1874] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
105 
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g35g~ (For other Household Items , see “ Basket ” pages.) 
Wall Pockets and Holders. 
Receptacles of various sizes placed against the 
wall are often of great convenience in bed-rooms, 
sitting-rooms, or other parts of the house. These 
may be made elaborately and costly or of cheap 
materials, which if well selected often produce as 
good an effect as the more expensive ones. They 
are made small enough to hold a watch and large 
enough to hold newspapers. Those of which we 
give illustrations are made of pasteboard and cov¬ 
ered with inexpensive materials, and finished with 
ornaments that arc easily obtained. Slippers 
which are only worn during the evening are much 
in the way the rest of the time unless there is a 
place for them, and as this place should always be 
close at hand nothing is more convenient than a 
Slipper Holder to hang upon the wall. It is 
made of pasteboard, black cloth, ordinary white 
china buttons, and white beads ; is made with very 
slight expense and trouble, and is more effective 
than many of the elaborately worked slipper hold¬ 
ers. Make the pattern for the back, which it will 
be observed is a square with a rounded portion be¬ 
low ; fold the paper in the middle, so as to cut both 
sides of the pattern alike. Commencing the curv¬ 
ing just at the end of the square, make a cover for 
the pasteboard, cut after this pattern, of black (or 
colored) cloth on one side and strong muslin on 
the other. Make the pocket part of the same ma¬ 
terials as shown in the engraving. Sew on the 
buttons with red silk. The center of the palm pat- 
and washed, of white dotted Swiss. Trim with 
ruffle of white. The edge is simply rolled over and 
coarsely over-handed with worsted the same shade 
as the paper muslin, and ribbon bows which orna¬ 
SLIPPER HOLDER. 
tern is made by sewing on ordinary white beads, 
matching the buttons in color. A neat 
Wall Pocket, to hold small articles is made 
thus : Take a square of pasteboard ; cover with blue, 
red, or green muslin; fasten securely on the wrong 
side. It will be prettier if two sides are braided 
in some simple pattern. Trim these sides with 
crochet lace, so as to soften the effect of the edge. 
Next make a paper pattern for the pocket part by 
cutting a square larger than the one you have al¬ 
ready covered. Take a ruler or any straight edge 
and draw a line from one corner to the other; cut 
close to this line. Measure this by placing corner 
to corner with the covered back, and you will find 
your half square a little too large at the top. Dot 
With a pencil how much on each side and draw a 
line parallel to the first, and cut neatly. Lay this 
paper pattern on thin pasteboard and cut as accu¬ 
rately as possible. Cover this half square with the 
same shade of paper muslin; fasten on wrong side 
securely. Make a cover, which may be taken off 
WALL POCKET. 
ment the top and sides. The illustrations and 
descriptions are sent by Miss A. Donlevy. 
“Sweet Home." 
Have you seen the ideal home ? Let me try to 
describe it. It is the place where all (“all” may 
be only two individuals, or it may be more) unite 
to give security and freedom and help and sym¬ 
pathy to each; where each feels free to act out 
himself in any way that does not interfere with 
the welfare of any other; where each is sure of 
sympathy in his joys and sorrows and plans; where 
each feels bound, by bonds of affection which are 
only perfect freedom to the wise, to lend a helping 
hand to any other member of the home who is in 
need of any kind of help that he can give ; where 
the golden rule is the law of daily action because 
the law of love is written on all hearts. 
No, I have never seen the ideal home as I have 
described it here, except in brief glimpses, and yet 
I do know something of it. I doubt whether any 
one lives, in the present somewhat chaotic state of 
human nature, who has constantly such a home, at 
least in its outward aspects. There may be—yes, I 
believe that there are—such homes carried about 
in the hearts of some fortunate ones who truly 
love each other, and love the Highest and Best 
supremely. There are those who know internally 
all about “sweet home,” know it by a kind of 
revelation from above, who have lives of outward 
hardship and sorrow, perhaps have not even a 
place to lay their heads. 
How near to this ideal standard of safety and 
freedom and joy can we bring our actual homes ? 
That is a question for all home-makers to study. 
Women are home-makers, but so are men. It can 
not be a true home where the service is one-sided, 
where only one tries to bear “one another’s bur¬ 
dens.” Each must do and bear a part, though the 
stronger and wiser ones can do and bear the most. 
