566 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
August 5 
[ Woman and Home \ 
From Day to Day. 
A little sun, a little rain, 
A soft wind blowing: from the west, 
And woods and fields are sweet again, 
And warmth within the mountain’s 
breast, 
So simple is lhe earth we tread, 
So quick with love and life her frame, 
Ten thousand years have dawned and fled, 
And still her magic is the same. 
A little love, a little trust, 
A soft impulse, a sudden dream, 
And life as dry as desert dust 
Is fresher than a mountain stream. 
So simple is the heart of man, 
So ready for new hope and joy, 
Ten thousand years since it began 
Have left it younger than a boy. 
— Rev. Stop ford A. Brooke. 
* 
The Hessian Diet appears to regard 
bachelorhood as a luxury, for that body 
has just passed a measure requiring 
bachelors to pay 25 per cent more in¬ 
come tax than married men. The same 
lawmakers tried to tax doubly female 
bicyclists, but this was defeated by a 
narrow majority. 
* 
A man in Pennsylvania recently made 
sure of the girl he desired to marry by 
causing her to file a bond in the sum of 
$50 to fulfill her part of the engagement. 
As an evidence of good faith, the man 
also furnished a like sum as surety that 
he would marry the girl. The man ex¬ 
plained to the justice that two girls who 
had promised to marry him had broken 
faith at the last moment, and he wished 
to make this engagement binding. He 
evidently considered that it would be 
well to reduce love’s young dream to 
strictly business priciples. 
* 
A Brooklyn woman was recently en¬ 
gaged in giving her sister a lesson in 
breadmaking, when an unusual noise 
was heard upstairs. The younger of the 
two women went to investigate, and dis¬ 
covered a burglar engaged in ransack¬ 
ing the sideboard. The young woman 
called for her sister, and for the next 
10 minutes, there was a lively athletic 
contest. Both women were plucky and 
muscular, and as they did not take time 
to wash their hands before interviewing 
the burglar, that misguided individual 
was so liberally adorned with flour and 
dough as to resemble a highly magnified 
hot cross bun. He was finally subdued, 
and the women announced their inten¬ 
tion of guarding him until the return of 
the master of the house, at noon. The 
burglar pleaded for freedom, told of his 
old mother, of his wife and family, but 
without avail, until the family minister 
happened to ring the bell, bent upon a 
pastoral call. He was sent for a police¬ 
man, and the burglar was locked up. 
This incident confirms us in the opinion 
that a woman who is capable of making 
good bread, is equal to any emergency. 
* 
July 15 is St. Swithin’s Day, and, 
according to an old English supersti¬ 
tion, as the weather is upon that day, so 
it will continue for 40 days afterwards. 
St. Swithin’s Day, an there be rain, 
For forty days it will remain; 
St. Swithin's Day, an it be fair. 
For forty days ’twill rain nae mair. 
St. Swithin, according to the legend, was 
Bishop of Winchester, and died in the 
year 862. He was a Saxon, of noble 
birth, but very pious and lowly-minded, 
and when he died, he asked that he be 
buried, not in a stately tomb within the 
building, but in the churchyard, so that 
the sweet rain of heaven might fall upon 
his grave, and the feet of the passers-by 
might tread upon it. The recollection 
of his virtues soon elevated Bishop 
Swithin to the rank of saint, and his 
grave was regarded as a holy shrine. 
In 971, the monks determined to remove 
the Bishop’s remains into the sanctuary, 
but furious rains set in, lasting for 40 
days, according to legend, until the 
monks abandoned the project. They 
then built a chapel over St. Swithin’s 
grave, which stood for several centuries, 
until, after the restoration of Winches¬ 
ter Cathedral, the bones of St. Swithin 
were finally removed and deposited in a 
place among the other bishops. 
* 
“What on earth is a wayzgoose?” 
asked one newspaper reader of another. 
“A wayzgoose? Give it up; some sort 
of a seafowl, I suppose,” responded the 
person asked. 
“What’s the use of being brought up 
on a farm, if you don’t know a wayz¬ 
goose when you meet it?” retorted the 
other. “I just read about a lot of print¬ 
ers holding a wayzgoose, and I want to 
know why they held it; did they think 
the old thing would get away?” 
