Part 3

By the way, I hope you call her a “maid,” not a “girl.” The latter word has been so rubbed and soiled by persistent usage on the part of domesticated foreigners, who shed the name of “servant” as soon as they stamp upon American soil, and by the handling of would-be “genteel” housewives, that people of refinement hesitate to touch it. What the old-fashioned New Englanders called “hired help” would shake the dust off the soles of the shoes they are not yet quite used to wearing, were you to allude to them as “servants.” “Maid” sounds well, bearing to their tickled ears a certain dignity not unsuited to their new estate.

Beginning with the first meal of the day, we will suppose a cereal, fruit, one dish of meat, bread and butter, potatoes, hot muffins, tea and coffee—a typical American breakfast, in fact.

A fruit-plate, holding a doily, on which is a finger-bowl half-filled with water, cold in summer, tepid in winter, is set for each person. If fruit that requires paring or cutting is to be eaten, lay a fruit-knife on the plate. If oranges are served, add an orange-spoon. At the right of the plate are the water tumbler, a knife, with the sharp edge toward the plate, and a cereal-spoon, bowl upward. At the left should be the bread-and-butter plate, the fork, tines upward, and a folded napkin.

In front of each plate are a pepper-cruet and a salt-cellar.

In the center of the board have a bowl of flowers, or something green and growing, all the year round. At the foot, carving-knife and fork, a steel or other “sharpener,” and a tablespoon; unless you have a polished table, cover it with a neat breakfast-cloth, using napkins (“serviettes”) to match. If your table-top be at all presentable, lay a hemstitched or embroidered square of linen—sold as a “breakfast or luncheon square”—in the center, and under each plate a doily of the same style. A thick mat to protect the varnish against the heated meat dish; a carafe, or glass pitcher, of ice-water on each side of the table, and the tea and coffee equipage at the head, complete the preparations for serving.

The basket, or dish of fruit, is handed from the sideboard where are arranged tablespoons, the glass or silver tub of broken ice to replenish glasses, and, if there are no carafes on the table, a pitcher of iced water, with a relay of knives and forks in case an extra supply should be required on account of accidents.

At the last minute, before the mistress is told at the sitting-room door that “breakfast is on,” the glasses are filled with iced water, a firm ball of butter and a freshly-cut slice of bread are laid upon the small plate at the left of each place.

When the family and guests are seated, the waitress, dressed in a neat gingham or print gown, a clean apron, with _bretelles_, bib and full skirt, and a white cap pinned above orderly hair (not used to cloak unkempt elf-locks), passes the fruit basket or dish to the mistress of the house from the left side; then to each person at table.

The fruit eaten, let the waitress, beginning as before, at the head of the table, take from the right side of each person, plate, knife and spoon in one hand, finger-bowl in the other, and remove to a side table, or to the “waitress’s pantry,” where they are to be washed. Never pile plates and saucers upon one another, or upon a tray. The habit is slovenly and lazy. Still more displeasing is the scraping of plates at the side table, or within hearing of the eaters.

If the cereal be cooked, it is usually served by the mistress of the house. In this case set the hot dish upon a mat beside or before her, when you have put a cereal saucer with a plate under it before each person. Have a tray, with a napkin or doily within it, ready to receive each saucer as it is filled; offer to the eaters from the left, and when all are served pass sugar and cream on the tray.

When the cereal has been discussed, remove first the dish, then the saucers, and bring in hot plates, quickly and dexterously setting one before each person. They should have been warmed through slowly in the kitchen, but not be so hot as to draw the varnish through the doilies. Next set the dish of hot meat, chicken or fish, in front of the carver. As each portion is laid upon a plate, the plate is set upon the tray you hold. Taking the plate in your hand when you reach the mistress of the house, set it down before her from the _right_.

