1900 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER: 
679 
FRET NOT THYSELF. 
The little sharp vexations. 
And the briars that catch and fret 
Why not take all to the Helper 
Who has never failed us yet? 
Tell Him about the heartache, 
And tell Him the longings too; 
Tell Him the baffled purpose 
When we scarce know what to do; 
Then leaving all our weakness 
With the One divinely strong, 
Forget that we bore the burden. 
And carry away the song. 
—Table Talk. 
We welcome, as a first accession to 
the Rural Branch of the International 
Sunshine Society, Mrs. J. P. G., of Ra¬ 
pides Parish, La., who paid her initia¬ 
tion fee as follows: 
A boat stopped at our landing last week, 
the owner, accompanied by his son, seek¬ 
ing work. Still suffering from the fever 
accompanying grippe I lay and watched 
the boy dawdling by on his bicycle time 
and again, looking forlorn, dilapidated and 
very dirty. This morning my husband 
hired him to wash out our boiler, and when 
I saw my boy Ben bringing him back to 
fjet his dinner, I left my bed to hunt up an 
entire suit of Ben’s underclothing, and 
armed with soap and towels made Ben 
take him into a back room, where he got 
a good bath and into the clean clothes. 
You never saw a boy more grateful. He 
said he would have Ben’s suit washed and 
brought back, but whether he does or not, 
I just had to do it. 
Mrs. J. P. G. is gladly welcomed into 
the Society. She lives on an isolated 
plantation, and would be glad to receive 
periodicals or words of cheer from other 
Sunshiners, both for herself and for a 
dear daughter of 16, who aids her broth¬ 
er, one year older, in caring for the farm 
and home. While we do not purpose 
publishing full names and addresses in 
this column, except by request, for ob¬ 
vious reasons, we shall be glad to make 
Sunshine members known to one an¬ 
other through the mail. If you wish to 
communicate with anyone herein 
named, let us know. 
Our next accession is Miss A. E. P., 
of Tolland County, Conn., a brave shut- 
in who bore years of weakness and phy¬ 
sical trial without losing her indomit¬ 
able New England spirit, or her interest 
in the great outside world. She says: 
You may think this old theme wor-nout, 
but it cannot be impressed upon our farm¬ 
ers’ wives and daughters too early or often. 
So many of them insist on making slaves 
and prisoners of themselves and other 
women whose lives are spent under their 
control, and make our beautiful country 
homes too dreary places to live in, and the 
outlook ahead a dismal one. Their com¬ 
plaints fill up their leisure hours, so that 
their working hours are really their hap¬ 
piest ones. There is no need of such a con¬ 
dition if one does live on a farm. A woman 
can look at the beautiful outdoor world 
and sunshine at the same time her hands 
are busy, if she will. Even our farm¬ 
houses have windows in them, and every 
one shows one picture at least of lovely 
trees and landscapes. We may be especi¬ 
ally favored with beautiful views, and I 
mean to make the most of them. I should 
like to tell you about Mother’s new plant 
room Father had built this year. It has 
four large sunny windows facing the south 
and a glass door at the west end. We ex¬ 
pect to get a good share of sunshine there 
this Winter. It already makes a delightful 
reading and sewing room and Father says 
he does not care if she does not have too 
many plants. 
That sunshine room is certainly suited 
to a Sunshine member and, for this and 
other ideas offered, Miss A. E. P. is wel¬ 
comed into the band. Miss S. M. T., of 
Bergen County, N. J., wishes to join us, 
and as she has just succeeded in col¬ 
lecting, for ti-e Red Cross Society, over 
100 garments to go to the sufferers at 
Galveston, we think she has fairly paid 
her initiation fee. Who will be the 
next? _ 
Goodness and love mould the form 
into their own image, and cause the joy 
and beauty of love to shine forth from 
every part of the face. When this form 
of love is seen, it appears ineffably beau¬ 
tiful, and affects with delight the inmost 
life of the soul.—Swedenborg. 
The Modern Housekeeper. 
