310 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
(October, 
My paper cost me a dollar for the year, and that 
one article gave me ten bushels per acre more of 
wheat than you get, on the twenty acres, which was 
so much clear gain, except hauling the extra grain 
to market. This made me a clean $300 profit.” 
“Just so, but if your Wife had been sick enough 
to have used up the Wheat you Would have been as 
bad off as I. Your good luck favors you.” 
“But she had no butter to make for market, and 
that saved her strength. I have tried in various 
ways to save her strength as well as my own. She 
has a machine that does up our sewing in short 
metre, and she goes to bed and sleeps and rests, in¬ 
stead of stitching until midnight, and feeling dull 
and mopish in the morning and all day. She also 
has her machinery to help on washing day, and does 
not complain of lame shoulders from wringing out 
clothes as she used to do.” 
“ But how did you buy them, if you first paid up 
your farm debt with that extra wheat crop?” 
“ I earned them at odd spells; Don’t yon re¬ 
member I called one evening two years ago, and 
asked you to subscribe for the agricultural paper ? 
I was going to tell you about how it helped me, 
but you bluffed me off short by saying 1 you didn’t 
waut any book farming.’ I was offended and did not 
press the matter, but I went to others and kept at it, 
and wife helped me among the neighbors, and her 
sister in-also helped, and so we finally made 
up a club of 130 names, and received our sewing 
machine as a present or premium. The editor gave 
it to me for my trouble, and the only expense was 
$1.75 for freight. Last year I got over a hundred 
names again, and received a subsoil plow for my¬ 
self, a wringing machine for my wife, and some ag¬ 
ricultural books besides, which furnished good and 
instructive reading. It would do you good to 
come over on Monday and see wife wring out her 
washing in a few minutes, without ever getting tired. 
This year I am going to get a jvashing machine 
which the editor speaks well of in his premium list. 
I begin already to see good effects from my subsoil 
plow also, and the other new thoughts and hints I 
have been getting from the paper all along, have 
made me think more, and farm more with my brains, 
as Tim Bunker says. Wife reads the paper also, 
and says she gets many good hints about her work.” 
“ I see it all. Iam sorry I answered you so sharp¬ 
ly about book farming. Pity you did not call on me 
again when I was in better mood. But its all my 
own fault, and it’s too late to remedy the matter 
now. If I can raise a dollar I must have the paper 
at any rate. Put me down on your list any way, 
and I’ll get the dollar for you to-morrow.” 
“ Not too late, as it happens. I have got twice 
as many names now as I need to get the washing 
machine, and I had thought about trying for the 
Cyclopaedia premium, that is, 16 large books con¬ 
taining information about every thing. But I am 
very busy this Fall, and I’ll give you the list of sur¬ 
plus names. With a little effort evenings and at 
town meetings, and going out of the town, you can 
soon make up a list large enough to secure your 
wife a sewing machine. It Will be the best medicine 
for her, I am sure. If you can’t get the 130 names 
at 80 cents each, you can at least get 90, and pay 
the extra 20 cents on each yourself, if necessary. 
You can see the list of premiums in my paper, which 
I will lend you until you can send to the editor for 
a sample copy which will be forwarded for 10 cents, 
or even free, if you promise to use it in getting up 
a club. You can do best by hurrying up the mat¬ 
ter now, for the Publisher of the American Agri¬ 
culturist , (New-York City,) offers it the rest of this 
year free to all names sent in soon.” 
“I am very much obliged to you, neighbor 
Thrifty. I’ll come over early this evening for the 
paper, and any instructions you can give me about 
getting names. Good morning. I will take new 
courage, and wife will too, when I tell her about 
the new medicine. The hope of it, will do her good. 
I have got a new hint. I have complained of ill 
luck in having a sickly wife, and many a man has 
broken down under this. But it’s my own fault. I 
ought to have got labor-saving implements for her, 
ns well as for my own work. She has broken down 
under day and night labor—sitting up until mid¬ 
night to finish her sewing, while I have slept and 
rested. It shall be so no longer. Thank you again 
for your plain, instructive talk. Good morning.” 
Middlings, Shorts, etc. 
Several contributors to the exhibition of. Corn 
Bread, intimated that rye flour is quite as good 
as wheat for mixing with corn meal for the 
manufacture of cheap, sweet and wholesome 
bread. This is probably true, excepting as re¬ 
spects color, and that should be a secondary 
consideration. One contributor has commend¬ 
ed wheat middlings as better than fine flour, say¬ 
ing that the last running from the bolter above 
the bran was intended, but suggesting modestly 
that we might substitute a more suitable term. 
That would be impossible. Middlings is just the 
word. It means, neither very coarse nor very 
fine, but half way between the extremes. As 
applied to the products of wheat, it has been 
long used to designate that which is finer and of 
lighter color than the bran, but darker and 
coarser than the flour. The products of a bush¬ 
el of wheat are sometimes distributed by the 
miller into as many as seven grades. In ordi¬ 
nary bolting for family use, seldom are more 
than four grades made, and oftener perhaps but 
three—the flour, the middlings and the bran. 
