FROM DAY TO DAY. 
Hot baked potatoes, crisp and floury, 
make a fine dish for the family supper at 
this season. They are wholesome, pal¬ 
atable, and very little trouble. Never 
send them to the table in a covered dish, 
or they will become soggy. Prick them 
with a fork, or crack them, as they are 
taken from the oven, and lay on a platter 
covered with a folded napkin, then put 
one corner of the napkin over them, and 
they will keep warm, without the steam 
being condensed upon them. Toast 
should be kept warm in the same way. 
* 
One of the rag dolls seen this winter, 
which has been a great favorite with 
the little girls, is reversible, presenting 
to its small owner either a grinning 
maiden. Dinah has a turban fastened 
with gilt pins, hoop earrings, a plaid 
gingham frock and check kitchen apron. 
Dinah is turned upside down, her skirt 
turned over her head, and a rosy-cheeked 
maid with white cap, muslin fichu, and 
pink calico frock appears. The two 
dolls are joined together at the waist, 
the two skirts being joined together in 
bag-shape, so that one forms the lining 
of the other. Of course, there are no 
underskirts. Any one with a knack for 
making rag dolls can effect a variation 
upon the ordinary type by making it 
thus reversible. 
* 
Some one remarked to us recently that 
cats were very stupid animals, far in¬ 
ferior to dogs in general intelligence. 
We don’t agree with this, and combated 
the statement with the true story of a 
path-finding pussy. A friend from New 
Jersey fell in love with a pretty half- 
grown cat, while staying in a Hudson 
River town, about 00 miles from New 
York. When she went home, pussy was 
put in a covered basket, and taken by 
boat to New York ; from there taken 
across one of the New York ferries, and 
transported by train, still in her basket, 
to a place in northern New Jersey, 15 
miles from New York. The cat did not 
appear to like her new home and, dis¬ 
appearing two days later, was mourned 
as lost. Fully six weeks later, the former 
owner of the animal, in the Hudson River 
town, was greeted at her door by a mis¬ 
erable-looking cat, starved, dirty and 
footsore. This poor little feline wreck 
appeared overcome with joy to see her, 
but was so changed by misery that it 
was not until a few days’ care had some¬ 
what restored it, that some peculiarities 
caused its recognition. It was the wan¬ 
derer from New Jersey. The distance 
between the two places is about 50 miles; 
the road entirely unfamiliar. How did 
that cat know where she came from ? 
And how did she get her bearings suffi¬ 
ciently to find her way back ? One little 
girl suggests that she, probably, asked 
all the cats she met, but even in that 
case, she would find as many difficulties 
as the heroine of the old fairy tale, who 
set out to find the castle that was east 
of the sun and west of the moon. 
* 
The school authorities in Brussels, 
wishing to give an object lesson in prac¬ 
tical thrift, requested the children to 
pick up and bring to school with them 
any discarded articles of possible utility 
which they might see. The children 
gathered a most heterogeneous collec¬ 
tion, including bottles, corks, old shoes, 
rags, paper, straw, and cardboard. This 
waste was sorted and sold, and at the 
end of eight months, the proceeds were 
sufficient to provide clothing for 500 des¬ 
titute children, to send 98 invalid children 
to various health resorts, to provide books 
for a number of poor students, and to 
give several hundreds of francs to local 
charities. We don’t greatly like the 
idea of turning children into scav¬ 
engers in this way, but the lesson was 
a good one. Foreigners say that we are 
the most wasteful people in the world 
and, when we look about us in city life, 
we often think that there is a great deal 
of truth in the accusation. We do not 
think that even the most lavish country 
housewives are so likely to waste, be¬ 
cause their conditions are different. But 
when a woman lives in a tiny flat, with 
no other pantry than her ice-box, she 
not only buys her supplies at the dearest 
rate, because bought in small quanti¬ 
ties, but she has little inducement to 
gather up the fragments, because she 
has nowhere to put them. 
At a meeting of the Mothers’ Congress 
in New York, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacoby 
gave an address on the above subject. 
