726 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
May 16, 
Woman and the Home 
From Day to Day 
THE VOLUNTEERS. 
The Volunteers ! The Volunteers! 
I dream, as in the bygone years, 
I hear again their stirring cheers, 
And see their banners shine, 
What time the yet unconquered north 
Pours to the wars her legions forth, 
For many a wrong to strike a blow 
With mailed hand at Mexico. 
The volunteers! Ah. where are they 
Who bade the hostile surges stay 
When the black forts of Monterey 
Frowned on their dauntless line? 
When, undismayed amid the shock 
Of war, like Ferro Gordo’s rock. 
They stood, or rushed more madly on 
Than tropic tempest o’er San Juan. 
On Angostura’s crowded field 
Their shattered columns scorned to yield, 
And wildly yet defiance pealed 
Their flashing batteries’ throats; 
And echoed then the rifle’s crack. 
As deadly as when on the track 
Of flying foe, of yore, its voice 
Bade Orleans’ dark-eyed girls rejoice. 
Blent with the roar of guns and bombs, 
How grandly from the dim past comes 
The roll of their victorious drums, 
Their bugles’ joyous notes, 
When over Mexico’s proud towers, 
And the fair valley’s storied bowers, 
Fit recompense of toil and scars, 
In triumph waved their flag of stars. 
Ah. comrades of your own tried troop, 
Whose honor ne’er to shame might stoop, 
Of lion heart and eagle swoop, 
But you alone remain; 
On all the rest has fallen the hush 
< )f death ; the men whose battle rush 
Was wild as sun loosed torrent’s flow 
On Orizaba’s crest of snow. 
The Volunteers ! The Volunteers! 
God send us peace through all our years, 
But if the cloud of war appears, 
We’ll see them once again. 
From broad Ohio’s peaceful side. 
From where the Maumee pours its tide 
From storm-lashed Erie’s wintry shore, 
Shall spring the volunteers once more. 
—William Haines Lytle. 
The poem above dates from the Mexi¬ 
can War of 1846. The author, an Ohio 
man, served in that war, and was killed 
in the battle of Chickamauga, Septem¬ 
ber 20, 1863. 
* 
This recipe for nut macaroons is high¬ 
ly recommended. Beat the whites of two 
eggs very light and add gradually, beat¬ 
ing constantly, a cupful of pulverized 
maple sugar, whipping until the mixture 
will hold its shape. Then fold in one 
large cupful of chopped pecans which 
have been lightly sprinkled with salt. 
Drop quickly from the tip of the spoon 
one inch apart on an unbuttered tin sheet 
and bake in a slow oven until delicately 
browned. 
* 
The Florists’ Exchange reports that 
the women of Central City, Ivy., are con¬ 
ducting a plant exchange for amateur 
gardeners on certain specified days. All 
varieties of pot plants will be exchanged, 
also shrubs, seeds, slips and bulbs. Any¬ 
one having more plants or other articles 
of one kind than they wish are to bring 
them in and exchange them for something 
else. A committee will value each plant 
sent in and the exchange will be made ac¬ 
cordingly. The exchange is to be con¬ 
ducted on the first Saturday in each 
month hereafter, and everyone is invited 
to take part. 
*:< 
The lieutenant-governor of a Middle 
West State has been studying the prob¬ 
lem of the unskilled workman, while his 
wife wished to investigate working girls’ 
troubles. The statesman got a job hand¬ 
ling packing cases in a corset factory for 
84 a week, but did not make good and 
was discharged after three days. The 
statesman’s wife got a job in a knitting 
mill at $5 a week, stuck her week out, 
was not discharged, and during this time 
received three offers of marriage. We do 
not know whether there is any particular 
moral attached, but the fact that a 
statesman who got down among the plain 
people was unable to earn .$4 a week 
makes us wonder whether, on the other 
hand, the taxpayers get the full worth of 
their money from those they set in high 
places. Evidently a position of social 
dignity, which must have released her 
from everyday drudgery, did not lessen 
the industrial efficiency of the states¬ 
man’s wife, since she was able to hold 
her position, while $5 a week for a fac¬ 
tory beginner must be counted as excel¬ 
lent. Furthermore, we must not forget 
the three offers of marriage from fellow 
employees, which were evidence of her 
social success as a working girl. The 
equal suffragists ought get a good deal 
of consolation from the discovery that, 
given the same environment, a woman 
is worth a dollar a week more than a 
statesman, with three chances for a hus¬ 
band thrown in to boot! 
