Part 33

HERB TEAS

Are made by infusing the dried or green leaves and stalks in boiling water, and letting them stand until cold. Sweeten to taste.

Sage tea, sweetened with honey, is good for a sore throat, used as a gargle, with a small bit of alum dissolved in it.

Catnip tea is the best panacea for infant ills, in the way of cold and colic, known to nurses.

Pennyroyal tea will often avert the unpleasant consequences of a sudden check of perspiration, or the evils induced by ladies’ thin shoes.

Chamomile and gentian teas are excellent tonics taken either cold or hot.

The tea made from blackberry-root is said to be good for summer disorders. That from green strawberry leaves is an admirable and soothing wash for a cankered mouth.

Tea of parsley-root scraped and steeped in boiling water, taken warm, will often cure strangury and kindred affections, as will that made from dried pumpkin-seed.

Tansy and rue teas are useful in cases of colic, as are fennel seeds steeped in brandy.

A tea of damask-rose leaves, dry or fresh, will usually subdue any simple case of summer complaint in infants.

Mint tea, made from the green leaves, crushed in cold or hot water and sweetened, is palatable and healing to the stomach and bowels.

MINT JULEP. ✠

Some sprigs of green mint, slightly bruised in a tumbler with a teaspoon. Put in a generous teaspoonful of white sugar; add gradually, stirring and rubbing lightly, enough water to fill the glass three-quarters of the way to the top. Fill up with pounded ice; stir hard; pour into a larger glass that you may shake up well, and put in two tablespoonfuls fine brandy.

This is called a “hail-storm julep.”

EAU SUCRÉ. ✠

Dissolve three or four lumps of loaf sugar in a glass of ice-water, and take a teaspoonful every few minutes for a “tickling in the throat,” or a hacking cough. Keep it ice-cold.

A simple, but often an efficacious remedy.

THE NURSERY.

All food intended for infants should be very thoroughly cooked. The numerous varieties of farinaceous substances—biscotine, farina, rice-flour, arrowroot, etc., however nourishing may be their properties when rightly prepared, are harsh and drastic when underdone. Unless you have a nurse whom you know for yourself to be faithful and experienced, always superintend the cooking of baby’s food. It can do no harm—it may prevent much—if you examine it every day to see that it is right as to quality and quantity. Do not aim at variety in this branch of your profession. Confine a child under three years of age to a very limited bill of fare. His stomach is too delicate an organ to be tampered with. Let milk—scalded or boiled, as a rule—be the staple, mixed with farina, barley, or something of the sort. Let him munch Graham bread and light crackers freely. Remove far from him hot bread and griddle-cakes. When he has cut his carnivorous teeth, Nature says—“This creature wants meat.” And Nature’s supply is seldom in advance of the demand. If he did not need what the teeth are designed to chew, you may be sure they would not be given him. Grant him the novel food sparingly and with discretion as to kind. Rare beef and well-boiled mutton, tender roast or boiled chicken and turkey are safe. Withhold fried meats of every description. Do not let him touch veal or pork in any shape. Mince the meat very finely to save his digestive apparatus all unnecessary work. Mealy old potatoes—_never_ new or waxy—young onions, boiled in two waters; fresh asparagus, green peas, and dry sweet potatoes should suffice for vegetables, with, of course, rice and hominy. For dessert, once in a while, a simple custard, a taste of home-made ice-cream, rice and farina puddings, Graham hasty pudding; the inner part of a well-roasted apple, and, in their season, ripe peaches and apples, will not harm him, taken in moderation, if he be well and strong.

_Pare the fruit always._ The skin of an apple is as bad for him as a bit of your kid gloves would be; that of a grape more indigestible than sole-leather. Raisins—“skins and all”—are unfit for anybody to eat. Pulp and pits, they are poisonous for baby. Ditto, pickles, pastry, and preserves. Ditto, most kinds of cake and all sorts of fruit puddings.

Give him light suppers, and put him to bed early in a dark room. He will not grow better in a glare of artificial light than will your camellias and azalias.

Always see for yourself that his last waking thoughts are pleasant; that he shuts his eyes at peace with the world and in love with you; that his feet are warm, his stomach easy, and his body not overloaded with blankets and quilts; also, that the nursery is clean and freshly aired. These are better prescriptions for sound slumber than all the old wives’ fables of the excellent properties of that pernicious drug—Soothing Syrup.