She observed that systematic care of 
one’s own children is a product of the 
present century. As was natural and 
proper, it has begun with the nursery 
and infancy, but as yet, it has not ex¬ 
tended much further. The care of in¬ 
fancy is directed toward keeping the 
child alive, but the care of adolescence is 
intended to show the youth how to live, 
and this is often so much more difficult 
that, on one pretext or another, it is 
neglected. Many things are needed for 
success in life. Physical health and vig¬ 
or, a reserve store of vital energy ade¬ 
quate not only to periods of sheltered 
prosperity, but to the moments of storm 
and stress, of strain and exposure to the 
times which try souls, and which few es¬ 
cape during the perilous journey from 
the cradle to the grave. 
Even more important, for they serve 
in the stead of physical health, are the 
moral qualities of courage, fortitude, 
energy, justice. These suffice to dignify, 
and lead to a good end, simple and even 
ignorant lives. But you do not mean 
that your child shall be ignorant. Such 
measure of success as is dreamed of by 
every mother who dreams at all, presup¬ 
poses sure judgment, quick insight, flex¬ 
ible adaptability—qualities partly the 
gift of nature, but which may be greatly 
developed by training. It presupposes 
that the youth shall have had access to 
the rich storehouses of the accumulated 
wisdom of the world, shall not have 
been thrust forth naked, like Ishmael 
into the desert, unknowing even the lit¬ 
tle fragments of that which may be 
known. 
All considerations about the physical, 
moral and mental training of adoles¬ 
cence in general are complicated in es¬ 
pecial fashion when they are to be ap¬ 
plied to girls—complicated sometimes by 
permanent conditions of sex and some¬ 
times by the transient circumstances of 
a changing society. I can only suggest 
the fundamental prineijde which should 
direct the care of the physical health of 
girls—the principle of furthering the 
normal course of development. The 
physical (and psychological) history of 
every one under twenty differs from that 
of every one who has passed that age, 
by the fact that their organisms are still 
in a process of ascending evolution ; they 
have not reached their full growth ; they 
have not attained their perfect functions. 
This general statement must be modi¬ 
fied, however, in a peculiar manner for 
each different organ. Thus, the brain 
attains six-sevenths of its gross size by 
seven years of age, the remaining sev¬ 
enth being acquired between the ages of 
seven and fifteen. But the fine details 
of its structure, upon which its functions 
depend, continue to be elaborated, at 
least until the fortieth year. Roughly 
speaking, the first seven years of life are 
preoccupied with the growth of the ner¬ 
vous system, the next three or four with 
the growth of the limbs, while between 
eleven and fourteen the main force of 
development is expended on the chest 
and the vital organs contained in it—the 
heart and lungs. 
Whebevek there is a sweet-tempered 
intelligent, sincere, healthy, immacu 
lately clean woman, there you will find a 
pretty woman, and mankind may thank 
its stars that there are millions of these. 
I 
! 
! 
Two articles by Mrs. S. T. Rorer, the first of which 
is in the FEBRUARY number of the 
LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL 
What to Eat 
and Not Have 
Indigestion 
k 
To be followed by the following series; 
When Unexpected Company Surprises You 
The Best Food for a Growing Boy 
Fruits as Foods and Fruits as Poisons 
The Right Food for Different Men 
Food for Bloodless Girls 
The Table for Stout and Thin Women 
School Luncheons for Children 
Carving and Serving of Meats and Game 
Mrs. Rorer writes for no magazine but the Journal 
A New Form of Personalities 
The old style of portraying famous people through a 
“sketch” or “biography” is to be modernized in The 
Ladies’ Home Journal during 1898. Five of the most 
prominent Americans have been chosen for the departure: 
President McKinley, Mrs. Cleveland, Mark Twain, Joseph 
Jefferson, and Thomas A. Edison. Each will have a special 
article, which will consist of about fifteen or twenty fresh, 
unpublished stories and anecdotes strung together, each 
anecdote showing some characteristic trait or presenting a 
different side of the subject. 
MANY OTHER NEW FEATURES 
FOR 1898. $1.00 PER YEAR 
For 25 cents we will send 
The Ladies' Home Journal 
on trial for three months 
ALSO, a handsome illustrated booklet containing our Pro¬ 
spectus for 1898 , with portraits of famous writers and small 
reproductions of some of the illustrations that are to appear 
in the Journal in Juture numbers. 
The Curtis Publishing Company, Philadelphia 
el ?**'?’?* 3 
brown Dinah, or a rosy, blue-eyed THE CARE OF THE ADOLESCENT GIRL. 
