104, 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
[March, 
troduced into it at one meal, until it has disposed 
of enough of its fluid contents to leave it in a suf¬ 
ficiently dense condition for kneading and churn¬ 
ing, and stirring about by the strong muscles of 
that organ. Too much fluid improperly dilutes the 
gastric juice which the stomach mixes with the 
food in order to help its thorough digestion. If the 
fluid mixed with the food as it is swallowed be very 
cold, it farther retards digestion by lowering the 
temperature of the contents of the stomach below 
the working point, so that digestion can not go for¬ 
ward until the body has sufficiently raised the tem¬ 
perature of the food in the stomach. With warm 
meals, a moderate amount of cold water (not ice- 
water) may produce no noticeable result, but the 
hearty cold water drinks had better be taken when 
the stomach is empty. Poured into a full stomach 
they often produce great discomfort, and sometimes 
result in serious disease. Drinks with meals, es¬ 
pecially for persons with defective teeth, had better 
be warm than very cold. Still, I think that if you 
teach your growing family to eat their food de¬ 
liberately with no tumbler or other drinking vessel 
at all placed habitually beside their plates, so that 
they naturally learn to moisten the food well with 
nature’s own preparation for that purpose—the 
saliva,which pours from the glands about the mouth 
with every motion of chewing—the children will 
grow up healthier in all respects for the good habit 
of deliberate and thorough chewing, and of drink¬ 
ing at proper times. 
The Inside Finishing 1 of Houses. 
I have just been turning again the pages of 
“Homes and How to Make Them.” I like the 
author’s ideas in regard to simplicity of design, in 
the finishings, or lack of straining for effect in 
ornamenting houses. As the most perfect style of 
dress is that which attracts the least attention, so 
the finishings of rooms should not challenge notice 
and detract from their furnishings. Let there be as 
few dust-traps as possible. These are found in 
enormous Grecian window and door cornices, sup¬ 
ported by huge carved consoles, in needless crooks 
and quirks, and unintelligible mouldings. The au¬ 
thor, a practical architect, declares that most of 
what is usually considered ornamental in such cases, 
is wholly incongruous with lath and plaster and 
floors of cheap boards. “ Any great outlay of la¬ 
bor or material on the casings of doors and win¬ 
dows, or the bases, when there is no other wood¬ 
work in the room, is surely out of place.” He says 
that fine art in building does not imply fine work. 
Attend first to the size and position, and relative 
proportion of all the parts, and then see that such 
mouldings as may be needed are simple and grace¬ 
ful, and you cannot go far wrong. The author ad¬ 
mits the practical utility of paint and varnish, 
though he protests against the kind of painting 
called “graining.” He objects to all this attempt 
at deception, which is so common, and would not 
have us ashamed of pine doors if those are what 
we can best afford. They are well enough, until 
they proclaim themselves, by false graining, to be 
oak, black walnut, or mahogany. He thinks this is 
a part of that spirit of show which pervades our 
whole social structure, obtruding itself into every 
department of life. If we want to see the natural 
grain of wood, it does not necessarily follow that 
we must use hard wood. He speaks of black-wal¬ 
nut as much over-estimated, and praises the beauty 
of the grain of our common white-pine—“rarely 
used without having its natural beauty extinguished 
by three coats of paint.” He also praises, for in¬ 
side finishings, ‘‘the different kinds of ash, yellow- 
pine, butternut, white-wood, cherry, cedar, even 
hemlock and spruce in some situations. Whatever 
wood we use unpainted, several important points 
must be observed. It must be the best of its kind, 
seasoned to its inmost fibre, carefully worked and 
finally filled [with oil I suppose,] and rubbed until 
it wears a surface that is not liable to soil, is easily 
cleaned, resists the action of moisture, and will 
grow richer with age.” He does not object to 
staining the wood if you prefer a different shade. 
This does not conceal, but strengthens the natural 
shading, and it is honest and sometimes an econom¬ 
ical expedient. “ The cost is less than common 
painting, and the effect as much better than grain¬ 
ing as nature’s work is more perfect than ours.” 
Floors and Carpets. 
There is a strong protest offered, in different 
ways and from various sources, against our long es¬ 
tablished practice of making poor floors, with the 
design of keeping them covered with carpets 
stretched and fitted to every part, and carefully 
tacked down. Carpets in daily use cannot be kept 
clean except by very frequent shaking and beating, 
and they do much toward corrupting the air by re¬ 
taining impure gases, hiding the finest, most pene¬ 
trating dust in their meshes and underneath them, 
and by giving off particles of fine wool into the at¬ 
mosphere, with other dust, as they are swept or 
walked upon. There is a demand for better floors, 
not necessarily inlaid or mosaics, of different kinds 
of precious wood, but made double, of strong sea¬ 
soned wood, that will not shrink or warp (spruce, 
however well seasoned, is almost sure to warp), 
and then carefully finished so as to be durable 
and easily cleaned. Carpeted floors seem a re¬ 
lief to the house-keeper when once the carpets are 
procured and fitted to the rooms and tacked down, 
because they do not show the dirt as the bare 
floors do. But oh ! when they do get full of dust! 
And when house-cleaning time comes, and they 
must be taken up and shaken and whipped as they 
well deserve ! With warmly-made floors and large 
warm rugs, couldn't we do without these abomina¬ 
tions even in winter. Certainly our rooms would 
be cooler and sweeter without them in summer. 
