Part 21

How can we tell good literature from bad? Well, it is often pretty hard to tell about the books and stories of today, but there is a very easy way of telling about what was written a hundred or a thousand years ago. Nowadays, when most people can read and write and the printing-press makes it possible to produce great numbers of books and papers, there are thousands of people writing all the time and naturally a lot of them write very poor stuff. We talk about the “best selling books” and go wild over some new novel. We did the same last month and we’ll do the same next month.

“What is the most popular novel this month?”

“Oh, ‘So-and-so’ by So-and-so. It’s simply grand!”

“What was the most popular novel last month?”

“Let’s see. Oh, yes—‘So-and-so,’ by So-and-so. It’s a perfectly charming story.”

“What was the most popular novel a year ago?”

“A _year_ ago? Mercy, I don’t know! There are so many novels now.”

There it is. All the time people are raving about the “latest” book. Like as not in a year they can’t even remember its name. Why is that? Because, hardly any of these books are really _good_ literature. Many of them are interesting and amuse us while we read them, but that’s all. In a year, or less, we have forgotten them.

Then what _is_ good literature? We can find out this way. Consider all the books that were written a thousand, a hundred, fifty or even twenty-five years ago. How many of them are read now? Comparatively very, very few. Now _why_? Because they weren’t good enough. There is a sure test for you—if a book lives on after its author is dead and buried you can be pretty sure that it is good literature. It had something to say that did more than amuse people for a month. The author had put into it some little bit of _human nature_, of _human life_, that is as true for people a hundred years later as it was for those who first read it. (Mind you, I am talking about novels, stories and plays, about fiction and poetry, not just about such things as histories which are generally preserved anyway because of the cold facts in them.) The authors of such novels or poems have written into them some of their own experience and observation of _life_. The characters in them are real human beings, and the feelings, thoughts, passions, sentiments, actions of the characters, or those expressed by the author without the aid of his characters, are, in general, the same feelings, thoughts, passions, sentiments and actions that you and I and our acquaintances have in us today. Therefore we understand the people in those books and sympathize with them, even though they may have lived centuries ago, in a foreign land, dressed in strange clothes, bound by strange customs and outwardly having very little in common with us. There is only one thing that people are _always_ interested in—human nature. It is according to whether a book gives us a true picture of human nature that it lives or dies, that it is good literature or bad.

With new books now appearing by thousands it is almost impossible to tell which will live and which will die, which are really good and which are not. Time is the only sure test. The men talk about Dr. Conan Doyle’s “Sherlock Holmes” stories now and some of us women like these tales equally well, but will they be alive in 1975 or not? Emile Gaboriau died only twenty-three years ago. His detective stories are better ones than Dr. Conan Doyle’s, but they are no longer read except by the few. Wilkie Collins wrote novels that made you hold your breath with interest and were widely read. He has been dead only seventeen years, yet already “The Moonstone,” “The Woman in White” and his other books are of the past. Both Gaboriau and Collins have some real merit and will probably always be read at least slightly, but what of the thousands of other authors who wrote books twenty-five years ago and whose very names are forgotten?

Among the books that have come down to us from the past we can choose pretty safely. If they have lived this long we can be sure there is something worth while in them. I know a few sensible women, some of them with both time and money, who make it a rule never to read any book until it has been published a year. If at the end of that period it is still interesting other people, then they buy it, being pretty sure that it must have at least some small merit. They say it is surprising how very few books do remain in the public attention that long.

Now I know just what will happen. Some of you know all I have been saying as well as I do, but some one is sure to say:

“Oh, yes, that’s all true enough, I suppose, but when I find time to read, I don’t want to wade through anything heavy.”

Nobody asked you to. Books aren’t “heavy” just because they are good. Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s “Marjorie Daw” and “The Story of a Bad Boy,” Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer,” “Huckleberry Finn” and “Innocents Abroad” are certainly far, far from being heavy; so are Charles Kingsley’s “Water Babies,” De Foe’s “Robinson Crusoe;” so are Dr. Brown’s “Rab, and His Friends,” Ouida’s “A Dog of Flanders,” though both bring tears to the eyes; so are the poems of Robert Burns and Longfellow; so are Æsop’s “Fables,” the stories of Joel Chandler Harris and Thomas Nelson Page; so are hundreds of others. Yet all these just named are good literature. If by “heavy” you mean only things that are dull or hard to understand, the list of good books that are not “heavy” grows tremendously, and there are still others that may be hard to understand in places but are nevertheless interesting enough to “amuse” you all the way through. Shakespeare, George Eliot, Hawthorne, Poe, Tennyson, Stevenson, Dickens, Thackeray, Whittier, Helen Hunt Jackson, Hugh Conway, Bret Harte, Augusta J. Evans, Louisa M. Alcott and scores besides are more than “worth while.” If there are now and then dull or difficult pages in some of them yet they are all the world away from being “heavy.”

