386 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
[October, 
“empty stomach,” and he 'would eat late at night 
sooner than go to bed without supper; and this he 
sometimes did iu busy times, when neither of us 
had sufficient help about our work. Of course the 
weary system had a hard time digesting its late 
suppers, and the stomach had no chance to rest 
while he slept. lie arose from a night’s sleep un¬ 
refreshed, and could not wait for breakfast half so 
comfortably as I could. So his digestion was in a 
wretched state when Providence turned over this 
last new leaf in our family history. But he asked 
questions, and listeued and thought for himself, 
and tried the two-meal system. So far the result 
is very satisfactory, and a courage and hope un¬ 
known for some months past come with a better 
digestion. We never thought of requiring the 
little chicks to conform to the new method, but 
after the first few days the baby and the three- 
year-old girl ceased to hint the least hunger between 
breakfast and dinner—a period of six and a half 
hours—and after a week more they cared so little 
for supper that ou a few occasions it has been 
omitted without any protest from them; only I 
gave them all the warm milk they cared to drink, 
which was not much. The child of six, a boy who 
inherits a feeble digestive apparatus, was not so 
easily brought into the new order, but in each case 
the change of dietetic habits causes an improve¬ 
ment in the disposition. They eat heartily at the 
table now, and we have them take enough bread or 
.other food slow (but not difficult) of digestion to 
“ stand by ” them a good while. I am not prepared 
to insist upon two meals a day even for our own 
family, much less for any other; but I see more 
clearly than ever that it is mainly a matter of habit 
whether one eats two or three meals a day, and 
that it is decidedly a bad habit to “ lunch ” between 
the regular meals. 
Another thing which our visitors have led me to 
realize is this: the danger of giving children too 
much “sloppy” food. Toothless babies require 
liquid or semi-liquid food, of course, but children 
who have teeth should learn to chew their food 
thoroughly, mixing it well with saliva, before it 
enters the stomach. If the bread or potato is 
made soft with milk or gravy the child will be too 
apt to bolt it in a half-masticated condition or 
without any real chewing. That is the mischief 
played by the drinks used at table. They are used 
to moisten the food and wash it down, and the 
saliva which nature furnishes for an important part 
of the digestive process is hardly called into natural 
action. The children now come to their meals 
with so good an appetite that a Graham gem with¬ 
out butter or other “ spread ” seems as delicious 
to them as it does to me when I am hungry, and 
they chew it with considerable enjoyment. Much 
of their food is soft, or semi-fluid, but there was 
something morbid in the boy’s desire to have 
nearly all his food swimming in milk. 
As far as we can reasonably , I think we should 
consult our children’s natural preferences in diet. 
Food that is eaten with a relish for it is more 
wholesome to the stomach usually than food (even 
more wholesome “in the abstract ”) which is dis¬ 
tasteful to the palate. But we should discriminate 
between a natural relish and a morbid craving, and 
use our best judgment iu respect to the child’s per¬ 
manent welfare in preparing its food. Here is 
something to be taken into the account too: no 
food will digest well that is taken by a person in an 
unhappy frame of mind. So this matter of feeding 
our families is quite a complicated one. As far 
as possible, we should “let them have their 
l ’d ruther,’” as Cousin Kate pithily remarks. It 
is a poor plan to ask each child its preference. That 
is the way to introduce disorder at table. But we 
can easily learn their tastes, and show that we re¬ 
gard them in filling the little plates at each meal. 
Careful and sympa.belie parents can often guess 
the real choice of their children better than the 
children can tell it. It is not well for young chil¬ 
dren to hear much discussion about the food set 
before them. The talk should be upon other sub¬ 
jects, and the wholesome fare should be eaten 
as unconsciously as is consistent with healthful 
propriety. 
Modes of Cooking Fish. — Most cooks are 
aware that mackerel and other kinds of salted fish 
are good freshened thoroughly and then baked and 
dressed with cream. But frying is the usual 
method of cooking the common kinds of fresh fish 
caught in our lakes and rivers. When our gentle¬ 
man guest brought in his first mess of sunfish I 
wondered what our guestess would say about it. I 
was sure she must have a horror of scorched butter, 
and must abominate melted grease in any form as 
an article of diet. I know the French cooks are 
said to boil things in such a quantity of “ oil,” at 
just the right degree of heat, that no grease pene¬ 
trates the food, but few of us can afford sufficient 
good butter to cover a half-dozen fishes while frying, 
and all the fried fish I have ever seen certainly 
were more or less “greasy” outside. 
But our wise woman had a better way for cooking 
fish, as she has a “ better way ” for doing almost 
everything. This is the way she 
Bakf.s Fresh Fish. —First the mode of dressing 
the fish preparatory to cooking. Our fisherman 
cuts the throat of each finny victim with his jack¬ 
knife as soon as he gets hold of it. He does not 
believe that any meat is as good when the victim 
is strangled or killed by any slow tormenting pro¬ 
cess as when quickly killed by letting the blood. 
As soon as possible the “inwards” are removed 
that they may not affect the flavor of the meat. 
Then the heads and fins are taken off (cutting 
around the fins and so taking them out) and buried 
in the earth somewhere, so that the air may not be 
tainted by them as they decay. 
Our wise cook skins all kinds of fish. She says 
that the skin is good for nothing as meat, and as it 
is just an excreting surface for the animal she can’t 
bear to eat it. It is easier and more agreeable to 
skin the fish than to scrape off the scales. Usually 
you pour boiling water over them, and the skin 
strips off quite easily. The sunfish have such thick 
skins that the hot water has little or no effect in 
loosening the skin unless first scaled, and it is as 
easy to skin them without scaling or scalding. 
