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iBiaSinet SPiciarioi Maine 
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THE ENTERTAINMENT OF GUESTS. 
Visitors seem to be a great trial to many house¬ 
keepers, and when ladies announce as a reason for 
many social omissions the fact that they have been 
entertaining company, every one seems to be expected 
to condole and sympathize with them. 
“ You have so much company,” said Mrs. H. to 
Aunt Rachel, one day, “it must be a great care to 
you ! ” 
“ Not a care, but a pleasure,” replied Aunt Rachel; 
“ we give our visitors a hearty welcome, and try to 
make them feel perfectly at home with us, but make 
no difference in our mode of life.” 
“ I don’t see how you do that,” replied Mrs H.; “ it 
disarranges my whole house if I have company for a 
week. I wish you would tell me how you manage 
to entertain your friends so easily.” 
“In the first place,” said Aunt Rachel, “we have 
our meals at regular hours. In winter we say to our 
guests iti the evening, at seven o’clock you will hear a 
rising bell, and at half-past seven the breakfast-bell 
will ring; then we have prayers and breakfast. I 
always try to have healthy food, and make it a 
rule to prepare nothing for the table that is really 
unhealthy. I have more regard to the health and 
comfort of my friends than to treat them to the indi¬ 
gestible dishes most of our preparations for company 
are. We always have unbolted bread, not ‘bran 
bread,’ as I have heard it called in derision, but bread 
of unbolted flour. Dr. Dio Lewis says, ‘ Wheat eaten 
in its natural condition, without bolting, would supply 
all the needed elements in the human body, and would 
sustain life for an indefinite period ; but in the process 
of bolting a large proportion of the nitrates and phos¬ 
phates is removed, so that bread made of superfine 
flour will sustain life only a few weeks.’ As the 
nitrates supply muscle, and the phosphates brain 
power, I think there are very few of us who can afford 
to dispense with their use. Unbolted bread is a valu¬ 
able remedy in cases of dyspepsia; we have had it in 
constant use for four years, and during that time I 
have been entirely cured of sick headache, from which 
I had suffered every week for many years. Nine out 
of ten of our visitors prefer unbolted to bolted bread— 
it is so much sweeter, and so nourishing.” 
“Do tell me how you make it, Aunt Rachel; if it 
cures sick headache I’ll have some baked to-morrow, 
for no one knows how I suffer in that way.” 
“Set your sponge with bolted flour; then add a 
little molasses and unbolted flour, until your dough is 
stiff enough to mould into loaves; make your loaves a 
medium size; let them raise again; bake an hour in a 
hot oven; let it be a day old before you eat, and your 
bread will cure sick headache better than any medical 
panacea.” 
“Thank you, Aunt Rachel; now tell me, please, 
what you have for breakfast? It is so hard for me to 
know what to get for every meal, you don’t know 
how I worry about it.” 
“For breakfast,” replied Aunt Rachel, “we have 
beef or mutton steak, broiled; you know I am too 
much of all English woman not to be a firm believer 
in the virtues of beef and mutton; fish, eggs (scram¬ 
bled, poached, or in omelet), potatoes, mush, cracked 
wheat, and sometimes hash.” 
“Hash!” exclaimed Mrs. H., “our people won’t 
touch hash. I always feel that it is wrong to waste 
so much cold meat, but they won’t eat hash; do tell 
how you make it?” 
“ I take the bones and a little water and boil them 
for an hour, or longer; chop my meat fine; boil that 
with the bones and gravy about ten minutes, adding a 
little flour, and seasoning well; then 1 lay pieces of 
toasted white bread in the bottom of a sauce-dish, pour 
the meat and gravy over it, garnish it with a hard 
boiled egg, finely chopped, and it is fit for a king’s 
table. We use no lard. We buy fresh meat suet, 
render it carefully, and use that for frying fish and 
potatoes; and we do not believe in calling mush 
hasty-pudding, for we boil it at least four hours before 
we consider it ready for the table, or to fry. We give 
our visitors the freedom of the house, liberty to go 
where they please, and do as they please; walk out 
with them, if possible; if not, give them music, 
pictures and books, wherewith to entertain them¬ 
selves. For dinner, we have beef, mutton, or poultry; 
never pork or veal; plenty of vegetables and fruit, 
and usually no dessert.” 
“No dessert for company!” exclaimed Mrs. H., in 
horror. “Why, aunt Rachel, I would’nt dare to ask 
my visitors to sit down to table without it.” 
“My dear,” replied Aunt Rachel, “ your husband is 
a great admirer of Mr. Emerson; listen to what he 
says: ‘I pray you, excellent wife, not to cumber 
yourself and me to get a rich dinner for this man or 
this woman who has alighted at our gate, nor a bed¬ 
chamber be made ready at too great a cost. Those 
things, if they are curious in, they can get for a dollar 
in any village. But let this stranger see, if he will, 
in your looks, in your accent and behavior, your 
heart and earnestness, your thought and will, that 
which he cannot buy at any price, at any village or 
city, and which he may well travel fifty miles, and 
dine sparsely, and sleep bad, in order to behold. Cer¬ 
tainly, let the board be spread, and let the bed be 
dressed for the traveller; but let not the emphasis of 
hospitality lie in these things.’” 
