762 
THE RURAIt NEW-YORKER 
Domestic Economy and Science 
The Business Side of Water Glass. 
To make one dollar do the work of two 
is not within the reach of every farmer’s 
wife, but so to plan and manage the 
whfle year’s crop of eggs, that the in¬ 
come derived from them is very material¬ 
ly increased, can be achieved by all. The 
usual custom among farmers is to take 
the egg crate as fast as filled, to market, 
and exchange the contents for groceries, 
generally of a miscellaneous character. 
This is all well and good, but while the 
prices of most groceries remain very much 
the same throughout the year, the price 
of eggs fluctuates so much that their pur¬ 
chasing power is at some times two or 
three times greater than at others, and 
this fact needs careful attention. For in¬ 
stance, eggs are now 18 to 20 cents per 
dozen in the local markets. A 12-dozen 
crate of eggs will bring $2.10 to $2.40. 
The groceries which are bought are usu¬ 
ally a small quantity of various articles, 
sufficient to last until the crate is again 
filled. These groceries cost just as much 
as when the eggs were worth 4o to 50 
cents per dozen. For some time the 
writer has followed the plan of preserv¬ 
ing a quantity of eggs in waterglass for 
home use. During the month of May 
when eggs are apt to be cheapest, a cou¬ 
ple of three-gallon crocks are filled, and 
the remainder of the season these eggs 
are used for cooking purposes, even to 
making angel cake. 
By the middle of June the price of 
eggs usually begins to advance and dur¬ 
ing the rest of the year it is apt gradual¬ 
ly to increase. Having in hand enough 
eggs for all cooking except for table use, 
enables us to get from $3 to $3.60 and 
often more for the same crate filled with 
eggs, and still not skimp ourselves. We 
still have a few 1914 eggs on hand. We 
have never sold any of these preserved 
eggs. I believe there is a law against 
it. If there isn’t there should be, as 
while they are perfectly sound and whole¬ 
some when taken from the liquid, they 
should be used as quickly as possible 
as they will deteriorate very rapidly. 
Another item worth considering is the 
fact that buying a greater quantity of 
one thing enables the purchaser to get a 
reduction in price. For instance a box 
of laundry soap containing 100 bars can 
be bought for something like $3; buying 
in the usual way of six or seven bars for 
25 cents makes the box cost around 
$3.50. By getting along without some 
items until another time, we try to get 
a box of soap when a crate of eggs will 
pay for it, thus saving in two ways on 
the one purchase, by getting the soap 
cheaper, r.nd having more eggs to sell 
when the price is better. This same plan 
applies to a great many groceries which 
are staple in every home and which will 
keep just as well upon our shelves as at 
the store. By this management we have 
accumulated quite a nice little grocery 
stock of our own, containing cases of 
canned vegetables, cereals, salmon, soap, 
chocolate, etc.; succotash costing 15 cents 
per can singly was 12 cents by the case 
of two dozen, thus saving 72 cents. 
In using water glass, which is a liquid 
somewhat resembling thin mucilage, the 
writer has found that nine parts of 
water to one of waterglass is the better 
proportion, and we have found no dif¬ 
ference between fertile and infertile eggs. 
The crock is filled a little over half full 
of the liquid and the eggs dropped in as 
gathered, only the very clean ones being 
used. When the crock is filled a plate 
is inverted over the eggs to keep them 
well under the liquid, which in time be¬ 
comes quite thick, much like cooked 
starch. This does no harm; the eggs are 
well rinsed with cold water when taken 
out, and they are ready for use. 
farmer’s wife. 
Lime in the Household. 
There are other uses for lime than as 
a sweetener of the soil, and while it is 
being purchased for that purpose it is 
well to consider its value in the house 
and about the premises. 