WHEREIN 8IIE DIFFERS FROM HER FORREAR8 
Let it be spoken low, lest it shock 
those who cherish an exalted idea of all 
oldtime housekeeping, says a writer in 
the New York Tribune, but it is true 
that the modern housewife is a much 
neater housewife than her grandmother 
ever was. Her ideals of neatness are 
higher. She has learned what scientific 
cleanliness means. The kitchen floor of 
oiled wood, its surface polished smooth 
by repeated rubbing, is a much more 
wholesome floor than that oldtime sand¬ 
ed floor of wood, scrubbed to snowy 
whiteness, with its numerous cracks to 
harbor the dangerous d6bris which come 
from the wastes of food which are con¬ 
stantly going on in a room where the 
cooking for a family is done. Exter¬ 
nally the oldtime kitchen may have been 
the perfection of neatness, yet, judged 
by the modern standard of household 
sanitation, it was often a menace to the 
health of the inhabitant. In many cases 
there was no proper way of disposing of 
all the waste water, and the water from 
dish washing, scrubbing and laundry 
work was poured in a common cesspool, 
which soon became so contaminated by 
impurities that it was a pest place, and 
this, to be convenient, was usually quite 
near the living and sleeping rooms of 
the house. The oldtime housekeeper 
knew nothing about disinfectants. She 
considered that a place that looked 
clean must be clean. Housekeepers now 
know that such a cesspool as that de¬ 
scribed may give no evidence to the 
senses of its dangerous condition, and 
yet be a menace to the health. The first 
work of modern housecleaning within or 
near the house is to disinfect all places 
where any danger of malarial germs or 
impure gases may find a lurking spot. 
Household sanitation is considered of 
the first importance, and external clean¬ 
liness, such as the polishing of window 
glass and the brass knobs and orna¬ 
ments at the front door, the nickel work 
of the cook stove, and even the iron 
casting of the stove on which oldtime 
housekeepers spent so much labor, are 
considered less necessary. Any corner 
or crack of a floor where the germs of 
impurities thrown off by life may lurk 
is of primary importance in cleaning. 
Any place where dust may lurk is a 
place to be cleaned out. All cracks in 
floors that have not been regularly laid 
should be filled in with a paste made of 
fine hardwood sawdust and thin glue. 
In old-fashioned houses where the floors 
are laid in spruce or pine, and there are 
wide cracks, the cracks can be filled and 
the floors covered with an inexpensive 
sanitary paint. This will save the trou¬ 
ble of cleaning them yearly with some 
such powerful disinfectant solution as 
boiling sal soda and water, or copperas 
and boiling water, though this latter 
will stain a floor a rather dingy color. 
It is a good plan at housecleaning time 
thoroughly to fumigate any room where 
there may be danger of insect pests. It 
also purifies the room from germs of 
disease, though it is considerable trou¬ 
ble, and should not be attempted unless 
necessary. 
Mixed and Mustard Pickles. 
I would like a recipe for good mustard 
pickles; also some other mixed pickles. 
What will prevent cucumbers in brine 
from getting soft? Delaware. 
Chow Chow. —This is the nicest mus¬ 
tard pickle we know. Materials re¬ 
quired: One-half pound English mus¬ 
tard, one-half ounce turmeric, two table¬ 
spoonfuls mustard seed, one-half gallon 
of vinegar, one cupful sugar, one gill 
salad oil, one head cauliflower, one 
quart tiny cucumbers, one quart button 
onions. Boil the cauliflower, beans and 
onions separately until tender. Cover 
the cucumbers with strong salt water, 
and soak for 24 hours. Then mix to¬ 
gether. Put the vinegar in a porcelain- 
lined Kettle; mix the mustard and tur¬ 
meric together, and moisten with a lit¬ 
tle cold vinegar; then stir into the hot 
vinegar, and stir continually until it be¬ 
gins to thicken. Add the sugar, mus¬ 
tard seed and oil, and stir again; pour 
this, while hot, over the vegetables, and 
put away in glass or stone jars. 
Mixed Pickles.—One-halt medium¬ 
sized head of cabbage, four celery roots, 
four tablespoonfuls grated horseradish, 
six large green tomatoes, one large or 
two small Spanish onions, 1 y z quart of 
vinegar, one-fourth teaspoonful of pow¬ 
dered alum. Chop all the vegetables and 
mix them together. Put a layer about 
two inches thick in the bottom of a jar, 
sprinkle it with a tablespoonful of salt, 
then another layer of vegetables and 
salt, and so on until all is used. Allow 
it to stand 24 hours, then drain, and 
press out all the liquor; cover with boil¬ 
ing water, allow it to stand ±0 minutes, 
then press with the hands until entirely 
dry. Add to one quart of vinegar *4 
teaspoonful oi alum, and stir until dis¬ 
solved. Put a layer of the pickles two 
inches thick in the bottom of a jar, 
sprinkle with mustard seed, black pep¬ 
per, and the grated horseradish; then 
another layer of pickle, and so on until 
used. Pour the vinegar over, let it 
stand two days, and it is ready for use. 
We have never had any trouble with 
softening of pickles in brine except 
when they were too mature when put 
away. Will some of The R.N.-Y. house¬ 
wives give further suggestions concern¬ 
ing this difficulty? The addition of a 
little alum keeps vinegar pickles crisp. 
A Woman Explorer. 