Physicians say that to eat a second time, after the 
appetite has been already satisfied, is a very pernicious 
custom, and the cause of half of the dyspepsia of the 
day. Although we often have guests whom we would 
gladly feast upon nectar and ambrosia, if nectar and 
ambrosia were obtainable in our town, yet if we can¬ 
not give them nectar in their fruit, we believe that the 
custom of having dessert is “ more honored by the 
breach than the observance.” The truth of the matter 
is, most persons in America, when they have visitors, 
change their style of living, and go to much extra 
trouble and expense, not so much to gratify their 
visitors as to satisfy their pride, so that I do not 
wonder that visitors are dreaded in many families. If 
we did this your uncle and I could not afford to have 
visitors at all; but we always enjoy having our friends 
with us. We always have light supper—Stewed oys¬ 
ters, dried beef, cracked wheat, gems, or biscuit of 
unbolted bread, and always fish. Of course, we try 
to study the tastes of our visitors if they have favorite 
dishes; it is a great pleasure to prepare them for 
them; but if guests come unexpectedly, we do not 
hesitate to ask them to sit down to very plain fare. 
“Is not the life more than bread?” Kindness and 
sympathy, and cordiality, are more to our guests than 
tables laden with luxuries. Very often, instead of 
being able to enjoy the society of those we visit, out of 
mistaken kindness and compliment to ns, they expend 
their time in the kitchen preparing dishes we would 
not touch, except out of compliment to them; and 
when they leave their kitchens they are too much 
fatigued by their unaccustomed labor, too tired to visit 
or to talk with us. If housekeepers would only be 
sensible about these things, would put this foolish, I 
should have said wicked, pride of appearances away 
from them; live strictly in accordance with their in¬ 
comes when they are alone, and when they have com¬ 
pany, I believe the pleasure and happiness they would 
gain from the society of their friends would amply 
repay them for the sacrifice of their pride.- 
As Aunt Rachel’s advice is so contrary to the prac¬ 
tice of most housekeepers, I thought perhaps some of 
the readers of the Cabinet would like to try her plan, 
and see if they could not entertain their friends with 
more ease and pleasure than they have ever done 
before. Marguerite. 
FASHION NOTES AND GOSSIP. 
A Combination Fan. —Says a Paris fashion writer: 
“A novelty is a fan, the handle of which forms a 
pocket handkerchief holder. The idea is ingenious. 
Of course, the handkerchief which issues from the 
holder must be rich with lace and delicately scented. 
Some fans have also a tiny scent-bottle inserted in the 
bottom of the fan-handle. And thus a fan becomes a 
handkerchief, scent-bottle and fan, in one.” Just in 
this latitude, according to the present state of the 
weather, fans will be rather unsaleable articles for 
some time to come. 
A Rose-Bud Dinner Party. —On Christmas Eve, 
a lady of Knickerbocker lineage, and of prominence 
among the exclusive fashionables of New York, gave 
a “rose-bud dinner-party.” A rose-bud dinner party 
is a comparatively novel entertainment here, aud 
was introduced at Newport, three summers ago, by 
Madame De Noailles, wife of the French ambassador 
at Washington. The title of the affair is derived from 
the fact that the dinner is given in honor of two or 
more young ladies who have not made their debut in 
society. It is something of a “coming-out party,” 
only instead of the guests dancing they eat. On the 
occasion of which we write, four demoiselles were 
honored—four of the prettiest in all this great city, 
according to rumor. Eighteen sat down to dinner— 
nine ladies (four of them “rose-buds”) and nine gen¬ 
tlemen. Delmonico provided the meal. It was an 
elaborate one, and Jenkins, who hired himself to 
Delmonico as waiter in order to get an account of the 
party, swears the bill of his employer was seventy-five 
hundred dollars and odd cents. The dining-room 
was transformed into a veritable bower of roses, and 
the whole house was redolent with perfume. There 
was music by Lander, and the menu was engraved on 
blue velvet in letters of gold. The four “ heroines of 
the hour” were beautifully attired, and were the 
recipients of compliments innumerable. The dinner 
was a great success. 
The Emperor and Empress of Russia wear pretty 
good clothes. The latter has a red velvet mantle lined 
with two hundred and twenty-eight sable skins, and 
valued at $20,000. The Emperor has a cloak of blue 
fox skin worth $24,000. 
At the late wedding of Senator Jones, one of the 
most noticeable gifts was an ivory statue of Ariadne, 
about twelve inches in hight, standing on a base of 
solid silver. At each corner, supporting the base, 
stood a silver bear on its hind feet. Around the edges 
of the base was arranged highly polished quartz 
specimens from all the mines in which Senator Jones 
is interested. In the centre of the front of the base 
was a raised circle composed of spades, hammers and 
other mining implements, in the middle of which was 
the bride’s monogram, the whole piece being about 
eighteen inches in height. 
In France widows wear mourning only eighteen 
months. 
