fu], it should be borne in mind that the sun is 
man’s best friend. Above all, do not plant 
evergreens near the house, for while they 
serve well as wind-breaks at the north or 
exposed side of a building, they lack the win¬ 
ter quality of deciduous trees which shed their 
leavesand partially admit the suu. Of course, 
trees can be thinned out when, from growth, 
they become objectionable, but it requires ex¬ 
ceptional courage for a man to cut down a tree 
that ho has planted and watered. 
That good landscape gardeniug isnotamong 
the common gifts to man, is very evident 
from an excursion through almost any farm¬ 
ing district in the United States, judgiug 
solely from the environment of farmhouses— 
tiie location of the house and out-buildings, 
the grading of the ground, the planting of or¬ 
chards, the disposal of shrubbery, the run of 
the drives and walks, and the various features 
that properly pertain to the scope of lands¬ 
cape gardening. Of course, the matter of 
ehiafest importance is economy and utility, 
but in really the majority of instances these 
are quite compatible with beauty. The lack 
lies in location without method, or with too 
much method, and with absence of taste, 
when, if the “ancestor” of the family would 
realize that ho is founding a homestead which, 
in all good sense, ought rarely be broken up, 
and would apply proportionate thought to it, 
the effect produced would be vastly better. 
The top of a mountain may be a good place 
fora signal station, but not always the best 
place for u home any more than is the foot, 
because there happens to be a spring there. 
There should bo a southern exposure for 
warmth in winter and cool breezes iu summer, 
and the outlook should be the best that the 
farm affords—at least it should be an agree¬ 
able one, and if inspiring so much the better. 
I think it is good to live where one can see the 
sun seL, for the King of Day is very fond of 
making his exit in grand style, and the display 
at times js worth a good mauy Fourths of 
July fireworks. 
In order that a house may appear to be put 
in exactly the r ; ght place, so much depends 
upon proper grading of the grounds, that it is 
a matter of prime importance. I often see 
very pretty houses that are spoiled in effect 
from badly graded grounds, while very com¬ 
monplace ones look well from being so well 
surrounded. 
Very good effects iu vegetation cun be had 
without money outlay, if one has a wood cm 
his farm from which to draw supplies. Then 
a great deal can be done with seedlings and 
cuttings nursed in a suitable place. When 
one is really beut on making his home a plaee 
of beauty ho will not fail to realize the truth 
of the saying, “To him that hath, shall be 
given,” which also means that to himthat.hatb 
the spirit to receive, his eyes are open to see 
the gifts which nature hath in storo for him. 
Vines, shrubs and trees of various kinds are 
often to be found in waste or roadside places, 
aud it is a good plan for one to slip a trowel 
and basket in bis wagon, for lifting small 
things when going off for a long drive. He 
will be surprised to find at the end of a 
few years with how mauy tine things his nur¬ 
sery is supplied. Meantime, his taste in ar¬ 
rangement will have improved aud eveu if he 
never equals Nature iu her grouping, or the 
trained landscape gardener, he will have cause 
to he proud of his own work, which will yield 
him the purest, freshest and most lasting of 
pleasures with the least trouble, expense aud 
worry. The point is to make a beginning, 
and the day nearest to you is always the best 
for an undertaking in which Nature has so 
much to do, for trees grow while we sleep. 
MV COMPANY DINNER. 
It was a Fourth of July dinner, too, as if 1 
had uot enough to do in looking alter my two 
small boys to seo that they got through the 
day with all their members and features com¬ 
plete, It. caulo on Monday, and with that 
forethought for which the masculine mind is 
noted, Fred never said a word to me about the 
matter until the evening before, when he 
cnoly announced that a couple of college 
friends from the East, who were “doiug” Cal¬ 
ifornia, would arrive by the niorniug stage 
aud spend the day and night with us. 
1 also knew these college friends; indeed (I 
whisper it quite gently, for I would not have 
Fred know), there was a time when they were 
all students at Columbia when I knew Charlie 
C. rather better than 1 did Fred, and there 
was for half a moment a lingering doubt in 
my mind as to whether I did not like him well 
euough to l>e Mrs. C. I had met Fred, how¬ 
ever, a few mouths before aud so 1 said no. 
Naturally, under the circumstances, I 
wanted to receive them nicely, and if 1 de¬ 
parted for a season from my usual sweet 
serenity and amiability, 1 didn.’t show half the 
temper l felt. Indeed, Fred, who is short¬ 
sighted, said afterward that l didn't show any. 