In the first place, lime is a disinfect¬ 
ant of marked efficiency. Milk of lime, 
made by slaking burned, or lump, lime, 
will destroy disease germs, even of such 
virulence as those of typhoid fever. A 
cupful of lump lime, broken up into small 
pieces, added to a typhoid stool and the 
whole just covered with hot water, will, 
in slaking, disinfect the stool and make it 
safe to dispose of it through ordinary 
channels. The heat from the slaking 
lime adds much to its efficiency as a 
germicide and its cheapness makes its 
use in copious quantities entirely prac¬ 
ticable. Freshly made milk of lime 
mixed with the stool to be disinfected is 
nearly as efficient. 
Lime whitewash, made by slaking lump 
lime in sufficient hot water to make a 
mixture of creamy consistency, is a dis¬ 
infectant paint which has no equal for 
the interior decoration of barns, poultry 
buildings, cellars, and stables. Not only 
does it kill the germs with which it 
comes in contact, but, by the reflection of 
light, its use is equivalent to adding an¬ 
other window to the room whose walls 
are thus treated, and light, itself, is a 
powerful germicide. It must be remem¬ 
bered that air-slaked lime will not do as 
a disinfectant; neither does it make a 
satisfactory whitewash. The unslaked 
lumps must be used and hot water is 
best to slake them with. 
Another household use of lime is in 
making the well-known Carron oil for 
the dressing of burns. This oil takes its 
name from the Carron iron works in 
England, where it was extensively used 
by the workmen for the burns incident 
to their trade. It is made by mixing 
lime water and linseed oil, in equal parts. 
It is not an elegant mixture from the 
standpoint of appearance but is exceed¬ 
ingly soothing when applied on clean 
lint or dressing cotton to a burn. It has 
the further advantage that its ingredients 
are usually easily obtained. 
Lime water for diluting the baby’s 
milk, or for older people who find whole 
milk indigestible, is easily made, yet all 
people do not know how to make it. A 
piece of unslaked lime the size of a nut 
will make a gallon or more of lime water 
and there is no use of paying drug store 
prices for it. I say “nut” because it is 
immaterial whether the piece of lime is 
the size of a hiekorynut or of a cocoanut. 
When slaked in pure, cold, water, as 
lime should be to make lime water, an 
infinitesimally small part of the lime is 
taken up by the water and held in solu¬ 
tion, the rest settles to the bottom of the 
container. The clear water from the top 
is the lime water to be used, and, as it 
is taken out, more may be added and the 
lime stirred up so that a little will dis¬ 
solve in the fresh water. So little of the 
lime is taken up by the water that a very 
small piece will make a very large quan¬ 
tity of lime water. The water used 
should, of course, be pure and wholesome, 
and if there is any doubt as to this, it 
may be boiled and cooled first. 
These are but a few of the uses of that 
essential element of the earth’s crust, 
lime, and for these uses, lime in the form 
of burned lump lime is to be taken. 
Slaked lime, either air or water slaked, 
or ground limestone are not adapted to 
the above described household purposes. 
M. R. I). 
“Twilight Sleep.” 
An attractive name goes a long way 
toward popularizing anything new, or 
which newly seeks public attention. Call 
a certain condition drug stupor, and the 
moral sense is at once offended and pre¬ 
monitions of danger aroused, but term the 
same tiling “twilight sleep,” and an ap¬ 
peal is at once made to memories of early 
morning semi-consciousness in which phy¬ 
sical weariness is forgotten and fanciful 
sprites guide one along entertaining, if 
erratic, paths. 
Nevertheless, the much exploited twi¬ 
light sleep, through which womankind is 
promised relief in the rack of childbirth, 
is neither more nor less than a condition 
of drug stupor brought about by the ad¬ 
ministration of morphine, and that other 
equally powerful, though less well known, 
narcotic, scopolamine. These drugs are 
combined and given in sufficient amounts 
to keep the patient hovering over that 
borderland between consciousness and un¬ 
consciousness from which she may be tem¬ 
porarily withdrawn, only to sink back 
again when the arousing force has ceased. 
Pain is felt, but it is quickly forgotten, 
as the stupefying effect of the drugs again 
controls the senses. In plain language, 
May 29, 1915. 
twilight sleep is the drunkenness of nar¬ 
cotics. 
Is the procedure reasonable and safe? 