Reading for amusement only is much better than not reading at all. We need amusement. But there is one danger. If what we read for amusement happens to be poor literature it is _not true to life_ and you are learning things about yourself and others that are not true and may lead you into mistakes some day. You know what dime novels—Wild West and detective stories—will do to young people. It isn’t only because they are exciting and deal with crime, but because they give false ideas of life and false ideals. There are thousands of books, apparently harmless enough, that will hurt grown people as much as dime novels hurt the children. There are plenty of books you can read “just for amusement” which are also very good literature and very good teachers of life. Why waste time on the poor ones?

When I say a book is good or bad I am not referring to its morals but to its merit as literature. A hopelessly poor piece of literature may have excellent morals, and a book that is good literature may be very unsafe from a moral point of view. The relation of literature to morals is too big a question for me to discuss. Each of us must steer her own course in regard to this question. It is, however, helpful to remember that if the purpose and main lesson of a book are morally good, even though it may deal a little with questionable subjects, its reading may tend toward good rather than evil.

_SHOULD WOMEN BE INTERESTED IN POLITICS?_

Next month in the April number we will take up woman’s interest in politics. Is there any reason for her being interested in them? What effect do city, state and national laws and law-makers have on her own personal welfare or that of her family? If she raises children what effect does that have on future politics? What two great questions now before the country bear directly on the price she pays for food and clothing and on the price her husband receives for what he sells or for his labor? What about the men the voting members of your family help elect to the state legislature or the national Congress or White House? (Perhaps if you live in Colorado, you vote for President yourself.) What about the wives and children of these men? What about the candidates who were not elected and their families? If there is an election on, ought you to know which of the candidates are rascals, which represent wrong principles, which will vote for measures that will make the things you buy more expensive? Ought you to use your influence against such men?

Let us each see who can send in the best reason for a woman’s being interested in politics. The answers must be very short, and they must reach our office before March 10, for the April number, as you know, appears March 25, and by March 10, at the very latest the printer should be working on whatever is to go in it. This seems like working a long ways ahead of time, but the Editor tells me that most magazines by that time, will be all done with the April number and working on May or June! So you see you will have to write very quickly to be in time.

We had a glimpse last month at some of the interesting things connected with bread and bread-making. The house is full of things we have known so long that we scarcely think of them except as parts of the daily routine, but which, if we turn our attention to them, prove veritable mines of information, history, travel and even romance. This month we’ll consider some of the things concerned in bread-making.

_Wheat_

Wheat, for example, takes us all over the earth and back to the days before there was any history at all. Wheat, like our other grains, belongs to the Grass Family and its scientific name is _Triticum vulgare_. It is the most valuable of all the cereal grasses and, next to maize, or Indian corn, the most productive. Rice is really its only rival as a human food. It is generally supposed that it originally came, like so many of our grains and fruits, from the plains of Central Asia, but it has been found that a certain wild grass of Western Asia and the Mediterranean regions, can be cultivated into what we call wheat. It is the bread-food of most European nations (who, by the way, call it corn) and is supplanting maize in America. In our country alone 40 or 50 million acres are devoted to it every year, and the yield is a million or so over half a billion bushels. Generally, one-fifth to two-fifths of this is sent to other countries. Russia, Canada and other countries produce large quantities of it.

Wheat was widely grown in the pre-historic world. As far back as there is any record of languages there was a word for wheat. We know that the Chinese (who knew about gunpowder, printing, glass, spectacles and many other things centuries before we “invented” them) cultivated wheat as far back as 2,700 B. C., and regarded it as a direct gift from heaven. The Egyptians attributed wheat to their heathen goddess Isis. The Greeks believed that Ceres, their goddess of agriculture, gave it to her favorite, Triptolemus, and lent him her miraculous chariot to drive over the earth and distribute the new grain to the sons of men. There is a pyramid in Egypt, which scientists estimate was built 3,359 years before Christ was born, more than 5,000 years ago, and in one of the bricks of this pyramid they found imbedded a little grain of wheat. How much that single grain told the world! The lake-dwellers of Switzerland and Italy also left traces showing they knew the use of wheat, as did the inhabitants of what is now Hungary, in the Stone Age.

There are more cultivated varieties of wheat than of any other grain, the number running up into the hundreds. New varieties are generally secured by taking the pollen from tiny flowers of one variety and putting it on the pistil of another, so that the resulting seeds, while they take after both parents, produce a new variety unlike either of them. This process of cross-breeding has been made to produce marvelous results not only in other grains, but in fruits, nuts, flowers and trees, as any of you who are familiar with the work of Mr. Luther Burbank, the “California Wizard,” know.

