From this dough or paste, by 
means of cutters, formed of strips of tin bent to the 
desired shape, leaves, parts of flowers, or other or¬ 
namental forms may be cut; this may be formed 
and moulded into any desired shape, and is the raw 
material from which the most elaborate ornaments 
are fashioned. These ornaments may be attached 
to the surface of the cake with little of the mucil¬ 
age, or where there is a flat surface, by merely wet¬ 
ting them ; parts of the paste ornaments may be 
joined to one another in a similar manner. 
Observe ..—Do not roll out any more of the 
6 ugar-paste than can be used at once, for as soon as 
dry it is as brittle as glass, and very hard. Keep 
the mass covered with a damp cloth. Have a defi¬ 
nite idea of what is to be made, so that the paste 
ornaments can be put into shape quickly, before it 
dries. The surface of leaves, etc., may be figured 
at will by drawing veins, etc., upon it with some 
hard, blunt point. Those who understand making 
wax or other artificial flowers, can fashion this 
paste into a great variety of forms. We have not 
provided forany colored or gilded ornaments some¬ 
times used on cakes, as pure white throughout 
is much more pleasing to persons of taste. 
What are Our Children Beading? 
BY FAITH ROCHESTER. 
Are we fully awake to the dangers that threaten 
us, as a result of the vile literature freely circulated 
among children and young people ? A great many 
have no idea of these perils. Of course they object 
to obscene publications, but these are seldom dis¬ 
covered by parents in the possession of their chil¬ 
dren. If read at all (as alas! they often are), they 
are read in secret. But many a child sits quietly 
down in the presence of its parents, and reads that 
which weakens its mental powers and poisons its 
morals, while the parents rejoice that their little 
one is so fond of reading, and fondly imagine that 
by reading it is of course improving its mind. They 
have no idea of the great flood of trash, and worse 
than trash, circulating under the name of juvenile 
reading. It is a common thing now for criminals, 
when questioned about the causes that led to their 
evil lives, to confess that the first instigations to 
crime came from the Dime Novels they read. Dime 
Novels are now pretty generally rejected by well- 
informed people, but only a small proportion of 
the evil literature comes in that form. There are 
several widely circulated, cheap, illustrated papers 
and magazines for boys and girls, which are in their 
general tone and scope worthy only of condemna¬ 
tion, even though they give some interesting and 
useful information, and some nice little moral lec¬ 
tures sandwiched in with their exciting tales of 
love and bloodshed, and extravagant adventure. 
Few children, when once fairly imbued with the 
love of these exciting tales, read any of the more 
prosy articles. Stories, and exciting stories alone, 
will satisfy their morbid appetites. Children who 
have been carefully trained, as their parents im¬ 
agined, and guarded from all evil companions, have 
turned out scamps, as .a direct result of the bad 
tone of their habitual reading. 
Only lately a book came into our family, recom¬ 
mended to a youthful member by a mother of little 
boys as “ first rate,” and “ very funny.” I was im¬ 
mediately besought to read it aloud, so that all 
might enjoy it. I looked over the group of heads 
as one turned the pages to show the funny pictures, 
telling something about several pictures, as the 
story had just been told him by those who lent the 
book. I was amazed. It seemed to me a miserable 
book. Not one wholesome picture of childhood 
did I see—the illustrations were mostly cf tricky 
little boys or flirting little girls, or silly stuck-up 
or severe teachers, and foolish easily-duped over- 
fond or over-severe parents. “ Do you really think 
this is the best book I can read to you now?” I 
asked.—“ I don’t think it is so good as the books 
you have read to us,” they said, “ but the L. chil¬ 
dren think it the funniest and best book that ever 
was, and they say we ought to read it.” 
I have studied that book with deliberate inten¬ 
tion. I know now one reason why Mrs. L. has to 
lock her boys out of the house when she goes away, 
for fear the apples will all be eaten up, and why the 
boys are punished for stealing sugar contrary to 
orders, and why they have lately been growing unfit 
companions for little girls. Tom Sawyer, the hero 
of this book, was not wholly bad, but he was a 
young scamp, indulging in deceit and lies and other 
vicious habits, but always coming out “ahead” of 
everybody else by his superior “ smartness.” When 
first introduced to the reader, at the age of 10, he 
seems to be in the habit of stealing out of his room 
window and remaining out with other lawless boys 
until midnight, or after, once looking on at a mur¬ 
der, sometimes tracking thieves or villains, and 
sometimes searching for hidden money. We are 
told that “there comes a time in every rightly con¬ 
structed boy’s life when he has a raging desire to 
go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.” So of 
course Tom went digging—and though he always 
shirked everything like regular work or steady in¬ 
dustry, either of body or mind, he “came out” at 
the end of the book far richer in purse than any of 
his steady, studious, industrious companions, all 
because of his “ luck ” in some of his midnight ad¬ 
ventures, which led to his finding a bag of money— 
he and a companion in folly. A very unchildlike 
and foolish love-story—Tom’s love adventures wilh 
a silly little girl—runs through the book. I found 
no good lesson of any kind in the book, and to me 
it was too painful, in its delineations of precocious¬ 
ly “smart” and deceitful childishness to be at all 
Fig. 2. —SPOOL-CASE, PIN-CUSHION, ETC., COMBINED. 
