1888 
187 
OUR PORTRAIT GALLERY. 
HEMAN H. HAAFF. 
Heman H. Haaff, who styles himself “the 
originator and inventor of the art of dehorn¬ 
ing cattle,” was born at Middlebury, Ver¬ 
mont, in 1833. His father, the Rev. H. H. 
Haff, was for 30 years a Baptist clergyman in 
New York State. The subject of this sketch 
added another “a” to the name because he 
“liked it better.” On his mother’s side Mr. H. 
is descended from the Howes and Tarbells— 
both names closely associated with the history 
of New York and Vermont. 
Mr. H. began active life as a teacher. He 
was educated at Madison University and at 
the State and National Law School at Pough¬ 
keepsie, N. Y. He graduated from this latter 
institution in 1858, and at once began practis¬ 
ing law in Chicago. Here he continued un¬ 
til 1874, when he purchased a farm of 4,000 
acres in Henry Co., Ills., and moved from the 
city. He took the land without fence or build¬ 
ing, but by the end of the first year had erect¬ 
ed comfortable buildings and built 30 miles of 
fence. It was on this farm that he began the 
investigations which led him to appear as the 
champion of dehorning cattle. As our readers 
know, this championage led to a prosecution 
by the Humane Society of Illinois. After four 
days’ trial the society was forced to acknowl¬ 
edge that it had no case. Mr. Haaff was mar¬ 
ried to Miss Evelyn L. Currier of Buffalo, N. Y. 
She has proved, as he says,decidedly his “bet¬ 
ter Haaff. ”He is now living in Chicago, hav¬ 
ing an interest in manufacturing enterprises 
which demand his personal attention. We 
give his likeness at Fig. 64—the first time it 
has been put on paper. His characteristic 
signature will be found beneath the picture. 
SPREADING MANURE ON THE SNOW. 
HENRY STEWART. 
Breaking away from old-rut practices; dark 
colored matter sinks steadily through the 
snow , which in melting diffuses its fertil¬ 
izing elements uniformly; by spreading 
manure on the snow the ground becomes fit 
for cultivation earlier; good results; salt 
not needed to melt the snow, the manure 
does it; a saving of labor. 
It is precisely 20 years since I first tried 
spreading manure upon the snow. I was then 
residing in Eastern Pennsylvania among the 
skillful but exceedingly conservative and yet 
prosperous Dutch farmers of that locality. 
The common practice of these farmers was to 
haul out the manure in the spring or fall and 
leave it in heaps at regular distances to be 
spread afterwards. Having a belief that it 
was wise to follow the customs of older resi¬ 
dents, I adopted their plan at first, but very 
soon found it a bad one. A wet spell so 
washed the manure in the soil that the crops 
fell down in the spots where the heaps had 
lain, and elsewhere they were quite inferior, 
so that I quickly abandoned the practice for a 
different one. The snow was more than a foot 
deep and I had a large quantity of manure to 
put out. The hauling in sleds and the spread¬ 
ing from the low boxes were easy, and I cov¬ 
ered eight acres pretty thickly with the ma¬ 
nure, and watched the results closely to find 
if they were consistent with my theory. This 
was that the dark-colored manure absorbent 
of the sun’s heat would quickly sink in the 
snow and reach the ground before much of 
the snow melted off, and that the melting snow 
would carry the manure into the soil and 
diffuse it pretty thoroughly. The field was a 
corn stubble of the previous year, and, follow¬ 
ing the usual rotation, was to be sown with 
oats. Everything turned out as I expected. 
The manure rapidly sank into the snow, and 
wherever even the smallest particle rested, 
the snow melted from under it, and let it down 
to the ground. The field was bare two weeks 
before the adjoining one, and was plowed ear¬ 
ly and sown with oats in April. I never had 
so good a crop. The seed was procured from 
Canada, and was of a Scotch variety known 
as Angus; but so like<- he short,, thick, white 
“Potato Oats,” that th y might have been this 
kind under another na ae. The seed weighed 
47 pounds to the measu red bushel. The yield 
of the eigne acres was 42 bushels of equally 
heavy oaks, or very nearly G ' bushels by meas¬ 
ure per acre; the straw was^thick and long, 
and the field being on the ro dside, attracted 
much attention from the neighbors, who had 
predicted a total loss of the manure by expos¬ 
ure and other consequences of departure from 
time-honored custom. 