Fortuimtely the possibilities of our ranch and 
fHE RUBAI. NEW-YORKER. 503 
garden in the way of fruit aud vegetables were 
infinite, but T had not a bit of fresh meat in 
the house. The itinerant butcher, who should 
have visited us on Saturday, had not put in an 
appearance, and there was no possibility of 
sending for any. A wild thought crossed my 
mind that we might pretend to be vegetarians 
and of attributing the absence of meat to 
Fred’s crankiness, but this was routed by his 
suggestion that probably they would uot care 
for meat, as he had noticed that, when he 
dined with them in Hau Francisco the other 
day, he had enjoyed the beefsteak and mush¬ 
rooms much more than they seemed to do. 
I determined to have a two o’clock dinner, 
with a lunch of fruit ou their arrival, and a 
supper of fruit, cake and milk. Wehad a fine 
trout stream near our house, and I resolved 
that if Fred could invito company for a din¬ 
ner which I must cook, he should at least pro¬ 
vide me with some nice, fresh trout. 
We were not usually without help, but it is 
almost impossible to get white servants that 
are worth the having on a ranch, and the 
Chinese have such an unpleasant fashion of 
murdering and mutilating their mistresses, 
that ou this point 1 was determined never to 
yield, and had always refused to employ 
a Chinese house servant. 
My mi'-nu ran as follows: 
CREAM OF CAULIFLOWER SOUP. 
Fillets Salmon-Trout Potatoes Browned. 
Asparagus Sauce Hollnndalse. Stewed Mushrooms. 
Peas Omelet, 
Cucumber and Tomato Salad. 
Apricots with Utce. 
PrCK off a handful <>f the flowrets from a large 
head of cauliflower, parboil the rest for ten 
minutes in salted water, then chop Hue with a 
small onion and some parsley and put iu a 
saucepan with a little butter, salt and pepper 
and one cup of milk autl water; stow until 
tender aud press through a sieve. Melt in a 
saucepan a tablespoonful of butter and ttir 
iu as much flour; season nicely; add the puree 
of cauliflower: one pint of rich milk or cream, 
and the sprigs of cuuliflower that have been 
boiled tender in salted water; finish the sea¬ 
soning with a little Cayenne, ard pass wafers 
aud sliced lemon with it. 
Loug before the stage had arrived Fred had 
returned from his fishing expedition with a 
fine salmon-trout weighing at least four 
pounds. It seemed almost a pity uot to serve 
it up whole, hut if you will notice the arrange¬ 
ment of the bill of fare, you will see that by 
making the soup early iu the morning and 
setting the table, preparing the vegetables, 
etc., all my dinner could be completed in 20 
minutes, and I knew Fred would spend that 
time at least in showing them the stock, so I 
cut the beauty iu fillets, removed the skin 
with a sharp, thin-bluded knife, and laid them 
on a plate with salt, pepper and u little lemon- 
juice. When ready to fry, dip in beaten egg, 
then in crumbs and fry in hot fat. Put a 
lump of maUre iPhtitcl, sauce (butter,chopped 
parsley ami lemon-juice kneaded together) ou 
each fillet. 
Some cold mashed potatoes were heated 
with just as little cream as would keep them 
from burning until I had them hot euough to 
whip light with a fork; these I moulded iu a 
baking-dish, saving a teacupful iu the sauce¬ 
pan; with the latter 1 mixed the beaten yelk 
of an egg. a lump of butter ami a gill of 
cream. To this 1 added the whipped whites 
of two eggs, beat the mixture well and 
smoothed it evenly over the mashed potatoes 
in the baking-dish; sprinkled well with tiue 
crumbs and baked 15 minutes. 
The Rural has already told how to cook 
asparagus with Ilolluuduise suuce, but I must 
tell you about the mushroons, for although 
they are uot so plentiful in the East as in Cali¬ 
fornia, they are very dainty and delightful 
wheu iu season. I had bribed the small boys 
to gather them, and by the promise of a fine 
display of pin-wheels and crackers in the even- 
ening had obtained a solemn promise that they 
would not touch even a piece of punk that day. 
1 peeled about a quart of small mushrooms aud 
put them over the fire with butter the size of 
an egg, aud allowed them to stew geutly until 
tender, added u gill of hot cream, ami a season¬ 
ing of pepper, salt mid lemon juice (just a lit¬ 
tle of the latter) and poured the whole over 
squares of buttered toast. 
Our delicious peas stood me iu good stead 
and 1 shelled and cooked a generous dish of 
them. There was uo help for it, 1 was obliged 
to leave our guests aud make the omelet my¬ 
self, but l had left the eggs already beaten, 
and the butter in the pan on the back of the 
range where it would keep warn, and could 
be made hot in n second, and the way 1 whisk¬ 
ed that omelet into the pan, and out ngniu to 
a hot dish, and circled it with a wreath of the 
peas drained from the juice, tiesides folding 
within its yellow sides, enough of them to make 
it the plumpest aud (irettiest omelet that ever 
went ou a table, would have been a lesson to 
any cook I ever had. Fred said I was back 
again before they had missed me, which 
seemed to me a sort of doubtful compliment, 
but the wife who gets any sort of compliment 
after she has been married half a dozen years 
is fortunate, and shouldn’t look a gift horse in 
the mouth. 
