AOS. 22 
gontestiij (Bconiim!?. 
A FEW SUGGESTIONS. 
I agree with a late writer in the Rural 
New-Yorker that luncheon for harvest 
hands is desirable, but think that men are 
apt to overdo it if th/fir luncheon is very 
appetizing. A sensible man who once 
worked for us used to say that a biscuit or 
something that amounted to that in quanti¬ 
ty, was all-sufficient. He said that people 
ate their luncheon too late, and ate too 
much, so as to spoil their dinners, 
Tea for Dinner. —In this warm weather 
men drink so much cold water that tea is 
far better for them at noon, than the inevit¬ 
able cold water dinners of some thrifty 
housewives. Cold water is a good thing in 
its place, but there is such a thing as too 
much of it. 
Keeping Meals Waiting. — Little things 
often interfere with our comfort very much, 
and one small annoyance is for men to delay 
coming to diunor when called. Sometimes 
they have an hour or more of work which 
they will do before quitting and then they 
go to the house to find the dinner cold, and 
the cook discouraged. Nothing is more dis¬ 
heartening to a tired woman than a table 
full of dirty dishes ornamenting the table 
an hour and a-hulf later in the day than 
usual. Punctuality is a virtue that men 
should learn if they art; in the habit of being 
uncertain about corning to meals. Any 
woman worthy the name of housekeeper 
will be regular with her meals if it lies 
within her to have them so. 
Working too Hard. —All over the land the 
cry is from farmer's wives, “I’m so tired ; 
my work is so hard, I do not think farming 
pays, there is so much hard labor connected 
with it.” I wish I could say to every one 
of them don’t work /ill the time. Let some¬ 
thing go undone if you cannot do it without 
overtaxing your strength. Constant labor 
from sunrise to sunset makes a joyless life. 
I remember in my early married life, when 
my husband and I first started on a new 
farm that 1 worked just as hard as I could 
all the time for a week at a time, T have 
washed and churned and baked (for a small 
family to be sure), Mondays, besides doing 
the inevitable work that comes every day 
in a house, I look back now with regret on 
the waste of strength I was guilty of by so 
doing. Big days’ works break down men 
and women both, prematurely. Have moral 
courage enough to be called lazy rather than 
ruin your health by continuous hard labor. 
Do not consider the time thrown away that 
you spend resting and reading. Feed your 
mind as well as your body if you would 
“live while you live.” A Farmer’s Wife. 
- — .. 
POOR COOKING. 
T. A. Bland, in Farming as a Profession, 
rightly says, “Why should not women 
strive for excellence in their branches of in¬ 
dustry, as well as men in theirs ?” I am 
sure there is as much need of reform in the 
modes of housekeeping, and especially in 
cookery, as in the prevailing systems of 
farming. 
Surrounded with a profusion of the good 
things of life, as the farmer is, or may easily 
be, ho, as a class, is the worst liver in the 
country—partly because, through parsimony 
or necessity, he sells the best he raises, but 
mainly because the popular system of cook¬ 
ing is so miserable that the best food is ren¬ 
dered unpalatable and unwholesome, aud 
much more he says that is so good that I can 
scarcely refrain from quoting the chapter 
entire. But I shall only give you these few 
words as a text for my effusion. I have 
often heard the remark that “ farmers sell 
all they can, and what they can’t sell, they 
feed their horses ; what the horses can’t eat, 
the cow gets ; anrl what is unpalatable for 
the cow, goes to the swine, and if the swine 
leave any, the farmer and his family live 
upon it.” Now, this picture is entirely over¬ 
drawn, and if they did or do live upon the 
unsaleable products of the farm, the wives 
and daughters should learn to cook them 
rightly and arrange them tastefully, t hat no 
one may think it is the scrapings of the 
place. 
If they would have good cooking, we 
should not have so much dyspepsia, fiver 
disease, scrofula, bilious fever, sick-liead- 
aches, etc., prevailing in the country. Now, 
I would like to help banish these diseases 
from our lovely lund, and thought I could 
put my mite in by giving the readers a few 
recipes, and some hints for another paper— 
OOBE’S BUBAL 
if this one is received favorably—as to the 
way we. farmer’s daughters and our mother 
conduct, things at our rural home. Perhaps 
it may benefit, some new beginner, or some 
tired fanner’s wife who is trying to perform . 
her daily tasks with dragging limbs, flagging 
energies and aching brain. If so, I shall be 
truly thankful that I added one ray of light 
to their road instead of hiding mine under a 1 
bushel. 