There need be no confusion in this much-debated question of “left and right” if the waitress will bear in mind one simple rule:

When plate, cup or other article is to be taken from the tray by the eater, or he is to help himself from an offered dish, the waitress must stand on his left, that he may use his right hand freely. What the waitress puts upon the table with her own hand must be done from the right.

For example, the plate with meat on it is set down from the _right_ of the person who is thus served. He takes his cup of coffee and helps himself to sugar and cream from the _left_.

Before the waitress leaves the breakfast-room for the pantry, if she does not remain throughout the meal, let her replenish glasses with water and ice, pass bread or muffins a second time, and if cups are emptied, offer her tray to take them back to the head of the table to be refilled. Should she begin to wash plates and saucers in the adjoining pantry to save time, let this be done very quietly. The rattle of china is not a musical accompaniment to table-talk.

The manner of setting the table and waiting at luncheon is substantially the same as at breakfast. Dinner demands certain variations, while the general principles are the same.

The waitress of to-day has a dinner uniform, decorous in all, becoming to a large majority of women. She wears a black gown, deep white cuffs and collar, and an apron of finer material and somewhat more ornate in fashion than in the forenoon.

Under the damask table-cloth is laid a covering of felt made for this purpose—sold as “table-felt,” or a “silence-cloth.” The linen cover lies more smoothly over this and appears to be of better texture than when spread upon bare boards. Besides the damask table-cloth, a “carving square” is laid at the foot of the table, and under it a thick mat on which the hot dish may stand. On this are carving-knife, fork and “steel;” also tablespoon and gravy ladle, leaving room between for the large dish. A cold plate stands at each place, to be taken up when the hot is set down by the waitress. At the right of the plate lie the soup-spoon, bowl uppermost, two knives, edges turned toward the plate, and a fish-knife (if there is to be fish) beyond the dinner-knives. A tumbler for water, and, if wine is used, glasses for this, stand also on the right, a little beyond the array of knives.

Some prefer to lay the soup-spoon at right angles to the knives, and back of where the plate is to be.

At the left of the plate have two large forks; then one for fish, and outside of this an oyster-fork, if there are to be raw oysters. The napkin, folded flat, and inclosing a slice of bread, cut thicker and narrower than for breakfast, lies also on the left.

Plates for the several courses are in array on the sideboard, except such as must be brought hot from the kitchen. Salad plates and those for dessert stand in order. Saucers for ices are set upon plates lined with doilies. Fruit plates are also supplied with doilies, on which are finger-bowls half-full of water.

A side table is reserved for vegetable dishes. They are not placed upon the principal table now, even at the daily family dinner. Pickles and olives are on the dinner-table; carafes of water, and always flowers.

Some housewives have soup served in hot plates directly from the kitchen. If the tureen be used instead, the mistress preferring to pour it out herself, have a carving-cloth at that end of the table also. The soup ladle lies at her right. As she ladles out the soup it is set on the waitress’s tray. She takes it off with her hand and puts it from the right before any guest who may be present; then the family in turn. At a dinner party, those on the right of the hostess are served first. The soup-plate is set upon the cold plate in front of the eater, and when removed is taken from the right, leaving the lower stationary cold plate in its place, until the fish comes, when it is exchanged for a hot one.

In clearing the table after each course the soup-tureen, and in its turn the large dish at the foot of the table go out first, the soiled plates afterward.

Before the dessert is brought in, crumb the table, using a clean folded napkin, when you have cleared the cloth of salt, pepper, pickles, etc.

After the sweets comes the coffee. This is often sent to the guests into the drawing-room. In this case, the waitress covers a large tray with a white napkin, arranges the filled cups, smoking hot, upon it, sets the sugar in the middle and takes the whole into the room where the party is assembled.

Liqueur-glasses follow the coffee, and are also carried into drawing-room or library. In announcing to the mistress, in sitting-room or elsewhere, that a meal is ready, the waitress says, “Breakfast is on,” or “Luncheon is ready,” or “Dinner is served”—according to modern usage. One frightened unfortunate, on duty at a trial-dinner party, filled the hostess with confusion, the guests with secret amusement, by rattling off all three formulas in a breath.

