1912 . 
THE RURA.lv NEW-YORKER 
207 
Preparing Fruit Syrups. 
Can you give me any information on the 
making of fruit syrups and where to get a 
small outfit for this purpose? w. H. o. 
The only outfit required for preparing 
fruit syrups in a small way would be 
the utensils required for making jelly. 
The fruit is prepared, boiled till soft, 
and dripped in a jelly bag just as for 
jelly; the clear juice is then put in a 
clean preserving kettle, brought to a 
boil, and skimmed. Sugar is added, one 
pint of sugar to one quart of juice, and 
the juice then boiled for five minutes, 
skimming carefully. Have ready bottles 
sterilized with boiling water; fill with 
the syrup, and stand in pans of boiling 
water in a moderate oven for 10 minutes. 
Have some boiling juice ready; pour a 
little more into the bottles when taken 
from the oven, so as to fill them; seal 
with sterilized corks and coat top of 
cork with paraffin. Stand the bottles out 
of a draft till cool. Self-sealing bottles 
are more convenient than those with 
separate corks. Very acid fruits may re¬ 
quire more sugar than one-half bulk of 
juice to make acceptable syrup. When 
extracting the juice, let it drip from the 
bag by its own weight, without press¬ 
ing or twisting, as the syrup should be 
perfectly clear; pressing the bag will 
give cloudy juice. 
In the Land of Our Tradition. 
When I was a little girl the world 
was divided into two parts, namely, 
the East and the West. The East was 
our enchanted land, very, very far away, 
where the parents, grandparents and 
great-grandparents away back in the 
misty past, even so far as the May¬ 
flower, had lived. And all the history 
making epochs with which they were 
concerned, even from the old Revolu¬ 
tionary grandsire down to our own 
Pater, who did his share in the Civil 
War, were vested with great honor and 
glory in our young minds. The beauties 
of New England’s landscape were por¬ 
trayed so vividly to us, and our childish 
imagination dwelt so fondly upon them, 
that at last we had in mind a veritable 
earthly paradise, people with folk like 
unto dear old New England grand¬ 
mothers, renowned for their goodness 
of heart, purity and nobility of char¬ 
acter as well as their wonderful culi¬ 
nary achievements, while the dignity, 
political solidity and beauty of New 
England homes impressed us as veri¬ 
table palaces peculiar to New England 
alone. And so they are, but since we 
have become the possessor of one, the 
rooms of which, including closets and 
hallways, number 35, with numberless 
small paned windows to keep clean from 
garret to cellar, the old New England 
home has been shorn of some of its 
glamour, along with its accumulation of 
old rubbish that were of no earthly use 
to anyone. A little old rusty stove said 
to be over a hundred years old (and one 
would readily believe it, judging from 
the style and lack of good draught), 
some old pieces of black haircloth fur¬ 
niture, as old, as black and somber, old 
armchairs that required more strength 
than we possessed to rock one of them, 
some old dishes, thick, heavy, ugly, old, 
they certainly are, were covered and 
stowed away in the garret for future 
generations to admire, or derive com¬ 
mercial gain from the antique man, who 
makes that his hobby. 
We visited an old tavern, in which 
George Washington, Bonaparte, John Q. 
Adams, and other notable men were en¬ 
tertained. The caretaker of the old inn 
pointed out to us with special pride the 
old plank floor “that people come for 
miles to see.” But somehow I do not 
appreciate the value of my old plank- 
floored kitchen, all red brick under the 
range, at present covered with linoleum. 
I had heard much of the old New Eng¬ 
land kitchen; it held wonderful mem¬ 
ories of great merrymakings of the 
past, apple parings, quiltings, cornhusk- 
ing, where to the tune of “Money 
Musk,” they tripped the light fantastic 
toe. But some how that age and gen¬ 
eration are passed. We feel small and 
inadequate in that great low-ceiled 
room, 25 feet in length. I find no need 
for a great brick boiler at one end, but 
feel a great longing at times for my own 
small convenient kitchen of the West, 
with all the modern conveniences. The 
great pantry, the full length of the 
kitchen, with shelves of every descrip¬ 
tion, hard to keep in order and filled 
with such a medley of culinary junk 
fairly bewildered us. All superfluities 
have been removed^ including the 
greater part of the shelves, only what 
are strictly necessary both of shelves 
and cooking utensils to look after and 
keep clean. It was hard to become ac¬ 
customed to the low ceilings, the wooden 
mantels, roomy to be sure, but very in¬ 
convenient. There certainly will be a 
great overhauling and transformation 
if we remain in the land of our tra¬ 
dition. 
The Apples of Eden could never have 
been fairer or sweeter than those that 
grew in our grandfathers’ garden, but 
somehow as the years have passed along, 
with other new-fangled things have 
come the various pests, diseases and in¬ 
sects which seem to multiply equally as 
well here as in the West, and judging 
from the looks of things, with less re¬ 
sistance from mankind, which must 
mean financial loss to the owner as well 
as unsightly orchards. Fruit laws 
similar to those in the West would un¬ 
doubtedly prove beneficial here. Fruit 
trees uncared for, covered with blight, 
insects and diseases, are properly cut 
down after being inspected by the fruit 
inspector, as there is one appointed for 
each section. Blemished fruit is not al¬ 
lowed on the market at any price, and if 
found is promptly kerosened or de¬ 
stroyed. This means better fruit and 
higher prices. “Eternal vigilance” is the 
price of good fruit there as well as here. 
Our forebears landed upon the rock- 
bound shores of New England years 
ago, and judging from the stone walls 
everywhere, they landed on rocks ever 
since up to the present generation. 