- *■■*■*■ -- i 
HOW TO COOK POTATOES. 
- i 
Peel aud either boil or steam two pounds , 
of potatoes till they fall to pieces ; if boiled 
drain the water from them, and lot them , 
stand by the side of the fire, with tlio lit) 
off, for five minutes, to let the steam evapo¬ 
rate ; add a lump of butter about the size of 
a small egg, or more if wished, aud when 
this has melted, break up the potatoes us 
small as possible with a fork, and then mush 
with a wooden spoon, adding milk by de¬ 
grees till they are the proper consistency. 
Turn into the dish, and smooth them with a 
spoon. If liked, they may be put in the 
oven for a few minutes to brown. Balt will, 
of course, have been put in while they were 
boiling. Pepper is sometimes added, but 
this is a matter of taste. 
-4-44- 
BRILLIANT WHITEWASH. 
Take half a bushel of unslaked lime. 
Blake it with boiling water, cover it during 
the process to keep the st eam in. Strain the 
liquid through a fine sieve and add to it a 
peek of salt previously well dissolved in 
warm water, three pounds of ground rice 
boiled to a thin paste aiul stirred in boiling 
hot, half a pound of powdered Spanish whit¬ 
ing, and a pound of clean glue which has 
been previously dissolved by soaking it well 
and hanging iL over a slow lire in a small 
kettle within a large one filled with water ; 
add five gallons of hot water to the mixture, 
stir it weli, and let stand a few days covered 
from the dirt. It should be put on hot.— 
Farmers' Union. 
- 4 4 » 
To Can Sweet Cohn.— I saw an inquiry 
for a recipe for canning swept corn in an 
April number of*the Rural New-Yorker, 
and as I have seen none given I will send 
you the one I have used for several years, 
and know it Is good. To every two quarts 
of corn add one teaspoonful of tartarlo acid 
and boil fifteen minutes. Put up the same 
as other fruit. On opening add the same 
quantity of bicarbonate of soda you did of 
the acid.— Mrs. E. C. Davy. 
- *■■*■*■ - -- 
SELECTED RECIPES. 
A Hygienic Breakfast .—The Laws of Life 
gives the. following :—For a private family, 
first, a saucer of oatmeal pudding with 
creamy milk (sugar or maple syrup if de¬ 
sired) and light, warm coru gems is set 
before us. This answers the same purpose, 
healthwise and Otherwise, as soups at our 
ordinary dinners ; and though in some fam¬ 
ilies, where the warm part of the breakfast, 
is put on the table at lirst it may not be de¬ 
sirable to leave it cooling while eating a first 
course, yet it is considered better to give the 
stomach this preparation before beginning 
the harder, dryer port of a meal. Bo next, if 
convenient, to the housekeeper, we will be 
served with warm mashed potato, milk 
toast and nicely prepared Lima beaus, with 
a continuation of the corn geius. This may 
sound scanty, but wo are sure from experi- 
■ enco that such a breakfast makes up richly, 
both in quantity and quality for what it 
lacks in variety, ami gives better satisfac¬ 
tion than a table loaded wit h so many differ¬ 
ent kinds of breads, puddings and sauces 
that the partaker must, eitrier go through an 
oft-times perplexing process of selection, or 
fall a weak victim to tne effects of taking as 
many kinds as are offered him. 
To Cook Rice. — The following is the 
method recommended by the French Acad¬ 
emy for cooking rice, during the siege of 
Paris. Tat© one cup of rice and one fourth 
of a cup of water in a saucepan, cover and 
place over a good fire ; after an hour the 
water will be evaporated, and the rice 
cooked tender, but dry, arid wit h the grains 
distinct,—not in a paste. Sufficient salt 
should be added in the first place, and care 
Should be taken not to disturb the rice while 
cooking. By adding a little, butter, and al¬ 
lowing the rice to dry a little more over a 
gentle fire, a more delicalo dish is prepared. 
The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal 
j ^savs that rice cooked in this manner, which 
is the,, same as that employed in tnc East 
’ Indies, bears ll* stinc relation to the indi¬ 
gestible paste of the Now England kitchen 
. as does bread to boiled JloUr. 
Russian Meal-Biscuit .—A German jour¬ 
nalist says that the Khlvan expedition has 
. brought into notice a rival to tho famous 
. Prussian erbsuiui st, or pea-sausage. The 
Russian soldiers wore fed chiefly ou biscuits 
' composed one-third of rye flour, one-third of 
, beef reduced to powder, and one-third of 
5 sauerkraut also reduced to powder. The 
soldiers are stated to have had a great relish 
for this food, and their good health during 
the expedition is attributed m great part to 
- I the use of it. 