FARINA. ✠

1 cup _boiling_ water. 1 cup fresh milk. 1 large tablespoonful Hecker’s Farina, wet up with cold water. 2 teaspoonfuls white sugar. A pinch of salt.

Stir the farina into the boiling water (_slightly_ salted) in the farina kettle (_i. e._, one boiler set within another, the latter filled with hot water). Boil fifteen minutes, stirring constantly until it is well-thickened. Then add the milk, stirring it in gradually, and boil fifteen minutes longer. Sweeten, and give to the child so soon as it is cool enough.

You may make enough in the morning to last all day; warming it up with a little hot milk as you want it. Keep in a cold place. Some of the finest children I have ever seen were reared upon this diet. Do not get it too sweet, and cook it well. Be sure the farina is sweet and dry.

BARLEY.

It sometimes happens that milk disagrees with a delicate infant so seriously that it is necessary to substitute some other article of diet for a few days. I have known barley water to be used, in such cases, with great success.

2 cups _boiling_ water. 2 tablespoonfuls pearl barley—picked over and washed. A pinch of salt. 2 teaspoonfuls white sugar—_not_ heaping.

Soak the barley half an hour in a very little lukewarm water, and stir, without draining, into the boiling water, salted very slightly. Simmer one hour, stirring often, and strain before sweetening.

ARROWROOT. ✠

1 cup of boiling water. 1 cup fresh milk. 2 teaspoonfuls best Bermuda arrowroot, wet with cold water. 1 _small_ pinch of salt. 2 even teaspoonfuls white sugar, dissolved in the milk.

Stir the arrowroot paste into the salted boiling water; stir and boil five minutes or until it is clear; add the sweetened milk, and boil ten minutes, slowly, still stirring.

If the child has fever, or cannot digest milk, substitute hot water for it. It is, however, a dangerous experiment to forbid milk altogether for an infant. I should rather diminish the quantity, putting in, say, one-third or one-fourth as much as the receipt names, and filling up with boiling water.

RICE JELLY. ✠

½ cup whole rice, well-washed and soaked two hours in a little warm water; then added, with the water, to that in the kettle. 3 pints cold water. 1 small pinch of salt, put into the water. Sweeten to taste with loaf sugar.

Simmer the rice half an hour; then boil it until it is a smooth paste, and the water is reduced one-half. Strain through double tarlatan, sweeten, and give to the child.

This is an admirable preparation for an infant suffering with weakness of the bowels. If there is no fever, you may put one-third part milk, boiled with the rice. Give a few spoonfuls every hour or half hour.

MILK AND BREAD. ✠

1 cup boiled milk. 2 tablespoonfuls stale Graham bread. A very little sugar.

Crumble the bread into the boiled milk, sweeten, and when cool enough, feed to the child with a spoon.

WHEATEN GRITS. ✠

4 tablespoonfuls grits (cracked wheat) soaked in a little cold water one hour, and then put into the kettle. 1 quart boiling water. 1 cup milk. A pinch of salt.

Boil the soaked grits in the quart of water one hour, stirring up often; add the milk and boil half an hour longer. Sweeten to taste, and if the child is well, pour cream over it. This is designed for children over a year old. It is slightly cathartic; especially if the milk be omitted, and is most useful in regulating the bowels. When this can be done without drugs, it is far better.

HOMINY AND MILK. ✠

½ cup _small_ hominy. 1 scant quart of cold water. Pinch of salt.

Boil one hour, stirring often. While hot, mix some soft with new milk, sweeten to taste and feed to baby with a spoon.

This is also relaxing to the bowels, and should not be given if the child is disposed to summer complaint.

GRAHAM HASTY PUDDING. ✠

1 cup Graham flour, wet up with cold water. 1 large cup _boiling_ water and same quantity of milk. 1 saltspoonful of salt.

Stir the wet flour into the boiling water, slightly salted. Boil fifteen minutes, stirring almost constantly. Add the milk and cook, after it has come again to a boil, ten minutes longer. Give with sugar and milk for breakfast.

Eaten with cream, nutmeg, and powdered sugar, this is a good plain dessert for grown people as well as children.

RICE FLOUR HASTY PUDDING

Is made as above, substituting two heaping tablespoonfuls rice flour for the Graham.

MILK PORRIDGE.

1 tablespoonful Indian meal } wet to a paste with cold 1 tablespoonful white flour } water. 2 cups boiling water. 2 cups milk. A _good_ pinch of salt.

