— Bese tc Belletonte, Pa., August 3, 1917. FOOLISH NATURE. Though I regret exceedingly To say it, still it seems to me That old Dame Nature now and then, Acts like a poor, old, silly hen. She means all right, I have no doubt, But does she know what she’s about? She needs some lectures eloquent On scientific management. She smiles and lures the buds to grow, Then with a frost she lays them low; She coaxes forth the tender wheat And shrivels it with parching heat; For days and days she sends us rains Till raging floods submerge the plains, And then for weeks the land is dry. Why thus? I pause for a reply. Through arts of hers the roses bloom; She fits them out with rich perfume; And then she turns a careless back, And bugs devour them, alack! For every fruit there is a blight. For all he gets man has to fight, Whereas, if Nature had good sense, She’d finish what she dares commence. But no.—she shirks the final touch, Or else she up and does too much. Her many gifts are scattered wide, But to each gift a string is tied. Too lavish here, too stingy there, Her methods lack both thought aud care. This earth with joy would fairly throb If Nature only knew her job! —WALTER G. DOTY. HER OWN LIFE. She paid the landlady five dollars from a plump little purse of gold mesh. “And I'm expecting a—a gentle- man to see me within the next half- hour,” she said. “Certainly, ma’am; I'll show him right inte the drawing-room and call you. I hope you’ll like the surround- ings, ma’am; I have nobody in my house but the most refined—" “Oh, I’m sure I shall. Good day.” She sat on the edge of the bed in the furnished room she had just rent- ed, and her face had the look of the girl’s face in a little autotype of “The Soul’s Awakening through Books” that hung on the wall opposite her. At last her soul was awake; she could hear it whispering, whispering in her bosom. Or was that sound merely the exultation of her excited heart? At any rate her soul was awake. She knew it, she could feel it, and it made her tingle. At last she had broken her bonds, she had proclaimed herself a real person in a real world. Her doll existence and her doll-self were further behind than the doll’s house she had left. She was free— free to be herself. free to live her own life as her own desires decreed. “Free! free!” she repeated under her breath. “Free!” Her very presence gave a glamour to the shabby little room, so palpitat- ing with life was she, so dainty and pretty and sweet, and so, palpably young. The coils of her bright-brown hair were smooth and artfully simple, as only the fingers of an expert hair- dresser could have made them; her clear-skinned, brunette coloring show- ed the fine hand of nature given every chance to produce its best; the deli- cate, dark curves of her eyebrows, the carmine bows of her lips, the chang- ing, liquid velvet of her gold-brown eyes, were masterpieces of the same supreme artist. She was as fair as an April morning that has somehow strayed into the luxuriance of June. Suddenly she realized that the air in the little room was close, that the single tall window was closed top and bottom. With a quick rustle of silk- en draperies, she fluttered over to it and threw it wide. The sounds that came in were not the metallic tenor shriek of the “elevated,” the rumbling of wagons on cobblestones, the whin- ing of surface cars: they were voices of the world. She held out her arms to them before returning to her perch on the bed. There was such a dazzling host of things to be done that she could not begin to do anything. Her two big cowhide suitcases, standing in rather disdainful opulence beside the shabby chiffonier, invited her to unpack; but she dismissed the invitation with a toss of her head. How could she des- ecrate her first hour of freedom by putting clothing into bureau drawers? A mote-filled streak of sunshine, ob- ligue with late afternoon, offered more congenial occupation. She let her eyes rest on it and dreamed. It was pale golden, like hope, like the turrets of castles in Spain, like the wealth awaiting claimants at the foot of a rainbow. For a long time she looked into it, and her face put off its first flush of exaltation for the wistful doubtfulness of raverie. There was a knock at the door. “Yes?” she answered. _ “Your gentleman friend is a-wait- ing for you in the drawing-room, ma’am,” announced the landlady’s voice from outside. “All right; thank you. I'll be right down,” she said. She arose in a small flutter of ex- citment, and patted her faultles: hair before the mirror, turning her head this way and that. Gone was her doubtfulness, her wistfulness; she had brightened like a mirror when a lamp is brought into the room. The warm color in her cheeks deepened, and her eyes felicitated their doubles in the mirror. Lightly she fluttered down the broad stairway to the tiled hall be- low. At the entrance to the parlor she paused a moment, then swept back the heavy curtain with such an air as one might use in unveiling a statue. A man, sitting in the big Turkish rocking-chair between the front win- dows rose hastily to his feet. He was a compact, short-statured, middle- aged man, with a look of grave alert- ness behind the friendly set of his face. Wendell 7” “Mrs. coming forward. . “And so you,” she said, still pois- ing between the curtains, “are Ames Hallton!” Immediately she laughed. “That sounds like melodrama,” she exclaimed. “I'm very glad to see you.” They shook hands. he murmured, Her eyes con- tinued to regard him with the puzzled interest that worderful objects fre- | quently inspire when seen closely. | There was a faint shadow of