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chance I see to make a raise. You’ve helped me
to it, and I am not going gack on my promise to you.
Poor old Miss Blossom! It’ll be hard on her. It’s the
lowest down game I’ve played yet. But it’s too late
to draw back.”
Then I stepped out of my corner, stood before
them and threw up my veil.
“It is not too late,” I said. “Providence has
showed me your hand. Your game is up! Be
ashamed of such low, disgraceful ways of making a
‘raise’ and try to live honestly. Good-bye to you.”
The station master was calling my train and I
turned off and left the dismayed and speechless pair.
1 had spoken stoutly, but all the same I felt as
might a stricken deer. I shed tears of bitterest
pain behind my veil all the way home. To be
deceived in friend and in lover, to be victimized
through their pfetdnded affection, to find that ybuf
soft heartedness had been made the tool to injure
and ruin you—all this was bitterness of soul for
many a day. God’s grace helped me to tide over
this trial, and in the end it proved a blessing, for it
opened my eyes to the frivolity of the life I was
leading and made me seek and find happiness in
doing useful work —work to aid and to uplift my
kind. It has made me able to feel for others also,
and to understand their temptations. And so it is
that I can sympathize with Sadie Brown.
THE OLD WOMAN.
Vellow pear tomatoes— THE RELIABLE
VAM—CANNED SUGAR GANE JUIGE;
This is goihg to be a glorious fruit yb'ar, and we
housewives can make up for last seasori and fill
our pantry shelves with canned fruits and preserves.
Last year I had to depend upon blackberries and
tomatoes. Fortunately I had planted quantities of
the yellow pear tomatoes, which preserve so beauti
fully, and when flavored with lemon juice, or the
grated peel of the lemon or orange, can hardly be
told from orange marmalade, being just the color
of the lighter kinds of orange. I canned many
gallons of pure blackberry juice—(not wine) —and
it was in great request in summer, when fever was
prevalent. I think it is most excellent in typhoid
fever. By the way, lam going to try to can fresh
sugar cane juice this year, as we raise the sugar
cane and make our own syrup, also a barrel or two
of sugar. I remember reading in the Sunny South,
in a sketch by Mrs. Bryan, or it may have been one
of her always entertaining Household Chats, where
She had, as she believed, saved the life of a typhoid
patient by the use of sugar cane juice. He was
a stranger to her and had been put off of a Red
River steamboat, because he was believed to have
yellow fever, then raging in Shreveport. She had
him taken to her home, or his boarding house, and
nursed him through his illness. Nothing in the way
of nourishment could be retained until she tried the
fresh cane juice, and from the time he began to
take it he commenced to improve. If canned I
do not see why cane juice would not keep as well as
the juices of fruits. Have any of you Household
sisters tried it?
We are preparing to plant almost all our little
farm in sweet potatoes. They are always in de
mand, and our little household never get tired of
the delicious baked yams. We have yams now, as
good as when put up, or rather better, for now
they are so sweet and rich, with a flavor that noth
ing else has. They make delightful custards, and
my children are very fond of sweet potato biscuit
—made by mixing the cooked and mashed yams with
the flour. If made at night and cooked in the
morning they rise nicely and do not get hard when
cold like ordinary biscuit. The children like them
in their school luncheons. I wish some of the
sisters would give me some dots about raising poul
try. I have the White Wyandottes and the Rhode
Island Reds. I like the Reds better than any breed
I have tried. They are gentle and hardy and they
grow off fast and are less liable to diseases.
ELLEN DOUGLAS WYNNE.
Valdosta, Ga.
*
THAT SCHOOL FOR WIVES AND HUSBANDS.