It is impossible to write out rules that will meet every form and exigency of “entertaining.” The hostess who, having mastered the leading principles here given, trains her waitress into the daily practice of them, insisting that her family shall be served three times a day in the right order, and as punctiliously as if a state banquet were the business of the hour, need fear no embarrassing “situations,” no matter how large the number, nor how important the stations of her guests.

AMONG THE LINENS

Everything commonly classed under this head should be carefully aired before it is put away. Even when this duty has been conscientiously performed, real linen, made of pure flax, has marvelous properties for absorbing humidity. And humidity is the parent of that relentless foe to housewifely peace—mildew. Table-cloths, napkins and linen sheets that have been packed securely—as the owner supposed—in closets, drawers and chests, sometimes present to our horrified eyes a collection of small blotches, like dark freckles, and as ineradicable, and the folds, when opened, smell musty. The walls of the closet were not quite dry, or the chest has stood in a damp room, or the sideboard drawers have gathered must in an unaired basement dining-room.

It is a matter of common prudence to overhaul the contents of linen closets, and especially linen drawers and chests, once a month, if only to make sure that the contents are keeping well. At the same time be on the lookout for rents, broken threads and thin places.

Never buy cheap linen. If you can not afford the finest, you may secure that which is “all linen,” round-threaded and evenly woven. A little practice in the purchase of these treasures will initiate you into the art of judicious choosing. Having bought good “material,” take care of it. A break in a table-cloth or napkin, or towel, if neatly darned, will give you several more weeks of wear out of it—perhaps months. Hemstitched articles are liable to “give” first in the drawn work, and a stitch here in time, saves ninety.

You may keep napery in drawers, if more convenient than elsewhere, or upon shelves in a roomy sideboard. When at all practicable have a light, airy closet for bed linen. My own linen-room, built to order, has a southern window, unshuttered, through which the sun streams all the afternoon on fine days. Except in wet weather this window stands open for an hour of every day—not longer, lest dust should blow in.

Suffer another personal paragraph:—Not a sheet, towel or pillow-case is taken from this closet except by myself. Each pile has place and meaning. Each set of towels belongs to an especial apartment. Heavy bath towels; soft damask for the leastest baby’s use; big, rough huckaback for the boys’ lake baths, and the orderly heaps of different styles and textures, every one marked with embroidered letter or monogram designating chamber or owner—are known familiarly to but one person in the family.

I modestly commend this rule to each housemother. Let the linen shelves be the especial charge of some one particular keeper. If not yourself, one of your daughters. This is rendered almost necessary by the system of rotation that should regulate the use of sheets, pillow-cases, counterpanes and towels. Those which come from the wash this week should be kept by themselves. In laying out clothes for the beds, and towels for the various rooms, select from the bottom of the pile of those laundered one, two or four weeks ago, working gradually upward, week by week, until all have gone through the wash and consequently, all are evenly worn. Never make up a bed with freshly washed linen, no matter how well aired it may seem to be.

Sheets, pillow-cases, towels, table-cloths—all folded linens—should be laid upon the shelves with the open and hemmed ends toward the wall, the round folds outward. The effect is neater to the eye, and articles are more easily taken out.

There should be no smell in this airy closet except the indescribable sweet sense of freshly laundered linen—not strong enough to be called an odor. Lavender, scented grasses, and dried rose leaves are poetical in the writing and the hearing thereof, but the sleeper between smooth cotton or linen sheets sickens of artificial smells. They are neither “goodly,” nor wholesome.

THE CHILDREN

Our forefathers and foremothers were dressed, in infancy, precisely like their fathers and mothers. As we see by the portraits treasured among our curios, they were abridged copies of the adults of a hundred years ago. Parents were then consistent in feeding their progeny with food they considered convenient for themselves.

