In living- up to the privileges of our 
times, who can outdo the small boy who 
objected to learning to write because he 
could do it so much better and easier on 
the typewriter ? 
* 
The American Kitchen Magazine pro¬ 
poses a new employment for women; 
that grocers should have women gradu¬ 
ates of cooking schools for their order 
clerks. It is suggested that a woman in 
such a position could make herself 
equally valuable to the customers and 
her employer. This would seem to be 
woman’s work rather than man’s, for 
her natural intelligence, without special 
training, qualifies her for handling 
foods. 
* 
A recent experience with earache re¬ 
minds us of the unconcern with which 
this ailment is regarded when a child is 
subject to it. Many persons, after giv¬ 
ing the simple home remedies, none of 
which is often of any avail, think their 
duty done and the child suffers, perhaps, 
one attack after another the winter 
through. A little thought on the mat¬ 
ter should convince one that the ear is 
one of the most delicate organs of the 
human body, and of such conformation 
that proper care and treatment cannot 
be given by any but a physician. Neglect 
to call medical aid in such cases is gross 
carelessness in parents for which the 
child will have to pay in suffering and, 
probably, in after life, with impaired 
hearing. 
I 
THE HIRED MAN IN THE HOME. 
MET my niece in the post-office, 
and she said that if I would call 
for her to-morrow, she could come out 
to the farm for a day or two,” said Mr. 
Fifield, depositing fresh newspapers, 
butter boxes and driving gloves on the 
kitchen table, and going out again to 
look after his horse. 
“Oh! Emma Fifield! We shall like 
to see Emma,” said his wife, turning 
over the papers in search of letters from 
her absent children. Mr. Fifield nodded 
as he closed the door. 
“ You will hear all about Emma’s en¬ 
gagement and plans now,” said Mrs. 
Fifield, disappointed in her search, and 
addressing Lottie, who was beating up a 
johnny cake in the pantry, and within 
hearing of what passed in the kitchen. 
“ I am so glad if she has decided to 
take Jack Eliot,” returned Lottie. “ I 
always liked Jack. But I was afraid 
Emma’s liking to have everything so 
dainty, and in such good style, might 
make her feel as though she couldn’t 
marry a farmer. I wonder how she feels 
about hired men and smelly rubber 
boots that have to be dried somewhere, 
and the stable smells, and rough clothes 
or shirt sleeves that will appear in the 
diningroom now and then ! Probably 
her only thought uow is what a fine 
fellow Jack is ; but she will have to face 
the rest some day.” 
“ Emma is not the girl to do anything 
without forethought,” was Mrs. Fifield’s 
reply. “I imagine that she looks the 
matter squarely in the face, and knows 
what she is choosing.” This premise 
proved well founded, when, the next 
evening, Emma Fifield and her aunt and 
cousins Lottie and Fannie, sat up long 
after the rest of the family had retired, 
talking of Jack Eliot and the home that 
was soon to be. For, though Jack’s 
courting had been long, circumstances 
had decided the young couple that the 
engagement should be a short one, and 
already Emma knew what furniture she 
would buy with the results of her saving, 
and promises of future plenishings as 
wedding gifts made the future home 
still more definite to the imagination. 
It was Fannie who suddenly gave a 
fresh turn to the conversation by ex¬ 
claiming, “ But think, Emma, how you 
will hate having a brace or two of hired 
men coming into your artistic dining¬ 
room, sitting in your high-backed, oak 
chairs, and eating from your Haviland 
plates!” 
“ Oh, I expect the rug will wear out 
some time, but the waxed floor will not, 
neither will hired men hurt the chairs 
or plates. And think what refining in¬ 
fluences it may have on the sons of toil I” 
laughed Emma, adding with eager in¬ 
sistence, “We can’t do much for the 
relief of the Armenians, or give very 
liberally to foreign missions, or join in 
college settlement work ; but why are 
the heathen and the downtrodden on 
the other side of the world or in the 
slums more deserving of the helping 
hand than are the foreigners and aliens 
at our own doors ?” 
