THE OLD PICKET FENCE. 
One morning in spring, the old fence said, 
As bent and crooked with age it stood: 
“ This winter that’s passed o’er my atred head, 
Has surely done me more harm than good. 
This morning, against my feeble frame, 
As my owner leaned his heavy weight, 
I trembled, and shook in every limb, 
While he thoughtlessly sealed my fate. 
“ ‘ Gates off the hinges, the posts rotting down; 
You unsightly thing, your day is past. 
It is time I tore the old fence to the ground, 
And called my dooryard a lawn at last. 
I’ve clung to it a good many years, 
And been to considerable expense, 
Only to honor my ancestors, 
Who were all so proud of their picket fence. 
“ ‘ But old things must give way to new; 
Such fences are unnecessary things; 
We cannot bound our horizons, now 
That our minds and souls have found their wings. 
So come down, old fence,’ he gayly cried; 
‘ You’ll do for my poultry yard, I guess; ’ 
Then with an ax, my strength he tried, 
And, you can imagine the rest. 
“ Now the quaint old yard of days gone by 
Lies unguarded on every side, 
While bruised and battered, I sadly lie 
Only a relic of ancestral pride.” 
ALICE E. PINNEY. 
A COOKING LECTURE. 
RECIPES WITH THE REASONS WHY, 
Part I. 
T the closing session of the Wiscon¬ 
sin Farmers’Institute, Mrs. Jennie 
A. Jamison, a cooking teacher from 
Neenah, Wis., gave the women a short 
series of lectures on cooking. The lec- 
tuier stood on a platform on which was 
a cooking stove and table. She was pro¬ 
vided with materials and utensils, and 
made the various dishes described, which 
were afterwards served to the audience 
to be tested. 
The first thing on the programme for 
the second lesson was roast beef. A rib 
roast, weighing about six pounds, was 
exhibited to the audience. The lecturer 
explained the necessity of providing 
tender meat to be roasted, saying that 
she would state in another lesson the 
principles of cooking tough meat, which 
are quite different. The meat was then 
sponged, dredged with salt and flour, 
and put into a dripping pan. The flour 
s.iould be pretty well rubbed in, so that 
it will fill the pores and absorb the 
juices of the meat when it comes out in 
the cooking. The following is a steno¬ 
graphic report of the lecture ; the audi¬ 
ence having been invited to ask ques¬ 
tions : 
Question. —I would like to know how 
you can tell tough meat from tender. 
Sometimes we get what we are told is 
tinder meat, and it comes from a part of 
the animal that should be tender, but it 
is not always so. 
Answer.—A tender meat should be 
fine, even-grained, and will be mottled 
with fat. This fat on the outside indi¬ 
cates that the animal is fat, but the best 
meat will always be mottled with fat all 
through, and the grain of the meat is 
fine. The fibers of the meat and the 
grain indicate more than anything else 
whether it is tough or tender. The meat 
from the animals which are bred on the 
plains, is frequently of very coarse fiber, 
and that meat, of course, is tough. The 
stall-fed animals are g-enerally more 
tender, unless it is Western beef that is 
quite young, as it should be when it is 
butchered. 
1 am dredging this piece of meat on 
both sides ; of course, when only one 
side is dredged, it will need to be ex¬ 
posed to a fierce fire. In an ordinary 
wood-stove oven, 1 would always recom¬ 
mend that you see that your oven is hot 
to begin with, and that you place the 
meat on the top grate, so that the top of 
the roast will sear over quickly. As 
soon as the meat is seared, the juice will 
not come out nearly so fast, and you 
preserve the goodness of the meat in 
that way. The same principle applies 
to cooking any tender meat; it should 
be quickly seared on the outside, whether 
it is roasted or broiled. This meat is 
now ready for the oven. Meat should 
always be sponged before it is cooked in 
any way. 
Q.—Was there anything in your drip¬ 
ping-pan ? 
A.—Yes, there was a rack. If you put 
the meat in the bottom of the pan, you 
can hardly avoid putting in water ; but 
with a rack, if you put it on the grate of 
the oven, you will not need to add water 
to begin with. These racks are very 
convenient; there is then no danger of 
burning the meat on the bottom, and 
you do not need to add any water. I 
think that the meat has a much finer 
flavor if it is cooked without water. The 
meat will need to be watched and basted. 
