The preparation of the cuttings or cions 
should be made at the time they are cut from 
the vine; a neighbor thought a fresh cut in 
the Spring when planting would be favorable 
—the result was failure, (Jut close under the 
lower bud and an inch or so above the upper 
one. To facilitate planting and cultivating, 
stretch a line and make n crevice with the 
spade and put in the cions so that the upper 
bud shall be about the surface; rather below 
than above, as the buds will there be less like¬ 
ly to be taken out by the cut-worm, the great¬ 
est enemy to success in light, warm soils. 
Pack the earth closely about thorn, as that al- 
v. ays favors the vegetation of either seeds or 
cuttings, if the cutting is very long itis better 
t o give it a slant rather than to deepen the hole, 
but slant the whole row the same way, as you 
"ill find this an advantage when taking them 
up. I think a cut with a kuife is the best, but 
you can do it faster with pruning shears, and 
this is a. fast age. 
There is « great difference in varieties of 
grapes as to their readiness to take root. The 
Clinton and Concord, w ith their families, with 
the Salem, Lindley nud some others of Rog¬ 
ers's Hybrids, take readily, while the Dela¬ 
ware, Humeian, Croton, and 11. gers’s No. 5 
are quite uncertain. I forgot to say that for 
keeping cuttings through the Winter I bury 
them in dry places with alternate layers of 
earth and cover them with earth 8 or 10 
inches, laying brush over them to hold the 
snow. S. B. Peck. 
Muskegon, Mich. 
PIG RAISING. 
WALDO F. BROWN. 
Treatment of Young Pigs and Their Dam. 
As these articles are mailed as soon ns 
wucten, there may be some repetition in them, 
but there are some points of such importance 
that they will bear repeating. We will sup¬ 
pose that the farmer has a litter of good, 
healthy pigs, of good stock, one day old. He 
congratulates himself that, having escaped the 
dangers which are so thick at the critical 
period of farrowing, he will have no further 
trouble The pigs are lively and w ell devel¬ 
oped; the mother shows no disposition to eat 
them, and is careful not to overlie them. 
There are still two dangers right before the 
pig raiser into which he may ignorantly run 
—but which may be easily a voided—which 
have caused the death of pigs by the million. 
The first is over-feeding the sow with rich, 
heat producing feed. I think there is uo one 
cause that has occasioned so much loss as this. 
Make it an invariable rule to feed sparingly 
of corn for I he first week. A failure to pay 
close attention to the matter of diet at this 
time v. ill often result in fever, which dries up 
the m:ik, the insufficiency of which actually 
starves the prigs to death. When the result is 1 
not so bad as this, the so v loses appetite, runs 
down rapidly in flesh, and although the pigs 
live, they do not thrive, and Wore weaning 
time the mother is a skeleton. For the first, 
w eek feoJ house slops and bran with but one 
ear of corn at a feed, and then increase grad¬ 
ually, anrl by the end of the second week you 
can feed as heavily as you please. 
The second danger to young pigs is that they 
will become diseased for want of exercise. If 
the sow is kept in a close pen and proves to be 
a good stickler, it is often the case that in two 
or three weeks the pigs get so fat as to die. 
Mmy a farmer, with a valuable litter of pigs 
shut up in a close pen, hag seen them die o.:e 
after the other until the litter disappeared, 
and yet he had no idea w hat was the matter. 
Lay it down, then, as a second rule iu pig 
raising, that “ynunigpigsmustliam exercise f 
Still another important thing is a cleau bed. 
ll’ allowed to sleep in dust they are likely to 
die of thumps, and if in a wet place or a ma¬ 
nure pile, they become mangy, or contract 
colds and die. 
But wo will suppose that the farmer is wise 
enough to guard against the dangers I have 
spoken of, and bus brought the litter safely to 
the age of four week*, with the mother in 
good condition and having a good appetite. 
It is now time to begin to prepare the pigs for 
weaning. Make a pen near where you feed 
the sow r , and arrange it so that the pigs can 
go in and out at pleasure, hut let it not be ac¬ 
cessible to tho sow, and begin feeding with 
milk and soaked corn. The quantity must be 
very small at iirst, and only what they will 
eRt clean. Increase gradually, and by the 
time they are eight w'etks old they will be eat¬ 
ing enough so that they can be weaned with¬ 
out checking their growth. If, as is often the 
case, there are in the litter two or three pigs 
that are not quite up to the average, it will be 
good, Loth for them and the sow--, to let them 
run with tho mother a week or two longer 
than the remainder of the litter. For four 
months after weaning fees] liberally. No mat- 
, ter whether your pigs are to be kept for breed- 
! ere, fattened the first Fall, or wintered over 
to be pastured the next Summer and fed the 
second Autumn, the treatment should be the 
same. Do not aim to make them fat, but get 
all the development of bone and muscle you 
can. The food should not be coni exclusively, 
I lor we want more of the llesh-forraers, and 
they should have tho mn of pasture and be 
fed on bran slop with the corn. Exercise, a 
varied diet, with part bulky food and not too 
much corn, will givem. profitable hog. 
