HINTS FOR THE HOUSEHOLD. TREATMENT OF HAMS. To preserve hams through the summer, make a number of cotton bags, a little larger than your hams. After the hams are well smoked, place them in the bags, and get the best kind of sweet, well made hay; cut it with a knife, and with your hands press it well around the hams in the bags; tie the bags with strings, put on a card of the year, to show their age, and hang them up in a garret or some dry room, and they will last five years, and will be better for boiling than on the day you hung them up. This method costs little, and the bags will last forty years. No flies or bugs will trouble hams if the hay is well pressed around them; the sweating of the hams will be taken up by the hay, and it will impart a fine flavour to the hams. The hams should be treated in this way before the hot weather sets in. BARLEY MILK. Boil half a pound of washed pearl barley in one quart of milk and half a pint of water, and sweeten; boil it again, and drink it when almost cold. SHEEP'S TROTTERS FOR THE SICK. Simmer six sheep's trotters, two blades of mace, a little lemon peel, a few hartshorn shavings, and a little isinglass in two quarts of water to one; when cold take off the fat, and give nearly half a pint twice a day, warming with it a little new milk. ISINGLASS. Boil one ounce of isinglass shavings, forty Jamaica peppers, and a bit of brown crust of bread, in a quart of water, to a pint, and strain it. This makes a pleasant jelly to keep in the house; of which a large spoonful may be taken in milk, tea, soup, or any way most agreeable. BREAD JELLY. Cut the crumb of a penny roll into thin slices, and toast them equally of a pale brown: boil them gently in a quart of water till it will jelly, which may be known by putting a little in a spoon to cool; and sweeten it with sugar. strain it upon a bit of lemon peel, STRENGTHENING JELLY. Simmer in two quarts of soft water, one ounce of pearl barley, one ounce of sago, one ounce of rice, till reduced to one quart; take a teacupful in milk, morning, noon, and night. BOILED FLOUR FOR INFANTS. Make a bag of cheap white calico, say a quarter of a yard square, or smaller if you like. Stuff it quite full of flour till it is quite hard, and the flour does not come out. Tie it very tightly at the top, and put it in a saucepan of boiling water. Let it boil hard for four hours, filling up with boiling water as the water wastes. Then take it up; peel off the skin; chop or break up the ball of flour into pieces; roll it with a rollingpin on a clean board until no lumps remain; when cold, put it into a dry tin. This is far better than arrow-root, ard much cheaper; indeed, it is one of the very best things for sick people or babies. Wilful waste makes woeful want. THE MOTHERS' TREASURY. TATTLING. O speak no slander-no, nor listen to it," such was the injunction of King Arthur to his knights. Such, too, is the principle on which alone people must conduct themselves who would escape the bite of the weapon which cuts deeper than a sword-viz., a tattling tongue, and who would for their own part live in perfect charity with all men. There is authority even greater than King Arthur against tattling. Our Lord and all His apostles condemn it as a mischievous and harmful habit, which injures both the speaker and him spoken of; and surely the experience of the world—ay, and the experience of every individual man-fully testify to the wisdom of the condemnation. Who does not know, out of his own experience, the sort of persons mentioned by the Apostle Paul in his letter to Timothy, those who "learn to be idle, wandering about from house to house; and not only idle, but tattlers also and busybodies, speaking things which they ought not "? Truly, a dangerous class, as powerful for evil to the mental peace and to the reputation of man or woman, as a poisonous open sewer is to their bodily health. They are they who are spoken of by Mrs. Browning, in "Aurora Leigh,"-people who دو "Cut your morning up To mincemeat of the very smallest talk, It must be supposed that if people really knew, or even gave themselves to think seriously about, the harm a chance word, an ungrateful expression, or an uncertified report, is capable of doing, they would not-nay, they could not-be so ready to tell and hear some new thing. "She is a very good sort of a person in her way, but- Well, that but is, more often than not, the initial word of a sentence so damaging, as not only to nullify the spare praise given in the first instance, but even to go far beyond, and eat away name, character-all the most precious belongings of her spoken of. Almost always this damaging part of the speech is uttered on the faith of what somebody has said, that "somebody else" having heard it from another, and not having suffered it to diminish in the repeating. Rarely it happens that it is spoken from the per 66 sonal knowledge of the speaker. Where it is so, the charge is made in more absolute terms, and there is no damning with faint praise" by way of prelude. Where it is not so, the speaker, if taxed with carelessness in repeating an