ANTIDOTE 
FOR POISONING 
GREEN. 
PARIS 
I>r. S. V. Summers in Our Home Journal, 
gives the following The symptoms are a 
violent burning pain iu the region of tho 
stomach and bowels, tenderness on pressure, 
retching, vomiting, sense of dryness and 
tightness in the throat, thirst, ho irsncss and 
difficulty of speech, these symptoms are 
more or less intense. The hyd rated peroxide 
of iron recently prepared, diffused through 
water, or precipitated carbonate, or the ruin- 
go ferri, in very line powder, to be adminis¬ 
tered every live or ten minutes, until relief 
is obtained. In the absence of the above, 
give freely emetics of sulphate zinc, diluent 
demulcents, such ns llax-seod tea, infusion of 
slippery elm. Tho hydrated peroxide of iron 
can be obtained at any drug shop, if it, can¬ 
not be bought iu your neighborhood. It may 
be prepared thus : dissolve sulphate of Iron 
(copperas) in hot water ; keep warm, and 
add nitric acid until the solution becomes 
yellow, then pour in ammonia water (com¬ 
mon hartshorn) or a solution of carbonate of 
ammonia, until a brown precipitate falls, 
keep this precipitate moist and in a tightly 
corked bottle. Every farmer who uses Paris 
green for the bugs, should keep this medicine 
in his house. 
-» » » 
OZONE IN THE SICK-ROOM. 
A German medical writer, according to 
the Boston .Journal of Chemistry, suggests, 
as an easy means of ozonizing the air in a 
sick-room, the use of a powder composed of 
peroxide of manganese, permanganate of 
potash, and oxalic acid, which luis the prop 
arty of giving out, in contact with water, an 
abundant quantity of ozone. For a chamber 
of middle size he uses about two tablespoon- 
fuls of the powder over which ho pours from 
one to one and a half tableapoonfuls of water 
every two hours. In this way tho quantity 
of ozone produced is exactly what is wanted ; 
the presence of a larger quantity in the air 
would occasion a cough. All metals, except 
gold and platinum, must be removed from 
the room, on account of the oxidizing effect 
of the ozone. 
- 4 » » 
LIE DOWN AND REST. 
Dr. Hall says the best medicine in the 
world, more efficient than all the potencies 
of the materia medica, are warmth, rest, 
cleanliness and pure air. Borne persons 
make it a virtue to bravo dispaae to “keep 
up” as long as they can move afoot or crook 
a finger, aud it sometimes succeeds ; but in 
others the powers of life are thereby so com¬ 
pletely exhausted that the system has lost all 
ability to recuperate, and slow and typhoid 
fever sets in, and carries the. patient to a pre¬ 
mature grave. Whenever walking or work¬ 
ing is an effort, a warm bed and a cold room 
are the first indispensable steps to a sure and 
speedy recovery. Instinct leads /ill beasts 
and birds to quietude anil rest the very 
moment disease or wounds assail the system. 
- 4 - 4-4 - 
HYGIENIC NOTES. 
Hay Fever.— Dr. T. C. Hoover of Bellaire, 
Ohio, in the American Journal of the Medical 
Sciences, relates his successful t reatment of 
this curious disease, so ballling to the profes¬ 
sion. The* first patient was a lady who had 
fits of sneezing which lasted several hours. 
She also had a slight cough, and suffered 
much at times from difficulty of breathing. 
The doctor made the following solution : 
Chlorate of potash 20 grains, sulphate of 
morphia 1 grains, pure water 2 fluid ounces ; 
mix. He used this solution by means of an 
atomizer. Relief was Instantaneous. Con¬ 
tinued application kept the patient well for 
five days. Then the sneezing returned, and 
the Doctor ordered the use of the following 
solution through the same instrument: Bro¬ 
mide of potassium one drachtu, water two 
fluid ounces. This ulso stopped .the. par¬ 
oxysm’s. She was ordered to use these pre- 
I parations alternately, from (j to IU inhalations 
three times daily, or about one fourth of a 
drachm. She continued to improve till she 
discarded the spray, being entirely well. 
Several other cases were similarly cured, 
some in a short time. 
in tho food of the people. Experiments con¬ 
ducted many years ago showed that grain 
affected with smut was capable of producing 
violent illness. Ergot of wheat is more active 
even than ergot of rye. The examining phy¬ 
sician, in the present case, reports that tho 
crop of tlio first, mentioned grain, raised in 
the vicinity last year, contained much more 
smut than usual. It is, therefore, possible 
that the disease is due to consumption of bad 
flour. 
