| Show THE DOMESTIC INFERNO L THE nursery up sta rs is generally admitted to be the heaven of our homes so the k ably takes up the position of the other place it is there that all the mischief of the house Is hatched and I 1 must say I 1 think the mistress of the house Is largely responsible for its sins on the few ons when a man vis ts it for instance when he comes back late and finds the ants have forgotten to lay any bread or the fire has gone out and some sticks are wanted he is as a rule absolutely appalled at its dirt and dib order it is true that the stove may be bright and that the dresser may look very clean with its rows of plates but if he has to look deeper what a perfect rag and bone shop the whole place is only let him peep into the cupboards only let him open he drawer of the kitchen table or the dresser and he will be perfectly her rifled to find that his wife allows such a mass of heterogeneous matter to be collected I 1 will spare my readers a picture of it let them go and see for themselves there is only one abes tion I 1 should like to have answered and that Is why asit that the draw ers in a dresser never have any ban dies I 1 am not merely trying to pro vide the followers of vilon with a re frain for a ballade I 1 ask in the in terest of our best knives our forks and skewers that break and twist themselves out of all shape in their efforts to open the drawers of dress ers this brings me to the appalling misuse which all the articles in the kitchen are fiut to every trade has its list of necessary tools and every one knows that there is not a mechanic in the world who requires to be so fully supplied with plant as a cook and that there Is no skilled workman who puts it to such bad use with a trowel and a mortar board a bricklayer will build a house indeed decorate the side of a cathedral and several houses with a few chisels and a hammer a stonemason will perhaps the carpenter Is the only skilled laborer who requires anything like so much plant as a cook she Is never happy and always ready with a string of excuses till she Is provided with a whole houseful of things which she declares are abao cutely essential to the cooking of ex plain fare she must have rows of saucepans ranging from the very biggest to the very smalle t and everything else in proportion and as soon as she is pro vided with them her fancy settles upon particular saucepans and pans which she keeps in constant use till they are destroyed every man knows that five pairs of boots or five suits of clothes will last longer by being worn alternately than by being hacked out separately but the mistress never in fists upon this system being applied to kitchen utensils no cook will be happy till she is provided with a meat chopper and a meat saw but when ane has got them she prefers to use the best carvers this will probably send my strong minded readers into hysterics but can they deny that cooks persistently use one spot in a sieve till they have rubbed a hole in it and that gener ally a cook will devote the first thing which comes to her hand to a use for which it was never intended and that this system leads to great damaged if they do I 1 should like to ask them to account tor the number of knives which are broken and to ask them it they ever in their lives saw a knife broken by proper use in the dining it stands to reason first that I 1 cannot go through the misuses which every article in the kitchen Is put to such should not be necessary and Is certainly impossible in the space which I 1 mean this book to oc cupy and secondly that as A mere man away all day at my business I 1 could not possibly be expected to know but most sensible women must admit if they think over it carefully that the annual renewals of a kitchen are out of all proportion this being so how should it be dealt witha well most men of bus ness set aside a certain amount of their incomes tor what ih on balance sheets depreciation ut plant I 1 wonder how many women there are who make any s ich provision in their own particular business homec I 1 wonder if there is one single one who is longheaded enough to have ever thought of such a thing and I 1 won der how many there are who have ever dreamed of a yearly or half year ly stock tal ing 7 do you know my fair readers that yours is the only business in the world which is not conducted on these ann caples and do you know that yours are the only servants in the world who object to be charged with de over and above a certain reasonable amounts do you know that where servants are employed in similar kursu ts by mei 1 I refer more particularly now to waiters and barmaids etc that there is such a thing as a breakage fund to which all subscribe willingly and that any surplus is devoted to the benefit of all concerned 7 now do you not think it would be well if you established such a systems do you not think it would make your servants more careful and you much I 1 am sure you do and this being so I 1 counsel all housekeepers to put it in practice but I 1 must get on to even a more important of waste than this there is perhaps no more serious expense in a household than coal it behooves you to be most careful of its consumption to do you justice in many ways you are you will reg exactly the amount of coal you use upstairs you put off having fires for your own comfort as long as you can and you economize by persuading your family to make one fire do tor as many as possible but there are ways to save coal that is to say there is a way to pre t look at your aitor coal vent it being wasted in most mid die class houses the kitchen has to provide breakfast middle day dinner or luncheon a cup of tea at five clock and dinner to do this it Is necessary accord ng to the cook to keep up a roaring furnace that would roast an ox or melt enough iron to make a good s zed gun from halt past six in the morning to close on ten clock at night fifteen and a halt hours there is no good in going into any elaborate explanations as to how to avoid this everybody knows as well as I 1 do but no woman takes the trouble to see that the coob really slacks down her fire of course everybody will jump to the front and say she and every other mistress does see to the kitchen fire but equally of course they do nothing of the kind if you don t believe me take down own at your own years bill for coal As a matter of fact your cook ought not to burn more coal in winter than in summer As a rule she burns three times as much some cooks are clever enough to hide this by making up the sur plus from the better coal nothing however alters the fact that the real bract cal cooking of a house in which I 1 do not include making a cup of tea does not begin till near mid day and Is over by 6 30 at latest in other words a really good fire Is re quiren tor about four hours yet the sparks fly upwards for some sixteen hours 1 expect that I 1 shall have plenty of people writing to say they have tried gas and found it was no saving at all as they burned just as much coal as ever with these persons I 1 quite agree in fact I 1 will go further I 1 should not be surprised to find that it proved infinitely more expensive because of course if you still keep a fire burning from 6 30 a m to 10 p m and gas besides there is not much chance for economy to come in there Is much more to be said about women s sins in the direction of the kitchen but they belong more particularly to the larder and I 1 will treat of them under that head there is no good in taking too many things together copyright by funk Wag nalls co |