There will probably be drippings enough 
from the fat, but if not, we will take a 
little beef drippings or something of 
that kind which we have on hand. 
When the meat gets fairly started, I 
shall make a Yorkshire pudding to go 
with it. That, of course, is a regular 
English dish, and is not so well known 
in this country as it would be if people 
were more accustomed to it; it is a very 
nice dish, and really not difticult to 
make. The meat should be basted about 
once in 15 minutes, and I like to have it 
cook about 20 minutes to the pound. 
Q.—Do you approve of a covered meat 
roaster ? 
A.—A covered pan for cooking meat 
in the oven, is very nice ; you can cook 
a tough piece of meat that way very 
nicely indeed, but it is hardly roasting. 
Roasting is cooking by direct heat, and 
with the covered roaster, you are cook¬ 
ing in steam, which is hardly the same 
thing. You can cook a piece of meat 
that is too tough to roast, in this cov¬ 
ered pan very nicely ; but it comes more 
nearly under what we call braizing, 
where the meat is cooked partly in water 
and partly in its own steam. 
A RUSTIC LAWN OR VERANDA CHAIR. 
HE design shows a homemade rus¬ 
tic chair that has possibilities of 
comfort in it, whether placed on the 
veranda or under a tree on the lawn. 
Take saplings, green cut, and bend them 
into the shape desired. Put them into 
the press for a week or more. The back 
and seat are formed from a single piece 
of stout duck or canvas, firmly attached 
to a cross-piece at either end. Select sap¬ 
lings, like ash, having a firm, smooth 
bark, and such as will bend easily into 
the required shape. A. h. d. 
WORKING FOR PAY. 
HOW THE HELPMEET CAN HELP MAKE. 
ALWAYS dislike to see a woman sit 
down resignedly and serenely, and 
say that she has to do without this 
or that, comfortable clothing, profitable 
reading, etc., because her husband’s earn¬ 
ings are not sufficient to enable her to 
get them. If he is doing as well as he 
can, and she has helped as well as she 
knew how, and they are still behind, 
why not try something different ? Per¬ 
haps there is some kind of work in which 
she is sure to succeed, and be an earnest, 
happy helpmeet, instead of simply a pic¬ 
ture of resignation. A farmer’s wife, 
because she is a farmer’s wife, need not 
necessarily spend all her time in the 
kitchen, cooking and washing for the 
help. If there is some other work that 
she can do easier, and that pays better, 
should she not hire the former done, and 
do the pleasanter and more profitable 
work instead ? Or, in many cases where 
the family is small or the children help¬ 
ful, the other work may be carried on 
without interfering with the housekeep¬ 
ing duties. One would certainly consider 
her husband foolish to spend all his time, 
talent and strength, in a new business 
which brought slim returns, when it 
necessitated the dropping of a very suc¬ 
cessful old business. 
There seems to be, with some women 
and girls, a false pride as to carrying on 
a business of their own separate from 
the rest of the family. But if they once 
begin, and success crown their efforts, 
they soon forget all of their anxiety as 
to the opinions of Mrs. Grundy. On the 
farm, where typewriting, stenography, 
etc., are not so much needed as in town, 
one might fancy that there were not so 
many opportunities for such efforts ; but, 
if sought, there are many. Poultry has 
been successfully raised by many a farm¬ 
er’s wife or daughter. One woman began 
making clothes for her help and rela¬ 
tives, and soon found herself a busy 
dressmaker, and that she could pay for 
her housework, clothe herself, pay the 
meat bills for the family, and still have 
a nice little sum left for the purchase of 
other things. Then, by buying as a dress¬ 
maker, she could get her purchases at 
the dry goods stores at reduced rates. A 
young girl, wishing a fine wrap for the 
winter, raised and cared for a large bed 
of onions, and secured the wished-for 
garment. Many women own and care 
for vineyards. They are also very suc¬ 
cessful in raising berries, and can pre¬ 
pare their fruit for market in very in¬ 
viting shape. 
