558 
TIIE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
July 22 , 
f Woman and Home ] 
From Day to Day. 
AMERICAN ARISTOCRACY. 
Of all the notable things on earth. 
The queerest one Is pride of birth 
Among our "tierce democracy!" 
A bridge across a hundred years, 
Without a prop to save it from sneers, 
Not even a couple of rotten peers— 
A thing for laughter, fleers, and jeers. 
Is American aristocracy. 
English and Irish, French and Spanish, 
Germans, Italians. Dutch and Danish, 
Crossing their veins until they vanish 
In one conglomeration ! 
So subtle a tangle of blood, indeed, 
No Heraldry Harvey will ever succeed 
In finding the circulation. 
Depend upon it, my snobbish friend, 
Your family thread you can't ascend, 
Without good reason to apprehend 
You may find it waxed, at the farther end, 
By some plebeian vocation ! 
Or, worse than that, your boasted line 
May end in a loop of stronger twine, 
That plagued some worthy relation ! 
—John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887). 
♦ 
To renovate thin, black materials, such 
as old mousseline de soie, cover the iron¬ 
ing board with old black cloth, and lay 
the mousseline flat upon it pinning it in 
place. Lay over it a piece of black lawn 
or cambric that has been wrung out of 
gum arabic water, and a dry cloth over 
this; then iron with a hot iron. The 
mousseline will be crisp and fresh, like 
new goods. 
* 
Every woman who does not rely upon 
pins has some special way of keeping her 
shirtwaist neat at the back. A simple 
way is to stitch a stout piece of tape 
across the hack and sides at the waist line, 
with ends long enough to tie in front. 
Three hooks are sewn inside the hack of 
the belt, about V/ inch apart. Three 
bar eyes are sewn on the tape at the back 
of the waist, at corresponding distances. 
The tape is tied tightly, and the hooks 
then adjusted at the back. The waist is 
bloused at the front as desired, and the 
string and hooks always keep it in place. 
* 
Here is a Shaker cook’s recipe for a 
codfish dinner, as given in Good House¬ 
keeping: Hard boil as many eggs as 
there are to be guests. Boil potatoes tilt 
they are nearly done, then drain them out 
and slice them into a skillet in which thin 
slices of bacon are crisping. In another 
dish shred a very little unsoaked salted 
codfish , cover it with water and cook un¬ 
til tender and the water has all evaporat¬ 
ed. Add a cup of cream to this and turn 
it over the potatoes and bacon. The salt 
of the bacon and codfish is sufficient for 
the dish. A little pepper may be added if 
desired. To serve, pile the potato on a 
large platter and garnish with the eggs 
and parsley. 
* 
In a very damp locality, where steel 
rusts quickly when exposed, it is wise to 
keep needles in general use stuck in oiled 
flannel, and the sewing tools should be put 
in the driest part of the room, away from 
open windows. Scissors are sometimes 
hopelessly rusted by leaving them near an 
open window over night. Iron or steel 
articles not in use may be covered with a 
thin layer of vaseline. Rust spots may be 
rubbed off with emery and oil, or covered 
with kerosene or sweet oil for some time, 
and then rubbed hard. In very obstinate 
cases, touch the spots first with muriatic 
acid and then with ammonia, to neutral¬ 
ize the acid; finish with emery or Bath 
brick. 
* 
A good many hard-working housekeep¬ 
ers will agree with a woman who, ac¬ 
cording to the Atchison Globe, says she 
would like to change places with the 
average hired girl. The woman does her 
own work. Washes, irons, does her 
house cleaning, cooks three meals a day, 
keeps a garden and has a nice-looking 
front yard, which she attends to without 
any assistance from her men folks. She 
says there are three hired girls in the 
neighborhood, who get $8.50 a week. They 
do not have to wash and iron. At house¬ 
cleaning time the lady of the house helps 
them, besides having outside help. The 
days that the hired girls sweep and wash 
windows the lady of the house assists 
with the kitchen work. The hired girl 
has all day to do what she has to do, and 
her time is her own. The woman who 
does her own work does her own sewing, 
but she says the hired girls have their 
dresses made by sewing women. The 
woman says everyone in the families 
where there are hired girls is afraid to 
find fault for fear the girls will leave, but 
that when she makes a mistake, no one is 
afraid to mention it to her. 
* 
A woman who does a good deal of 
canning and preserving says she had a 
tinsmith make her a tin kettle long 
enough to hold three quart cans, and 
two cans wide. Two frames were made 
to fit in this, raised on feet; each had 
six holes, one frame being for pint cans 
and the other for quart. These frames 
hold the fruit jars so that they do not 
slide about and the whole outfit is very 
convenient. We have seen a home¬ 
made wooden frame used for the same 
purpose; it had a slat bottom that just 
fitted an ordinary wash boiler and above 
this little lath partitions that held the 
bottles in place. A good many women 
still treat this method of canning in an 
experimental way, and trust to odd pieces 
of board laid upon the bottom of the 
boiler, with scraps of kindling or twists 
of straw around the bottles. It is worth 
while to save trouble by more permanent 
appliances. _ 
Mrs. Perry’s Grievances. 