* 
The Children’s Bureau of the U. S. 
Department of Labor has just issued 
Publication No. 6, “New Zealand Society 
for the Health of Women and Children.” 
New Zealand has been described as a 
country that is like one big family, and 
this no doubt aids in the experiments 
made for social betterment. Two strik¬ 
ing features in connection with the so¬ 
ciety described in this bulletin are the 
formation of local committees in every 
township where women could be inter¬ 
ested and the establishment of a body 
of trained nurses, whose duty is to give 
aid to women and children, especially in 
isolated rural communities. Owing to 
the earnest work done in the advance¬ 
ment of this movement by Lady Plunket, 
wife of a former governor of New Zea¬ 
land, these trained women are known as 
Plunket nurses. As a contrast in baby¬ 
saving, we find that Dunedin, New Zea¬ 
land, a city of 41,529, had in 1911 a 
death rate for babies under one year of 
four per cent.; Lowell, Mass., 1910, had 
an infant death rate of 23.1. The in¬ 
fant death rate for the whole of New Zea¬ 
land (where birth registry is strictly en¬ 
forced) is 5.1; for Rhode Island 15.8, 
and for New Hampshire 14.6. We 
strongly recommend a study of this bul¬ 
letin, which may be procured from the 
Chief of the Children’s Bureau at Wash¬ 
ington ; it suggests a valuable line of 
work for the Grange, and for all clubs 
and societies in which farm and rural 
women are interested. 
The Conservation of Fuel. 
It really seems as though nearly half 
the fuel used is wasted by injudicious 
management. There are ways and ways 
to save. First the furnace; we use a 
common hot-air furnace, and we have 
found it saving over the old base-burner- 
range system. It heats the house better, 
and really seems to consume little more 
coal than a good-sized base-burner, and 
the heat can be turned on or off any 
room desired, which is something that 
cannot be done with the stationary stove. 
To conserve fuel in this, we keep close 
at hand the siftings from the coal, and 
on warm days a shovelful or two of these 
siftings will “bank” the fire, keep it go¬ 
ing and yet hold the heat in abeyance. 
At night this same scheme is resorted to, 
and it proves an economical method, be¬ 
cause it uses every scrap of coal, even 
the dust, and it is all turned into heat. 
We use chiefly soft coal, but can use 
wood or any kind of fuel. When a little 
fire is needed in early Fall or late Spring, 
a few chunks of railroad ties come in 
bandy; they will burn slowly and throw 
off a good deal of heat. Still another 
thing, which works better with a steam 
or hot-water furnace than with the hot 
air, is this: Papers and old magazines 
are saved, and in case of needing a little 
fire these are twisted or wound into tight 
bundles, and put in on a small fire. They 
will sometimes heat a house comfortably 
all day—one bundle will—if the weather 
is not very cold. If all the old rags 
which are thrown out were rolled 
into tight bundles and burned in a hot¬ 
air furnace or in any kind of a stove, 
the country would be the better for it, 
and the house more comfortable, provid¬ 
ed these were used on the right kind of 
a day. 
We have a woodbox, and in this ac¬ 
cumulates a great deal of litter. It 
makes a great “muss” to try to burn it 
in the kitchen range, and when it be¬ 
comes necessary to remove this litter, 
it is shoveled into a bushel basket and 
carried to the cellar, to use in the furn¬ 
ace when needed. One woman saved the 
price of Summer fuel almost entirely by 
using cobs which she gathered from the 
pigpen. Dry, nothing makes a better or 
hotter fire than corncobs, and a tubful 
will do a good deal of cooking if man¬ 
aged right. 
Baking can be done with a light fire 
with a little extra care—that is small 
baking, like pies, layer cakes or cookies. 
Make the fire and heat the stove lids hot, 
have ready your pie or cake to put in 
the oven, put in as many hot stove lids 
as you require, and place the pies or lay¬ 
er cakes on these, and have them on the 
top grate. You will find that the hot 
lids answer every purpose of the big fire 
and the hot bottom oven. Such things 
can be baked with one-half or one-fourth 
the fuel required to heat the stove to 
baking heat all over. Another thing is 
to use the fire while it is in operation. 
Of course the fire suggested above, will 
not be kept long enough to cook much, 
but water may be heated for any amount 
of dishwashing, etc. Of course where the 
stove lids are removed something must 
supply their place, and a kettle or two 
will do it. 