When the royal father ate fermenty for breakfast it is upon record that a baby prince, suffering from marasmus, was nourished (!) upon barley, boiled soft with raisins. They sat up to late functions—those wretchedly dissipated princelings—and the cotter’s children went to bed at the same time with himself.

He who doubts whether or not our times are better than the former would be converted to steadfastness of conviction by patient study of the nursery habits of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

We have children’s outfitters nowadays, who fashion garments utterly unlike those worn by be-corseted, be-trained, and be-pantalooned grown people. The cotter’s wife clothes her boys in knickerbockers and blouses, her girls in loose waists and brief skirts, all designed expressly—although she does not know it—to allow free and healthful growth of the immature creatures.

I wish I could add that reform as radical and commonsensible had been wrought in children’s diet, and children’s hours of rest and sleep.

Mothers who have thought deeply upon these matters and acted upon meditation, appreciate the hygienic law that children require sleep to promote growth, as well as to repair the waste of waking—which are working—hours. If an adult needs seven hours’ slumber, the infant of days—under seven years of age—requires ten to satisfy wants his senior has outgrown. Up to the age when the child ceases to add inches, if not cubits, to his stature yearly, provision must be made for the steady drain upon vital and nerve forces.

The aforesaid canny mothers call in the little ones from play before sundown in summer, bathe them, endue them in nightgowns and pajamas, put dressing-gowns over these, and loose slippers upon the tired feet, then set them down to a supper of bread and milk, or buttered bread with a dash of jam or jelly, and good, sweet milk, with once in a while a plain cooky as an afterthought. Supper over and prayers said, the darlings are laid in bed by the time the west begins to blush at the sun’s nearer approach. In winter, the six o’clock supper is served in the nursery or dining-room, and the bairnies disposed of comfortably to themselves and to the rest of the household before “grown-uppers” sit down to the “hearty” supper or dinner dividing the working day from an evening as busy, and sometimes almost as long.

To borrow from the slang dictionary—the child needs the ten or twelve hours’ sleep in his business of growing tall and robust, steady of nerve and sane of mind. Furthermore, he needs food adapted to his needs. Plenty of cereals; plenty of milk; plenty of ripe fruit in the season thereof; meat once a day; nourishing broths and a few green vegetables. No fried things whatsoever; neither tea nor coffee. No pastry; no mince pie nor plum pudding, nor highly seasoned _entrées_. Time enough for these delicacies when the inches (and feet) are all in, the muscles in splendid working order, the gray matter of the brain “all there,” and ready to do the duties of a man’s brain for fifty years to come.

One branch of a child’s education, sorely neglected in tens of thousands of homes, is mastication. As soon as he cuts his teeth teach him why they were given him. Make him chew everything he takes into his mouth. Able dieticians are proclaiming boldly that milk should be chewed, a mouthful at a time, if one would not have it change to curd about the diaphragm. The child’s meat should be finely minced for him until he can cut it up for himself, and bolting be reckoned as a breach of decent behavior. He may forget the truism that “gentlemen eat slowly” after he joins in the great American rush for fortune. Obedience to it for a term of years will lay the foundation of sound digestion. He will have a better chance of long life and no dyspepsia, than if he had been allowed to gulp down milk by the glassful without drawing breath, and to gobble steaks and chops in two-inch chunks.

Insist that the child shall behave decorously at the table, as well as eat properly, from the time he can comprehend an order conveyed in the simplest language. Do not let him make porridge of his soup by crumbing bread into it, or churn crackers into mush in his milk, or dip toast into his cocoa, or work vegetables and gravy into a mound, using the knife as a trowel. He should be reproved for sipping soup and other liquids audibly, and for loud inspirations after drinking. Line upon line and precept upon precept, gently but regularly enforced, will make a well-bred boy of him. And right habits learned in childhood last a lifetime.

There is common sense in each of the conventions at which vulgarians scoff.