“No, the day of miracles' ain’t over, and 
folks dream dreams and see visions even 
now. You don’t believe it? Well, I’ll 
tell you of a case. 
“It was a year ago this coming month 
that I went over to spend a couple of 
weeks with Cousin Elvira at Marshall’s 
Corners. Now, you probably don’t know 
it, but Marshall’s Corners ain’t exactly 
the liveliest place in all the world. They 
are mostly farmers there, and a mile 
from Elvira’s is a store and post office 
and a tack factory. Oh, yes, and there’s 
a schoolhouse in a pine grove half a mile 
from her house the other way. 
“I guess it was the third day I was 
there that I says, ‘Elvira, who is it lives 
in the house across the road, and what’s 
so much coming and going there for? 
Seems to me there’s some one calling 
there every half hour.’ 
“Elvira, she folded up her work and 
stood up. ‘Come along with me,’ she 
says, ‘and you’ll see why there’s so much 
calling there. It’s Mrs. Perry lives there. 
Her husband's sick, has been for a long 
time, but lie's getting better now. We all 
think everything of Mrs. Perry, though 
we didn’t like her a bit the first month or 
so she was here.’ 
“I noticed, as we went across the road, 
what a pleasant look the house had. The 
curtains were raised quite high so’s to let 
in a lot of light, and there was one win¬ 
dow full of bright*- clean-looking, blos¬ 
soming plants. A big yellow cat set on 
another window sill and blinked at us as 
we went by. I never liked a yellow cat, 
but somehow this one seemed different, 
and no other kind would have seemed so 
cheerful. 
“The minute I laid eyes on Mrs. Perry 
I knew why everybody liked her. You 
know there’s some folks you just meet 
on the road; they don’t do nothing more 
than nod and smile at you, but you some¬ 
how feel better for seeing ’em. Mrs. 
Perry was like that. She wa’n’t what 
you’d call pretty, but she had nice clean- 
looking teeth and her hair was tidy, and 
she had the pleasantest cordial smile I 
ever see. She had on a plain, calico dress, 
but it was clean and whole and fitted her 
nice, and looked kinder stylish. ‘She is 
genuine,’ I says to myself. ‘She’s just 
what she appears to be.’ Her house was 
just like her; it was plain and neat; there 
was comfortable chairs, and there was 
books and a piano. 
“Mr. Perry was lying in a reclining 
chair, and although you could see that 
he was a pleasant sort of person enough, 
it was his wife that was the one folks 
liked best. 
“Well, we had an awful nice call, and 
just before we went, Elvira asked her to 
play and sing for us. She never made a 
word of objection, and she didn’t say she 
had a cold and couldn’t, but she went 
right over to the piano and set down and 
begun to play. Now I’ve heard more or 
less good music in my day, and when I 
heard Mrs. Perry sing I knew she wa’n’t 
no ordinary amateur. Her voice wa’n’t 
nothing wonderful, but it was sweet and 
true, and she sang with some life and 
snap. I says somethin" about it after she 
got through, and she said she’d studied 
a good deal and been to some good teach¬ 
ers, but she didn’t put on no airs about it. 
“After that first call, I went over there 
pretty often, and we talked together like 
old cronies. It was one day towards the 
end of my visit that we had a specially 
long talk. It was a rainy day, and Mr. 
Perry was asleep in the next room, so we 
had quite a long spell to ourselves. We’d 
come to a kind of pause in our conver¬ 
sation, and there wa’n’t no sound in the 
room but the clock ticking and the cat 
purring. Finally Mrs. Perry laid down 
her work—she was one of the busy kind 
and we was both sewing—and she says, 
with a queer little smile, ‘Aunt Asenath, 
I’m going to tell you a strange experience 
I had when I first moved into this neigh¬ 
borhood. I never have told anybody but 
Alfred, and I was ashamed to tell even 
him all of it. 
