388 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[October, 
and heavy, or drawn too tight around the body. 
Some careful mothers use three nursery pins for 
fastening them. Very 6mall nursery (or “ safety”) 
pins can be obtained it boxes, and these only are 
safe for use in a baby’s clothing. 
Dainty white lined bibs to button around the 
neck, are needed if baby vomits or drools, and are 
neat and useful in any case. 
Washing Dishes. 
Some one inquires about a rack for drying the 
dishes. I have never seen a better arrangement 
than one of my friends used to have in her sink. 
Fig. 1.— GROUND PLAN OF OVEN. 
The sink extended across one end of a narrow 
“ cook room,” my friend preferring, like some 
others, a room for her cook-stove too small to serve 
also as a dining-room, So that she could find room 
in her house for a separate and distinct dining-room. 
The sink was in the end of the cook-room next to 
the pantry, which opened from the dining-room by 
a door close by the entrance to the dining-room 
from the cook-room. In the partition between the 
pantry and cook-room, over the back of the sink, 
was a sliding door or window, through which the 
dishes were passed to a shelf in the pantry as fast 
as they were dried. At one end of the sink was the 
cistern pump, upon a shelf level with the top edge 
of the sink. Across the other end of the long sink 
was the dish rack, which was made to turn up 
against the wall by hinges, when not in use. It 
was simply a wooden rack made of narrow slats 
nailed to cleats, having spaces between about an 
inch wide, so that plates and saucers could be stuck 
in by their edges, while cups and bowls and other 
deep dishes could be turned down upon the rack. 
Such a rack would hardlv obviate the necessity for 
Fig. ».— SECTION THROUGH A, B, FIG. 1. 
wiping dishes at all, but it would make that task 
lighter and less disagreeable. Of course the dishes 
should first be rinsed in clean hot water. Nothing 
but perfectly clean water will dry upon the dishes 
without leaving spots and streaks. 
I have never had such a rack or such a sink, but 
I dislike greatly to wipe dishes that have not been 
drained from clear hot water. Yet I seldom see 
any one wash and wipe dishes in my way. Usually 
the dishes are washed in suds, and then are either 
passed immediately through hot water and wiped 
by an assistant, or they are piled up and afterwards 
are turned down in a dish-pan as though to drain 
them, and hot water is poured over them, (over 
their backs), after which each is taken from the 
rinsing water and immediately wiped without pre¬ 
vious draining. In either case the wiping cloth is 
made quite wet, and sometimes two or three are 
needed for the operation. I think it is a saving of 
labor, on the whole, to drain the dishes, though 
one has to use a common dish-pan for it, as I do. 
There is no other comfortable process if children 
do the work. A little girl, six years old, washes 
and wipes all of my breakfast dishes this summer, 
and usually wipes the dinner dishes for me. She 
kneels in a chair at the dish-table, and does her 
work very satisfactorily. I first wash the pans and 
stone or iron dishes, all of the big, awkward, or 
very sticky utensils, and my rinsing water serves as 
her dish water. I get the work all ready for her, 
placing the plates in the bottom of the dish-pan, 
with saucers, cups, etc., at the top, and knives, 
forks, and spoons stuck in around the sides. When 
I call her to the work, she finds these dishes soak¬ 
ing in warm water, with a clean orderly table to 
pile them upon as she washes them. Sometimes I 
get the rinsing water for her from the stove reser¬ 
voir, but if I am busy she gets it herself if able to 
empty the big dish-pan of the dish water. This 
big pan is used for draining the dishes, after being 
wiped out clean with the dish-cloth. The rinsing 
water is in another pan, and the washed dishes are 
run through it, cups first, then bowls, saucers, 
plates, etc., and all are turned down to drain in the 
dish-pan. They dry very fast, and the wiping cloth 
is scarcely damp when the work is done. Some 
good house-keepers wipe the dishes directly from 
the first suds, but that never seems to me a clean 
way of doing. 
“I always scald my dishes,” boasts one, but I 
happen to know that her dishes are usually streaked 
or sticky when put upon the shelves, because she 
“ scalds” them in such an absurd manner, turning 
them all down in her pan, and pouring hot water 
over the backs of the dishes, leaving the faces of 
the plates and other dishes unrinsed, while the 
heating they get from the hot water on their backs 
dries the suds or greasy dish water in streaks, which 
do not all wipe off—and so the wiping towels get 
quickly soiled. 