Many homes, however humble, will 
always have a window full of blossoming 
plants, though the place seemingly was 
poorly planned for such a use : but the 
woman who dwells there must have the 
flowers, and raises them in spite of all 
obstacles. If that woman would try, 
she might care for flowers and plants 
successfully in hothouses and cold 
frames, and the fact that they brought 
an income, would not lessen her enjoy¬ 
ment of her favorites. On many fruit 
farms, more profit is made from the sale 
of plants than from fruit. Women’s hands 
are very deft at assorting and packing 
these plants, as well as bulbs and flowers. 
Fruit evaporating may be just as suit¬ 
ably carried on nowadays, with all of 
the convenient machinery and appli¬ 
ances, as it was in years gone by, when 
apples were strung on twine and fes¬ 
tooned on huge racks before the fire¬ 
place, and paring bees were in fashion. 
A young girl who loved to draw and 
color flowers from Nature, painted a few 
pretty Christmas cards, and left them at 
a city store. She was delighted to find 
that they sold at a fair price, and the 
next Christmas she had orders for quite 
a number. Another lady has been very 
successful in stuffing and mounting birds 
and squirrels. A school teacher married 
a young farmer and took upon herself 
the care of the chickens. She became 
much interested in raising fine poultry, 
writes for three poultry journals and 
many agricultural papers, and has a 
steady income of her own and a de¬ 
lightful feeling of independence which 
many a farmer’s wife might envy. 
These are a few of the cases in which 
women have not spent their time in be¬ 
wailing hard times, or dreaming of the 
day when money would come to them 
unsought, in some unexpected way. 
CLARA T. SISSON. 
AN EXPERIENCE OF LONG AGO. 
RS. NORTON had passed her (50th 
birthday ; her numerous family of 
children were married and settled away 
from her, some of them in distant States. 
With a mother's yearning affection, arose 
the desire to hear often from the absent 
children. There is no other way, she 
thought, but for me to regain my ability 
to write ; if the children write to me, I 
must answer their letters; and I do so 
much wish to hear often from all of them. 
To recover the lost art of penmanship, 
was no slight undertaking, as good, 
hard-working Mrs. Norton had hardly 
written her own name for 40 years—un¬ 
less it had been to sign a mortgage or 
some other legal paper—and her fingers 
were cramped and stiffened, by years of 
toil, in rearing her family. Besides her 
everyday housekeeping, at which she 
was often at work long after the rest of 
the household were in their beds, there 
were the spinning and weaving of cloth, 
as well as making it into clothing for 
her family. However, nothing daunted 
by the difficulties encountered, she be¬ 
gan in the leisure hours of the after¬ 
noons, to - copy short articles from the 
newspapers, bits of poetry, and such 
like, for practice. 
Such persevering and well-directed 
efforts will always succeed, and after a 
little time, letters went often from the 
old home to the absent children, helping 
to keep bright the chain of affection ; 
the cheering letters received in return, 
made glad the mother’s heart. 
Not long since one of the daughters of 
her family, in looking over some old 
family relics, found the following lines, 
written in the quaint, old-fashioned 
style of mother—some of her practic¬ 
ing—and 1 am sure # that after being read 
they found a secure place in the family 
Bible : 
Sweet Robin, I have heard them say 
That thou wert there upon the day 
That Christ was crowned in cruel scorn, 
And bore away one bleeding- thorn; 
That so the blush upon thv breast 
In shameful sorrow was impressed, 
And thence thy genial sympathy, 
With our redeemed humanity. 
AUNT RACHEL. 
THE PROMISE OF THE FUTURE. 
O wonder Faber says, “Kindness is 
the turf of the spiritual w’orld,” says 
Mrs. Bottome in the Ladies’Home J ournal 
And though, perhaps, we do not take 
much notice of the common grass, yet 
this would be a very different world 
without it. So let us keep on doing the 
kindly things, and “ let who will be 
clever.” My dear tired mother, don’t 
become discouraged. You do not know 
what that fretful child will be to you yet. 
I well remember a dear old lady with 
whose son and daughter we once took a 