_Flour_

Flour, being generally a product of wheat, has had much the same history, but the process of milling has a little story of its own. The earliest mills consisted merely of two stones, one round, the other hollowed out. The grain was placed in the hollow and then crunched into small bits by the round stone. Later on, man thought of putting a handle on the round stone, making something like a mortar and pestle. Another and later way of improving this crude mill, was to groove the round stone and make it fit into a fairly deep hole in the under stone, with a place for the ground meal to come out. This is called a quern. You have heard of someone’s being “caught between the upper and nether mill-stones.” In Deuteronomy (XXIV, 6,) we find this: “No man shall take the upper or nether mill-stone to pledge, for he taketh a man’s life to pledge.” In Numbers (XI, 8), “ground it in mills or beat it in a mortar” shows that the children of Israel, knew both kinds of mill, and other passages show that they had at least two kinds of meal or flour.

The Romans used only the mortar and pestle, and until 173 B. C. the poor woman did all the work. Then baking became a regular occupation, and the bakers were called _pistores_, which means “pounders.” When the Romans conquered Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium and Britain they took their customs with them. The hand-mill was followed by one with animal power, and later by one with water-power. As late as 1800 A. D. there were to be found in remote parts of Scotland and Ireland crude mills made of two large stones ground against each other by running or falling water.

The wheat grain is really not a seed, but a fruit, for it is composed not only of the true seed, but of the seed and its husk or covering. The two considered together, make what botanists call a “fruit.” In modern milling this husk is generally separated from the seed and made into bran, while the seed becomes flour. When the two are mixed we have “whole wheat” flour.

Good flour, should be a pure, uniform white powder, only faintly tinged with yellow, free from grits and lumps, should show some adhesiveness when pressed, should have no smell of damp and moldiness or any acidity of taste.

Most flour now, is “new process” flour, made by a gradual crushing between sets of rollers revolved by water-power, steam or electricity. The “new process” originated in Hungary and France and began to be generally adopted about 1880.

_Yeast_

Yeast is a vegetable. Strange as it may seem, yeast is a tiny fungus growth, though it takes a microscope to see it. In brewing (particularly with hops), in wine-making and in any other process of fermentation where the liquid contains some sugar and some albuminous matter, the clear liquid becomes “muddy.” Then the minute things that made it muddy collect into a foaming, bitter mass which is yeast. This yeast has the power of setting up fresh fermentation when put with other things. It is fermentation that makes bread-dough “raise.” Oh, yes, there is alcohol in bread-dough, but it doesn’t stay there. As I told you last month, 12,000,000 gallons of alcohol are made and lost in bread-making every year in Germany alone! Some day scientists will learn how to save it.

_Hops_

We generally think of hops when yeast is mentioned. I wish any of you who can tell us the story of hops would send it in to our Department.

_Salt_

How could we cook, or eat, or live without salt? It is an absolute necessity for people and animals. Also, it is very valuable as a fertilizer, and was used as such centuries and centuries ago by the Hindoos and Chinese. Further than this, soda is derived from salt, and as soda is necessary in making both glass and soap, these two useful things could not be made if it were not for salt. Most of our modern textile fabrics are more or less dependent on chlorine, which is made from salt. We all know how valuable salt is as a preservative for butter, meats and other animal food, and now they are learning a way to preserve timber with it. We know, too, its use in freezing ice cream, but may not realize how much it is used for refrigerating other things. In short, even if we could live at all without it, life would be pretty miserable.

The chemists call salt _chloride of sodium_ and use this symbol for it—Na Cl, which shows what it is composed of, but doesn’t mean anything to me.

We get salt in three ways—from rock-salt mines, from natural brine springs and from evaporating sea water. The world’s biggest rock-salt mines are in Gallicia, upper Austria, Bavaria, Hungary, Transylvania, Wallachia; at Vic and Dienze, France; at Bix, Switzerland; at Cadrona, Spain, and at Cheshire, England. That at Wieliczka in Gallicia is a mile long, three-fourths of a mile wide and over a thousand feet deep. Some of its chambers are 150 feet high—as high as a sky-scraper—and one of them is fitted up as a chapel to St. Anthony, the altar, statues and everything being solid salt. In this mine is a lake 650 feet long and 40 feet deep. There are horses there that have never seen the light of day, and men, women and children who live in salt houses and never see the outside world above their heads. It is a small village buried down under the ground. When the emperor and his family visit the mine, it is brilliantly illuminated and a grand festival is held in a great hall.

In Africa are large beds of salt land, beds of rock-salt and a lake covered at times with a shining white crust of pure salt two feet thick. France, Spain, Portugal, Italy and some Mediterranean islands are the chief producers of sea-salt. In China there are salt wells of great depth and number.