AVe usually have a soft coal fire in the 
range in the morning, and only one fire. 
To use this then, one must be prepared 
the night before, if baking stewing, etc., 
needs to be done, by having the uten¬ 
sils ready for instant use on rising. It 
takes but a little while to make the des¬ 
sert for dinner, or the cake for supper, 
and get them baked with this one fire. 
Then too, considerable ironing may be 
done by this one fire. If there are two to 
work so much the better, but if there is 
but one, the irons may be heated after the 
breakfast is taken up, the dishes may 
simply be piled up, and the worker iron 
until the fire gets too low, and then with 
red coals inside the stove, she may still 
go on, by putting the irons right on to 
the coals. Extra holders will be needed 
for this, and the irons will need wiping, 
but a good many plain things may be 
ironed with irons heated inside the stove. 
Make the two-hour rice pudding, bake 
beaus, roast meat, etc., in the oven on 
washday. By cooking meats and things 
which need long cooking by the one range 
fire, it will take little fire to cook the 
vegetables for dinner when that time 
comes and only a light wood fire will be 
needed, or gasoline, or other substitute. 
The fireless cooker is all right for many 
things, but for many others, it really is 
not a saving. If we have to make a fire 
to heat soapstones, etc., we have made 
about enough to cook potatoes and such 
things without the cooker, but for cook¬ 
ing things which require a long time it is 
useful. 
We can conserve by using the fire when 
we require it. and using both top of the 
stove and the even. We may conserve 
by having things ready to put right over 
the fire the first thing it is made in the 
morning, for one good soft coal lire will 
hold heat to keep things simmering for 
some hours, but if the things are not put 
on until the breakfast is over and the 
work done up. then there will be prac¬ 
tically no lire to do it with. Make ready 
the night before. It isn’t any special 
economy to make a lot of things to get 
stale. If one pie serves the family then 
make only one; it takes such a few min¬ 
utes to make one, and this one can be 
baked by the single fire in range. Any 
pie is a hundred per cent, better the day 
it is baked. Manage your dampers well, 
and moreover do not neglect the fresh 
air. Houses are sometimes cold, or 
rather people are, simply because there is 
no oxygen left in the air to breathe. A 
well-aired room will seem much warmer 
than a higher temperature in a room that 
is stuffy and unaired. R. S. M. 
Some Sausage Dishes. —“Variety is 
is the spice of life,” in cooking as well 
as other things, and there are more ways 
than one of cooking sausage. First, they 
are good fried or baked in the oven. 
Second, they are fine cooked with baked 
beans, in place of salt pork. Soak, boil 
and season beans as usual. When ready 
for the oven slice two or three links or 
sliced sausage meat in small pieces and 
mix with the beans and bake. They give 
a nice flavor to the beans and are not 
greasy. To cook with dried beef, brown 
or sizzle beef, put a tablespoonful of flour 
and small piece of butter in frying pan. 
Then add water and one or more cooked 
sausage (left over) cut in small bits, and 
an egg, stirring until it thickens. It is 
a nice change from beef cooked in milk, 
especially if you happen to be short of 
milk. Sausage gives a nice flavor to 
baked beans for sandwiches. 
ALICE E. PINNEY. 
Mrs. Hopeless —“I’m all upset. Mrs. 
Pryor phoned me yesterday that 
she was going to drive over this 
afternoon, so I had to put off 
washing. It takes me all day, 
and I wouldn’t have her catch 
me working for anything—she’d 
never get done talking about my 
poor management.” 
Anty Drudge —“My dear, I’m afraid 
you’re a poor manager, to put 
your washing off. You should 
have used Fels-Naptha Soap. 
Then you would have been ready 
to see your visitor, with the wash 
safely out of the way.” 
Doing a little 
each day, with 
Fels-Naptha Soap 
to m a 
ke your 
work easy, will 
keep your house 
clean and fresh, 
and won’t tire you 
out, either. 
Fel s-Naptha 
will do your wash¬ 
ing for you in cool 
or 1 u k e w a r m 
water, without 
hard rubbing or 
boiling the clothes, 
and will do it better, 
quicker and easier 
than ever. 
Fels-Naptha does 
every kind of work. It 
makes dirt disappear, 
dissolves grease, and 
makes stains vanish, 
even stubborn blood 
stains. 
ling it by the box or carton. Fol¬ 
low the directions on the Red and 
Green Wrapper. 
Pels & Co., Philadelphia. 
FELS-NAPTHA 