The Rural mentions the case of a friend 
who proposes to haul manure on the snow and 
scatter salt to. help melt the snow. No.salt 
will be required. The manure will sink to the 
ground fast enough. If he wants to try let 
him scatter any kind of dark-colored sub¬ 
stance on the snow—ashes; even soil or chip 
waste—and notice how every little dark frag¬ 
ment will make its way through the snow. 
Only let the manure be well shaken out and 
spread, and the Rural’s friend willnotregret 
the course he is taking. The work is so easy 
and is done at so convenient a time that the 
plan recommends itself for these reasons,, not 
to mention the beneficial results on the soil. 
Since 1868 I have always practiced this meth¬ 
od, taking the manure out as soon as enough 
for a day’s hauling has been gathered, and 
leaving it in the stables, with abundant litter 
to keep the animals clean, until ready for 
hauling it out. This plan saves a good deal of 
labor, and I am all the more pleased with it 
because Mr. Terry, of Ohio, practices it, al¬ 
though I have done it for 20 years, and am 
now doing it. Here in the North Carolina 
mountains we have had no snow this winter, 
and no ice, but my manure is already spread 
on the young grass and clover seeding, on the 
ground for potatoes, and on the orchard; and 
some will go out this week on the land intend¬ 
ed for oats. 
Macon Co., N. C. 
XDmiwm s XPorh. 
CONDUCTED BY EMILY LOUISE TAPLIN. 
CHAT BY THE WAY. 
dentist says that after taking tincture 
or solution of iron it is well to rinse the 
mouth with water in which a little baking 
soda is dissolved. It is well to take 
this precaution even when the medicine is 
taken through a tube. Ordinary muriate 
tincture of iron is excessively corroding in its 
action, and should be avoided. What is 
known as dialyzed iron contains less of the 
destructive acid while equally strengthening. 
* * * 
We came across a Spanish proverb recently 
which contains the sum of all philosophy in a 
few words. It says: “If we cannot get what 
we like, let us like what we can get.” Very 
few among us can really get what we like, so 
we had better bend all our energies toward 
fulfilling the latter half of the proverb. It is 
not so very hard when it becomes a matter of 
habit. And a habit of contented good-humor 
has so much to do with one’s personal appear¬ 
ance that we women can’t afford to do with- 
out it. ^ ^ ^ 
Among occupations for.women we note the 
rather unusual one of teaching whist! A 
clever girl whose greatest accomplishment 
was scientific whist-playing has found her 
livelihood in instructing classes of fashionable 
damsels in this game. Of course, she charges 
them well for it; her teaching would not be 
appreciated if she did not. Undoubtedly, a 
woman who wishes to earn a living need only 
decide on knowing how to do one special thing 
better than any one else. Half-knowledge is 
worse than no knowledge at all. 
* * * 
A very good moral is pointed out in Miss 
Carey’s fascinating book “Not Like Other 
Girls.” Its heroines are unlike other girls. 
They are brought up in ease, with all the 
tastes of well-born gentlewomen. But when 
poverty comes, instead of being deterred from 
work through any false ideas of gentility, 
they take up the one thing for which they 
possess actual talent. Instead of trying to 
become governesses or music teachers, they 
boldly set up as dressmakers, and make the 
work successful. Perhaps some of us feel as 
if we had no decided talent in any one direc¬ 
tion. In that case one must make energy and 
perseverance take the place of talent. 
* * * 
The “Cheerful Letter Exchange,” of Bos¬ 
ton, may be recognized at once as a feminine 
of leisure in Boston and some lonely, busy, 
house-mother in the far West. Cheery thoughts 
aud bright words, and, mayhap, a paper or 
picture now and then, go to cheer the lonely 
woman on the prairie; how grateful such let¬ 
ters may be only those living a lonely life 
may know. 
Another epistolary charity is the Christ¬ 
mas Letter Mission, conducted by Miss Cox of 
Newtown, Long Island. This mission sends 
Christmas letters, with cards inclosed, to hos¬ 
pitals, asylums, aud prisons, and also to sick 
and aged poor m their own homes. 
A FEMININE LETTER. 
D ear Rural: I am moved to speak on 
the pie question. I am glad Henry has 
spoken,too. 
Years ago, somewhere in the last of the 
fifties, as nearly as I can remember, I read in 
the Rural New-Yorker of that day how to 
make pie-crust, and as the crust helps ma¬ 
terially to give to pie its charm, I tried it, and 
have always followed its instructions—with a 
few additions of my own. There is one in¬ 
gredient I always put into everything I make, 
it makes no difference whether it is rich or 
plain, sweet.or sour, one thing that I.always 
endeavor to keep on hand and use in plentiful 
supply. 
