Part 3

As I said, Jack and I arrived just at this crisis in the farm life of Podunk. Indeed, within an hour after we landed, and amid the chaos of unpacking, a gentle maiden tapped at our kitchen door and importuned us to buy some preserving berries.

Jack has a sweet tooth and I saw at a glance that he had not missed the vision of rows of red jars on the swinging shelf in the cellar, and Sunday night teas of jam, long after the last strawberry had ripened and decayed. But he desisted and let her depart without buying a berry. This I call heroic and manly, and told him so on the spot.

Of course the well had not been pumped out, the water-pail had not been unpacked, the grocery supplies had not arrived. There had not been a fire in the stove for eight months, and there was no split wood in the wood shed, but men have been known to expect household routine to go on under conditions quite as hindering, therefore I repeat, that Jack, in the face of vanishing sweets, showed fortitude and consideration.

But it was plain that "strawberry time" had made an impression on his mind that took somewhat the form of a problem.

Now Jack is never happier than when he has nuts to crack or problems to solve. He is that all-round type of man that can and does bring the same philosophic trend of mind to bear upon matters domestic as upon civic and national affairs.

We had come to Podunk to rest, but Jack always rests in motion, and in less than a week after our arrival I saw him go forth to canvass the community. For days and days he was as glum as an oyster, leaving me to guess what he was up to, but I have so long known the limitations to his capacity for holding in and carrying a secret, that I could wait in patience for the unbosoming. It came on one of those chilly, rainy nights in June,--the sort of night that Jack always expects and gets warm gingerbread for supper. Gingerbread always puts him in a talkative mood.

We had each taken a second cup of tea, when Jack looked up and said, "Do you realize, my dear, that this canning and jellying process is only just started for the season in Podunk? I find that our Fourth of July not only proclaims American independence but also the proper time for making currant jelly, and so, unless Nature plays us false, the same ordeal must be repeated, with only the difference that 'currant' will be written on the label instead of 'strawberry.' And still another repetition, when raspberries are ripe and blackberries grow sweet and luscious. Again when the huckleberry bushes give up their treasures, shadowing forth a winter supply for pies. Then come the peaches, pears and plums, followed by apples, grapes and quinces. Between times, lest the hand forgets its cunning, there are peas, corn, beets and tomatoes to be rescued for future use. And the season ends with a pickling tournament.

"It hardly seems creditable, but from here to Podunk Hollow, a distance of less than two miles, and only sparsely settled, I find by actual count that there are thousands of cans of fruit and hundreds of glasses of jelly prepared every season. From 'strawberry time'--indeed some ambitious housekeepers start in with rhubarb in April--until the last luckless green tomato is snatched from Jack Frost, there is a mad rush on the part of the farmer's wife to keep apace with Nature and to take care of her bounties with a thrifty hand."

By this time Jack was ready for a second helping of gingerbread and proceeded. "Don't you see, my dear, that this is an awful waste of muscular energy and stove fuel. Don't you see that consolidation and coöperation at just this point would emancipate these women quite as much as the telephone and the rural delivery?

"Furthermore, I believe there is fruit enough that goes to waste every year, which, if rescued, would not only pay for the running of a community kitchen, but also give a handsome bonus for civic beautifying. It is my firm faith that Podunk can earn the foundations of a fine library, within the next three years, by simply saving the waste of fruit and vegetables within her own borders. She has a market already established at the summer colony of Bide-a-wee."

The third piece of gingerbread gave Jack the courage to make a clean breast of everything, and to confess that he had called a meeting and made all the necessary arrangements to start a community kitchen for canning and preserving, to be ready this season for the currant crop.

Jack always persists that my impulsive opposition is his most helpful ally, so I never feel hindered in giving it. But I said "You have surely never looked at this problem from the psychological standpoint. You have never calculated the personal pride of every housewife in her own handiwork, done in her own way, the way tradition has made sacred to her. Eliminate the personal touch from half the preserve closets of Podunk and you rob them of their glory and half of their flavor. There are some things that cannot be consolidated and coöperated and this is one of them. Why! Mrs. Patterson would be inconsolably wretched, if she thought a jar of peaches would ever stand in her cellar that did not adhere to the formula of one and three-quarters pints of sugar to three pints of water. Now Mrs. Smith is equally loyal to one and one-half parts sugar to three parts water."

"And as for jelly making, it has a hedge about it as conservative and invulnerable as a Chinese wall. Instance, our beloved Mrs. Thornton. That splendid spirit of housewifely excellence that we have always admired in her would be wholly inundated and wrecked, if she ever had to set before us, on her own tea-table, a glass of jelly that had been made by heating the currants before they were crushed, and straining the juice through cheesecloth instead of flannel. To Mrs. Thornton there is but one right way, the cold and flannel process.