In my next article I shall tell howto make 
the cheapest pork from these healthy pigs. 
for Women, 
CONDUCTED BY MISS RAV CLARK. 
ONLY A BABY. 
BY E. M. K. 
Only a baby Softly and low 
Telling n requiem, measured and slow. 
The sad, sweet tongue of the mellow-toned bell 
Voices our tears in Its sorrowful knell. 
And IoyIhb hands lay 
Deep under the sod 
The beautiful clay 
Whose soul Is with God, 
While strangers to grief whisper under their breath 
• It's 'only a baby’—gone, to Its death.” 
“ Only a baby!” Ah ! do you not know 
That little, feet walk where no others can go ? 
That soft little fingers 
Laid on tho chords 
Make music that lingers— 
Sweeter than words ? 
That the touch of a baby has »>nglc that brings 
Harmonies rich from discordant heart-strings ? 
That in her little voice all the melodies sweet. 
Which are sung In the home, In unison meet ? 
Only a baby !”-So little a life, 
That no one can tell how amid the world st rife 
The whirr of the loom—where our lives take their 
form, 
This little gold thread should have weaved In Its 
charm. 
Yet Into those nooks 
Where secrets are kept, 
By laugh and by looks 
She wordlessly crept; 
And smiled away furrows from faces grown old, 
Made warm nestling places In natures grown cold. 
“ Only a bnhy ?” And yet from the skies 
The great God looked down and .smiled in her eyes, 
Till tvo saw In them shine 
From glory thus given 
The light nil rilvlno 
The radiance of heaven ! 
'* Only a bahy !” Yet so needed above, 
That att angel came down with a message of love, 
And lifted the babe—at the word of the Lord- 
Front the mother's warm breast to the bosom of God 
CONCERNING WINTER WORK-IN 
TWO PAPERS. 
MARY WAGER-FISHER. 
First Paper. 
Now that the holidays are over, it is high 
time to begin the work of self improvement 
for which the Winter mouths afford such ex¬ 
cellent opportunity for a beg inning, at least. 
And in the matter of culture most persons are 
more dilatory than in ail other Ihings. So 
the important, thing is to begin. And begin 
now. If you are a poor speller, begin with 
spelling. It is a good exercise for the break¬ 
fast or dinner table, and if either parent or an 
elder child will lead in the matter, a great deal 
of pleasure and profit may be had. All per¬ 
sons who have read the various and numerous 
accounts of President Garfield’s home Imbits 
will recall the one relating to the dinner-table, 
the improvement made of the opportunity at 
that hour for the instruction of all the family. 
At one time the exercises pertained to spelling; 
long columns of words were gone through 
with during the week. At another time a 
little work on the proper pronunciation of 
certain words usually incorrectly pronounced 
was mastered, and soon. Lessons iu geogra¬ 
phy, history, banking, government, etc.,form 
good themes of table talk, and each and all 
members of the family may be either instruct¬ 
ed or already acquired knowledge be bright¬ 
ened up by such means. One may improve 
his handwriting if he has nothing else to im¬ 
prove. A little book called the “Orthcepist,” by 
Alfred Ayres, and published by Appleton, of 
New York, is an excellent pronouncing man¬ 
ual. Tho samp author has la'ely issued an¬ 
other which concerns spelling, I think, which 
it might be worth while to examine. But a 
common fpellipg hook or a column in a well- 
i edited newspaper will serve for a spelling 
manual. To bo able to write a round, open 
hand enables one, at times, to earn a liveli¬ 
hood when all other resources fail. 
Tho bane of many a household is the. weekly 
story paper. Old rnd young alike spend pre¬ 
cious hours every week in rending “ stories,” 
becoming wholly absorbed in the adventures 
or misfortunes of the characters which figure 
therein. However “good”ond “innocent”or 
| bad such “stories” may be, they never fail to 
I work one irreparable harm—they eat up the 
; time which should be devoted to better read- 
' ing, and there’s nothing so precious as time. 