“ ‘You see, when he was taken sick and 
the doctor said he must come into the 
country, it was a terrible blow to me. I’d 
always lived in the city, all my friends 
were there, and I went about a great 
deal. To leave all that and go into the 
country, which I hated, especially with 
Winter coming on, with nothing to do but 
take care of a sick man—well, it nearly 
broke my heart. I actually was so child¬ 
ish and horrid that I felt as if Alfred was 
somehow to blame for getting sick. This 
wasn’t all; I had a sort of compound 
grievance: Alfred chose to come to this 
lonely, out-of-the-way place, where I was 
sure there was no society. I did not like 
the town itself, and I did not like this 
neighborhood nor the house, and 1 made 
up my mind that I should not like the 
people. They called on me very soon 
after 1 got settled, and I was just as hor¬ 
rid as 1 could be to them. I told them 
how lonesome and homesick I was and 
how I disliked the country, and I bragged 
about my life in the city and of all the ad¬ 
vantages I had there. After my callers 
went I told Alfred how countrified and 
boorish I thought them, and I declared 
that I never would return their calls. Poor 
Alfred, what he had to endure! I thought 
the country was a good place to" wear out 
mv old clothes, so I wore old-gowns that 
had seen better days, and I looked like a 
fright, especially as I neglected my hair 
and wore shabby old slippers. 
“ ‘The doctor came out to see Alfred, 
and he looked puzzled and shook his head. 
‘I don’t sec why he doesn’t gain more,’ he 
said, and he looked at me sharply and 
with a gleam of suspicion in his eyes. 
“ ‘I don’t like to think of that time. The 
neighbors did not call a second time, of 
c jrse, and I was really very lonely, 
though I did not admit it, and kept saying 
how glad I was not to be bothered by 
them. I could see that Alfred was get¬ 
ting worse instead of better, and I knew 
the doctor thought I was somehow to 
blame for it. I never was so wretched in 
my life. I began to be really alarmed 
about my husband, and it was when I got 
my mind off myself that the revelation 
came. 
“‘It was one night after one of Alfred''; 
very worst days that I lay awake worry¬ 
ing about him. At last I fell asleep, and 
I had a dream, or a vision, I don’t know 
which to call it. I seemed to be in a 
graveyard, and there was one stone that 
I seemed to be drawn toward. I expected 
to see my husband’s name on it, and I 
trembled with fear, but I drew nearer and 
looked. 1 saw my own name, and below 
it I read these words: ‘My Lady Disdain. 
No one loved her in life nor mourned her 
in death, and no one was ever made happy 
by her.’ 
“ ‘I awoke with a start, and there was 
no more sleep for me that night. I looked 
at myself as if T had been some one else, 
and I saw that if T kept on as I had be¬ 
gun, my epitaph would be a true one. 
Then I realized what was the trouble with 
Alfred. My gloomy, fault-finding, de¬ 
posing tmosphere was having its effect 
on him. As soon as it was light I looked 
at his sleeping face, and I was terrified, he 
looked so worn and pale and unhappy. I 
was sick with fear. Had I learned my 
lesson too late? 
“ ‘It was hard to appear cheerful and 
hopeful when there was such a fear at my 
heart, hut somehow strength was given 
me to do it, and you don’t know how 
thankful I was that first day when I made 
Alfred laugh—something he had not done 
for weeks. T played to him and read to 
him, and in the afternoon when he took 
his nap I went out and called on one of 
the neighbors, and every day when I 
could returned one of the calls T had re¬ 
ceived. It was hard for me to do it, re¬ 
membering how disdainful and rude I had 
been, but they were all so kind and for¬ 
giving and did not seem to remember the 
first impression. 
“ ‘Soon the neighbors began to drop in 
often, and this helped to cheer Alfred up, 
and the next time the doctor came he was 
surprised at the improvement in his pa¬ 
tient. He looked me over from top to toe 
—I had changed my appearance a great 
deal—and then he nodded his head ap¬ 
provingly and muttered, ‘I thought so ’ 
I did not ask him what he meant, because 
I knew. 
“ ‘That dream has made such a differ¬ 
ence in my life, Aunt Asenath—yes, and 
in the lives of others, too. I shudder to 
think what I would have been by this 
time if I had not had that experience.’ 
“Don’t waste any shudders on that,’ I 
says. ‘Something else would have put 
you on the right track, but of course the 
vision you had made a quicker cure. You 
are one of the kind that can take a hint. 
Now, lots of folks can’t, and in your place 
they would have kept right on as you be¬ 
gun, and then would have blamed every¬ 
body under the sun but themselves for 
their misery.’ 
“‘Well,’ she says, ‘I’m glad I found the 
guilty person. And what do you think, 
Aunt Asenath? I have got so I like the 
town and the neighborhood and the house 
and the people—yes, the people most of 
all. Besides all that, I’m going to like 
the country pretty soon, too—in about an¬ 
other month. I think,’ and she laughed. 
“‘The difference is all in yourself,’ I 
says. ‘Most generally when folks hate 
everything and everybody in sight, the 
trouble’s all with themselves. Tf they’d 
only see it and hate themselves for awhile 
it would make all the difference in the 
world to ’em, and to everybody else that 
has to live with ’em or see ’em. 
SUSAN BROWN ROBBINS. 
THE LONE FISHERMAN. Fig. 233. 