disap- ! pointment on her face, but she did not | allow it to linger. “It was kind—it was awf’ly kind of | you to come,” she said. “Shan’t we | sit down? Do you know, I almost! thought you wouidn’t come.” | “Your letter was very interesting,” he returned dryly. “I tried to make it that way—so in- teresting that you just couldn’t keep from coming.” She folded her hands in her brown-silk lap and gravely bowed her head so that light from the window could bring out the copper tints in her hair. She felt the judicial expression of the gray eyes watching her, and chose the simplest means of making partizans of them. “I was quite desperate, and after I'd read your ‘Love’s Ordeal’ I knew you were the one person who could help me.” “Have you already left your hus- band ?” he inquired. She winced a little, and her brows protested. “You remind me of a sur- geon,” she said; “but that’s what I need—that’s what attracted me to you in your book. 1t’s all so calm and sim- ple and scientific. It made me realize for the first time what I was—it and Ibsen’s ‘Doll’s House.” I was nothing but a plaything, a parasite, a mis- tress, a doll.” She bowed her head in shame. The warm color flooding her cheeks was as flawless as that in the finest tinted bisque. “What you say is very, very inter- esting,” murmured Hallton; and she knew from his changed tone that the fact of her beauty had at last been borne in upon him. With renewed confidence, almost with boldness, she lifted her head and continued: “You see, I was married when I was only eighteen—just out of boarding-school. I was already sick of hearing about love; everybody made love to me.” “Of course,” said Hallton, slightly sarcastic. “I couldn’t help that, could I?” she complained, turning the depths of her gold-brown eyes full upon him. He lowered his own eyes and purs- ed his lips. “No, of course not,” he admitted. “And then, when you realized that you were—inconveniently situated, you decided to imitate Nora in the Doll’ House,” and get out? Is that it? “Well, yes; but—" “So you explained to your husband how you felt, and left him ?” “I didn’t exactly explain; my thoughts seemed to be all mixed up: I thought it would be better to write, after I'd thought a little more.” Again she allowed the glory of her eyes to be her best apologist. “I was going to write as soon as I'd had a talk with you. You see, I came away only two hours ago, and Harry—my husband— will just think I've gone to visit some- where.” Her beauty made a confident appeal that he would sanction her po- sition. a But Hallton looked out of the win- ow. “And what do you expect to do to earn your living,” he asked, “now that you’ve decided to quit being a para- site 7” It was cruelly unfamiliar ground, this necessity he put upon her of ans- wering questions with mere words; she had become accustomed to use glances as a final statement of her po- sition, as a full and sufficient answer for any question that a man could ask her. Nevertheless, she drew herself together and addressed Hallton’s un- appreciative profile: “My husband will give me an allow- ance, I am sure, until I decide on some suitakle occupaticn; or, if he is mean enough not to, there’ll be alimony or —or something like that, won’t there?” Her eyebrows began to arch a little as Hallton continued to look out of the window, and her lips lost some of their softness. “That is qne of the things I wished to speak to you about,” she explained. “I thought per- haps I might take up writing, and I thought you might tell me the best way to begin. Hallton put one hand to his fore- head. “However, of course the most im- portant thing,” she resumed steadily, “is for me to live my own life. That’s what I’ve come to realize: I must ex- press myself, I must be free. Why, I didn’t know I had a soul until I found myself alone a short time ago in the little room that I had rented myself, all for myself. I've been a chattel— ves, a chattel!” Her voice quavered; she hesitated, waiting for at least a glance of encouragement. “I hoped you’d understand, that you would advise me,” she murmured. “I'm afraid I'm frightfully helpless; I’ve always been that way.” “My God! yes, madam!” he explod- ed, facing her; “I should think you were!” She made no reply; she did not even show surprise by a change of ex- pression; she simply sat up very straight and faced him with the look of clear-eyed intelligence that she had found best suited to situations utterly beyond her comprehension. She wait- ed, calm-browed, level-eyed, judicious- mouthed, for him to explain, to apolo- gize. “I beg your pardon,” he said. Her silence demanded more. “I was rather overcome; I was about to take a cheap, narrow view of your—your dilemma,” he explained. “I was about to say that your trou- bles were as common as dirt, and that you were wrong to take them so ideal- istically, and not to realize the sim- plest fundamentals of— Women are going through a period of readjust- ment just now, of course. Your troubles probably aren’t much great- er than those of any woman or man, who goes out to hunt a job. You don’t need te smash things, to kick up a row.” She watched, with the penetrating gaze of a Muse, his half-disgusted at- tempts to be polite. She had not the slightest idea what he was driving at; she merely understood that only his regard for her beauty and womanhood kept him from sayirg wild, irrational things. It occurred tc her that he might be mentally unbalanced; gen- iuses often were. “Look here,” he continued, growing increasingly excited under her look of beautiful, - understanding aloofness, No. 19 in Health and Happiness Series. (Continued from last