Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-08-11
TOWN AIRS AND GRACES.
Shirley Dare on Cooking Appliances.
Edward AtkiRsen's Oven;
New RefrigeratOr-Some House Cooling
Schemes-POints for Women Who Want
to be Healthy and ComeIy. r,
ICopyrighted.l

Written for the Gazette.
The southwest wind blows like the
draught from furnace far off Open
ing the doors and windows this morning
the outer air rushed IN so many degrees
warmer that it seemed as if the world
had been simmering over night. The
moist, Oppressive heat gives one a sym
pathizing idea what it is inland, in closely
built towns and country houses with only
the breeze between them and the sun.
How do people live without east winds
cooled by icebergs off Labrador, and the
strengthening of salt air? Why does not
some genius study a new subject and go
about telling people how to live COM
fortably? Notably, there was such a
one, the Polish exile and philosopher,
Count Lelmanowsld, yet remembered in
the interior where he used to lecture in
a benevolent way. But the best of
his work was always done nights and
mornings when he stayed, in giving peo-
pie invaluable hints about health and
convenience and how to manage, from
cooking a foreign dish to the routine of
crops or choosing a vocation. He was
man of very sincere mind and that wide,
clear sagacity for which nothing was too
vast or too small to be of interest, and
have heard him spoken of almost ador-
ingly the help his advice had given on
practical matters on which the comfort
of narrow lines turned. The philosophers
like Franklin and Count Rumford and
Horsford of Harvard found their genius
never better employed than deYising aids
for domestic economy. 1t is to Franklin
nyn1D ~
twenty other conveniences under patent
to-day. The best cooking ranges
and utensils are copied direct from Rum
ford IS designs 100 years ago which never
have been improved upon. 1 have heard
one of the old Gloucester folk tell of the
first cooking stove ever brought to the
place, more than fifty years ago, which
drew almost as much wonder from the
neighbors as the railway engine years
later. People harnessed teams and drove
up from Marblehead and Ipswich to see
the new cooking machine. We are apt
to think we are at the completion of i'm
provements when we have hardly begun
on the ideas the fathers have written and
stored away? Life goes so much easier
with intelligence, and a tour among the
inventions for GOODNESS and comfort dis
closes great alleviatlons for days at So
dogs. in the shade with humidity
We must eat if it is summer, and that
necessity adds fearfulIy to the distress
and mortality of heated months. 1t is a
very serious fact that many women die
every summer from oYerwork and over
heating. They could endure the work if
if were not for the heat of that MOloch of
a cooking stove. Kerosene stoves are a
great boon, but even an oil stove equal
m ho IF 70 i1vro
sive heat. The ideal arrangement is this
square, close-shut japanned box, about
two feet square, on four high legs, under
a tin hood higher than ones head, with
pipe connected with the chimney. A
large entry lamp under the box supplied
tee heat. Lifting the cover of the box,
behold q complete cooking battery, of
white ware jars, one with chicken,
another with beef roasting, three more
with vegetables and dumplings light as
sponge. Another pair hold brown |
bread lOaves, steaming to perfection; a |
square tin holds a loaf of white bread |
which will be finished in the oven at one |
side. Observe the convenience. The |
cooking box is so high there is no |
STOPPING to stir the food or look in the |
oven. There is no anxiety about burn |
ing food in these thick pots of fire |
proof ware, so nicely is the heat adjusted, |
and consequently no burning and wither-
ing of wOmen's faces, standing over
the fire. The box, or oven as you please
if of paper pulp, ffre-proof as iron, with
the excellent property of conveying no
heat into the air. All heat and odor
when opened are drawn at once into the
by the tin hood, under which
one might fry fish without anyone in the
next room being wiser. This is the in
vention and practical diversion of very
busy and very practical man, Mr.. Ed
ward Atkinson, diplomat, financier,
writer on political economy, secretary of
a rich insurance company and student of
such philosophers of common life as the
ablest men of all times have been. The
idea of the cOoking-boX is an old one,
used by the shrewd peasantry abroad and
approved by every old writer on the
economy of heat, but it was left for Mr..
to improve and develop it It |
simply reduces the expense of fuel and the /
heat felt to the lowest degree, while
making cookery absolutely an exact
science IN practice The flavor i'm
parted or rather developed in such
cooking, the tenderness and richness of
meats, the sweetness of bread and fine
quality of vegetables is remarkable, and
suG gam III SuDSLdlCS OF lOOU pays lot
the oil burned thrice over. The whole
process is so free of all the evils of COM
non cooking that one would imagine
women reaching for the new invention
IN masse, but the intense conservatism
If ordinary women in ali matters outside
heir self-interest stands stupidity una
ware that a tightening of their burdens
: here presented.
Such an invention would do more for
hem than the ballot if they only knew
/, and l think the Western women will
Know how to appreciate it.
The value of the cooking oven depends
IN the nom conducting property of paper
Pulp. What is good to keep the heat in
will keep it out, and the next application
[ the material is the convenient refrig-
ratOr of compressed wood pulp. This
las the advantage of not needing double
walls, ana being light enough, to wheels
ntb any place, unlike the common be
lemoth refrigeratofs. The Ideal refrfg-
rator ii wood pulp is decorated with
Iickel plate, scrolls and oil pictures to
,e ornamental enough for an ordinary
lining room or side hail. To my taste