"Even I, Jack, dear, must own up to feeling an unpleasant sensation down my spinal column, and a vexatious agitation in my mind, whenever I see jelly boil more than five minutes after the sugar is added. Nay, my Worthy Wisdom, let me entreat you to carefully consider ere you intrude upon the sacred precincts of jelly-making with any ruthless tread.

"As for pickling, it is an established fact that every housewife pickles to suit the taste of her family and her rule lies in the palate of said family. You know that the Joneses are always strong on the onion flavor, while the Millers emphasize cinnamon and allspice! Fancy consolidating these flavors into a blend and expect either family to be contented and happy.

"Worthy as your Community Kitchen idea is in its inception, I fear it is doomed to failure. It uproots too many of the 'eternals' of housekeeping."

Jack received my volley of opposing arguments, not only with fortitude but with apparent satisfaction, and simply said, "Have you finished?" As I had, he again took the floor.

"Now, I am sure that my foundation is secure and my psychological attitude all right, for all the objections you mention were brought up, in one form or another, at the meeting we held, and I was able to meet every one of them. No, my dear, I do not mean to uproot the 'eternals' and the Joneses shall stand for onion flavor to the end of time. The personal equation will always be considered. Each farmer will simply send his consignment of berries or fruit with explicit instructions as to recipes to be followed, just as our great-grandfathers sent their grist to the mill to be ground and ordered middlings left in or middlings left out, according as to whether it was for pancakes or bread. Those worthies took it on faith that they brought back the same grain they carried and there need be no question now. Farmer Dunn's marrowfats need never get mixed with Deacon White's telephone peas, and Mrs. Thornton can always send her flannel jelly bag.

"It is my opinion that the good wives will have gained enough leisure time to come to the Kitchen and inspect the process while their batch of fruit is being handled."

So closely are faith and works related in Jack's philosophy of life that in an incredibly short time Podunk awoke one morning to find the abandoned Haskell house turned into a "Community Kitchen," in charge of a New England man and his wife, of thrift and learning. They began on the currant crop.

Of course, since Jack was behind the innovation, I had to show my faith by sending the first lot, with instructions that the jelly should be boiled only one minute after the sugar was added. The twenty glasses of tender crystalline jelly that stood on my pantry shelf the next day needed no argument and so encouraged my nearest neighbor that she sent half of her picking to the Kitchen. I saw that it caused a wrench, but she supported herself on the consciousness that she was only risking half. But the jelly that came back adhered so closely in color, taste and texture to the "traditional" that the other half was sent without a qualm. This made a beginning and by the time the raspberries were ripe a dozen families were converted.

When the fall fruits came on, it had grown into such a fashion to send the preserving out that the capacity of the Kitchen was somewhat taxed. An evaporating outfit was added, that saved hundreds of bushels of apples from absolute waste. A simple device for making unfermented grape juice brought profit enough the first year to paint the town hall, build over the stage and buy a curtain that never failed to work.

The second year a "Sunshine" Laundry was added to the Kitchen, which proved a great boon. Podunk had wrestled with the domestic problem, but like the rest of the world had not solved it, and was left to do its own washing.

As the name suggests, the "Community Kitchen" was established on a coöperative basis, with the understanding that after all running expenses were paid and each contributor had a certain share of profit, proportioned to the amount of surplus material he contributed, all the remaining profit was to go for the improvement of the town.

The "Kitchen" is now three years old and every visitor coming to Podunk naturally wanders into the pretty new library on Main Street. The sweet-faced librarian is always cordial and tells you with unmasked pride that this is the first library built of fruit and vegetables.

But complete regeneration came not to Podunk, until the Culture Club became an active organization, impelled forward by the brain force of the women of the community. Given a margin of leisure, it was demonstrated that culture will flourish as persistently in rural districts as in city precincts. Shakespeare and Browning were not neglected, nor were Wagner and Mendelssohn.

Nature study, Domestic Economy and Civic beautifying opened new and broad avenues of culture, and classes in these subjects were held every week. The women of Podunk began to know their birds and to call them by name. The church suppers took on a new aspect, for the dietetic unrighteousness of four kinds of cake and three kinds of sweet pudding, at the same meal, was openly discussed and frowned upon. Deacon Wyburn, who had a tooth sweeter even than Jack's, declared, at first, that this was heresy that should not be allowed to enter the sanctuary. But regeneration came to the deacon as indigestion departed.

And all of this happened, because Jack saw the need of an emancipation proclamation and the people of Podunk availed themselves of its freedom. I have always said that Jack was a man among men.