Then, too, such reading demoralizes the mind 
for anything better; it produces a mental dys¬ 
pepsia that unfits it for digesting wholesome 
food. It. is next, to impossible to make some 
people comprehend this, while there are oth¬ 
ers who do comprehend it and yet they will 
continue to allow this literary trash to enter 
their homes, for it is “trash;” one might 
read it for 18 hours out of tho 24 daily for a 
quarter of a century and have nothing at the 
end—no store house of information to please 
either himself or anybody else. In dealing 
with tho habit of foolish reading—it might 
even be called vicious—there is only one 
method to pursue, and that is to break it off 
at once, and entirely. Leave the “story” 
paper iu the post-office, or, if brought, borne, at 
once consign it to the flames. If you have 
subscribed for it, that is bad; but if, in addi¬ 
tion to that, you read it, your misfortune is 
still greater. 
A very erroneous notion exists among.most 
people that unless we are “happy” when 
young, we never will have a “ good time.” 
And so young people suffer from a vast 
amount of mischief—from dissipation of var¬ 
ious sorts, from the sowing of “wild oats” etc.» 
from from vague sort of an idea, that happi¬ 
ness consists in such things, and that after one 
“settles down in life” existence becomes 
monotonous and prosy, and real enjoyment 
and “fun ” are things of the past. Nothing 
of the sort is true. The older people grow, 
the happier they become, providing of course, 
that their lives are well ordered. My own 
happiness now, is a thousand fold greater than 
in my early youth and girlhood,. or young 
lady hood,” if you please, every conscien¬ 
tious and thoughtful young person is tortured 
with manifold doubts and fears as to the 
future both of this life and of that v’hicli is to 
come, it is a period of “ sturm und drang ” 
as the Germans well express it. But after 
one has passed the age of 25 or 30 years they 
become in a degree philosophic. Life opens 
up in every direction with a new meaning— 
the world, all nature, human beings become 
instinct with new significance and new inter¬ 
est. The enormous capacity of the human 
mind for enjoyment is perhaps for the first 
time apparent, the highest and best enjoy¬ 
ment being always that which is mental, or 
appeals to the mind. The advantage then of 
a well cultivated mind begins to be apprec¬ 
iated. 
The reading of many books is by no means 
essential to mental culture. A few good 
books well digested, form a store of treasure 
of far more value than the hasty reading of a 
thousand. The book of Proverbs in the 
Bible is full of “meat,” of pithy truths no¬ 
where to be excelled, no one can be called 
illiterate who is a good Biblical scholar, and 
most persons can become familiar with that 
remarkable liistory if they will. If read in¬ 
telligently, and without prejudice, it should 
be as fascinating as any history of the an¬ 
cient Greeks or Romans. I mention this, as a 
reminder of what may be gained by a study 
of the commonest book, and to attract the at¬ 
tention of those young people w ho yawn, and 
w ish they “ had something to read.” If one 
wants love stories, or accounts of battles, of 
iutrigues, of t he triumph of good over evil, of 
dariug, of the power of beauty or valor—in 
brief, almost every taste of the mind can be 
gratified in the varied literature of the history 
we call the Bible. 
The difficulty in not being “well read” 
does not lie in the lack of good books, but in 
the study of them. If every spare moment 
is applied to study—careful • reading—the 
amount gained in a year's time will be great, 
even if the moments be few'. The very first 
thing to do, is to have your reading where you 
can lay your hand on it, so that there will be 
no time wasted iu hunting for it. If you 
haven’t n book shelf, or bracket, have a book 
nail, and hang up your book, in the neighbor¬ 
hood of tho chair where you are to sit. Have 
a book up stairs and one down-stairs. Have 
a book every where you are likely to have 
two minutes to read. To keep the mind ac¬ 
tive, is to keep one’s self young and beautiful 
and happy. 
CONDUCTED BV EMILY MAPLE. 
“ HIGHLY-SPICED,” 
ANNIE L. JACK. 
“ What is one man’s meat is another’s poi¬ 
son'’ is a truth often proved, and in nothing 
more than in the details and condiments of 
cooking. 
Yon think the French Canadian smolls too 
strongly of garlic aud eats too much pork ; 
but if you were to dine with a Greenlander he 
would treat you to his favorite dish of whale’s 
tail, with a bumper of train oil. In China 
you tyould have roasted dog; in Burmah 
red ant stews ; in Africa fat, roasted spiders. 
Go to Australia and get kangaroos' tails ; to 
Brazil for parrot pies, and in France tho frogs 
are so “highly-spiced” as to be said tore 
semble veal. 