Sore Throat—Tight Collars. —An eminent 
physician, who devotes his whole attention 
to diseases of the throat and lungs, told us 
tho other day that about three-fourths of all 
throat diseases would get well by wearing 
very loose collars, and no necktie n l. all. lie 
said that often singers would come to him 
for throat disease and loss of voice, and he 
would tear open their cravats and cure them 
with no other treatment whatever. “ The 
pressure of I,lie collar on tho arteries of tho 
neck is very bad for the health,” said he. 
Ho also added :—“ If you have, a disease of 
the throat, let nature do the curing, aud the 
physician just as litllu as possible.” 
Obstinate Vomiting of Pregnancy, cured 
by Fnemnta of Bromide, of Potassium. —Dr. 
Giralietti has successfully treated the obsti¬ 
nate vomitings of pregnancy bo enemate of 
bromide of potassium given in increasing 
doses ; commencing with (5 grammes (about 
93grains) the first day, 8 grammes the second, 
and ten grammes tho third ; after which tho 
dose is lessened iu proportion to the effect 
produced. In one ease the vomitings wero 
arrested by this treatment, in three days. 
— Amer. Jour, oj Med. Sciences. 
Danger from Rad Flour. —From an inves 
tigution, recently conducted in Petersburgh 
Michigan, into the cause of the ipidomiu of 
Ccrebro spinal meningitis, wilh which the 
locality lias been allU:tod during the past 
spring, there appears ground for ascribing 
tho prevalence of tho disease to some poisons 
(#tld 
CABBAGES “POISONING” GROUND. 
A. S. Nasii is informed that neither cab¬ 
bages nor any other crop will “poison” the 
soil. Tho difficulty is that the cabbage crop 
has so exhausted his soil that the limited ap¬ 
plications of manure this year have nut re¬ 
stored its fortuity. Market gardeners find no 
difficulty in growing good crops after cab¬ 
bage—often the second crop the same year 
after early cabbage is taken off. But they 
apply forty to one hundred dollars’ worth of 
manure per year on each acre. Let Mr. 
Nasii do this and he will not be troubled to 
grow good crops after cabbage. Mr. Nash 
has noticed the same dilfcrenceiu the growth 
of corn after turnips. Bo have 1 and from 
tho same cause. Lust year 1 had one aero 
of Swedish turnips, one corner of which was 
decidedly poorer than the rest. This spring 
l manured this corner lightly thinking it 
would be sufficient. Tho corn on this ma¬ 
nured ground was a surprise to me. It is 
now July 27, not one third tho size of com 
three rods distant ou land also in turnips last 
year, but which was so rich that the crop 
could not exhaust it. Like Mr. Nash I 
made tho mistake of uot manuring heavily 
enough. Turnips and cabbage are both very 
exhaustive crops, and if farmers try to grow 
them largely without an abundance of ma¬ 
nure they should do so on very rich alluvial 
soil, if possible where there is an excess of 
carbonaceous matter. By growing turnips 
on mucky soil, feeding the crop on the farm 
and applying the manure we can speedily 
change crude carbonaceous matter into 
nitrogenized manure suitable for growing 
wheat and other grasses. 
Western New York. 
- 44-4 - 
FIELD NOTES. 
Introduction of Swedish Turnip in Great 
Britain. —The New-York Tribune says :—A 
somewhat romantic story accounts for the 
introduction of Swedish turnip into Great 
Britain. Mr. Miller was an eminent farmer 
near Dumfries, iu Scotland. He had been a 
sailor in his youth, aud had of course beea 
wrecked upon a lee shore. From that disas¬ 
ter he conceived the idea that a ship that 
could be moved by paddles would be a good 
thiug to h/ive when cruising off lee shores. 
He carried his idea into execution and built 
a vessel fitted up with paddles which could 
be worked by means of a windlass. This he 
offered to the British Government, by whom 
it was refused. Ha then offered it to C.i.irle A 
XIII. of Sweden, who accepted if, and in 
return presented the Scotch farmer with a 
gold snuff-box set with diamonds. In the 
box was a | ieofi of paper in which a few 
small sepfls wero wrapped. These Mr. Miller 
sowed upon his farm, and the result was 
Swedish turnips, or rutabagas-. Thus we 
owe tin’s valuable root, or at least our 
knowledge of it, to the shipwreck of Mr. 
Miller upon a lee shore. Qi course we fully 
believe it. 