The dessert was made in the morning. Sim¬ 
mer a cup of rice very gently with a quart of 
milk. When the rice is thoroughly cooked 
the milk will be all absorbed; put it into a 
bowl and beat with a fork for a few minutes, 
addiug half a cup of sugar; then press into a 
mold that has been wet with cold water, and 
when cold turn out. Surround with the 
halves of large appricots canned or stewed, re¬ 
duce tbo juice by adding sugar and boiling 
until almost a jelly, pour over and serve very 
cold. 
Altogether, I think the dinner was fairly 
successful. The next, day when Fred returned 
from driving bis frieuds to the station, he said 
that Charlie C. envied his glorious climate, 
his beautiful fruit ranch, aud his-but there 
I gave Fred such a look that ho never said an¬ 
other word. BESSIE BROWN. 
THE EXPERIENCE OF A SUCCESSFUL 
BUTTER MAKER. 
My experience in butter making Is that of 
tweuty-five years, and when I inform the 
reader that my butter for that length of 
time has always commanded at least two 
cents a pound more than that usually sent to 
the markets, it may not appear egotistical iu 
me to speak of my success. I have tried 
keeping milk in cellars aud spring-houses; the 
former I did uot like because of the liability 
of milk and butter to take ou the odors of 
their surroundings, and it is next to impossi¬ 
ble to prevent an accumulation of various 
unsavory articles in a cellar uot entirely de¬ 
voted to dairy purposes. A spring-house I 
fouud almost equally objectionable, owing to 
the irregularity of temperature, which causes 
the place to become almost useless in the mid¬ 
dle of the warm days, thus rendering the 
cream ditlieult to churn and the butter often 
without flavor. For all purposes of milk set¬ 
ting I have a room excavated about four feet 
below the surface of the ground: it is nine by 
twelve feet, and the walls are built of square 
timbers niue inches through and six feet 
abo\ e the ground: the roof is of plauks, two 
thicknesses. On two sides of the bottom I 
bavo a ditch ten inches wide Mud a covered 
drain to carry off the water with which the 
floors and drain are covered every morning 
I always let the milk staud about 20 miuutes 
before straining, and then put it into common 
one-gallon Haring stone crocks. What is 
milked one day is all skimmed the evening of 
the next, aud the cream thrown together, a 
teaspoonful of salt being added to each gallon 
of cream. Next morning it is churned, before 
sunrise if possible. I use no thermometer, as 
I can tell by the appearance and taste of the 
cream if it is too cold or too warm. If too 
cold, I add warm (not hot) water and let staud 
a half hour; if too warm, be very sure and 
add enough cold water before churuing is 
commenced. If I have trouble in getting the 
butter to come or to gather it after it has 
come, I throw iuto the chum au ounce or so 
of salted butter and the trouble is quickly 
remedied. 
I wash the butter with only one water, 
handle carefully with a wooden ladle, give one 
ounce of salt to one and a-half pound of butter, 
make iuto one-pound squares or pyramids, 
bavu some white cloths dipped in strong salt- 
aud-water (with a very little sugar added), 
aud dried; wrap each pound separately and 
lay them iu a keg or jar. and set iu a cool 
plaee until wanted for market. I have never 
bad occasion to use any of the various butter 
colors. 1 believe butter carefully handled, 
will keep better and be more delicious to the 
taste without the addition of articles that I 
have knowu to be deleterious. If my butter 
is not colored euough wheu it comes from the 
churn, l set it away for 12 or 24 hours, then 
handle it as if just churned, and it is all right 
in color. Living in a grass region, we seldom 
feed our cows during summer aud early fall; 
when the grass begins to fail we feed them a 
little corn in the ear, with occasionally a feed 
of sheaf oats, aud give --alt once a week; in 
summer we give salt once every two days. 
Our cows are natives, mostly, with Short-horn 
grades. I find the grades give larger quanti¬ 
ties of milk, but it does uot average any more 
butter to the cow than the natives. If I make 
one and a-half pound a day, from each cow, 
it is doing pretty well I think, and that is what 
I average the year round. Some of my cows 
come in in January, but most of them in May 
and June. I dry them off about a month be¬ 
fore coming in, so there is uot much time lost. 
1 have had no experience with creameries, but 
judging from the butter that is here called 
“creamery,” I am not favorably impressed 
with them. It ba-s (tome) au insipid taste, as 
though too much milk was somehow re¬ 
tained in it; aud really, for a tnoderate-sized 
dairy, I think a erenmery entirely superfluous. 