“I am afraid that I would be planning 
to have the work folks eat in the kitchen, 
or else that Jack would hire men who 
could board themselves,” laughed Lottie. 
“I have thought of both ways,” was 
the prompt response. “But we shall 
not have the extra house for the man 
with a family, neither could we just now 
afford him. 11 is needs are greater, and 
he cannot be let go during the winter 
months. I hope that, some day, we can 
build two or three farm cottages, and 
employ men with families. But it must 
be work and save now while we are 
young and have health and hope to keep 
us light-hearted. When father was 
alive, and we lived on the farm, we 
found that having the hired people sit 
at a separate table was less economical. 
Father used to say that the further you 
separate the lives and interests of the 
workman and his employer, the poorer 
the service obtained unless you can pay 
enough to command a superior grade of 
labor.” 
“ And you want to put yourself on a 
level with your hired men in order to 
get more work out of them ! I have 
seen people do it, but for you and Jack, 
.Emma Fifield !” and Fannie stopped 
short with curling lip. 
Emma was too happy to be other than 
amused. “ We trust that our hired men 
will conform to our standards, not we to 
theirs,” she explained hopefully. “ And 
haven’t 1 seen it proved that an example 
of dignity and courtesy seldom fails to 
breed the same in others ? Jack says 
that he would not have a man about his 
house and stables who was not fit to 
break bread with. Jack’s younger 
brother will be with us some, and we 
could not have him associated in his work 
with men really low and unclean. Why, 
Fanny,” and the girl turned a bright 
face on her cousin, “ how has it always 
been in your home here ? Uncle Horace 
has kept a hired man ever since I can re¬ 
member, and always he has been as 
quiet and inoffensive as a mouse in the 
kitchen and diningroom. Don’t you re¬ 
member how Tom’s anxiety to be well- 
mannered and gentlemanly used to 
amuse us ? And Gustav and later, Nic- 
colo would even touch their caps to me, 
and just run to do anything you asked of 
them. If ever our hired people forget 
their manners and monopolize the con¬ 
versation, or reach across the table, or 
behave objectionably, I shall think of 
Aunt Janet and Uncle Horace, and know 
that Jack and I are somehow to blame.” 
“Yes, Niccolo is respectful enough and 
all that; but I can’t always think him a 
choice table companion, especially just 
before the spring plowing,” returned 
Fannie, wrinkling her pretty nose to 
suggest memories of odors not poetically 
attributed to Araby. 
Mrs. Fifield frowned, but her protest 
was cut short by Emma’s ready retort: 
“ You are likely to encounter worse 
annoyances than any farm odors the WOMAN’S AMBITIONS. 
next time you enter a crowded horsecar, r WOULD like to sit down by each 
and are wedged in with stale tobacco, 1 woman and girl who reads The It- 
whisky and the rankness of the unwashed N.-Y. and ask, “What would you wish 
at your elbows. A barnyard is purity, to be ?” and “What do you wish to do ?” 
almost, compared with a crowded, un- j suppose that there would be teachers 
ventilated car or theater.’ lannie of music and drawing and painting; 
laughed with the rest. there would be typewriters and nurses 
“I once boarded with a young couple,” and housekeepers. Some would like to 
Emma presently began in a retrospec- engage in business ; some would prefer 
tive vein, “ who made a mistake. They travel ; many would sigh for a life of 
were very young to be householders, and pleasure, and many for study. Would 
were modest and afraid of ‘ putting on any say, like the Chinese woman, “ I 
airs ’ C‘ airs ’ are considered a personal hope to be a mother of sons ” ? 