unwarranted tale, will take refuge in the assertion, "I had it from So-and-so;" as if that made any difference! The injury caused by the poison of a serpent is as destructive when injected at second-hand, as when fresh from the reptile's fang; and it could never be admitted as an excuse for the poisoner, that he was not the originator of the deadly stuff he used. The effect is well stated in the oft quoted words of Iago, truthful, though spoken by a villain :— "He that filches from me my good name Half the time it is due to thoughtlessness, or to a want of power to connect cause and effect, that tattling goes on, it may be to the blasting of a woman's reputation, to the commencement of the ruin of a man's credit, but certainly to the promotion of a dearth of "Christian charity under the sun." In cases where the evil tongue can be traced, the victim of its poison has a remedy at law; but how rarely can the originator of a rumour be traced ! how impossible it is to point to one of many streams, and say that one in particular is the parent of yonder river! Besides, the law gives no remedy against the listener to slander, and as it is certain there would not be thieves if there were not receivers of stolen goods, so tattling, "speaking things which they ought not," would not go on if there were no one to listen. The principle enunciated by King Arthur goes further than the principle of our law, and includes in the same condemnation the speaker and the hearer. How different would all societies of men and women be, how much better and happier, if all the members of them would but stop a tale-bearer on the threshold of his story, and ask him, Are you about to speak from your own knowledge? Have you good ground for believing what you are about to state?" Better still would it be, if both speaker and hearer would govern themselves by the principle on which our existing law of libel is founded, and which will not admit the truth of the libel as an excuse for uttering it, unless the defendant can show that, besides being true, it was for the general advantage that the truth should be known. Surely there are charges enough against individual persons, which the public is concerned to know, without dragging into the light those many more which are not of the least importance to the generality. Let a man's sin find him out-as it must do-without your help; and if he can atone for it to those he has injured, and get rid of the moral stain by recourse to God's grace, why should you presume to punish him by publishing his fault, and perhaps set a stumbling-block in the way of your weak brother to repentance? 66 And as of a man's sins, so of his minor faults: bridle the tongue and check the ear in reference to them, lest you, too, fall into condemnation, and find that lack of charity uncovers the multitude of sins. Even when the slander spoken is true, all this and much more can be said against the repetition of it; but when it is false -as in the majority of cases-there are not words strong enough to castigate those who utter it. Slander is a social curse, a very evil disease, and there is no practice so liable to propagate it, and to prevent all endeavours to make it die out, as the idle habit against which every one should prayerfully guard-the habit of "having talks," or tattling.-The Quiver. "PAPA TEACHES ME." F I were only old enough, I would smoke cigars, mamma," said a boy of six summers, as he stood looking out at the window. "Oh, no, my son; smoking is not a nice, cleanly habit, it is injurious to health, leads people into other bad habits, and into bad company. Besides, it wastes a great deal of money that might feed and clothe poor little wretched children, or give the Bible to those who have never heard anything about Jesus, our Saviour. Don't you see that such a useless, wasteful habit, would be very wrong, my dear boy?" "Yes, mamma, I did not think of these things; but papa teaches me to smoke, and he is good." "Papa teaches you? He would not teach you a bad habit for the world. What makes you say so?" "He smokes himself, mamma!" Christian father! is the fine promising boy growing up by your side, upon whom you look with joy and pride, to be impressively taught by your silent example to begin a career of self-indulgence, which will lead him by slow but sure steps to idle, lounging, sinful expenditures, evil company, and perhaps to profanity, intemperance, and the worst of vices? Oh, stop, stop, when you are nearest to God in your closet, and consider well your ways; consider them especially in reference to your child. Think how potent is the influence of your example, even in little things, in this forming period of his character, and how lasting is its power. A wrong step now-a little step into the path of doubtful self-indulgence, and out of the path of unquestionable moral rectitude, your child will be quick to see, and the sight may be a deathblow to pure unyielding moral principle, in his heart for ever! O Christian parent, you would not, as you fear God, for any present pleasure peril the temporal and eternal future of your confiding child. |