funny. We must have entertaining reading for the 
children. We need something besides that which 
merely affords useful knowledge. We want good 
moral lessons conveyed by interesting stories. We 
want books which will serve our children in the 
way of well bred companions, exerting an uncon¬ 
scious influence for good upon their manners and 
judgments, helping to form good faithful charac¬ 
ters. A book like the one I have briefly reviewed 
above, tends to throw contempt upon obedience, 
industry, temperance, and education, and its influ¬ 
ence is to cultivate lawlessness and vagabondage, 
which lead to crime.—[And a busy press is send¬ 
ing out hundreds of thousands of these Boys and 
Girls story papers every week, not apparently im¬ 
moral at first sight, but of a most demoralizing 
tendency. We have seen parents of fair intel¬ 
ligence buy and carry home these papers, and sub¬ 
scribe for them, because they happened to see a 
copy having a pleasing and instructive engraving 
as a sugar-coating to a vile compound.— Ed.] 
Convenient Spool Cases. 
BY L. D. SNOOK, YATES CO., N. Y. 
[Needle-work is much facilitated by having the 
various and numerous articles required, always at 
band in 6uch a manner that any particular thing 
may be found without overhauling the work- 
basket, in which the one thing needed has a happy 
faculty of getting always at the bottom. Some 
months ago we gave a plan of a case for holding 
the various spools of thread and silk, devised by 
Mr. Snook, and the same ingenious gentleman 
Fig. 1.— A NEAT SPOOL-CASE. 
sends us designs for two others, either of which 
will allow the spools to be kept where the right one 
may be at once found.— Ed.] The engravings show 
the arrangement of the cases so plainly that little 
description is required. Figure 1 is a box about 7 
inches long, 5 inches wide, and 2s inches high ; the 
partition in the middle projects far enough above 
the upper edge to be wrought into a handle, and a 
cover is hinged upon each side of this. In the 
bottom of the box are fixed iron or wooden pins, 
upon which to place the spools. A small smooth 
hole is provided opposite each spool for the end of 
the thread to pass through, and it would be well if 
the number of the thread were placed over the 
hole. In fig. 2 there is a different style, in which 
the spools are placed horizontally, instead of up¬ 
right, and it has an additional advantage in afford¬ 
ing a place for needle cases, scisoors, and a pin¬ 
cushion. This is about 7 inches high, C inches wide, 
and 4 inches deep at the bottom, tapering to 3 inches 
at the top. The pins for the spools when put in 
should be set slightly slanting downwards from 
front to rear, which will prevent the spools from 
running off when the cover of the case is opened. 
The ends of the threads pass out at the sides. Such 
cases may be made of a great variety of materials 
and admit of different styles of finish. They may 
be of common pine and covered with fancy paper 
or other material and ornamented in various styles. 
They may be made of fancy woods and varnished 
or polished, or if one has a talent for painting, 
they may be of any white wood, and ornamented 
with some pleasing design. Of course the inside 
will be lined as may be fancied. Those who would 
contribute articles to fairs are often at loss what to 
make that will be both attractive and useful. Cases 
like these are useful and easily made and may be as 
plain or as elegant as one chooses. Brothers and 
sisters can co-operate in work of this kind, the boy 
doing the wood-work and the girl the finishing. 
Household Notes and Queries. 
Down Bed-Quilts.— A correspondent, who omits 
to give State, yet thoughtfully sends a stamped en¬ 
velope for a reply by mail, wishes to know how to 
make bed-quilts, “ using down from geese instead 
of wool or cotton.” Can any one inform her? 
Stewed Carrots. —It is rare that Americans 
make use of carrots otherwise than to flavor soups 
or stews, but they are very generally used by Euro¬ 
peans. Cut the carrots, after scraping them, into 
small pieces or “ dice,” and cook in water enough 
to cover them until thoroughly done ; pour off the 
water and add milk sufficient to cover, with flour 
enough to thicken, salt and butter, allow this to 
boil up, and serve hot. This is a favorite winter 
dish with the writer, who finds a slight dusting of 