DIET AND DIGESTION

The second depends upon the first. The two make up a whole which is Health.

“Food values” is so emphatically a technical term that I would not employ it here if it did not express just what I mean, when used untechnically.

What we eat has many and differing values. It is possible, without degenerating into dietetic cranks, to appraise them properly and to apply the knowledge thus gained to the building up of these bodies of ours and the consequent up-building of the immortal better part they encase.

Digestions are so many and so diverse, the one from the other, that it is rank folly to prescribe bills-of-fare warranted to agree with everybody.

Take, for example, milk. It has won from the ablest writers on dietetics the title of the One Perfect Food for the human race. Specialists on dyspepsia prescribe an almost exclusive milk diet for obstinate cases. In typhoid fevers it is the specific regimen. One man consumes inordinate quantities, by advice, to increase adipose tissue. A woman lives upon skim milk, swallowed very slowly, to reduce her flesh. And so on through multifarious cases—all acting upon the recommendation of experts.

All the time, as each of us knows, certain stomachs can not digest milk, or even retain it long enough to test its nutritive properties, while in others it causes intense heartburn and engenders bile.

Toast and tea are the stock invalid diet, the civilized world over. Yet Medical Daniels (M. D.’s) are rising up by the score to protest against ruining stomachs with tannic acid and burdening digestive organs by forcing what is no better than dry sawdust upon them.

Chocolate is freely prescribed as digestible, and so nutritious that one could live and not lose flesh, eating nothing else, for weeks together.

I am acquainted personally with ten people at least, to whom any form of chocolate is poisonous and abhorrent to every sense.

Natives of the land where the cocoa palm grows virtually subsist upon the nuts, and many in other lands devour the imported cocoanut with impunity. The fatty flesh acts upon some stomachs with the virulence of glass filings, producing terrible cramps and even convulsions.

A noted teacher of culinary lore strenuously recommends our native nuts, walnuts, filberts, hazelnuts, chestnuts, and so forth, raw, and cooked in various ways as a substitute for meat. The innovation is daring, and opposed to the conclusion based upon the observation and experience of scores of other writers, to the effect that nuts are hurtful to six people out of ten, the oils, and the cells which contain the oils, difficult of digestion by any save the strongest stomach.

It is much the fashion with writers upon domestic economy to extol fish as more economical and more easily digested than flesh, besides being rich in the phosphates needed to repair the waste of brain force.

Some people who would scout the imputation of invalidism can not eat even fresh fish without experiencing symptoms not unlike ptomaine poisoning. I recall the case of one woman who was extremely fond of oysters, yet dared not touch them for fear of fatal consequences. I once saw her faint away an hour after she had eaten half a dozen.

Who shall decide when dietists and individual digestions disagree so radically as is indicated by these and hundreds of other examples? And by what standard of gastronomic morality shall we gage personal conduct in the government of appetite? Since man must eat to live, and an unimpaired digestion is wealth inestimable—what shall we eat?

Certain combinations of materials are manifestly iniquitous. Cooked fats, fried fats in particular; soggy bread, especially when fresh from the oven; hot cakes, (“sinkers”), viscid with griddle grease and swimming in butter; tough doughnuts, reeking with lard; leathery pie-crust; underdone fish and rare pork and veal; cabbage that has been cooked in but one water; turnips that have been left in the ground until they are stringy pith; tough meats of all kinds that resist mastication; unripe fruits—none of these should ever enter human mouths, or be imposed upon the long-suffering digestive apparatus.

The housemother who studies wisely the properties of the fare she puts before her family will adjust food-values to the several needs of those to whom she ministers. The child of weak intestines must have neither oatmeal, hominy, nor mush for his breakfast cereal. Rice, rightly cooked, thickened milk, well boiled, and arrowroot porridge, will heal irritation, and, as it were, tighten the tension of the machine. He may not indulge in the apple-sauce and cracked wheat which are better than laxative drugs to his hale brother.