Do they? No; in many a place called “home,” 
but never truly such, they who arc strong use 
their strength to compel the service of the weaker 
ones; they who imagine themselves superior in 
wisdom prove their folly by exacting signs of rev¬ 
erence from those they consider their inferiors be¬ 
cause of age or sex or some kind of personal dif¬ 
ference, while they allow their own rudeness* and 
selfishness such license among the defenseless mem¬ 
bers of their own family as they would not venture 
upon anywhere else. 
The perfect home, in outward aspects, is hardly 
possible yet, because we are still so imperfectly 
christianized. We are all linked together, good 
and evil, wise and foolish, healthy and sick. They 
who grovel keep those down who try to rise. They 
who try to raise themselves find that they are bur¬ 
dened by the weight of all mankind below them, 
and that the truest way to help themselves is to 
set to work to help everybody else. The 
spirit of caste and the true home spirit 
never harmonize. You sing the praises of 
hon.e and the family, and then look about 
for the reality of that which your fancy 
pictures. You find that the bare strug¬ 
gle for an existence—for food and clothes 
and shelter—consumes all of the time 
and strength of a large proportion of our 
fellow-men; that the little children scarce¬ 
ly get a chance to see their fathers ; that 
the fathers and mothers are so weary and 
care-worn when evening comes that any 
interchange of thought except upon the 
cares and anxieties of their position and 
the foolish neighborhood gossip seems 
impossible. Then there are homes where 
wealth abounds, but you see the inmates 
worried by the cares that wealth entails 
and by the incompetency and unfaithful¬ 
ness of those they employ to do their 
work. Ignorant servants—“ servants ” of 
any kind in the usual sense of that word 
—mar the harmony of home. Private 
family selfishness is the lasting bane of 
our present style of home. How soon 
shall we be able to bring Bridget and all her class 
within the influence of the co-operative spirit? 
How soon shall we be able to unite our home 
interests sufficiently to allow us all some chance 
to draw a free breath? When we 6hall have 
made moral and spiritual progress enough for 
this a good many evils which seem each to call fo "> 
a special class of “reformers” will settle their - 
selves, so to speak. 
FcrELL, 
What Shall we Have for Breakfast t 
BT MBS. ELLEN E. BONHAM, OXFORD, O. 
Last month we gave an answer to this question 
from a lady in Louisiana, and we now give an¬ 
other, this time from Oiiio, with recipes for pre¬ 
paring such dishes as the writer considers not 
generally known or for which her manner of mak¬ 
ing them may be peculiar. She writes : 
“In preparing a bill of fare for breakfast for one 
week I have selected such articles as most farmers’ 
wives can command, and such as I am in the habit 
of setting before my own family. Most of the 
dishes are wholesome and easily prepared, and a 
breakfast from any one of these bills of fare can 
be made ready in forty-five minutes.” 
Bill of fare for breakfast for one week : 
Sunday. — Beefsteak. Hashed potato. Fried 
mush. Baked apples. Cold bread, coffee, and 
such fruit as is in season accompany each break¬ 
fast, and need not be repeated. 
Monday. —Broiled ham. Potato balls. Graham 
gems. 
Tuesday.— Sausage or mutton chops. Fried 
potatoes. Corn dodgers. 
Wednesday. —Breakfast bacon or corned-beef 
hash. Baked potatoes. Shirred eggs. Corn 
bread. Pickles. 
Thursday. — Veal cutlets. Boiled potatoes. 
Butter-cakes or milk toast. 
Friday.— Ham toast, and Graham bread. Pota¬ 
toes pared, sliced, and boiled in just water enough 
to cover them. Pickles. 
Saturday.— Codfish balls. Boiled eggs. Fried 
rice or baking-powder biscuit. 
Hashed Potatoes. —Chop cold boiled potatoes 
as for ha 3 h. Moisten with milk, add butter and 
salt to taste, and heat in a skillet. 
Graham Gems.— One heaping pint of Graham 
flour, one scant pint of cold water, and one-half 
tea-spoonful of salt. Heat the gem-pans, grease, 
and fill even full with the batter. They will bake 
in thirty minutes in a quick oven. 
Corn Dodgers.— Scald the corn-meal, add salt 
and cold water, having the batter as stiff as mush. 
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