Wayzgoose is a queer word, and we 
don’t wonder that it was a puzzler to the 
man who thus met with it in his morn¬ 
ing paper. In provincial English dia¬ 
lect, a wayzgoose is a domestic goose 
which has been fattened on stubble 
fields, but, used as mentioned in the con¬ 
versation above, it represents a feast or 
jollification given by a party of printers. 
It is quite possible that, originally, the 
name was given to a printers’ supper, at 
which roast goose was a leading dish; 
but it is now applied to a printers’ all¬ 
day festivity of the picnic class. Every 
trade has a language of its own, and 
printers’ ink has a particularly varied 
trade vocabulary. 
* 
A well-written letter always com¬ 
mends the writer to one’s attention; it 
is unfortunate that we do not pay more 
attention to this accomplishment. We 
have changed greatly since the days 
when, in spite of strangely distorted 
spelling, letter-writing was a serious ac¬ 
complishment; the cost of paper and 
postage prevented the hurried scrawling 
notes of to-day. Even when one finds it 
difficult to write a letter, and is con¬ 
scious of stiffness in diction, practice' 
will aid in removing this disability. A 
letter which suggests a careful study of 
The Polite Letter Writer is always ob¬ 
jectionable. The plan followed in one 
family of our acquaintance, where the 
children, from the time when they first 
learned to form letters, were taught to 
write weekly epistles to their mother, is 
a good one. Each child wrote whatever 
he desired, the mother gently criticised 
the letters, pointing out errors in spell¬ 
ing, composition, or conventional man¬ 
ners. This criticism was very helpful,, 
and, as adults, these children display an 
unusual ease in writing pleasant letters. 
It is very necessary, too, that a child 
should learn to address an envelope 
properly, to begin and end a letter with 
propriety, and to avoid the use of vul¬ 
garly conspicuous stationery. One’s 
whole career may be altered by the abil¬ 
ity to write a letter with propriety and 
ease. 
♦ 
Hard-wood floors, which formerly 
seemed confined to the houses of 
wealthy people, are coming more and 
more into favor in country houses, their 
cleanliness and durability making them 
more advantageous than any form of 
floor covering. In many cases, in old 
houses, such a floor is laid over the old 
boards, making a very warm, tight floor. 
In such cases, we think a center of nar¬ 
row boards with a contrasting border 
preferable to inlaid parquetry; it seems 
more likely to keep perfectly flat. It 
would be wise, if contemplating the lay¬ 
ing of such a floor, to buy the lumber 
several months in advance, and store it 
where it may be seasoned. One of our 
friends stored such lumber in the cellar 
near a furnace over Winter, and has had 
no trouble with the floor since it was 
laid; but we know several cases where 
an expensive hard-wood floor has 
buckled out of shape so badly that it 
had to be relaid. Such floors should 
never be washed with water; they are 
shellacked once or twice a year, wiped 
with a woolen cloth and, when cleaning 
is required, are rubbed with a woolen 
cloth and a little crude oil. Treated 
thus, the floor always looks well, and 
that without the backbreaking labor of 
the old-time polished floor. 
* 
Midsummer is the “silly season,” as 
the English newspapers call it, when 
National news lessens in importance, 
owing to the adjournment of Congress, 
and when the Summer vacations take 
many public men into semi-obscurity, 
for a time, at least. This is the season 
when the sensational newspapers deal 
especially in those marvelous stories 
known as fakes. Our old friend, the sea 
serpent, is first to appear among these, 
but this year, his glory has been dimmed 
by the exploits of the kissing bug. Al¬ 
most every day, one reads of the doings 
of this diabolical insect, and some 
deaths are reported from its bites. It 
appears true enough that more serious 
insect bites are reported this Summer 
than usual, and it also appears that the 
creature now known as the kissing bug 
is commoner than usual; ordinarily it is 
so rare -that it has never before attained 
the distinction of a popular name. 
