Mother's Cook Book: Containing Recipes for Every Day in the Week, Including ..

no donbt, cost money, bnt not a tithe the amount that one of the lesser vices will cost — vices which are sore to be acquired away from home, bnt seldom there. Then there should be social pleasure— a gathering of young and old around the hearthstone, a warm welcome to the neighbor who drops in to pass a pleasant hoar. There should be music and amusements and reading. The tastes of all should be consulted, until each member of the family looks forward to the hoar of reunion around the hearth as the brightest one in the twenty-four. Wherever there is found a pleasant, cheerful, neat, attractive, inexpensive home there you may be sore to find the abode of the domestic virtues; there will be no dissipated husbands, no discon- tented or discouraged wives, no " fast" sons or frivolous daughters. DINNER-TABLE FANCIES. - To be thoroughly good form at dinner is the very inflo- rescence of civilized life. Like many other regulations of social life, dinner-table etiqnette is arbitrary, but not to know certain things is to argue yourself unknown so far as society life goes. To take soup pushing the spoon from rather than toward yourself; to touch the napkin as little as possible; to accept or decline what is offered instantly and quietly; these and other trifles characterize the well- bred diner-out The attempts to introduce too much color in dinner-table decorations are rather declining. The finest white damask still holds the preference, and the centre- piece of plush or velvet onderlace is little used now. Fewer flowers, too, are seen, and those in very low forms. The dessert plates come in deep tones in Dresden china, and the doyley on which the finger-bowl rests should be immediately removed with the bowl, on reaching the guest. rhe latest fashion in ice-cream plates is the Bohemian glass in oval form with small handles. Menu cards, band- Mother's Cook Book. 311 painted, bold the preference, but many are seen on tinted cardboard with engraved vignette in one corner and the date in another. THE USE OP AMMONIA IN BAKING POWDERS. The recent discoveries in science and chemistry are fast revolutionizing oar daily domestic economies. Old methods are giving way to the light of modern investigation, and the habits and methods of onr fathers and mothers are step- ping down and out, to be succeeded by the new ideas, with marvelous rapidity. In no department of science, however, have more rapid strides been made than its relations to the preparation and preservation of human food. Scientists, having discovered how to traverse space, furnish heat, and beat time itself, by the application of natural forces, and to do a hundred other things promotive of the comfort and happiness of the human kind, are naturally turning their attention to the development of other agencies and powers that shall add to the years during which man may enjoy the blessings set before him. Among the recent discoveries in this direction, none is more important than the uses to which common ammonia can be properly put as a leavening agent, and which indicate that this familiar salt is hereafter to perform an active part in the preparation of onr daily food. The carbonate of ammonia is an exceedingly volatile sub- stance. Place a small portion of it upon a knife and hold over a flame, and it will almost immediately be entirely de- veloped into gas and pass off into the air. The gas thus formed is a simple composition of nitrogen and hydrogen. No residue is left from the ammonia. This gives it its superiority as a leavening power over soda and cream tartar when used alone, and has induced its use as a supplement to these articles. A small quantity of ammonia in the dough 812 Mother's Cook Boos.