Boil the paste in the hot water twenty minutes; add the milk and cook ten minutes more, stirring often.

Eat with sugar and milk, stirred in while hot.

MUSH AND MILK.

1 cup Indian meal, wet up with cold water. 2 quarts cold water. Salt to taste.

Boil two hours; stirring often with a wooden spoon or a stick.

To be eaten hot with milk and sugar.

CONDENSED MILK.

This is perhaps the safest substitute for the “good milk from one cow,” which few mothers in town can procure. Keep the can in a cool place and mix according to directions.

SUNDRIES.

CLEANING POTS, KETTLES, AND TINS.

Boil a double handful of hay or grass in a new iron pot, before attempting to cook with it; scrub out with soap and sand; then set on full of fair water, and let it boil half an hour. After this, you may use it without fear. As soon as you empty a pot or frying-pan of that which has been cooked in it, fill with hot or cold water (hot is best) and set back upon the fire to scald thoroughly.

New tins should stand near the fire with boiling water in them, in which has been dissolved a spoonful of soda, for an hour; then be scoured inside with soft soap; afterward rinsed with hot water. Keep them clean by rubbing with sifted _wood_-ashes, or whitening.

Copper utensils should be cleaned with brickdust and flannel.

Never set a vessel in the pot-closet without cleaning and wiping it thoroughly. If grease be left in it, it will grow rancid. If set aside wet, it is apt to rust.

KNIVES.

Clean with a soft flannel and Bath brick. If rusty, use wood-ashes, rubbed on with a newly cut bit of Irish potato. This will remove spots when nothing else will. Keep your best set wrapped in _soft_ white paper; then in linen, in a drawer out of damp and dust.

Never dip the ivory handles of knives in hot water.

SILVER.

Wash, after each meal, all that is soiled, in _very_ hot soft water, with hard soap. Wipe hard and quickly on a clean towel; then polish with dry flannel. If discolored with egg, mustard, spinach, or beans, by any other means, rub out the stain with a stiff toothbrush (used only for this purpose), and silver soap.

For years I have used no other preparation for cleaning silver than the Indexical silver soap, applied as I have described. After rubbing with a stiff lather made with this, wash off with hot water, wipe and polish while hot. There is no need for the weekly silver cleaning to be an event or a bugbear, if a little care and watchfulness be observed after each meal. Silver should never be allowed to grow dingy. If Bridget or Chloe will _not_ attend properly to this matter, take it in hand yourself. Have your own soap-cups—two of them—one with common soap, the other with a cake of silver soap in the bottom. Have for one a mop, for the other a stiff brush—a toothbrush is best. Use your softest towels for silver.

Besides being clean and easy of application, the silver soap will not wear away the metal as will whiting or chalk, or plate-powder, however finely pulverized.

CHINA AND GLASS.

There are few of the minor crooks in the lot of the careful housewife that cause her more anxiety and more discouragement than the attempt to teach domestics how to wash up dishes.

“I’ve heard that Mrs. —— is very _exact_ about some things, such as washing up dishes and the likes of that!” said a woman to me, with an affected laugh, having called to apply for the then vacant position of cook in my kitchen. She had high recommendations, a whine engrafted upon her native brogue, and spoke of me in the third person—a trick of cheap (and bogus) gentility that tries my nerves and temper to the very marrow of my spine. “I was a-saying to myself, as I came along, that Mrs. —— must have been _very_ onlucky in her girls if she had to tache them how to wash up dishes. I always thought that was one of the things that came _kinder nat’ral_ to every cook.”

“Mrs. ——’s” experience goes to prove that the wrong way of doing this must “come natural” to the class mentioned, and that Nature is mighty in woman. The fact that the right way is _not_ to pile unrinsed dishes and plates in a big pan with a loose bit of soap on top, and pour lukewarm water over all; then with a bit of rag to splash said water over each separately, and make another pile of them upon the kitchen-table, until the last is drawn, reeking with liquid grease, sticky and streaming, from the now filthy puddle of diluted swill; then to rub them lightly and leisurely with one towel—be they many or few—is as difficult of comprehension to the scullionly mind as would be a familiar lecture upon the _pons asinorum_.