Fate

Great men live in word and deed, Tho' the hand that sows the seed No harvest knows. Fixed as is the rolling sea By its bounds, so this shall be To thee and those; Something lost and something won E'er the life that hath begun For thee shall close.

--_Grace Agnes Thompson_

Out of Chicken Pie

By Helen Campbell

"The point is," said the young woman, "never to spend any time in self-pity and never mention one of whatever afflictions may have been apportioned to your individual self. The first takes your strength and spoils any good work you might do. The second is a bore to your friends and destruction to self-respect. In the first grip of things it is possible one may send up a howl. But at that or any other time, no matter what the impulse, Don't!"

Was she a young woman after all? For, as she brought out the "Don't!" staccato, I looked again. Really she seemed more like a nice boy, well up in athletics, and as far on in general college work as athletics permit. Her hair was short, cut close to her head, yet curly, and though rather a dark brown, yet showing gold where little tendrils had their way, here and there, behind an ear or on her slender neck. Her hands were small, of course, for she was a Southern woman, generations of whom had no need to use their hands in any coarsening work, yet could and did use them in delicate cookery, preserving, and the like, and knew every secret of cutting and generally overseeing the garments for a plantation. Delicately formed, straight as a dart and with the alert expression of a champion tennis player, she stood at the gate into the chicken-yard, and smiled a delightful smile.

"I shouldn't tell you one word," she said, "if you hadn't come from so old a friend. Oh, privately I would tell anyone interested, but printing is another matter. It will help, you say. I'm sure I don't know. Perhaps, but I somehow seem to think most find out for themselves, perhaps by a good many experiments, just what to do. But I will tell you just how it began with me. Nellie has told you, I don't doubt, that I was left a widow with three children. We had lived in town, after my marriage, in a rented house. When my husband died and I presently summed up my capital, it was, first, the children, then, not quite two hundred dollars left in the bank after the expenses of the long sickness and the funeral were paid. Added to this were nine hens and a rooster that I had kept at the end of the little garden at the back of the house, our cat and dog and about a fortnight's supplies in the pantry. Our clothes, too, were in fair amount and order. That was all. Lots of people came to condole with me and tell me what to do, but not one made what seemed to me a really practical suggestion. I knew what I could do, or thought I did, which amounts to the same thing, if you really go ahead and do it. I did it.

"The first thing was to move into the country, where I had longed to have the children. It isn't country now exactly, for the station is not far away, but the house was out of repair, and I had the option of buying it at the end of the year, if I wanted it then. The owner couldn't do much and was glad to think it might be off his hands, and I took it for eighty dollars a year--this to include a few repairs.

"There was a big garden, not tended for years, not a fruit tree, and the four acres outside the fenced-in garden one mass of brush. My next neighbor was a farmer from the North, come South for his health and getting it, and he took an interest from the beginning; he ploughed my land for me, and agreed to go over it with the cultivator when it was necessary, but I must first manage to rake up and burn up all the weeds and sticks, etc. The children helped me and we made a spree of it. I bought a cow of him, a good one, and, as one of my hens had begun to set on a box of nails, decided she should have eggs. He had some fine, pure-blooded Plymouth Rocks, and mine were Wyandottes, just as good and no fear as to crossing breeds, and so I started in. What I was after was broilers, and if broilers wouldn't support us, why there was something else that I felt sure would, and that was chicken pies. You smile, but let me tell you they weren't everyday chicken pies. Our old Dilly on my father's plantation was a champion chicken-pie maker, in demand for every wedding and general church entertainment, and she taught me just how, swearing me to secrecy long as she lived. So I watched her many times, realizing, at last, that it meant using the very choicest material straight through. No old hens simmered all day long to make them tender. On the contrary, she demanded the choicest broilers, and she made, not exactly puff paste but the most delicate order of pastry to put them in. To season to a turn and with no variation, and to have the gravy smooth and rich, these were her secrets, and I learned them so thoroughly that after once sampling them there was no further trouble as to orders. I sent little individual pies to every hotel and restaurant in the city I had left. I had bought a good cow, as I said, and soon bought another, to have plenty of cream, for that was one important item in the pies, and as the work got too much for me alone I presently had a girl to help, and at last another, all of us doing steady hard work, but liking it. I raised the chickens, you see, though I often hated to have them killed, and by this time we had small fruits, and all that grows in a well-kept garden. The children helped as well as went to school and were rosy, healthy creatures, my comfort and joy, and they always have been. I never have cleared over five hundred a year, but what more do I need? I make ten cents clear on each individual chicken pie and fifteen on the larger ones. Specials I make as large as people want them, but I prefer the little ones. Three sizes are made every day, and some families, who go away for the summer, have their chicken pies expressed to them each week and won't do without them. Some people fuss and say they are too rich. Others want me to charge less and say, if I would use lard instead of butter in the pastry, I could sell cheaper. But I answer that it is my business never to fall below the standard. Aunt Dilly would turn in her grave if she thought her rule was to have lard used instead of butter. I made some experiments and found it was distinctly best to stick close to the old original text. You can buy cheap pies anywhere and they taste cheap. These melt in your mouth. And you ought to know that two other women in the neighborhood have specialties, too, and I taught them, for my mother used to make a delicious chicken jelly for sick people and one woman does that and has a big market for it at the Woman's Exchange, and another makes cornbeef hash for three restaurants and has all she can do. The gist of it is _good cooking can always be made to pay_. Keep to the best form you can find, never vary, and a living, and often much more, is certain. When women learn that, perhaps more of them will turn in this direction. Here is the home paid for, trees growing and yielding, children growing too, and Tom almost ready for college, and chicken pie has done it, and will keep on doing it, perhaps as long as I live. At any rate I should never stop doing something as perfectly as I could for that is half the fun of living. Don't you think so? We keep the evenings for as much of a good time as possible. I keep a little of my old music and play accompaniments, for Tom has a fine baritone voice and we all sing, and Edith and her violin take the kinks out of any day's work. We have a fair little library and do not mean to fall behind or forget what quiet progress means. It has been a happy life, thank God! How could it help being so, with such children and a certain sure thing to do?"

