AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
167 
ere infinitely better than these furnaces, which 
I am sure have some secret relationship with 
the fiery furnace of hell. Thoy seem to mo 
made on purpose to destroy the human nerves 
and lungs. Besides these, they have in their 
drawing-rooms the heat of the gas-lights ; and 
w hen we add to this the keenness and the 
changeableness of the atmosphere out of doors, 
it is easy to explain why the women, who in 
particular, are, in this country so thoughtless 
in their clothing, should be delicate and out of 
health, and why consumption should be greatly 
on the increase in these North-eastern States. 
ivies’ fmrtnmtL 
Our correspondent who has furnished several 
numbers of the Journal of a Farmer’s Wife, is ' 
unable at present, owing to sudden indispo¬ 
sition, to continue those articles. Will not some 
of our lady readers take up the pen and give 
a short weekly journal, which shall contain 
useful hints on the management and improve¬ 
ment in conducting household affairs ? 
The following recipe we published in No. 4, 
but on referring to our manuscript, we see the 
printer has made a mistake in giving four lemons. 
There should be two as follows : 
For four Lemon Pies. —Grate the peels of 
two lemons, and squeeze the juice into the 
grated peel. Then take nine eggs, leaving out 
half of the whites, one pound of loaf (or white) 
sugar, half a pound of butter, one pint of cream 
(or of milk,) and four tablespoonfuls of rose¬ 
water, and beat them well together, and add the 
lemon. Divide into four pies with undercrust, 
and bake. 
The above were called “ lemon puddings,” but 
we thought they resembled pies, and we so 
called them. We are, however, not skillful 
enough in diplomacy to settle “ the dividing 
line” between Pies and Puddings. 
We are pleased with the following, and hope 
our fair correspondent will continue her favors, 
and that others will imitate her example. There 
are thousands of recipes going the round of the 
papers, with no other recommendation than that 
somehow and somewhere they got into print, 1 
and have henceforth been copied without credit' 
into almost every paper in the country. We 
think that when a recipe appears in any paper 
in leaded type, without credit, it should ever 
after be credited to that paper, and let its 
editors be responsible for its goodness or bad¬ 
ness. 
Messrs. Editors : 1 wish your lady readers 
who have recipes, which they or their friends 
have proved to be really good and useful, would 
send them to you for publication. I will con¬ 
tribute my mite to-day, and promise more here¬ 
after. The following recipe I have often used, 
and have written it out a dozen times for my 
friends, and they are all pleased with it. 
Yours, S •****. 
Cheap Loaf Cake. —Take 3 cups of sugar, 
3 cups of butter, 3 eggs, and 2 grated nutmegs 
or 2 teaspoonfuls of oil of lemon. Rub the 
sugar and butter to a cream and beat in the 
eggs; take out half of this mixture, and to the 
remainder add three cups of milk quite warm, 
and a little yeast, and stir in sifted flour enough 
to make it quite stiff. Allow this to stand sev¬ 
eral hours till perfectly light, then add the 
reserved portion of butter, sugar, and eggs, 
mix well together, and bake.* By adding 2 
pounds of raisins the cake will be very rich. If 
coffee cups are used the above will make four i 
loaves. 
The French Medical Review states, that re¬ 
cent experiments indicate, that hydrate of mag¬ 
nesia is an antidote for arsenious acid (the com¬ 
mon poisonous arsenic,) for copper salts (blue 
vitriol for example, which is sulphuric acid and 
oxide of copper,) and also for corrosive subli¬ 
mate. We are not certain that this is the case, 
though probably the statement is true with 
simple and almost always at hand; and such 
information as this should always be preserved 
in such a way as to be readily referred to, when 
no more certain remedies are available. 
Hydrate of magnesia is prepared by simply 
mixing the common calcined magnesia with 
water. In cases of poisoning with arsenic, 20 
times as much magnesia should be swallowed 
as there has been poison taken, and for corro¬ 
sive sublimate o to 10 times as much. The 
reliance upon such antidotes, however, should 
be only for the instant, a thorough physician 
should be speedily summoned. 
The hydrate of magnesia mentioned above, 
if taken in small quantities of a teaspoonful or 
so, is a good corrective of an acid stomach, 
though its constant use is generally injurious. 
-♦«!- 
We notice an item going the rounds, that a 
slight application of spirits of turpentine to 
shelves, book-cases, bureaus, &c., will effect¬ 
ually drive away cockroaches. We have no 
means of proving the efficacy of this, not being 
troubled with these depredators, but we should 
suppose it might be effectual, unless so much is 
required that the medicine will be worse than 
the disease. 
India Rubber should be kept free fiom con¬ 
tact with camphene or burning fluid. A lady 
friend of ours entirely spoiled a new pair of 
India rubber gloves by wearing them while 
cleaning a fluid lamp. A little was spilled upon 
the fingers of the gloves and they very soon 
dropped off A rubber shoe would be destroy¬ 
ed by stepping upon a carpet wet with cam- 
phenc for the purpose of removing grease. 