Perhaps, under certain conditions. It is 
not new, and it is not capable of anything 
like universal application. It is a recru¬ 
descence of old attempts to mitigate pain 
by the use of narcotic drugs. Carried out 
in specially equipped institutions and by 
trained attendants, there is no doubt that 
it may be successful. Even then, the 
equally careful administration of better 
known and longer used anaesthetics, such 
as chloroform, will undoubtedly produce 
as good, or better, results, and with less 
danger to at least one of the two lives at 
stake. Owing its present prominence, not 
to its novelty, or to its real value to hu¬ 
manity, but to the eagerness of popular 
magazines to find something with which 
to stimulate the dulling interest of their 
readers, twilight sleep will presently drop 
back into its proper place as a hospital 
procedure of limited usefulness, and will 
be forgotten by the public. 
THE COUNTRY DOCTOR. 
Dishwashing a Pleasure. 
When I was a girl, washing dishes was 
to me an unpleasant task. When I 
married, and realized that three times a 
day the dishes must be washed, I began 
to try to think of some way to make it 
a more pleasurable task. Here is my 
way: I pin to the cupboard over my 
table, where I can easily see it, some 
nice poems, or fine bit of prose, a song or 
some pretty little jingle that will please 
the little folks. It does not take me long 
to commit them, and I hardly know I am 
washing dishes. I have often entertained 
sick children by repeating some of the 
things I have learned that way, while at 
the same time I could be tidying the 
room. Then when I had a severe illness 
and could not even bear being read to, 
some of these fine old poems kept run¬ 
ning through my mind, and helped pass 
the weary hours. My two girls com¬ 
mitted Whittier’s “Snow Bound” to mem¬ 
ory while washing dishes. Many a time 
I have seen a guest quietly move close to 
the kitchen door to listen. This has been 
such a joy to myself and my daughters 
that I want to pass it on. 
California. MRS. s. C. davis. 
“The farmer’s wife is the prop of the 
farm from the time she marries,” and 
“We would rather have free telephones 
and moving pictures than free seeds,” are 
ideas from women who have replied to 
letters sent out by the Department of 
Agriculture at Washington. Many wom¬ 
en deplore the hard conditions on the 
farm, while other more fortunate women 
favored with modern conveniences take a 
more optimistic view of farm life. “La¬ 
bor saving devices have made farm life 
enjoyable,” one woman declares, while 
another woman wrote the department that 
“Such love for home the flat dweller nev¬ 
er could feel.” Another letter says: 
“Farm women of today are the most up- 
to-date and independent of any class in 
the world. They are better dressed, more 
refined, better educated, more moral and 
need less help than any woman of the 
world.” 
“Eliminate the pantry, in building 
the new home.” That may be ques¬ 
tionable advice, yet it is given by a 
sensible housewife, at one time “sot” on 
the idea of having a pantry somewhere 
joined to the kitchen. She says the kitch¬ 
en cabinet does away with the multitude 
of steps she was compelled to make day 
after day from the hot, stuffy kitchen into 
the pantry, then around into the dining 
room and back again to the kitchen. Sin 1 
says a pantry is not a necessity; it is a 
curse, designed to pile more steps on the 
tired housewife. She advises the next 
rainy day to “clean out the pantry” 
shelves and all, make the men do it, es¬ 
tablish a wash-room of it, buy a kitchen 
cabinet if need be on the installment plan, 
or even make one from boards, and sys¬ 
tematize it according to catalogue house 
pictures. Then fix up a sink, fix it up 
temporarily, and pipe the water away 
from the house, if need be, with a tempo¬ 
rary trough. The kitchen cabinet will 
place all necessary articles which the 
housewife needs within reach. 
Canned Sausage. —I saw on page 32 
a question regarding how to keep sausage. 
My experience has been as a cannery- 
man. The only way to keep it is to have 
it canned ; it is much better than when 
fresh and will keep for years. If one 
can get it to a cannery and they know 
how to can it, he will never have it any 
other way. E. E. w. 
Virginia. 
Churning Day. 
