Women Make the 
woman And The 
Homes Make the 
Home. 
the entries for the prizes. 
OSSIBLY the woman does not exist for whom a clean, 
crisp $5 bill does not hold attractions. Hence it is not 
surprising that from all over the country and even from 
Canada, housewifely hands were stretched out toward 
our modest prizes. From Canada and Vermont to Georgia 
—from the cities of the East and from the farms of the 
far West, from Nebraska, from new-made Washington on 
the farthest border have come pleasant letters and help¬ 
ful recitals of culinary and other economics. Nearly 100 
bright women marched forth to capture the prize; and from 
beneath the depths of something like 1,000 sheets of extra 
manuscript, the Chief Cook gasps out a message that—she 
—will—endeavor—to have—things in shape—to announce 
the decisions, and to publish the prize articles next week. 
* * * 
Most of our subscribers may be able to guess that we 
are not friendly to long articles, yet there is so much 
genuine interest shown by our fiiend who writes about 
“The Home Paper,” and so much food for thought in her 
letter, that we give it entire. That she is a woman with 
at least one hobby (people who amount to much always do 
have hobbies) seems certain. It appears to us, however, 
that the latter part of her article in some degree contra¬ 
dicts the earlier points laid down. We should be glad to 
have it discussed by the thoughtful among our readers, 
especially as it is just in the line of what we called for 
when we were wearing our “thinking-cap” last summer, 
before this friend became our friend. We recognize in her 
a kindred spirit. 
* * * 
Will Ella R. Beebe, who sent the recipe for Bavarian 
cream lately, add to that kindness by explaining the neces¬ 
sity of having a vanilla bean to soak in the milk, or its 
superiority over the ordinary flavorings ? and will she also 
tell us where the beans can be procured, and at what price? 
Does “a bean” as she calls it, mean a pod? We have known 
several who have tried to procure the vanilla beans for the 
purpose of making the extract of vanilla, but who were 
unsuccessful. Some druggists say that they cannot keep 
the beans in good condition ; they give this as a reason for 
not having them on sale. 
SCIENCE IN OUR COUNTRY SCHOOLS. 
UCH is said nowadays about keeping the boys on 
the farm, and yet one plan is almost entirely 
neglected, which could not fail to interest the majority of 
them in country life. Our forests and fields are alive 
with insects and small animals; our groves are melodious 
with bird songs, and the eye is delighted with our various 
and beautiful wild flowers; yet the study of the natural 
sciences is left to be made, if at all, in the higher institu¬ 
tions of learning. Our colleges send out frequent and en 
thusiastic parties of students to study the natural objects 
which surrounded them in their childhood, and which 
should have been as familiar to them as the names of their 
comrades. 
To whom are entomology, botany, ornithology and 
geology of more value than to the farmer ? How many 
farmers will you find who have made that easiest of all 
the sciences, botany, such a study and pleasant companion 
that they know all the weeds which threaten their crops, 
by name, or, better still, can identify their seeds when 
found among those of grass or grain ? Would not a class 
in weeds be of value in our country schools ? 
How much loss and annoyance might have been spared 
us had we fully understood the total depravity of the 
English sparrow before we invited him to make his home 
with us. Lit wasn’t a farmer, but a city nincompoop 
who introduced the sparrow pest.— Eds.] What would 
the farmers of Australia not give to-day had they known 
more about rabbits before they took them as colonists. 
Then there are the insects. Many of them are, at least, 
harmless. Many more are valuable as the enemies of their 
injurious cousins. There is no time like childhood to 
form the acquaintance of these friends and enemies, and 
to learn to discriminate between them, and no place like 
the country school. 
In my own childhood the word science was the name of 
an august something so far above and beyond me that I 
dared not think of understanding it, something so diffi¬ 
cult of comprehension that my feeble powers could not 
even grasp its simplest details. But every year brings the 
sciences nearer to the masses, and even children, in the 
graded schools, are taught the simpler elements of some 
of them. Costly appliances are not needed to introduce 
the sciences into our schools. An enthusiastic teacher 
having no globe, once taught her class the motions of the 
earth by sticking a pin into an apple and then walking 
around one of her pupils while she turned the apple in her 
hand, exhibiting the “pin side” at regular intervals. 
Apparatus for studying the sciences may cost more than 
the pin and the apple, but a great deal of valuable infor¬ 
mation may be obtained where none but the simplest ap¬ 
pliances are used, if the teacher has the faculty of im¬ 
parting enthusiasm to his pupil. 
A little chemistry should be taught with geology, that 
the pupil may see ho w closely the two are akin, or at least 
how each depends on the other, and if he is shown how 
one agent acts chemically upon another in the soil, he will 
not only learn his lesson more thoroughly, but he will be 
led to study cause and effect, and will learn what agent to 
employ to render his barren fields fertile, when he begins 
to assist in tilling his father’s land. 