Yet the right and only neat method is so simple and easy! Rinse the greasy plates, and whatever is sticky with sugar or other sweet, in hot water and transfer to a larger pan of _very_ hot. Wash glass first; next silver; then china—one article at a time, although you may put several in the pan. Have a mop with a handle; rub upon the soap (over which the water should have been poured) until you have strong suds. There is a little implement made by the “Dover Stamping Co.,” a cup of tinned wire, called a “soap-shaker,” that greatly facilitates this process of suds-making, without waste of soap. Wash both sides of plate and saucer, and wipe _before putting it out of your hand_. Draining leaves streaks which can be felt by sensitive finger-tips, if not seen. If china is rough to the touch, it is dirty. Hot, clean suds, a dry, clean towel, and quick wiping leave it bright and shining. Roll your glasses around in the water, filling them as soon as they touch it, and you need never crack one. A lady did once explain the dinginess of her goblets to me by saying that she was “afraid to put them in hot water. It _rots_ glass and makes it so tender! I prefer to have them a little cloudy.” This is literally true—that she said it, I mean. Certainly not that a year’s soak in hot water could make glass tender.

WASHING WINDOWS.

Dissolve a little washing-soda in the water if the glass is very dim with smoke or dirt. Do not let it run on the sash, but wash each pane with old flannel; dry quickly with a soft, clean towel, wiping the corners with especial care. Polish with chamois skin, or newspapers rubbed soft between the hands.

TO CLEAN CARPETS.

Sprinkle the carpet with tea-leaves; sweep well; then use soap and soft, warm water for the grease and dirt spots. This freshens up old carpets marvellously. Rub the wet spots dry with a clean cloth.

TO CLEAN PAINT.

Scour with a flat brush, less harsh than that used for floors, using warm soft suds; before it dries wash off with old flannel dipped in clean cold water, and wipe dry with a linen towel or cloth. Go through the whole process quickly, that the water may not dry upon and streak the paint.

TO KEEP WOOLENS.

Beat out all the dust, and sun for a day; shake very hard; fold neatly and pin—or, what is better, sew up—closely in muslin or linen cloths, putting a small lump of gum-camphor in the centre of each bundle. Wrap newspapers about all, pinning so as to exclude dust and insects.

These are really all the precautions necessary for the safety even of furs, if they are strictly obeyed. But you may set moths at defiance if you can, in addition to these, secure, as a packing-case, a whiskey or alcohol barrel, but lately emptied, and still strongly scented by the liquor. Have a close head, and fit it in neatly. Set away in the garret, and think no more of your treasures until next winter.

TO WASH DOUBTFUL CALICOES.

Put a teaspoonful of sugar of lead into a pailful of water, and soak fifteen minutes before washing.

TO CLEAN A CLOTH COAT.

Rub soap upon the wristbands and collar; dip them in boiling-hot suds—and scrub with a stiff clean brush. Treat the grease and dirt spots in the same way. Change the suds for clean and hot as it gets dirty. Wet and brush the whole coat, the right way of the cloth, with fresh suds, when you have scoured out the spots, adding three or four tablespoonfuls of alcohol to the water. Stretch the sleeves, pocket-holes, wristbands, and collar into shape, folding the sleeves as if they had been ironed, also the collar. Lay upon a clean cloth, spread upon the table or floor, and let it get perfectly dry in the shade, turning over three or four times without disturbing the folds.

TO CLEAN SILK.

_To Remove Grease Spots._—Scrape Venetian or French chalk fine; moisten to a stiff paste with soap-suds; make it into flat cakes by pressing between two boards, and dry in the sun or oven. Keep these for use. When you need them, scrape one to powder and cover the spot with it, laying the silk upon a fine clean linen or cotton cloth. Lay two or three folds of tissue-paper upon the chalk, and press it with a hot iron for a minute or more, taking care it does not touch the silk. Raise the paper and scrape off the grease with the chalk. Split a visiting-card, and rub the place where the spot _was_, with the inside, to restore the lustre. The silk should be pressed on the wrong side.

If the spot be discovered at once, simply rub the wrong side hard with powdered French chalk, and leave it to wear off.

_To Wash Silk._—Mix together

2 cups cold water. 1 tablespoonful honey. 1 tablespoonful soft soap. 1 wineglass alcohol.

Shake up well; lay the silk, a breadth at a time, on a table, and sponge both sides with this, rubbing it well in; shake it about well and up and down in a tub of cold water; flap it as dry as you can, but do not wring it. Hang it by the edges, not the middle, until fit to iron. Iron on the wrong side while it is very damp.

Black and dark or sober-colored silks may be successfully treated in this way.

_To Smooth Wrinkled Silk._—Sponge on the right side with very weak gum-arabic water, and iron on the wrong side.