There seems reason to doubt, however, 
whether all the poisonous insect bites 
reported are the work of this one insect; 
we have seen injuries of the same class, 
accompanied by acute pain, extensive 
swelling, and an eruption like erysipe¬ 
las, result from the bite of a spider. One 
is usually safe in applying ammonia to 
any severe insect bite. The Medical 
Record gives the successful treatment 
advised by one physician for such bites; 
it consisted of painting tfle swollen sur¬ 
face with tincture of iodine once, after 
which the eruption was treated with car¬ 
bolic-acid ointment, and covered with 
linen. Until the swelling subsided, the 
patient was ordered to take, internally, 
a one-tenth-grain tablet of sulphide of 
calcium every two hours. The result of 
this treatment was thoroughly satisfac¬ 
tory. 
The Lesson of Endurance. 
“Behold,” says one who knew of what 
he wrote, “we count them happy who 
endure.” There was a special “other 
world” significance, no doubt, in the 
original application of the thought, says 
a writer in the New York Evening Post, 
but it is a goodly thing for us to grasp 
and hold on to, from the baby boy out 
of whose grasp his gay balloon has 
taken flight to the general who has lost 
his battle. 
I do not mean that happiness is found 
in bending under bitter blows which 
drub the life out of us; there is neither 
education nor elevation in merely being 
beaten with many stripes. The endur¬ 
ance which makes great is the carrying 
one’s burden, whether great or small, 
with a brave, straight back and eyes 
that look “forward and not backward, 
up and not down.” 
The child who is allowed, or, as is so 
often the case, is encouraged to cry over 
every small hurt; the boy who sulks or 
storms over every annoyance at school 
or disappointment in play; the woman 
who makes herself ill because her house¬ 
hold management is trying; the man 
Who shoots himself and leaves a wife 
and children with what he is too selfish 
to struggle with as their portion, all be¬ 
long to the same category. 
The amazing record of this last year 
of youthful suicides ought to make 
every mother in the land, of every de¬ 
gree and station, look to it that in her 
nursery or about her feet, as she drudges 
through a day of toil, she should learn 
to endure pain, or deprivation, or dis¬ 
appointment with courage and cheerful¬ 
ness. That a girl of 14 should take her 
life because her father scolded her for 
wrong-doing; that a lad of yet childish 
years should hang himself because he 
had failed in a school examination, 
brings a thrill of horror to every hu¬ 
mane breast, but few of us study the 
philosophy of these awful facts, or find 
in them any hints for personal conduct. 
It seems as though the world had 
grown so rich in resource, things are 
made so facile and delightful, that to be 
hurt or denied anything has become 
unbearable, i do not beiieve a little one 
can be too early taught, after reason 
and understanding are awake, that pain 
must be patiently borne, and desire bear 
denial without an outbreak of feeling. 
When the hour comes in which a 
mother can bring to bear the ambition 
to be brave, and combine with it an ap¬ 
peal to be unselfish and not annoy other 
people, nothing saould divert her from 
the pursuance of this teaching until the 
principle has been established. Once 
learned, it is learned for life; he who, 
gazing into tae sky, winks away the 
tears while his kite soars over the chim¬ 
ney pots, and is man enough to take 
thought of its eccentric flight, will find 
himself prepared to stand firm, when 
in later life, his pet scheme proves a 
mistake, and to build a new castle wheie 
the ruins of the old one stand. 
But all the teaching, all the most rigid 
requirements of the parent, are futile 
and fruitless when the child unlearns 
by example what is instilled by words. 
In a home where every ailment makes 
the mother querulous and complaining; 
where a spoiled dress rouses anger or 
brings tears of vexation; where the daily 
round of small annoyances causes per¬ 
petual irritation, and the hourly vexa¬ 
tions bring harsh words, the children 
will make perpetual outcry when dis¬ 
turbed, and be a source of wearisome an¬ 
noyance whenever their wills are cross¬ 
ed or their bodies are hurt. 
In the illnesses of children, those mys¬ 
terious visitations to the tender, lovely 
existence of infancy, the power to bear, 
nay, even to recover, very often lies in 
their yet rudimentary training. It is, 
to be sure, but the alphabet of the great 
study of endurance which we can teach 
them, but it avails to make them take 
bitter medicine; to keep an injured 
limb still; to bear a bandage without 
tearing it; to control the little fingers 
which irritate a sore. The calm 
mother, on whose breast the unthinking 
little head has leaned while trying to 
check its sobs, gives not only a resting 
place, but affords strength to the ef¬ 
fort made. 
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