Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1884-04-02


eaten. Yet let us not be in haste to lay
the blame at the door of the school. We
are to bear in mind that education is q
process begun in the cradle. The senses,
tastes, habits, manners and morals, are
moulded in their plastic infancy; and
harden into permanencs, in no small meas
ure long before the child begins to learn
anything from books. :tJust as the twig
is bent the trees inclined" in spite of all
that after life may do to change it. You
rarely meet an individual IN whom the
home trade mark, has wholly ceased to be
visible
Strange, that SO many women are
spending their time and strength in seek
ing outside leverage by means of which
to set the world upright, ignoring or ne
glecting that which lies in their own
homes, ready to their hand. .
But this is DEPRESSION. We were about
to say that if daughters are suffered to
grow up with the feeling that work is I'M
ladylike; if, to be, or feign to be, utterly
ignorant of domestic matters, seems to
them patent Of gentility; if their hands
are too delicate to be useful, and they are
eager to go to school because they expect
by that means to be raised above partici-
patton in the homely homework then
no amount of classical, or literary, or
musical attainments, will be likely to dis
abuse their minds Of these false and fool
ish notions. A distaste for work, or a
disinclinatlon to do it well, betrays de-
feet in moral, no less than in industrial,
training. Where the daily home influence
has maintained the dignity, as well as the
obligation of labor, there will be little
danger that any course of study will make
our girls, as farmer recently complained
one had made his, good for nothing -
The trouble in such cases is apt to be, not
too much education, but too little, and
that one sided, and unbalanced. Not
what the school has done, but what the
home has not done.
There is ample scope in home duties
and home industries, for the profitable
use of the best education possible Nay
more; without such education, the per-
lection of the ideal home in all it's in
terests must fail to be attained. We need
only refer to the average products of
home dairy work in butter, as an illustra-
tion-meaning of course, their average
quality. From the butter of nomadic
origin, churned in a skin bottle, and
melted and skinned to remove some of
its impurities, to the gilt-edged article of
to-day, there is. indeed, wide remove
but it is pertinent to ask, how much of
all the immense aggregate OF butter year
ly manufactured, can be classed as gilt
edged? In any small trading centre OF
three or four thousand people, how much
of the butter offered for sale, is strictly a
first class article? 1t is stated in report
of the Department of Agriculture, that
two thirds of that made in the state OF
New York, is Of inferior grade and the
annual loss to the whole country from
this same deficiency in value, is estimated
at millions of dollars.
Moreover, '*the offence is rank it smells
to heaven" Train oil, and rancid bears,
fat, are delicacies to the taste of an Esqui
maux, because he has grown up in theil
liking. In no other way can we account
for the seeming relish with which so many
people, east and west, regale themselves
upon butter absolutely offensive. II
there be any distasteful or disappointing
flavor, that has not been served up in the
butter dish upon somebody's table, il
must be flavor of extreme rarity. Mo-
to speak of the various tastes derived
from weedy and musty hay, from mouldy
feed and bad water, and foul air in which
COWS are kept for which women are no
responsible they may be held to accoun
for the faint of decaying vegetables il
cellars for that from imperfect cleansing
of dairy utensils, or of the closets ant
shelves in which they, or the milk, ma,
be kept, and from the foul gases general
ed in unventilated living rooms, ever
where the eye discerns no special lack O
cleanliness. You may identify in butte
the flavor of stale or burnt fat, caugh
where much frying is done the flavor O
old clothes, hung up in close proximity t,
the milk the flavor of washing day, steam
and suds not emitting the familiar flavo
of boiled dinners. And the very hea,
and front of the offending, is the unmis
taxable stable faint, resulting from care
less milking. One longs for terms tina
would taste, so as to convey an adequat
impression of the strength of the sub ect
Who can say that much of our nationa
dyspepsia, popularity attributed to salera
tus and fat pork, ought not rather to b
| dyspepsia deranges the whole organism
mental as we'll as physical, perhaps som
| good woman who is sorely tried by he
husbands unreasonable irritability, ma,
be herself accountable therefor, in a wa;
she has not thought Of
It is by no means pleasant to acknow
ledge that so much of woman's hard work
is spoiled in the doing. Nevertheless
the notifying fact is advertised far an
wide, by every newspaper that make
mention Of grease butter as an articl
in the market. And while much may b
said by way of excuse, as to lack of con
veniences and unfavorable circumstances
it is to be feared after ALL that ignorance
and a certain form of incapacity tina
used to be termed shiftlessness, are main
ly responsible for the dispensation o
| bad butter.
In an Agricultural Fair, once held an
nually up among the foothills of tn
| White Mountains, the premium butter, 70
several years in succession, came from
| log house with one room and a lean to
| Sweeter purer butter, none need wish t,
taste, the very essence of clover and sun
shine. The whole secret lay in daint,
cleanness, and thorough painstaking. (
large fireplace on one side of the room
secured good ventilation for the rest
| husband and wife had both alike the rar
! good fortune to be trained in the practica
| belief that cleanliness is next to godli
| ness
1t is evident that in the partnership o
domestic interests, success is largely de
pendent upon full cooperation. TIL
best educated and most capable of wemen
could hardly be expected to make gil
edged butter in a house banked up wit
the accommodations of the barn yard. No
would it conduce to her success, if he
husband habitually sat down to enjoy tn
warmth of his home, in clothing redolen
of the stable. Even the odor of the yer
best tobacco, might prove Objectionable
| if introduced too literally.
Not only does efficient cooperate
forestall hindrances, it provides help!
Labor saving inventions have rightly
place in the home dairy, as we'll as in til
field. mention papers as helps, would
of course, be superfluous, where the
needs and their worth are so thorough
understood. Indeed, these rank so big
in the esteem Of some, that it has bee
said, that good dairy paper furnishe
all the book learning necessary, to max
any woman an expert in butter-makin>
Bnt, as many men are of many mind
and it is the province of these papel
to discuss questions, rather than to d.
eide them, it would seem that one mu
have had previous mental training enoug
to balance the weight of arguments, an
the probabilities of conflicting stat
ments, in order to study the papers wit
profit. Otherwise, the cross fire of a
serti0ns would be likely to bewilde