The best way to salt the fish is before cooking, i'f 
you have time, by letting them lie, already dressed, 
in a pan of salted water over night, or for an hour 
before dinner. Drain them from the salted water, 
or sprinkle salt over them if they have not been in 
salted water, and lay them iu your clean dripping- 
pan, and put them in the oven. They need about 
lialf-an-hour’s good baking, and then you may pour 
over them a cup of creamy milk and set them back 
in the oven for a few minutes. It is best to bake 
them in some baking-disli that will do to set upon 
the table just as it comes from the oven. 
To Boil Fish. —Dress them as for baking. Wrap 
them altogether iu a cloth, or, better still, put them 
iu a clean bag (a salt bag if there are not too many), 
and put the bag into boiling water enough to cover 
it. Let them boil half an hour. Pour over them, 
when dished, cream-gravy or drawn butter. 
I don’t know which is best, baked or boiled fish, 
but no one but a dyspeptic whose tastes are all 
morbid, will be likely to prefer fish fried to either. 
Bustles, Hoops, etc. 
BY KELL. 
The other day a young girl came into my room 
and said : “ I wish you would write an article about 
bustles. I really think it might do good by setting 
some people to thinking. Folks praise the bustles 
because they keep the clothing away from the 
spine and hips, which are usually too much heated 
by a woman’s style of dress, you know. But see 
this girl now,” she said, lifting the overskirt of her 
sister who had just come into the room. “ She 
puts her bustle ou over all her clothes except the 
overskirt, which is never more than two thick¬ 
nesses of cloth, and cloth too that never ought to 
be there in the first place, making so much unne¬ 
cessary warmth. So her bustle makes her dress all 
the more unhealthy by pressing her petticoats and 
dress-skirt all the closer to her back. There is Hetty 
Atkinson, now, wears a bustle because her back is 
weak, and she puts it under all her skirts, so that 
it does keep her spine cooler than it would be 
without one. But most girls only put the bustle 
under the overskirt and basque, unless they have 
made their dress skirts to accommodate bustles, or 
long enough behind to be elevated by the bustles 
without spoiling the ‘hang’ of the skirts. And 
poor girls can’t afford to buy good, cool, wire bus¬ 
tles like this, so they make thick, warm ones of 
newspaper wadded together over a string, and those 
are a great nuisance. I do thiuk*it is wicked!” 
Thus said the pretty maiden; and I replied: 
“ The article about bustles shall be written.” 
I have given her earnest little lecture on the sub¬ 
ject as nearly verbatim as possible, for I think many 
persons are not aware that there are girls just com¬ 
ing into the prime of their youth who have con¬ 
scientious thoughts about the hygiene of dress. 
The other day I read that a professor in a New 
York medical college deliberately stated that it is 
impossible at the present day to find a woman 
whose internal organs are in a healthy condition, 
and this because of the unhealthiness of woman’s 
dress. I suppose no intelligent physician will 
deny—what most of them positively assert—that 
almost all of the “female weaknesses” are caused 
mainly by woman’s unhealthy mode of dress. The 
weight of her clothing upon the hips, and its undue 
thickness and heat about the abdomen, are espe¬ 
cially complained of. The weight presses the in¬ 
ternal organs out of their proper place, and the 
heat (an excess of which is always enervating to 
any living thing or to any part so heated) weakens 
the action of the abdominal organs, and also de¬ 
stroys the natural power of the muscles and liga¬ 
ments which hold them iu place. The unconscious 
suicide going on among women is fearful to think 
of. And what chance is there for healthy sons and 
daughters to be born of these victims of Fashion ? 
If long, heavy skirts must be worn, the skeleton- 
skirt lessens their unhealthiness and discomfort, 
provided it is large enough (especially at the top) 
to afford some ventilation about the hips, and to 
allow of easy locomotion, and provided it does not 
hang upon the hips and bowels—for whatever hangs 
upon the hips also presses down upon the bowels. 
Do you think it is any better to hang the skeleton 
skirt upon a stiff corset ? It feels better, because 
the pressure is so much equalized, but it is in real¬ 
ity worse and worse. The most reasonable bustle 
and support for the skirts is a loose waist cut high 
enough upon the shoulders so as not to press upon 
the arms, and so as not to be dragged down by the 
skirt’s weight. A gored or circling piece sewed 
around the bottom of this waist, with a long whale¬ 
bone or large rattan run in the hem of it, forms the 
bustle and skirt-supporter. The size of the bustle 
is determined by the length of the whalebone and 
the width of the gored piece sewed on. It should 
not be gored or cut circling in front. 
I recommend this simple bustle only as a mitiga¬ 
tion of a nuisance—not at all from the artistic point 
of view. If the idea of woman's dress is not 
chiefly, as it ought to be, a comfortable and conve- 
vient covering for the body, but if it is chiefly 
drapery and barbaric ornamentation, then we must 
mitigate its inevitable evils as far as possible— 
so give us hoops and bustles. 
Yesterday was the Sabbath. I took up the Chris¬ 
tian Union, and read one of Mr. Beecher’s “Lec¬ 
tures on Preaching,” delivered to the theologues of 
Yale. Having determined to write this article, this 
sentence struck me as applying to the subject of 
woman’s dress : “ You can not long go right when it 
is the sense of beauty alone that you are appealing to. ” 
A good deal of a sermon grew out of that sen¬ 
tence in my own mind. My sister, see if you can 
not preach one to yourself from the same text. 
“ The sense of beauty ” is what woman’s dress pro¬ 
fesses to appeal to chiefly, and it is so long since 
woman’s dress has gone right that the memory of 
man runneth not back to that time. And it never 
will go right until women are made intelligent 
about anatomj', physiology, and hygiene, and not 
until the conscience of woman is freed from its 
slavery to the “ traditions of men,” and taught to 
concern itself with the practical duties of daily life. 