-r •(- 
Good Bread. —Mix two quarts of corn meal ; 
with boiling water into a stiff batter, add one tea- 
spoonfull of salt, one teaspoonfull of saleratus. 
half a tea cup full of molasses, half a pint ofj 
yeast, and wheat flour, or unbolted wheat meal, j 
enough to make a loaf by hard kneading. Set ■ 
it by till light, and bake two hours in an oven i 
hot enough to brown the crust. 
To boil Fresh Pork. —Take a fat blade bone 
of country pork, commonly called the oyster; 
take out the bone and put veal stuffing in its 
place, wrap it in a clean cloth, and put it into a 
saucepan of boiling water with a little salt; let 
it boil slowly for about an hour and a half, or 
an hour and three quarters, according to the 
j size ; it should, however, be well done. Serve 
it up with parsley and butter poured over plen¬ 
tifully. This is a most rich, and at the same 
time a most delicate dish, equal to boiled fowl 
and pickled pork, which, indeed, it greatly re¬ 
sembles. 
--- 
Advice to a Bride. —I beg to remind my 
new daughter that the husband has in his daily 
avocations a thousand elements of disturbance 
to which the wife is an utter stranger; and it 
will be her privilege and her title to the respect 
of all whose respect is worth having, to make 
his own fireside the most attractive place in the 
universe for the calm repose of a weary body or 
excited mind. 
The Half Housekeeper.— She was only a 
half housekeeper. Go where you would about 
her home, there was neither taste nor neatness. 
She would begin things with great avidity, hut 
lose all her zeal before she got through. Of her 
husband’s half dozen new shirts all were parti 
ally finished—one, wanted sleeves, another collar 
and wristband, another bosom and gussets, and 
so on through the list. Several skeletons of 
quilts lay unfolded in her drawers and her 
tables and trunks were loaded with magnificent 
promises. 
Her bread was always unpalatable because 
she forgot this or that—and though she had 
been married ten years, in all that time the table 
was never rightly laid for a meal. Either the 
salt was wanting—a knife, or spoon, or some 
other important ingredient. This afforded good 
i exercise for the family, and there was at all times 
a continued running to and fro. 
She was a half housekeeper. Her meats were 
never properly eared for after dinner—and then. 
it was, “La! throw it away ; it ain’t much.” 
much or little, it made the butcher’s bill enor¬ 
mous, and her husband half distracted. There 
always stood in her musty-smelling pantry, 
mouldy milk, mouldy bread, mouldy meat, and 
mouldy cheese. There always laid about her 
room a dozen garments worn out by trampling 
rather than use. She was forever tripping over 
brooms; forever wondering why on earth work 
came so hard to her—forever running up stairs 
for something she had left down cellar, or flying 
down cellar for what she had thrown in the 
garret. 
Her children’s clothes came to pieces the 
second day, because they were only half made; 
her preserves soured the second month because 
they were only half done, and her temper soured 
quicker than any thing else. She was continu¬ 
ally lamenting that she ever married, and 
wondering where some folks got their knack of 
house-work. She loved to clear a corner for 
herself, and sit with her arms folded. She loved 
to gossip—loved to have some new scheme on 
hand, for then she was furious till it was begun, 
always losing her enthusiasm at the first stitch. 
“ Oh! dear me!” seemed some days the vocab¬ 
ulary, and it would make one sad to watch her 
listless movements and hear her declare that no 
woman worked so hard as she, which was partly 
true, for she had no method. 
She never received company without an apol¬ 
ogy on her tongue, and never sat them down to 
a decent table. She dragged through life, and 
worried through death, for which, 1 fear, like 
every thing else, she was only half prepared, and 
and left six daughters to follow her example, 
and curse the world with six more miserable 
half housekeepers.— Illustrated Mews. 
Which is the Weaker Sex? —Females are 
called the weaker sex—but why ? 1 f they are 
not strong, who is? When men must wrap 
themselves in thick garments, and incase the 
whole in a stout overcoat to shut out the cold ; 
women in thin silk dresses, with the neck and 
shoulders bare, or nearly so, say that they are 
perfectly comfortable. When men wear water¬ 
proof boots over woollen hose, and incase: the 
whole in India rubber to keep them from freez- 
• ing, women wear thin silk hose and cloth shoes, 
I and pretend not to feel the cold. VV hen men 
! cover their heads with furs, and then complain 
; of the severity of the weather, women half cover 
| their heads with straw bonnets, and ride twenty 
j miles in an open sleigh, facing a cold north- 
j wester, and pretend not to suffer at all. They 
! can sit, t6o, by men who smell of rum and to- 
! bacco smoke, enough to poison a whole house, 
| and not appear more annoyed than though they 
were sitting by a mammoth boquet of roses. 
Year after year they can bear abuses of all sorts 
from drunken husbands, as though their strength 
was made of iron. And then is not woman’s 
mental strength greater than man’s ? Can she 
not endure sufferings that would bow the stout¬ 
est man to the earth ? Call not woman the 
weaker vessel; for had she not been stronger 
than man the race would long since have been 
extinct. 