affront up where they live.) They always While we congratulate ourselves in liv- 
spoke of each other as ‘Ted’ and ‘Millie.’ ing in these days when the sphere of 
The result was that the chore boy used woman’s work is so much enlarged, there 
to come to the door and shout, ‘ Come, i s danger of forgetting that the great 
Millie, we’re ready for them lunch need of the world is good mothers. In 
boxes.’ And I have heard the hired girl Q ur Christian land, sons are no more 
say to the master of the house, ‘Just fill welcome than daughters; but where 
up that wood basket for me, will you, shall we place the blame, if the advent 
Ted.’ I want to share enough with our of a child to the home is looked upon as 
hired people to give them as helpful and curtailing a woman’s usefulness, not less 
pleasant a home as I can. They must than her pleasures ? Perhaps we might 
have an extra fire or the use of the profitably study some of the old-time 
kitchen on winter evenings, and plenty pictures of the “ Ages of Man,” or from 
to read (I remember how Tom used to “ Shore to Shore,” until we get a realiz- 
enjoy the farm papers and Youth’s Cora- ing sense that life is a progression, and 
panion). But I hope to keep the sitting- holds possibilities of happiness and suc- 
room to ourselves and callers. I mean to cess all the way. 
avoid talking of personal or family In an old rhetoric, these words are 
affairs at table, and to keep our real given as an example of sublimity, “ I 
home life free from intrusion.” 
“Some day you will have company 
from the city,” said Lottie, gazing into 
space, and assuming an oracular air, 
“your elegant friend who married the 
bank cashier, will drive out for the day, 
or that young uncle who enjoys the 
munificent salary, will take a notion to 
visit you-” 
“1 will show them a life as pleasant 
as their own,” interrupted the girl mer¬ 
rily. “It will not be at all like theirs, 
but if they have any sense of the beauty 
of naturalness and simplicity, if freedom 
and freshness and variety have any 
charm for them, they will have a chance 
to get wonderfully rested from the bur¬ 
dens and artificialities of their own 
ways. I think that they will like it. If 
they did not value anything but ele¬ 
gance, I would not have them for 
friends.” 
“ Now you express my ideas exactly,” 
said Mrs. Fifield, approvingly. “I tell 
the girls that farm iife and city life are 
two different things, and that 1 will not 
have city airs in my house, but,” and her 
rueful tones soon set the girls off in a 
peal of merriment, “ 1 am inveigled into 
one thing after another, till I expect any 
day to find myself eating olives without 
making a face, and rinsing my fingers 
after dinner in a pint bowl set on a 
napkin.” 
“I suppose that you will dine your 
city friends at the table with the field 
hands in order that the latter may catch 
the refined manners of town folks !” per¬ 
sisted Fannie, after the laugh was ended, 
and she had hugged her mother and told 
her (to Mrs. Fifield’s chagrin, real or 
feigned), that she was as pretty and 
ladylike as a queen, especially when 
Tlieron Iluntoon came to dinner and 
they had out the best china. 
“ I may set two tables on those days,” 
Emma admitted. “ It is so pleasant to 
visit over a leisurely dinner and not 
have to hurry the pudding because the 
men are waiting for it. Jack wouldn’t 
nind, now and then, if his men lounged 
and smoked an hour while waiting for 
him.” 
Then Mrs. Fifield glanced at the clock 
and said, “ Come, come girls ! Do you 
know what time it is ?” and the confab 
ended—or was transformed to a whis¬ 
pered session held among the pillows 
in Lottie’s pretty chamber under the 
old, sloping roof. 
PRUDENCE T. PRIMROSE. 
love God and little children.” It seems 
A smart Broadway, New 
York, druggist has 
this sign hanging outside 
his store; it marks the 
new era of drug selling. 
Is it any wonder that he 
has to enlarge his quar¬ 
ters, that his clerks are 
busy, and that his store is 
one of the most popular 
along the leading thor¬ 
oughfare ? 
You can afford to trade 
with a druggist who gives 
you SCOTT’S EMULSION 
when you ask lor it. 
jj 
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FRESH 
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