If, on this principle of distribution, the miller 
should return, for a bushel of wheat, 25 lbs. of 
flour, 20 lbs. of middlings, 12 lbs. of bran, it 
would be evident that some of the flour and 
some of the finer parts of the bran had gone to¬ 
gether to make the middlings. This shows 
what middlings are; but to ascertain their value, 
as food, we need to examine the kernel of wheat, 
to see of what its several parts are composed, 
and which of its parts go to make up the mid¬ 
dlings after grinding. First, there is the body 
of the kernel, consisting very largely of starch. 
This is surrounded by a 8-fold coating, outer, 
middle and inner. The outer coating is little 
else than hard, woody scales; the middle con¬ 
tains much gluten; and the inner, which is 
quite thick, is almost wholly of gluten; while 
the enclosed interior as we have said above, is 
principally starch, having a little gluten dissem¬ 
inated among its particles. 
Now it is manifest, that if we grind and bolt 
wheat so as to make but two grades—fine flour 
and bran, the entire substance of the skin 
goes with the bran, and never finds its way into 
the bread tray; whereas, if we make some 
twenty pounds to the bushel of a middle grade, 
we save the glutinous inner coating; and what¬ 
ever of food value there is in the middle coating 
is saved. These, together with a little of the 
fine flour, make up the middlings, darker in col- i 
or, but more palatable than the flour, and of far 
greater value as food, because they contain more 
gluten, this being the only substance in wheat 
which supplies material for the tissues of the 
body, especially for the muscles. 
Bread made of wheat middlings, or of these 
with one half corn meal, gives to the human 
form a more perfect development, more health, 
strength, symmetry and beauty, than that made 
from fine flour, and would sustain life much 
longer, if used as the only food. The finest 
bread is not the best for common use. The 
whitest is not. That which contains most of 
the matter of which bone, sinew and muscle are 
made, will make better developed men and 
women. Especially will it be so, if we supply it 
to our children in the growing period. We 
therefore vote for a full supply of middlings, 
and for a good share of corn meal in the batch. 
Wheat contains hardly oil enough to make 
it the best constant food. Corn contains 
rather too much. Mixed in equal portions, they 
are about right. Let us honor the brown loaf. 
We should forget the whim, that whiteness and 
fineness are the only qualities of good bread, 
and let us look rather for what will make vig¬ 
orous, stalwart men, and strong, healthy and 
beautiful women. * 
Don’t Buy a Pound of Butter. 
Buy a firkin or a pail of it at a time, now that 
cool weather allows of its being kept sweet for 
a long period. This advice is intended for the 
very large class of readers of the Agriculturist 
who live in cities and villages, many of whom 
buy their butter at the grocery only as it is need¬ 
ed from day to day. This is an extravagant 
practice. Butter, for which the farmer would 
gladly receive from sixteen to twenty cents, ac¬ 
cording to the season, costs the purchaser from 
twenty to twenty-five cents by the small quan¬ 
tity. But, aside from this, grocery butter is sel¬ 
dom of as good quality as that purchased di¬ 
rectly from the producer. Dairymen and women 
are really not as particular with butter “for the 
store ” as with that made for private customers. 
“ What is the use of my taking pains,” says 
Mrs. Perkins, “when my butter will be put 
with Mrs. Slack’s, and Mrs. Hasty’s, and a dozen 
more lots of poor stuff. It won’t bring any 
more, and I shall get no credit.” But order a 
pail from Mrs. Perkins, and she knows that un¬ 
less it be good, she will hear from it. Then, 
too, the butter for sale at the grocer’s has often 
been brought from a distance, exposed to the 
heat, and in retailing, it is opened to the air, and 
subjected to the not over-nice manipulations of 
the clerk in weighing, etc., and by the time it 
reaches the table its glory is departed. Almost 
all our readers have some acquaintance in the 
country from whom they can engage a supply 
of butter for the Winter. Now is the time to do 
it. Butter made from the sweet after-growth of 
the meadows, before the frost has partially with¬ 
ered the grass, and while the weather is cool, if 
properly Worked and packed, will keep sweet 
until next Spring. Send to Such an acquaint¬ 
ance an Order for what will be needed, with di¬ 
rections to have it packed in stone jars, or in 
new sweet firkins, and you will rejoice in your 
foresight over every plate of well-buttered 
“buckwheats” during the Winter. 
“Old Maids.” 
We heartily endorse the following kindly 
words from the pen of Henry Ward Beecher, 
in behalf of a class whose good deeds have 
never been appreciated. He says: “I have 
no sympathy with that rude, unfeeling, and in¬ 
delicate phrase, old maid, which is bandied about 
in the mouths of rude, unfeeling, and indelicate 
persons. It is true that a selfish nature, cut off 
from all duties and ties, and sinking back into 
the solitary life of a selfish heart, becomes most 
unlovely, and useless. But shall the few cloud 
the true nobleness of the many ? How many 
elder sisters, it maybe unblessed with outward 
comeliness, have entered into a brother’s or a 
sister’s family, and accepted all its cares as the 
duty of their life, and, joining hands with the 
mother, given to each child, as it were, two 
souls of love, like two wings of God, to help it 
fly up withal from weakness and ignorance to 
manhood and strength! How many have cheer¬ 
fully given up their own whole life, built no 
nest, sought no companion, but sang in the tree 