TO RENEW WRINKLED CRAPE.

Stretch over a basin of boiling water, holding it smooth, but not tight, over the top, and shifting as the steam fairly penetrates it. Fold, while damp, in the original creases, and lay under a heavy book or board to dry. It will look almost as well as new.

TO RESTORE THE PILE OF VELVET.

If but slightly pressed, treat as you would crape. Steam on the right side until heated through. If very badly crushed, wet on the wrong side; let an assistant hold a hot iron, bottom upward, and pass the wet side of the velvet slowly over the flat surface—a sort of upside-down ironing. When the steam rises thickly through to the right side, it will raise the pile with it. Dry without handling.

TO CURL TUMBLED FEATHERS.

Hold over the heated top of the range or stove, not near enough to burn; withdraw, shake them out, and hold them over it again until curled.

TO CLEAN STRAW MATTING.

Wash with a cloth dipped in clean salt and water; then wipe dry at once. This prevents it from turning yellow.

TO WASH LAWN OR THIN MUSLIN.

Boil two quarts of wheat-bran in six quarts, or more, of water, half an hour. Strain through a coarse towel and mix in the water in which the muslin is to be washed. Use no soap, if you can help it, and no starch. Rinse lightly in fair water. This preparation both cleanses and stiffens the lawn. If you can conveniently, take out all the gathers. The skirt should always be ripped from the waist.

TO WASH WOOLENS.

Wash in clean, hot soap suds; rinse out in clear, hot water, and shake out the wet without passing through the wringer. Worsted dress-goods should never be wrung when washed.

TO WASH WHITE LACE EDGING.

Have a quart bottle covered with linen, stitched smoothly to fit the shape. Begin at the bottom and wind the lace about it, basting fast at both edges, even the minutest point, to the linen. Wash on the bottle, soaping it well, rinse by plunging in a pail of fair water, and boil as you would a white handkerchief, bottle and all. Set in the hot sun to dry. When quite dry, clip the basting-threads, and use the lace without ironing. If neatly basted on, it will look nearly as well as new—if not quite.

BLACK LACE.

½ cup rain water, or very soft spring water. 1 teaspoonful borax. 1 tablespoonful spirits of wine.

Squeeze the tumbled rusty lace through this four times, then rinse in a cup of hot water in which a black kid glove has been boiled. Pull out the edges of the lace until almost dry; then press for two days between the leaves of a heavy book.

TO SPONGE BLACK WORSTED DRESSES.

Sponge on the right side with a strong tea made of _fig leaves_, and iron on the wrong.

This process restores lustre and crispness to alpaca, bombazine, etc.

TO CLEAN VERY DIRTY BLACK DRESSES.

2 parts soft water to 1 part alcohol, or if there be paint spots upon the stuff, spirits turpentine. Soap a sponge well, dip in the mixture and rub, a breadth at a time, on both sides, stretching it upon a table. Iron on the wrong side, or that which is to be inside when the stuff is made up. Sponge off with fair water, hot but not scalding, _before you iron_. Iron while damp.

TO REMOVE STAINS FROM MARBLE.

Make a mortar of unslacked lime and very strong lye. Cover the spot thickly with it and leave it on for six weeks. Wash it off perfectly clean, and rub _hard_ with a brush dipped in a lather of soap and water. Polish with a smooth, hard brush.

IRON MOULD

Is as nearly ineradicable as it is possible for stain to be. _Try_ moistening the part injured with ink, and while this is wet, rub in muriatic acid diluted with five times its weight of water. I have heard that the old and new stain can sometimes be removed together by this operation.

MILDEW

Is likewise obstinate. If anything will extract it, it is lemon-juice mixed with an equal weight of salt, powdered starch, and soft soap. Rub on thickly and lay upon the grass in the hot sun; renewing the application two or three times a day until the spot fades or comes out.

I have also used salt wet with tomato-juice, often renewed, laying the article stained upon the grass. Sometimes the stain was taken out, sometimes not.

INK.

While the stains are yet wet upon the carpet, sponge them with skim-milk _thoroughly_. Then wash out the milk with a clean sponge dipped again and again in fair water, cold. Exchange this presently for warm; then rub dry with a cloth. If the stain is upon any article of clothing, or table, or bed linen, wash in the milk well, afterward in the water.

_Dry_ ink stains can be removed from white cloth by oxalic acid, or lemon-juice and salt.

STAINS OF ACIDS AND ALKALIES.