The directions were to take equal quantities 
of shortening and water and stir with a spoon 
as stiff as possible—not knead. Now, I have 
found that pie crust is best to be handled as 
lightly and delicately as you would a tiny 
baby. To one teacup of shortening add the 
same of water, salt sufficient, and a piece of 
carbonate of soda, or saleratus, if you use 
that, about so big—O. I generally use a 
tablespoonful more of the shortening than the 
water, unless I am a little scrimped on the 
shortening. We always have plenty of water 
and know how to use it, too; then stir with a 
spoon as stiff as possible—the softer it is 
and allow to roll out, the better it will 
be. Why, yes, of course, melt the shorten¬ 
ing if it is not soft enough to work 
well with a spoon—don’t roll it too thin. 
Dear! dear! ! to think of a piece of pie that 
I tried to eat the other day when 
I went visiting. The crust was about as thick 
as the thin edge of a case knife, and I had 
to chew and chew to get it into any condition 
to swallow. I thought all the time of Mary 
Wager and that forlorn-looking object that 
graced the head of her articles. By-the-by, 
that picture is a libel on every farmer, farm¬ 
er’s wife and farm in these United States. 
We live here amid the hills, and stony ones 
at that; why my husband set out an orchard 
of apple trees some 30 years ago and the land 
was so stony that he had to carry dirt from a 
distance to get enough to cover the roots, but 
he put in some of the same ingredient that I 
put in my pie crust and in all of the rest of 
my cookiDg, and every one of those trees grew 
and last fall we sold 800 barrels of apples, and 
we all work hard, but in all the country 
around I don’t know of such a forlorn-look¬ 
ing woman. And then to think of a farmer’s 
wife combing up her hair and putting on a 
clean collar and cuffs and sitting down on her 
elbows to look that way!! If the Rural was 
any common sort of a paper I would have had 
it-discontinued. She might better be 
making a good pie or the hired man's bed or 
doing something—“counting up her mercies’ 
for instance. 
But about the pie crust, I am afraid I have 
been digressing: my husband says it is a fault 
of mine and I believe it is of women in gen¬ 
eral, but not in particular. As I said before, 
don’t roll it too thin, leave something to eat; 
have the top clear of flour; make it to de¬ 
light the eye as well as the palate inside and 
outside. 
Bake it just right, with just a tinge of 
golden brown, with the juices all in the pie, 
not on the bottom of the oven. And that in¬ 
gredient? Well, yes, to be sure—put soul into 
it, put it into everything you cook aud you 
can eat pie made that way morning, noon 
and night if you want to, and not be “mean” 
or “vulgar” or have the jim-jams either. 
Affectionately. mary Elizabeth. 
TEACHING THE YOUNG IDEA HOW TO 
SHOOT. 
A knowledge of the three “R’s” alone is no 
louger considered a sufficient education 
for children. The last generation made great 
progress, not only in the manner of imparting 
knowledge, but in its estimate of the kind of 
knowledge requisite to enable a boy or girl to 
battle successfully with the world. 
An editorial writer in aD exchange very 
sensibly says, “Public schools ought to be the 
State nurseries for the training of good citi¬ 
zens.” Among other knowledge which he 
suggests the propriety of promulgating, is 
the fact that wealth is the joint creation of 
labor, capital and social order, and that its 
distribution can only be accom¬ 
plished by the free operation of natural laws. 
If children could be imbued with the idea that 
wealth is not created by labor alone, there 
would be less anarchy and fewer strikes. The 
absolute sacredness of contracts, the funda¬ 
mental principles of political economy, the 
natural and unalienable right of every hu¬ 
man being to do as he pleases with his own so 
long as he injures no one else, are all lessons 
that should be taught in every school in the 
land. 
In short, the Golden Rule is not a bad thing 
to impress upon the mind of a child, showing 
him also how to put it in practice. A univer¬ 
sal and thorough application of this rule, “Do 
unto others as ye would that they should do 
to you,” would correct most if not all domes¬ 
tic, social and political evils. 
There is one point of education wherein we 
are, I think, behind, and not ahead, of our 
ancestors. I refer to politeness. In olden 
times children were taught to bow and lift 
their hats to strangers on country roads, to 
remain standing while talking to elders, rev¬ 
erence to old age, and many things such as 
tend to make gentlemen of boys, and to trans¬ 
form hoydenish girls iuto modest, lady-like 
women. This is a much needed reform. 
A.^G, 
idea. Through its friendly offices corres¬ 
pondence is arranged between some woman rightful 