Old Woman, I shake hands with you in your esti
mate of the average husband. I have no such
adjunct myself and I judge of the species solely by
the specimens I see about me, particularly my sis
ter’s husband, who is a model in his own estima
tion. The exalted opinion that man has of him
self and the profoundness of his conviction that
women were made to wait upon men—this was
partly inherited no doubt, but a great deal of it is
(Owing to-tfie way he was brought up. He was the
.only boy of the family and .mother and sisters
The Golden Age for April 23, 1908.
united in ministering to his every wish, thus spoil
ing him effectually for a husband.
Mothers ought surely to think of the prospective
wives of the boys whom they are training to be
selfish and exacting. Somebody told in the House
hold of a school for husbands and wives that had
been projected or rather this was to be added to
the usual school curriculum. I think this a very
good idea. Schools are to enrich our store of
knowledge on all useful matters, and I think
no knowledge is more important than that which
would lead to harmony in married life. Forbearance,
courtesy, justice, tact, unselfishness, these may be
taught and the lesson well learned would eliminate
the necessity for a divorce court.
AMELIA SELDEN.
Eufaula, Ala.
W
LIGHT ON THE HILLS.
Across the green valley shadows are falling,
A mist creeps over the murmuring rills.
The woodlands grow darker, when lo! over yonder
The light, golden light, falls soft o’er the hills.
Afar in the east purple clouds are creeping,
Across the wide heavens, sombre and still,
Down in the meadow flowers are sleeping,
But, see, over yonder, the light on the hills.
The veil of the twilight falls softly, caressing
The wide stretch of plain, so quiet and still.
But look far away where the sunset is fading,
And light, radiant light, drifts down on the hill.
O’er the land, o’er the sea, the darkness is resting,
The night With its shadows our lonely hearts
thrill.
But watch! See it creeping, the roseate dawning
Os day, and the splendor it casts o'er the hills.
When sadness and sorrow their shadows throw round
us,
When longing and pain our lonely hearts fill.
Gaze not at the valleys, but lift the eyes skyward,
And light, glorious light, will be found on the hills.
MAY E. M’MILLAN.
Belleview, Ga.
FROM THE OUTSIDE.
A woman had a beautiful potted plant. It sat
in an exquisite jardiniere on a small tabourette near
the window. The stand was not of sufficient height
to enable the plant to be seen full length through
the window, so the woman, for lack of something
better just at that moment, brought in a rough,
unpainted box, and placing the tabourette on it,
elevated the flower to a position where its beauty
could be seen and admired from the street. , “But,”
I remonstrated, “the box destroys the nice order of
your room. Its inharmonious appearance mars the
effect of your pretty furnishings.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter how it looks inside, if it
shows up all right outside!” answered the owner
of the plant. And I thought how perfectly this
unconscious expression voiced the sentiment of the
age. It seems to me that today our chief aim in
living is for ostentation. We forget to seek for the
pure, sweet pleasures that only simple, true living
can give, in our efforts to out-do our neighbors and
no matter what our means to keep up appearances
so that all may look fair from the outside, though
it be bleak and rough on the inside. That the
material outside may be kept harmonious and bright
many a man has suffered the collapse and degrada
tion of the moral inside, and this tendency for dis
play, this modern publicity mania, is the real
cause of the increase in crimes such as bank rob
beries by its employes, and is the chief reason that
hundreds of men, dishonored, yearly seek suicides’
graves.
The life worth living after all, I think, is the
one lived from the “inside” by those who strive to
make the inner life and home harmonious and beau
tiful. The woman thought not of her own pleasure
in the beauty of her plant; it was for display, and
it mattered not how uncouth its appearance inside,
so that the eyes of the world would behold and pro
nounce it lovely. I ask, what need care we what
the world thinks of us, if we are living clean, pure
lives, doing our duty toward God and man accord
ing to our lights? Why should we worry because
our means are too limited to carry the style of Mrs.