I write (I think) from the stand-point of a ma¬ 
jority of American housewives. Many of us are 
limited iu means and limited in help, and we 
all know that butler which is faultless is rare¬ 
ly to he found; but when tried and found 
jierfect it is a source of no mean income, and I 
advise all farmers’ wives to try and make a 
perfect article. Leave creameries and butter 
colors alone. If you nmtinge your milk prop¬ 
erly, your butter will be better than if made 
in a creamery, aud if the color is sometimes 
not so golden as you might wish, if the qual¬ 
ity is all right it will never fail to amply re¬ 
munerate you for all your work. 
AUNT PHOEBE. 
CORN BREAD. 
In the Rural of Feb. Id. Aunt Betty asks 
for a recipe for the above that dyspeptics can 
eat. The following is excellent, but I will not 
guarantee it as suitable food for such people: 
Two and a half cups of meal, one of flour, two 
of sweet milk, cue of sour milk, one-half cup 
of sugar or molasses, one teaspoon level full of 
soda aud a little salt. Steam three hours and 
bake one, or I sometimes let it brown over iu 
the oven first aud then steam it, the longer the 
better. Some add one egg aud a little butter, 
but it is not necessary to make it nice. 
FRUIT CAKE. 
Three eggs, one cup of sugar, one-half cup 
of butter, one-half cup of buttermilk, one 
teaspoonful of soda, one teaspoonful each of 
allspice, cinnamon and cloves, one cup of 
raisins, flour euough for batter, but not too 
thick. MARY D. THOMAS. 
WASHINGTON CAKE. 
One pound of sugar, one-half pound of but¬ 
ter, five eggs, one cup of sweet milk, one 
pound of sifted flour, two teaspoonfuls, rouud- 
iug, of baking powder. Cream the butter aud 
sugar, add the beaten yelks of the eggs, then 
the milk, the whipped whites and the flour 
with the powder stirred through it. Flavor 
aud bake. Ice if you please. 
MRS. A. J. BOGART. 
pic.tfUitucou.5i ^tlvcvtt.simv 
The Great Secret 
Of exceptionally long and abundant 
hair may never he solved; but that 
Ayer’s Hair Vigor preserves the hair 
iu all its beauty and luxuriance, aud 
even restores it, when thin and gray, is 
Well Known. 
P. J. Cullen, Saratoga Springs, X. Y., 
writes : " My father, at about the age of 
fifty, lost all the hair from the top of his 
head. After one month’s trial of Ayer’s 
Hair Vigor, the hair began coming, and, 
in three mouths, he had a nue growth of 
hair of the natural color.” 
J. T. C.ibson, f)G Hope st., Huntley, 
Staffordshire, Eng., says : “ I have seen 
young men in South Australia quite 
gray, whose hair has been restored to its 
natural color after using but one bottle 
of Ayer’s Hair Vigor.” 
Ayer’s Hair Vigor, 
Prepared by Dr. J. C. Ayer & Co., I.oivell, Mass. 
Sold by Druggists and Perfumers. 
CREA MERY, 
RARE i»PPO K T V X 1 T Y. 
For a responsible and practicable man with #3,600 
to $1,500 capital. Alexandria, Dakota offers ■» bonus 
of *10011 for a erenmerv. The location unexcelled. cor¬ 
respondence • ollctted by parties wi-hlng to locate in 
the growing west. Bargain to be clivsed in the next 
8U days. Address 
ALEX. HINCKLEY, Mayor, 
Alexandria, Dakota. 
THOROUGHBRED 
from the best strains. Bred for Health. Rent aud 
Eggs. Stnndnrd Birds. For prices of Eggs and 
Birds, address DR. B, BI RR. POCASSET, MASS. 
Tuirnnr 
YES THIS WILL PLEASE YOU 
Steel Shears, JSe.j Button hole Selzzors, 50e. Ulus. List free. MAHER 
Blades are finest razor steel, 
hand forced. Ule-tcsted,. and 
replaced free tf soft or flawy. 
I* ta mode for the hunter, far¬ 
mer, or mechanic. I'rteo 7,5c 
— ■=— 5 tor S3., with 
stag.. bony.or white 
handle-. 1 'ur'.’-blauo 
ru- 
. ... .jMBBB_.,Bud- 
1 ding, .15c: Grafting, 
nj si '-'c ; Hoys' siroug l- 
1 — blade, ‘45c.; Girls', 
25c.; Ladles’ 2-blade 
!'• arl. oiio.; Gents’ 3- 
blade, si, 8-tneh- 
CJ UO.SU, 4th St„ Toledo. Ohio. 
s-—A handle-. 1 >ur2-blai 
\ ~ v* Jao>sKalfc,M>C.; IT 
p--' ) - m nlngKnlfe.oOc.; Bu 