Yes, how could it help being thus with such a spirit at work to bring it about? That was the thought as I looked at the mother, and wished that all dolorous and uncertain women might have the same chance. Joining the Sunshine Circle or the Harmony Club might be the first essential. After that things would take care of themselves.

In August

Cora A. Matson Dolson

For me a basket and a book Where cooling hemlocks grow; And, in the deep of wooded nooks, The spikes of cardinal glow.

A book to bring but not to read-- Enough to know it near, To turn a leaf I do not need, The song is with me here.

A bird-note comes adown the wood, It seems to stillness wed; A tap, then gleam of scarlet hood High in the tree o'erhead.

The Indian-pipe is waxen stemmed; The squirrels near me play; While on this bank by mosses gemmed I dream the hours away.

Old Age

By Kate Gannett Wells

Old age becomes more of a problem when living in it than when viewed afar off. It is a question of economics and ethics more than of wrinkles. It is so easy not to mind it when well, rich and beloved; it is so impossible not to object to it when sick, poor and unwelcome. It creeps into almost every home and, though we try to alleviate it and succeed to a certain extent, through affection, cookery and cleanliness, the vast majority of the world does not know how to manage to live on almost nothing, and yet it is upon those of small or of no means that the support of old age presses most heavily. So love only is left, and too often not even that.

Then one wonders if one ought to refuse marriage and devote one's self to one's parents;--or, if married and children are many, and food and lodgings scant, shall one also house one's aged parents? If the ethics thereof are difficult to settle when money and space are available, it is a hideous task for decision when both are lacking.

Nowhere does the attempted settlement to remove the stigma of pauperism from the aged through legislation threaten to be more puzzling than in England, where after January 1, 1911, a workhouse inmate of above seventy years and "fairly respectable" is entitled to leave the house and receive in lieu of its shelter five shillings a week. Is acceptance of such pension outside of a workhouse more honorable than being dependent on Government for support inside the workhouse? That is the question the Old Age pensioners of England are trying to solve. Who is going to house, feed and clothe them for five shillings a week? What does that amount to, set against the care of an infirm, old, undesired relative who is not wanted either for his keep or his affection, and who will only grow older? Even as a boarder of no kin whatever to his landlady, is he likely to be as comfortable as in the workhouse? Startling have been some of the discoveries that have followed upon this apparently beneficent legislation.

Well was it that Miss Edith Sellers of England, of her own free will, visited relatives of the inmates of a London workhouse, hoping to carry back to the latter place the joyful tidings that they were wanted in families. Alas! out of 528 such inmates only 221 had any relatives, and more than half of that number knew that, if they went to their kinspeople, they would not be taken in. Some who had felt sure of a welcome were bitterly disappointed. "Old folk give no end of trouble; keeping them clean takes up all one's time. Besides they must have somewhere to sleep," was generally answered. One grown-up daughter, supporting herself, her mother and brother in two rooms, one no better than a cupboard, grieved she could not take back her father. Other sons and daughters, by blood or by law, waxed indignant at being urged to receive their kinsmen, even for the sake of the shillings. They had neither room nor food for them; each generation must care first for its own children and not take up burdens of parents, worse still of grandparents, aunts and cousins once gotten rid of; especially, if they were of the drunken variety, as was too often the case.