Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1859-06-25
SHIFTLESS TRICKS.

SHIFTLESS TRICKS.
To let the cattle fodder themselves at the
stack they pull out and trample more than
they eat. They eat till the edge of appetite is
gone, and then daintily pick the choice parts :;
the residue, being coarse and refuse, they will
not afterwards touch.
To sell half stack of hay and leave the low
er half open to rain and snow. In feeding out
hay knife should be used on the stack in
selling. either dispose of the whole, or remove
that which is left to a shed or barn.
II is shiftess trick to lie about stores and
groceries, arguing with men that you have no
fDtr, III ii new country. for nice farmirg-for
making good fences for smooth meadows with
out stump; for draining wet patches which
disfgure fine fields.
To raise your own frogs in your own yard !;
to permit year after year, dirty, sinking,
mantled puddle to stand before your fence in
the street.
To plant orchards, and allow your cattle to
eat the trees up. When gnawed down. to save
your money, by trying to nurse the stubs into
good trees instead of getting fresh ones from
the nursery.
TO allow an orchard to have blank spaces,
where trees have died, and when the living
trees begin to bear, to wake up and put Young
whips in the vacant spots.
1t is very shiftless to build your barn-yard so
that every rain shall drain it to build YOUR
privy and dig your well close together to build
privy more than seven feet square-some
shiftless folks have it of the size of the whole
yard to set it in the most exposed spot on the
premises; to set it at the very far end of the
garden, for the pleasure of traversing mud
puddles and labyrinths of wet weeds in rainy
davs.
1t is a dirty trick to make bread without
washing ones hands after cleaning fish or chick
ems; to use an apron for Il handkerchief to
use veteran handkerchief just from the wars
for an apron to use mlk-pans alternately for
wash-bowls and milk. To wash dishes and ba-
by linen in the same tub either alternately or
altogether; to chew snuff while YOU are cook
ing, for sometimes food will chance to be too
highly spiced. We have a distinct but unut-
terable remembrance of a cud of tobacco in a
dish of hdshed pork-but it was before we were
married
a lady of our acquaintance, at boarding
house, excited some fears among her friends,
by foaming ut the mouth, of madness. In eat
ing hash (made, doubtless, of every scrap
from the table, not consumed the day beforc.)
she found herself blessed with mouthful of
hd'd soap, which only lathered the more the
more she washed at it. 1t is a filthy thing to
comb ones hair in small kitchen in the inter
walls of cooking the breakfast to use the bread
trough for cradle-a thing which we have un-
doubtedly seen; to put trunks, boxes, baskets,
with sundry other utensils, under the bed where
you keep the cake for company; we have seen
dexterous housewife whip the bed-spread
aside, and bring forth, not what we feared, but
loaf-cake.
1t is dirty trick to wash children's ewes in
the pudding dish not that the sore ewes, but
subsequent puddings, will not be benefited; to
flIghn n,.I 4
wrap warm bread in q dirty table-coth to
make and mold bread on table innocent of
washing for weeks; to use dirty table-cloths
for sheets, practice which we have had expert
mental knowledge, once at least in our lives.
The standing plea of all slatterns and slovens
IS, that Everybody must eat peck of dirt be-
fore they die" A peck? that would be a mer
cy, mere mouthful, in comparison of cooked
cart-oads of dirt which is to be eaten in steam
boats, canal-boats, taverns, mansions, huts and
novels.
TOBACCO TRIcKs.-It is filthy trick to use
it at all and it puts an end to all our affected
squeamishness at the Chinese taste, in eating
rats, CATS and birds nests. 1t is a filthy trick
to let the exquisite juice of tobacco tricke down
the corners of ones mouth or lie in splashes
on ones coat, or bosom; to squirt the juice all
over a clean hoor, or upon carpet, or baptis-
mally to sprinkle proud pair of andirons the
refulgent glory of the much securing house
wife. 1t is vile economy to lay up for re-
mastcation halfchewed cud to pocket half
smoked cigar; and finally to be-drench ones
self with tobacco juice, to so be-smoke ones
clothes that man can be scented as far off as
whale-ship can be smelt at sea.
1t is a shiftless trick to snuff candle with
your fingers, or your wfe's best scissors, to
throw the snuff on the carpet, or on the polish
ed iloor, and then to extinguish it by treading
on it
To borrow choice book to read it with
unwashed hands, that have been used in the