Is it then any wonder if the inhabitants of a 
country that comprises many nations should 
have varied ideas regarding their food ? The 
sensors too have a great influence on our 
needs, for in the torrid days of July wo do not 
require the carbon necessary in January. 
Cool salads, fresh eggs, fruit and well boiled 
wheat grains, or corn or oatmeal are more 
wholesome for the summer w eather, while the 
hot coffee, the savory bacon and pancakes, are 
not so hurtful when the thermometer reaches 
zero and the body is to be actively employed 
afterward. How many men whose wives 
wish to introduce a table ac cording to the hy¬ 
gienic rules find their att erupts interfere with 
customary usage, and say, “ I must hare 
stronger food, it is all very well for women 
folks.” Yet by analysis the fact could l » 
easily ascertained that half the usual articles 
of food are not really nourishing. Having a 
few friends to spend an evening lately,my at¬ 
tention was arrested by the difference of taste 
in regard to the oysters we had for supper. 
One gentleman after a copious sprinkle of 
black pepper and a dash of cayenne, remarked 
that he could hardly get his food too “highly 
seasoned.” Another could not eat at all after 
he had put in a slight sprinkling of cayenne, 
but had to exchange for a ulate of fresh stew 
and did not add any popper at all. This little 
circumstance proved to me how difficult it is 
for any one to properly judge the quantity 
necessary for seasoning, and that the task of 
editor to a Department of Domestic Economy 
is beset with difficulties. Each reader must 
exercise her own judgment as to whether her 
family require their food exactly according to 
the receipt* or loss “ highly spiced.” 
- » ♦ ■» - 
A CUP OF TEA. 
Ask nine women out of ten to draw a picture 
of domestic bliss or of personal comfort, and 
the chances are great that you will see in n 
prominent place tho hissing kettle, or the 
neatly-arranged tray, or some other prepara¬ 
tion for a cosy cup of tea. Novelists take 
advantage of the tea mania, and in recent 
books of fiction tba striking episodes do not 
take place in the shaded ai!oy ( or the moonlit 
grove, ns of yore, but by the afternoon tea 
table—w ith what approach to the relations of 
life our readers may judge for themselves. 
Tho heroine trifles with a teaspoon, and the 
hero saunters across the room with a cup. and 
behold, present ly the thing that we have been 
waiting three volumes for is done I Nor is 
tea for the rich alone a necessary part of 
everyday comfort. Go into the poorest home 
of the agricultural laborer, and you will find 
the house mother looking forward to her cup 
of tea as a reward for her day’s labor. Follow 
to her home some wretched rag-picker in the 
dirtiest alley of our cities, and if she be not 
yet so degraded as to have no care left for 
anything except gin, she, too, will moisten her 
crust of bread with n cup of tea. 
Tea does not contain any nourishment what¬ 
ever, if w-e except the milk and sugar com¬ 
monly added toil, but it does act upon the 
nervous system, and in some individuals very 
powerfully. 
We have no wish to join in the chorus of 
those w ho prohibit tea altogether, any more 
than we conclude that all alcoholic drinks 
must be pernicious because some people are 
drunkards ; but it is not widely enough known 
that a huge number of women suffer from in¬ 
digestion and nervous symptoms, aggravated 
and even caused by the immoderate use of 
tea. Women of the poorer classes drink tea 
with every meal, if not between meals. They 
keep a teapot simmering on the stove, ami 
they “put their lips to it when they feel so 
disposed.” A little experience teaches one to 
recognize these poor creatures; they have as 
much their distinguishing mark as confirmed 
dram-drinkers. They are almost always 
martyrs to indigestion, and they always cling 
pertinaciously to their enemy, declaring that 
they “ haven't any appetite, and can’t touch 
a bit of anything till they’ve had their tea.” 
For such as those-cruel as it ser ins to take 
away any comfort from those who have so 
fe tv— total abstinence is tl.e best cure. And 
for many other women who suffer from 
nervous headache and other symptoms, and 
who depend on ultra strong afternoon ten to 
bring them up to the pitch of dressing for 
dinner, we would recommend abstinence again 
after a meal, not after some hours’ fasting, 
as an adjunct, to good food, by no means in 
the place of it. These rules apply to all tea 
drinkers. Women are very often indifferent 
to tho pleasures of the table ; and the most iu 
different are, perhaps, the working women of 
tho middle classes, who, iu the present struggle 
for education, are apt to think all n oney is 
wasted that, is spent on creature comforts. 
Tea is a trusted, but will prove n false friend 