The youngsters will, no doubt, make bad work with sci¬ 
entific names, but interesting facts will meet with ready 
comprehension and the way will be paved for more com¬ 
prehensive knowledge. If a teacher can train his pupils 
to become observers, he has achieved a great success. 
Never mind if the school-room is littered with the common¬ 
est weeds; never mind if the little pockets are weighed 
down with bits of rock or even with bugs and worms; 
don’t show the disgust you may feel, gentle teacher, but 
teach them to discriminate more wisely next time. Teach 
them to press and mount typical specimens of each plant 
gathered and Identified. Help them to collect a little 
cabinet of insects or minerals. Offer a trifling prize for 
the be 3 t individual collection. Encourage them to watch 
the birds and to tell you about their habits and seasons. 
Teach them the difference between collecting birds’ eggs 
for scientific purposes and robbing tfie nests for fun. 
Natural philosophy, too, is a study which may well com¬ 
mand th<yittention of our growing farmers as well as of 
their sisters. This is an age when one wants to know not 
only that a thing is, but why it is, and no one says “why?” 
so often as a child. S. A. LITTLE. 
Seneca Co., N. Y. 
THE HOME PAPER: WHO SHALL BE ITS CON¬ 
TRIBUTORS ? 
The Rural New-Yorker began its weekly visits to me, 
an entire stranger, scarcely two months ago. But it has 
not taken nearly that length of time for me to catch the 
clear ring of the metal that bespeaks it the true friend of 
the farmer. 
Now, if you will admit the house-wives more freely, 
I predict that in the near future one of its most attractive 
features will be the corner for farmers’ wives and daugh¬ 
ters, North, South, East and West, chatting cosily and 
helpfully together as one great family, happily in love 
with each other. But, please, do not let the woman’s de¬ 
partment deteriorate into one of those “ cut-and-dried” 
affairs edited a whole year before it is published, and 
dumped down in one mass, as it were, as “Woman’s World 
and Work not as if she were man’s true help-mate, 
keeping along bravely by his side, but a sort of fag end 
of creation, to be satisfied with the scraps of last year’s 
“left-overs.” 
Many periodicals come to me professing to be the peo¬ 
ple’s papers, written for and by the people, but bearing 
the unmistakable stamp of city life, man’s own peculiar 
creation, while the country people, among whom the foot¬ 
steps of God are daily passing to and fro, cannot find a 
niche in which to enjoy their native simplicity. 
The rustle of silken drapery, the flash and glitter of 
crystal and silver service, and the polished gleam of costly 
veneering is behind it all, the toiling house-wives of the 
land contributing the dollars to maintain the salaried city 
editress, while she in return for it often—yea, too often, 
only sows the seeds of distaste and aversion for the sim¬ 
plicity of the average home-life, robbing it of its sweetness 
and contentment. Then a great hue and cry is raised 
against the young men and women, who have all their 
lives been nibbling at this glittering bait, when they es¬ 
chew the simple, plodding ways of farm life for the allur¬ 
ing possibilities of the city. 
I once had a house-keepers’ journal that announced in 
glowing terms its peculiar good fortune in having secured 
the services of Mrs.-as editress, for the annual sum of 
ten thousand dollars! Her city bred life, her classic educa¬ 
tion, her refined home, almost princely iu its elegance, the 
very cost of the pearl inlaid desk from which she wrote, 
were all enumerated in the many traits that fitted her pre¬ 
eminently to enter into all the needs of the practical women 
of this day. This day! With its toiling masses of women, 
struggling more often than otherwise to make life merely 
comfortable—not even that perhaps, with the most meager 
of scanty means, and the actual labor of their toil-worn 
hands. Meanwhile Mrs. Editress, in the refined estheticism 
of her city home, would not touch one of those soul-full 
articles, that was to lift these dear, semi-barbarous beings 
to a pinnacle whence they could view an earthly para¬ 
dise to which their wildest imagination could never as¬ 
pire the hope of attainment, for less than one hundred dol¬ 
lars per column, or ten thousand dollars per year. The 
actual good was done when this devoted, philanthropic 
editress permitted some tired, over-worked soul gratui¬ 
tously to occupy a little space in which she, unconsciously, 
doubtless, showed the clear shining of her patient, perse¬ 
vering life. 
