Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1886-08-19
STREET SWiNDLERS.
How Sweet-Scented Lavender Flowers an
Cinnamon Beans Are Made.

SWINDCEHS.
How Sweet-Scented Lavender Flowers and
Cinnamon Beans Are Made.
Lavender flowers, fresh. genuine
English lavender flowers, Strewn be-
tween your linen they preserve it from,
rust, they give it sweet scent and keep
the moths out of your oth-presses and
chests of drawers. Sweet-scented laven-
derr'
Summer is full upon the city. and
everybody who is anybody and has to
stay in town during the sdison oaortc is
on State street for couple of hours
each day, despite the heat. The enter
prising street fakir knows that, and his
roasted chestnuts and hot popcorn have
gone-together with Dr.. Cureall's cele-
brated cough drops, only nickel
package, six packages for quarter of a
dollar, sample free-to where the wood
bine twineth. They are out summer
ing-these standard articles of the am
bulant vendors stock in trade.
Something new had to be introduced,
or rather, something old enough to be
forgotten posing as new That is dried
lavender. There isn't so much laven-
der raised in tiowery Surrey and all the
blooming midland shires of old England
in one season as is exposed for sale on
State street or peddled through the fash
ionable residence thoroughtares of Chi
cago in one day. But there is plenty Of
big white clover raised in Egypt
meadowy marshes of Southern Illinois.
Carefully dried these clover blossoms
look for the world like lavender, and they
can be bought at five cents a pound, which
is about as much in volume as an orli-
nary market basket will hold. The ex-
perienced fakir is no mean adept in
chemistry, and he understands thor
oughly how to treat ten pounds of clover
blossoms in such manner with one
ounce of oil of lavendar that the scent
will last for days even in the open air
Dip your hands deep into the fragrant
pile. Is not the odor SO thoroughly up
to the standard mastery depicted by
George Eliot that you imagine you stand
in Adam Bede's workshop and inhale
natures sweetness as it is waited into
the open windows?
But to come back to everyday prose.
Ten pounds of clover blossoms cost fifty
cents; an ounce of Oil of lavender, just
as much. Make twenty packages of
'.dried lavender of each pound. sell
each package at ten cents. and you rake
in twenty dollars-a profit of nineteen
dollars, for you have to pay no rent.
Why, money is still lying around loose;
one must but understand how to pick it
up.
Next to the dry lavender in venerable
age is the cinnamon BEAM" which will
doubtless be brought out soon by the in
dustrious fakir. Whatever natural phil
osophers of great depth of mind and
much appIicat on may say in regard to
the cinnamon, even if they go SO far as
to say that the seed is no bean, but a
collection of small kernels in fibrous
tissue-evervbody knows from his child
hoods days the delightful aromatic per-
fume of cinnamon, not only discernible
in the taste of the big cake which
mother herself made for Easter
Sunday, but plainly perceptible to the
olfactory nerves. 1t is no vulgar, OBJ
trusive scent, produced in a chem
lists shop from distilling. triturating or
blending byturic ether, which in turn is
made from rancid butter and such fatty
substances as are gained by boiling
down the malodorous contents of garb-
age barrels-it is natures own scent,
sweet, subtle and lasting What do the
memories of youth care for botanical
incongru1ties? The cinnamon bean has
been dead so long that it will most GER
tainly be resurrected. Fortunes have
been made out of it, and it will again
furnish the festive street vender with
visible means of support. Carried in
the vest-pocket, it will again ''permeate
your dress with a most wonderful and
lasting scent, which pleases without
being penetrating, which declaims you
as man of taste and good habits, and
which is not prodact of effervescing
art but of nature
The recipe is easy. Purchase bushel
of what is known in kitchen parlance
as COW beans. They cost about dollar
bushel- Soak them we'll until they
swell up. then dry them in the open air,
and if dry, roast them while adding oil
of cinnamon, about four ounces to the
bushel. Then select q prominent street
corner, sprinkle oil of cinnamon for
half block in every direction, sprinkle
your own clothes with it, until about
three dollars has been expended for the
essential oil. Then sell the beans at ten
cents apiece Be careful to select an
other corner, farther off, the next days:
sprinkle again oil over the remnant
and over your clothes. and when the
bushel is sold you will have made about
fifteen hundred dollars But do not buy
any cinnamon beans your self at street.
corners. &c Chicago Neaos.