The late Miss Mary Kingsley, one of 
the most intrepid of recent African ex¬ 
plorers, and a writer whose books are 
not only vivid, but brightened by many 
touches of humor, has been described 
as “the very cut of an old maid,’’ says 
the Youth’s Compaion. She used to be 
seen in a little black bonnet, of by no 
means the newest shape; and even in 
wading streams or pushing through the 
West African bush, she never aban¬ 
doned skirts. Thus hampered, it is a 
mystery why she was not drowned in 
one of the capsizings to which her West 
African river crews were continually 
treating her. One narrow escape, with 
unusually frightful accessories drawn 
from her wealth of adventurous experi¬ 
ences, was given by Miss Kingsley to 
the Westminster Gazette. 
On a certain voyage, circumstances 
over which she had no control placed 
her in a canoe with a white trader on a 
river in the south. The two travelers 
were talking about rubber—it seems 
that everybody talks rubber in that 
country—when they saw in the river 
ahead a herd of hippopotami, and Miss 
Kingsley being nervous said: 
“Can you tell me if hippos are dan¬ 
gerous in this country?” 
“Sometimes they are, ma’am, and 
sometimes they’re not. You can’t tell 
till you are past them,” said the trader, 
and he discoursed again on rubber. 
They went on, and just as Miss Kings¬ 
ley thought, “Saved!” a hippo came un¬ 
der the boat, and they were in the water. 
Miss Kingsley always went conscien¬ 
tiously to the bottom when upset, and 
when she returned to the surface she 
saw their crew making for the bank, and 
heard a voice, with a rich Manchester 
accent, saying: 
“Do you appear to survive, ma’am?” 
“Temporarily,” said Miss Kingsley. 
“Then hang on to the canoe.” 
“I am hanging,” she said. “Hang on 
yourself.” 
And he hung. Miss Kingsley then 
suggested the bank. 
“No,” said the trader. “Wait till the 
canoe carries us past the land. If they 
can get a foothold they’ll stamp you 
down. They can’t do much in deep 
water.” 
MOTHERS.—Be sure to use“Mrs.Wins- 
low’s Soothing Syrup” for your children 
while Teething. It is the Best.— Adv. 
They floated along in silence for 
awhile. Then the trader said: 
“The worst of floating along like this 
is, the chances are a jackray (crocodile) 
will come along and sample your legs.” 
As may be imagined, it was not all 
plain floating for Miss Kingsley after 
that! No such direful thing happened, 
however, and in due course the voyagers 
proceeded on their way in a righted 
canoe. 
The Home-Cured Ham. 
How to prepare hams so that they will 
keep all Summer, be soft and moist and 
not salted and smoked too much, is a 
puzzling problem to many. Some salt 
the hams so much that they must be 
freshened before eating, and smoke 
them until they look like chunks of 
shoemakers’ wax. Under such condi¬ 
tions the meat cannot help being tough 
and inferior. A reader who seems to 
have struck about the right combina¬ 
tion, gives his method as follows: 
“The hams are left six weeks in a 
brine just salt enough so that when a 
potato is put into it a piece about the 
size of a penny will rise above the sur¬ 
face. After this they are smoked until 
the outside is slightly brown. Then we 
wrap them in paper and pack in a box in 
the cellar in ordinary land plaster, put¬ 
ting a good layer of the plaster on the 
bottom, top and sides of the box, and 
pressing it down tightly so that the air 
will be entirely excluded. Prepared in 
this way we always have hams that 
are just salt enough to eat, and not dried 
up hard as a bone. There will some¬ 
times be a little mold on the outside, 
and the plaster will get on the meat 
more or less, but a little scraping with a 
knife will remove all of this. For pick¬ 
ling hams one special barrel should be 
kept and used for nothing else. If not 
thoroughly cleaned, or if used for beef 
or other meat, the hams may be dam¬ 
aged.” 
No Premiums 
and no need of them—the 
best sells on its merits. 
B.T. Babbitts 
Best Soap 
is for folks who want their 
money’s worth of soap 
Don’t buy soap and premium 
knick-knacks together. 
You’re likely to pay too much for 
your premiums and much too much 
for your soap. 
Your full money’s worth of soap- 
quality and long-lasting economy in 
every cake. 
Made by B. T. Babbitt, New York 
ONE-HALF YOUR 
We Tell You How. 
FUEL 
Rochester Radiator Co. 27 Furnace St. Rochester,N.Y. 
FARMERS 
Can Become 
Surveyors, Business 
Men, Architects, 
Civil, Steam, Me¬ 
chanical or Electrical Engineers. 
Write for our Farmers’ Circular, tell¬ 
ing of farmers who have successfully 
changed their occupation without loss 
of time or money. 
LNTERXATIOIAL CORKESPOSDESCE SCHOOLS, 
Box 1410 Scranton, Fa. 
Elgin Watches 
are sold by jewelers everywhere in various sizes 
and styles, at prices to suit. Send for free booklet 
to the ELGIN NATIONAL WATCH CO., Elgin, Ill. 