So-and-So down the street? Why should we think
it necessary to starve and pinch in secret that we
may be enabled to give as swell a function as
Mrs. Whats-Her-Name across the way? Should the
fact that your hat is a little off-style and you are
wearing last winter’s suit this winter make you feel
in any way inferior to your up-to-date, stylish neigh-
bor in the next block? Then it is a matter of dress
and not character that makes the person? Truly
this is the verdict of the masses today, but why
should we care for this when we have the approba
tion of all people of good sense?
Happiness is the phantom we are all pursuing,
and it seems to me that those people who live sim
ple, unaffected lives, plain and unpretentious in their
way, striving ever to follow the Golden Rule, come
nearer overtaking it than any other class. Our
Creator never meant that we should lose sight of
nature’s face and become warped by false pride
from the original plan. Most of us are afraid to
seek those harmless joys that would please us best,
because we fear our worldly-minded kind would “talk
about it.” “What people will say” has been the bug
bear of many a hampered soul. I once knew a
family so far consumed by false pride that, being
unable to hire someone for the work, they would
clean their front yard under cover of darkness for
fear some one would see them at what they con
sidered a menial and undignified task. As if there
is in honest labor anything of which the most exalted
could be ashamed. I assert that with all our boasted
freedom we are slaves —slaves to fears and to cus
toms which extol the outside of tilings to the disad
vantage of the inner life, both morally and mate
rially.
I deplore the fact that individuality of char
acter is on the decrease because we think to pos
sess this would stamp us as “queer,” when, as a
matter of fact, all that has been accomplished in
the world’s progress has been because of this sort
of “queerness” of people who followed their own
bent and strove to make the inside as perfect as
the outside. To follow blindly the lead of others
would be to hurl the world back into a state of in
tellectual darkness. It behooves us to more thor
oughly assert our individuality of character, daring
to do just what God has made us, not to pretend to
be more than we are, but to pray that we may
grow spiritually and mentally each day, reaching up
fcr those things that really make life worth while,
and these are more mental and moral than material.
Keep the inside of your homes and lives pure and
in harmony and let the outside take care of itself.
Dare to be your true selves, to seek truth as you
would seek no other virtue, to follow your own
promptings as to what is the true life, and peace and
happiness are pretty sure to take up their abode
under your roof.
JULIA COMAN TAIT.
*
PERENNIAL GOLD MINES.
To realize what riches —greater than those of gold
and silver mines—are being drawn from the earth
by the hand of industry and the life-giving power
of the sun, one must travel across the vast fertile
plains of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio in the season
when the immense wheat fields are ripening, or
when the mighty harvest is being reaped by the
great machines that mow, gather, and bind the
sheaves of golden grain with magical celerity,
making them ready to be thrashed, ground, and
transported across land and ocean to waiting cities
and ports. For is not the great Middle West the
granary of the world? Does not the tide of trade
and prosperity rise or fall according as its vast fields
are normally productive, or fail in their usual abund
ant yield?
Everything in these great grain-growing states is
on a large scale. Industry and enterprise are com
mensurate with the yield of the rich prairie lands.
Travel and transportation are enormously active. Not
only do passenger and freight trains carry all they
can accommodate, but from every considerable town
radiate numerous electric interurban lines, extend
ing in every direction, sometimes for a hundred
miles, thus bringing country life in close relation
to the life of the city, that the advantages of each
can be shared by the dwellers in the respective sec
tions. The inmates of the thousands of pretty
cottages, half hidden in blossoming orchards, that
adorn the roadsides, are privileged to take advantage
of all the social and mentally improving opportu
nities afforded to city people, while they enjoy also
their quiet homes and their pleasant fields and gar
dens, hummed over by hives full of honey-making
bees. MARY E. BRYAN.
*
Brown Waffles— Put a tablespoonful of sugar in
your waffles or pancake batter. They will brown
much more quickly and also taste better. —Mrs. F. H.
I?
To Keep Away Mites — Paper your chicken house
with tar paper and sprinkle the floor with sulphur.
Try a banana peeling for polishing patent leather
shoes.—Fay P.
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