Lots, highways, fields, gardens, mead¬ 
ows, pastures, homes, bounded, bordered, 
hedged, divided, subdivided by walls, 
grey stone walls, in most cases much 
ajar and ready to topple over. Some 
show the evidence of futile attempts at 
repairing, loose wires dangling from tree 
to tree above the stones, or a shaky rail 
teetering on some shaky stakes, and in 
some instances a wall such as the foun¬ 
dation of the Wall of China might have 
been, wide enough for a roadway, 
straight as a die, strong, well built, com¬ 
posed of all the greater and lesser walls 
on the farm. Such a fence is a pleasant 
sight, an honor to the owner, a monu¬ 
ment to the builder’s good handiwork, 
but it takes time and dollars to build 
such walls, and the age of stone wall 
building is past. So what to do with the 
stone walls is a conundrum. 
“Haul them off and throw them in 
the lake or take them in Winter when 
the ice is thick and let them sink when 
it melts,” advises the grown son, who 
prefers greenhouse business to stone¬ 
wall building. 
“Why not dig ditches and throw them 
in?” suggests the daughter home from 
the university. Father shakes his head 
and looks wise but the walls are still 
there. With all the achievement and 
invention of to-day there will surely 
be some method found of utilizing these 
ugly walls; grinding them up for roads, 
perhaps. The coming of the automobile 
calls for better roads. Why go to a 
rock quarry when every roadside is just 
crying out “rocks?” 
“It may turn out to be a song or per¬ 
haps a sermon” Robert Burnett used to 
admonish his readers, but as this is 
neither one it may not seem untimely to 
mention our pigs. As father does not 
take to pigs (only after they are cooked) 
I decided to try my hand in the busi¬ 
ness. Pin money, you say? No, most 
decidedly I always felt a great aversion 
for that phrase applied to any married 
woman. I do not know where it origi¬ 
nated or when, but the sooner it passes 
into the unknown the better. I bought 
two little pigs for seven dollars last 
July; they will bring $10 each at pres¬ 
ent. At first p-i-g spelled sausage, 
smoked ham, bacon, doughnuts, but as 
they grew and increased in size and 
value, I had vague thoughts of a few 
sheep, or a fine Jersey heifer, or some 
registered pigs to increase my stock. 
“Open confession is good for the soul,” 
they say, and I must confess I really en¬ 
joyed caring for and watching them 
grow. I bought no feed except a little 
middlings; scraps from the table, some 
milk, but mostly corn and plenty of 
green food. The corn froze the thir¬ 
teenth of September, so it never ma¬ 
tured ; still they eat it and thrive won¬ 
derfully. I feed them twice a day, at 
9 in the morning and at 3 in the after¬ 
noon, giving them corn and apples in 
plenty to keep them busy, and everyone 
says they are fine-looking fellows. 
A certain good minister of our ac¬ 
quaintance used to say be believed in 
practical religion. “We all like to meet 
here and listen to flowery or eloquent 
sermons, sing of golden harps and flow- 
erys beds of ease, and be carried in 
spirit to the seventh heaven, but breth¬ 
ren, be sure to see the contribution 
plate when it is passed and shake hands 
with your next-door neighbor before 
you leave this house.” So when I read 
I always look for something that is go¬ 
ing to benefit or instruct, mentally, 
spiritually, or physically; unless it can 
do this I consider my time wasted. I 
did intend to tell you of our way of 
making angel cake with half the num¬ 
ber of ten eggs, and cream puffs that 
they say are equal to any, with a quarter 
the number of ten eggs. But think 
what a medley it has been, from ancient 
heirlooms of mahogany to plain plebeian 
pig. Apples of Eden to stone walls of 
the past. From the beginning man has 
sought to super-improve his diagnosis 
upon life and the living world—to his 
own confusion. He is saved from his 
own logical absurdities only by the fact 
that his own life is one with that of 
the universe; a pattern woven according 
to a pattern hidden from his conscious 
observation. 
THE COUNTRY GENTLEWOMAN. 
SCOTT’S 
EMULSION 
is the near-nature treatment 
for Consumption. 
The power it creates, 
its purity and whole¬ 
someness are Nature’s 
greatest aid in over¬ 
coming disease. 
ALL DRUGGISTS 
11-52 
Every Farm 
Needs this 
Chopper. 
Besides its 
value at kill¬ 
ing time—for grinding 
sausage meat, etc.— 
there’s an everyday 
use for the 
ENTERPRISE 
Meat and Food Chopper 
It’s the chopper that is made to 
f ive hard, honest service. Four- 
laded steel knife revolves against 
inner surface of a perforated steel 
plate. Parts interchangeable. 
Cannot rust. 
To be sure of quality and long service— 
look for the name Enterprise. 
45 styles and sizes—hand and power. 
Price, $ 1.75 and Upward 
Indispensable in the kitchen—the ereat 
home economizer. 
Enterprise Fruit Presses, Sausage 
btuffers, Sad Irons, etc.—made on honor. 
Send 4c in stamps for our economy recipe 
book, the Enterprising Housekeeper.” 
THE ENTERPRISE MFG.CO.OFPA 
Pept. 69 . Philadelphia. 
A 
<3 
U+ensils Quickly 
Cleaned and 
Cleared away with 
Old 
Dutch 
Qeanser 
/ 
A dash of Old Dutch 
Cleanser on a damp 
cloth quickly removes 
the caked flour from 
the rolling-pin and the 
bread-board, cuts away 
the burnt-in crusts on 
the baking-pans. 
Many other uses and 
full directions on large 
Sifter-Can 10c 
i/r 