In Spain, France and other countries salt is a government monopoly, and no one else can sell it. Travelers tell me they have seen salt lakes in Spain where the people living along the shores were prevented by the _guardia civile_, or national police, from picking up the salt deposited in large quantities at the water’s edge. They had to buy it of the government. The poor use salt sparingly over there even now, and you may remember that the heavy tax on salt was one cause of the awful French Revolution.

In our country nearly every state has salt deposits of some kind. Virginia furnishes lots of rock-salt. The most important salt springs are in Onondaga County, New York, and furnish nearly half of what the country uses. The state owns them and gets a royalty of one cent a bushel. Michigan produces about twenty million bushels a year.

_Removing Grease Spots_

To remove a grease-spot from cloth, lay a piece of clean blotting paper over the spot and then pass a hot iron back and forth over blotter. As the grease is melted and soaked into the blotter, cover the stain with a fresh part of the blotter and continue the operation until the stain has disappeared.

_Dish-Mop_

The little dish-washing mop is a comparatively recent invention, but its use is increasing as its advantages are learned by experience. It is merely a handle about ten inches long with a miniature mop, smaller than your clenched fist, at the end. With very little trouble a home-made one can be arranged, which is practically as good as the store ones, though the latter can be bought for ten or fifteen cents. The little mop saves the hand from going into the water so much, answers every purpose of the old dish-rag, and can, like the cloth, be cleaned by vigorous boiling.

_Spice Cabinets_

The little tin or wooden cabinets, now on sale in large quantities at the bigger stores, with from four to twelve small drawers for spices, are great space-savers and time-savers. The only objection is that, despite the label on each drawer, the busy cook is sometimes likely to get hold of the wrong one.

_Soup-Stock_

If soup-stock is put to cool in an earthware vessel, instead of a metal one, much better results are obtained. It is claimed that this is one of the secrets of the excellent soups the French are famous for.

_A Fuel Saver_

If one uses a gas stove, a single burner can be made to do several times its ordinary work by means of a thin sheet of iron, about a foot square, placed directly over it. The flame spreads out against this sheet and renders its whole area available for cooking, so that two, three or even four small vessels can get from this one burner enough heat to boil water, or at least to keep the contents warm against the time for serving. No more gas is used than when a single vessel is allotted to each burner. It is possible to buy a sheet of iron, an eighth or a quarter of an inch thick, made expressly for this purpose, the edges being turned down to raise it about half an inch from the surface of the stove.

_Table Mats_

Asbestos, bought in large pieces, cut into round, oval or square mats, and either covered daintily or placed under regular table-mats, makes not only an economical protection for a polished table against hot dishes, but a very sure one.

_Coal Oil and Gasoline_

If you are in the habit of starting a fire by pouring coal-oil on the kindling, break yourself of it. You may do it safely fifteen hundred times and be blown up the next. Coal-oil will not even burn if you drop a match in a barrel of it, but if you spread it out in any way (as on a lamp-wick) it will not only burn but the gas thus formed will often explode with terrific force. Never fill a coal-oil lamp while it is burning.

Gasoline is still more dangerous. If the fire insurance inspector finds out that you keep even a small bottle of it in the house, he will have your policy cancelled immediately, unless you have paid extra for a special clause permitting you to keep a small amount on the premises. I knew a physician who was killed and blown clear across the street by the explosion of gasoline in a saucer, which was being used for cleaning spots on the carpet of a house he was visiting. The vapor caught fire from an open grate two rooms away from where the saucer had been left. Gasoline is an excellent cleaner, but if you use it, do so out of doors. Let no one come near with a lighted match or cigar, and throw away any of the liquid that may be left. As an explosive, gasoline is much more powerful than gunpowder.

_A Cheap Shower Bath_

Five feet of rubber tubing and a ten-cent spray will make as good a shower-bath apparatus for the bath-tub as any one could ask. The stem of the spray will twist into one end of the tubing and if the bath-tub faucet has the right kind of attachment it will twist into the other end, making a long flexible shower-spray that will prove an unending comfort. If the faucet hasn’t the right kind of nozzle to fit a hose, one can be purchased from the plumber or hardware store for very little. Besides the pleasure and comfort a spray gives, there is the added satisfaction of thoroughly cleaning the body with perfectly clean water before drying with the towel.

_A Warmer Bed_

If you continue to feel cold in bed even after piling on a mountain of covers, turn your attention underneath. A feather-bed lets no cold reach you from below, and a box-mattress is often nearly as good a protection, but an ordinary mattress, even a good one, is very likely to let the cold through. If you don’t use a comforter under the sheet, for the sake of the mattress and for greater softness to the body, put one there for warmth. If this is not enough, spread several layers of newspaper or wrapping paper between this comfort and the mattress. It will crackle under your weight for a time, but it will keep you warm and cosy.

_Hanging Pictures_