Material for Pics. 
It is amusing to see how many things, and what 
odd things, are made into pies, by people who have 
been brought up in parts of the country where pie 
is king of cookery. The strangest material I can 
think of at the moment is—Night-shade berries ! 
These have actually been used by our neighbors, 
and I have not heard of any fatal result. It was 
not the “Deadly Niglit-shade,” ( Atropa ), but the 
“ Black,” (Solanum nigrum), a near relative of the 
common potato. I suppose its dark berries look 
pie-suggestive, but there cannot be any other vir¬ 
tue in them. It seems 
about as absurd to use 
elder berries, which 
have to be “ doctored” 
a considerable to make 
them delude people into 
the belief that they are 
good. Then we have 
mock-mince pies, made 
somehow of green to¬ 
matoes. I wouldn’t 
give the recipes for 
these things if I could. 
The ripe tomato - pie, 
however, is quite palat¬ 
able — made by using 
the tomato like other 
fruit, slicing it, ripe and 
raw, into the pie, and 
seasoning it “to taste.” 
I have never made one, 
but I have cheerfully 
assisted at the eating 
of more than one. 
But what is the use 
of making pies of things 
that are good enough 
without any such prepa¬ 
ration ? It is spending our strength for nought. I 
only pity my neighbor who values strawberries 
chiefly as pie material, and I would rather have a 
good peach in my hand than baked betw’een pie 
crusts, and I can’t imagine a musk melon im¬ 
proved (as some think) by serving it up in a pie. 
They tell of bean pies, too—pies made of beans 
cooked very soft and sifted and seasoned and baked 
like pumpkin pies. I shouldn’t wonder if they are 
good, as certainly the pumpkin pie, well made, is 
almost universally liked. Pumpkins and beans 
have to be cooked somehow before they can serve 
us as food—not so our apples, peaches, melons and 
berries. Good fruit may make good pies, however; 
but if we are to win our way back to Paradise 
through simplified living, we must learn to eat 
our fruit with simple bread and butter, adding, 
perhaps, a little sugar or cream. To make pies 
of material which is not at all nutritious, and which 
is even injurious, is, to my notion, a very needless 
performance.—[We hope no one will be induced to 
try Nightshade berries as food in any form. There 
are cases recorded in which children have been 
poisoned by eating them, and though the heat of 
cooking may destroy the poisonous principle, it is 
better not to run any risks. Such different accounts 
are given of the plant, that it is probably very vari¬ 
able, and consequently treacherous, and to be let 
alone.—E d.] 
How to Build an Oven and Smoke-house. 
The old-fashioned brick oven is still a favorite 
with many housekeepers, who enjoy the peculiarly 
sweet, agreeable flavor of the bread which is baked 
upon the brick hearth. The cast-iron stove which 
is an excellent substitute when the old-fashioned 
oven is not to be had, permits some of the gases 
produced in the combustion of the fuel to escape 
into the oven, and they to some extent flavor the 
bread or pastry. The ease with which exactly the 
proper temperature can be maintained in a brick 
oven, and the consequent absence of all danger of 
burning the contents is another of its advantages. 
We suppose it is on these accounts that of late so 
many inquiries have come to us for a plan of build¬ 
ing a brick oven, simple enough to enable any or¬ 
dinary brick-layer to construct one. 
The bricks chosen for an oven should be hard, 
well burned, well molded, and with straight edges. 
This is especially necessary for the hearth. The 
oven should be located as near the kitchen as pos¬ 
sible. If it can be built in the kitchen-wall so that 
the body of the oven forms an addition at the rear 
of the kitchen, or in a separate part which could be 
used as a baking or washing room, it would be 
more convenient for winter use. But an oven and 
smoke-house can be built together very conve¬ 
niently and economically, and in this case it is best 
to have it detached from the house and yet so near 
to the kitchen door that it may be easily reached. 
The foundation of the oven is made by building 
two nine-inch walls of the proper length or about 
six feet, and six feet apart to a hight of two feet 
above the ground. Upon these walls are laid cross- 
Fig. 4.— THE OVEN COMPLETED. 