In the day when some editor will have the courage to 
pass by the ready-made professional writer who hires out 
by the year, and pay any and every woman a modest sum 
for anything she can write that will actually increase the 
comfort and happiness of the ordinary housewife whose 
comfort depends more on contrivance than money—then 
will the true elevation of farm life begin and be worked 
out by personal labor adequately compensated. This will 
cultivate a far broader humanity and sympathy among 
the unmonied classes; it will incite them to a better, 
nobler life, that they may worthily stretch forth a helping 
hand to others; it will engender broader reading, deeper 
thinking, and a clearer estimate of life and its duties; and 
the fact will be revealed that it is by our own efforts alone 
that we can be truly elevated and educated. Then the 
spare moments will be devoted to standard literature and 
history of past and current events. The goody-goody, 
namby-pamby and sensational story vender will be glad 
to retire to a little farm, or starve ; while the real masters 
of the classics, sciences and belles lettres will find their 
hands full supplying food to these masses whose appetites 
have been whetted to avidity by constant rubbing 
together. 
I had written thus far when The R.N.-Y.of the 24th ult. 
was brought in. Almost the first thing that caught my eye 
was “ Women’s Little Corner in the Paper,” from S. A. 
Little. To me It is no matter for comment that women 
read the papers and then do the work in their own way. 
It is not often that we can fit other people’s plans into 
our own circumstances even in the same walks of life. 
And the average paper is by no means fitted to the average 
woman. But let woman “ know something of everything” 
if she will. In time she will ‘ know everything about some¬ 
thing,” and may adapt a broad knowledge to her special 
work, stamping general rules with her own individuality 
and common sense. 
It would, indeed, be a delectable house that was con¬ 
stantly adjusting itself to the plans of writers of half-a- 
dozen papers, even if these were not half the time spinning 
out high-strung impossibilities at the expense, In dollars 
and cents as well as bitter experience in many instances, 
of the “greatest number ” though not really for good, ex¬ 
cept it be through the dearly bought experience. 
The appliance of actual experience (though theory, too, 
is good in its place) implying the fullest sympathy on the 
part of the giver and need on that of the receiver, is the 
channel through which to touch the responsive view of 
the “ greatest number.” Christianity itself is based on this 
principle. 
And now what we want Is a paper that is a real type of 
“ the suburban and country home ” with woman its true 
motive power, if she will be, with everything centering to 
and circling around her, clogging or quickening the wheels 
of the whole machinery as “ she looketh well to the ways 
of her household” while “the heart of her husband doth 
safely trust in her ” or as “ she foolishly plucketh it down 
with her hands.” SARA armistead n. 
Manola Co., Miss. 
The writer who has been dear to children’s hearts for 
many years under the psuedonym of A. L. O. E. (A Lady 
of England,) and whose real name is Miss Tucker, is a busy 
worker among the zenanas of Northern India. She is said 
to be a charming old lady.—Harper’s Weekly. 
There is just so much of fuming and fretting for every 
one—and the numbers or degrees of external irritations do 
not have much to do in producing it. One can avoid a 
great deal of mental suffering by a resolute exercise of the 
will, aided by the reasoning faculties. If you find your¬ 
self irritated and unhappy—and with fairly good reasons 
for being so—take hold of yourself by the collar and set 
yourself down hard, and say to yourself. “Well, what of 
it ? Suppose that it is so, how long will it be so ? What 
difference will it make a short time from now ? A good 
night’s sleep will dissipate the most of it. If not, you 
will soon become accustomed to it. If nothing else will 
remedy it death will—and that is not far away. Why 
should I allow the brief time that I have to be happy in 
this life to be turned to misery ? I will not do it. I will 
not permit myself to be fretted and chafed and embit¬ 
tered.” Then go and dash cold water over your head and 
take hold of some sort of work.—Interior. 
I WONDER why sons will never marry the girls their 
mothers pick out for them. The perversity of human 
nature, I suppose. But it seems to me that if any one 
pointed out the proper line of conduct to me I would 
follow it. I had never much of a fancy for Gerarda 
Abbey. Her lips and cheeks always seemed to be too 
bright colored, and her dark hair curled and flew about 
so. And then her eyes danced and shone in a totally un¬ 
dignified manner. “Tom,” I used to say at least once a 
month, “ I wonder you don’t admire Margie Hoffheimer. 
She has such dignity, such repose of manner.” “ So has 
an iceberg—and an oyster,” Tom would retort. “ Well 1 
the young men of the present day have strange tastes. She 
is just my ideal of a woman. She never covers her fore¬ 
head with foolish bangs and frizzes.” “ Pity she 
doesn’t! ” said Tom. “ It has such a lumpy look.”— 
Husbandman. 
In writing to advertisers, please mention The R. N.-Y. 
CURE Dandruff 
REVENT 
BALDNESS. 
Dermatologists tell us that: The chief requirement of the 
hair is cleanliness—thorough shampooing for women once a 
fortnight, and for men once a week, and that the best agent for 
the purpose is 
Packer’s Tar SoAp. 
It is one of Nature’s Remedies, 
and the IDEAL TOILET SOAP. 
25 cents. All druggists. Sample half cake, 10 cents in stamps. 
THE PACKER MFG. CO., 100 Fulton St., N. Y. 