But in that case we must take more pains with our 
floors, and we must have something better than the 
common unpainted ones. Oiled floors are better 
liked than those painted, even for kitchens. Wom¬ 
en find that they can oil their floors themselves, and 
many a kitchen floor has, within a few years, been 
made comfortable and decent in that way. Boiled 
linseed oil is used, and two or three coats are put 
on, one after another, as fast as they are dry. 
Floors of alternate boards of different kinds of 
wood are pretty for some rooms, and sometimes a 
border made in this way, with diagonal stripes, bor¬ 
dered by a straight board on each side, or wood of 
two kinds laid in checks or diamonds, is very satis¬ 
factory. These bordered rooms are especially de¬ 
signed for parlors, or rooms where a heavy bordered 
carpet or large rich rug is intended to merely cover 
most of the floor, leaving a margin of about two 
feet around the edges—a carpet which can often 
be carried out and shaken free from dust. 
Oiled floors do not need hard scrubbing, like un¬ 
painted floors, but simply a good washing with 
warm (not hot) water, often changed as you go 
over it. Strong suds of course will gradually re¬ 
move the oil with which you have carefully filled 
the pores. Grease spots do not have the same ef¬ 
fect as upon an unpainted or unoiled floor, which 
must be kept free from grease in order to look well, 
for-now you have it greased all over; whatever 
grease gets on it now', that can not be scraped or 
wiped up, may be thoroughly rubbed in. 
The Easiest Way to Make Graham Bread, 
And perhaps the best way is to make loaves of 
graham. In the morning, take a part of your 
bread sponge, set over-night with yeast and fine 
flour, as usual, and stir this with graham as thick 
as you can conveniently with a strong spoon. Stir 
it well to make it all of an even consistency, and 
at the same time stir in a tablespoonful of sugar 
to a medium sized loaf. Do not knead it at all, 
but turn it, when thoroughly mixed with the spoon, 
into buttered bread pans, ar.d let it rise until near¬ 
ly doubled in size, then bake in a moderate oven. 
Cockroaches. 
Having mentioned these pests in former Topics, as 
probably my next lesson in entomology, I must say 
a word more. But lam not likely to become very 
learned in respect to them, and I feel quite recon¬ 
ciled to a continuation of my present ignorance. I 
showed one to Mr. R. when I had first learned its 
name, and he suggested “ can it be possible that 
w T e brought them ourselves from one of the depots 
where the goods stayed over night ?” I thought it 
impossible as, having found two near together, as 
to time and space, 1 thought the house must be 
well stocked with them. But from that day to 
this, 1 have seen only one more full-grown specimen 
—and I had them “ on the brain ” sufficiently to 
have allowed none to escape my search. I found 
in their vicinity a few weeks afterwards, a good 
many little brown bugs of the same general make 
up, though different in color, unlike anything I had 
ever observed before. I destroyed all I could find, 
and scattered a mixture of corn meal, molasses, 
and arsenic in places most likely to be infested. 
Afterwards I found some of these little bugs dead 
near the poison, but I have seen none for a long 
time. If I ever do again, I shall treat them to 
powdered borax, which I learn, from several, 
is a sure remedy.—[And, like some other “ sure 
remedies,” we have found it utterly useless.— Ed.] 
--- «> «»».-*-»-. 
A Bread or Kneading Board, 
“ D.,” of Louisiana, Mo., sends a neat sketch and 
a description of a Bread Board, that he has had for 
many years, and finds it 
a useful household con¬ 
venience. The idea is, 
to have a board for the 
bread which shall be 
used for that purpose 
only, that may be readi¬ 
ly taken down and put 
away, and when not in 
use shall occupy but 
little room and at the 
same time be protected 
from dust. Figure 1 
shows the board when 
not in use, and fig. 3, 
the same ready for 
work. Where the wall 
of the kitchen is plas¬ 
tered, a lining (1. fig. 3 ) corresponding to the size 
of the board will be needed, but if the walls are 
wainscotted this is not necessary. Above the lin¬ 
ing is a box cornice, the front of which lifts up, and 
opens a place in which the rolling pin, cake-cutters, 
etc., are kept. The board(2) is three feet square 
Fig. 2.—BREAD-BOARD OPEN FOR USE. 
and one inch and a quarter thick, with an inch tmd 
a half cleat securely fastened at each end, to pre¬ 
vent warping. Mr. D. finds no wood so suitable 
for the board itself as soft maple, but all the other 
parts may be of pine. The board is hinged to a 
strip (3) of the same thickness, and provided with 
light legs (4) to support it at a convenient bight 
when down ; these are hinged to the board and drop 
down, as in fig. 1, when that is not in use. The 
engraving makes other description unnecessary. 
What is Tin-ware ? The Care of It. 
ft does not appear to be generally known that 
the article so commonly used for household uten¬ 
sils, for cans, for roofing, etc., called “tin,” really 
contains very little tin, seldom more than one part 
in forty or fifty. Tin—pure tin—is a silvery white 
metal, and is the lightest and easiest melted of all 
the metals in common use ; it being only about 
five-eighths as heavy as lead, and requires only 
about two-thirds the heat to melt it. Pure tin is 
called “ block-tin,” but it is rarely used pure, the 
utensils, said to be made of block-tin being alloys 
with other metals. Our common tin-ware is really 
Fig. 1.— BREAD BOARD 
FOLDED AGAINST WALL. 