week's Watchman.) How To Regulate Your Weight. BY ROBERT H. ROSE, M. D., in “American Magazine.” If my patient were a woman I should be guided by a different table of weights, but the diet would be worked out on the same principle. The normal weight table for women, dressed in street clothing, follows be- low. With these two weight tables and a Food as Served Bread, white or Graham Cereals cooked, moist Cereals, eaten dry Thickened or cream soups Macaroni Potato, boiled or baked Potato, mashed Rice, boiled “iol =Ng¥ Corn, canned Peas, fresh Lima beans, canned Squash Beef tea, clear soups Fish, lean (cod, flounder) Fish, fat (shad, salmon) Meat, lean Meat, medium Meat, fat Oysters, medium size (raw) Egg Butter Cream cheese Milk Skimmed milk and buttermilk Condensed milk, sweetened Condensed milk, unsweetened Apple or pear Apple sauce Banana Orange Strawberries Dried figs, dates, raisins Fruit jelly, sweetened Custard Ice cream Sponge cake Pudding (rice, tapioca, bread) Sugar Honey Olive oil Olives Almonds, shelled Cocoa powders Overeating seems to be getting more general as our cities continue to grow and hard manual labor becomes less usual. The average city dweller is slow to recognize that since he has little exercise he requires little food. When he does go out for a tramp ora few sets of tennis the unwonted activ- ity is more likely to increase his ap- petite than his legitimate demand for food. A walk of three miles requires an addition to the dietary of only one large slice of bread and butter; yet the average urbanite, after taking such a walk is likely to eat a third more than usual at the next meal. Do you wonder that the lithe figure and the quick, snappy step is so seldom seen in the shadow of skyscrapers? Many sane and conservative citi- zens seem to say good-by to their sense of proportion as soon as they sit down to the dinner table. If they applied their system of eating to oth- What Women Ages: 15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 4 ft. 11 in. 111 113 115 Dit. Oin. 113 114 117 ft. 1 in, 115 116 118 Dit. 2 in. 117 118 120 Hh ft. 3 in. 120 122 124 BD ft. 4. in, 123 125 127 5ft. 5 in. 125 128 131 ft. Gin. 128 132 135 9% Tin: 132 135 139 5ft. Sin. 136 140 143 5ft. 9 in. 140 144 147 5 ft. 10 in, 144 147 151 WHAT TO DO IF YOU ARE TOO THIN. For the benefit of those who would gain weight, little need be added: they should eat heartily of the very things that fat folk are warned to shun. A diet of high caloric value and rich in fats and carbohydrates can be arranged easily from tables al- ready given. I will set. down, however, a diet I ordered recently for a patient 5 feet 6 inches tall, who lacked twenty pounds of his normal 150. I found that his daily diet was 3,000 calories —a very large amount for one of his size—but he was burning it up by in- tense activity. My special reason for mentioning this man is that he is the sort of person so frequently pointed out to support the contention that some people are born to be thin, no matter how much they eat. I order- ed him to follow this diet, which has over 3,600 calories of food value: Breakfast Two eggs Butter (2 balls) Two slices of bread Cereal Cream (2% ounces) Sugar (4 teaspoonfuls) Luncheon Butter (3 balls) Cream (2 ounces) Lamb chops (2) Bread (2 slices) Potato (1) Sugar (2 teaspoonfuls) Dinner Meat (51-3 ounces) Rice Bread (2 slices) Sugar Butter (3 balls) Cream (3 ounces) Salad and oil (1 ounce) Cheese (2x1 inch) Before Retiring Milk (1 glass) Crackers (4) There are sone individuals who, be- cause of abnormal gastric conditions, find difficulty in eating more than they are accustomed to, and a surplus seems to lie like a heavy load upon their stomachs. Usually I have solv- ed this problem by prescribing fre- quent small meals made up of the most nourishing foods. In many cases the patient has to force himself for a while to take a little more food than he really wants before he can eat a sufficient amount without feeling un- comfortable. When one’s weight has been brought to normal it is simple to keep it there by adopting a sensible main- tenance diet. Anyone should be able to select such a diet from the sugges- tions already given. In addition to the patent disadvan- tage of a marked variation from nor- mal weight there is a very real dan- ger. Tables prepared by a large in- surance company from one hundred thousand cases of record show that people who are under weight have a higher death rate up to the thirtieth year, and that after forty a higher death rate is found among persons who weigh more than the average for their age and height. Between forty and fifty a man who “wouldn’t it be a good thing if you de- cided, before beginning to live your own life, just what sort of life your own life is—what you . want to make of it? You're breaking away from a beastly artificial environment; aren’t you afraid you'll have as hard a time as, say, a pet canary turned out to table of the number of calories in or- dinary helpings of various foods any reader who wishes an exact diet to fit his case should be able to figure one out easily. But in selecting such a di- et, tha statements I have made al- ready about the kinds of food that go to make up a well-balanced diet should be remembered. Household Measure Calories 1 slice, 4x414 in. 70 1 heaping tablespoonful 35 1 heaping tablespoonfui 20 1 soup plate full 160 1 heaping tablespoonful 25 1 medium 90 1 heaping tablespoonful 40 1 heaping tablespoonful 35 1 heaping tablespoonful 35 1 heaping tablespoonful 40 1 heaping tablespoonful 20 1 heaping tablespoonful 20 1 teacup 5-20 1 heaping tablespoonful 35 1 heaping tablespoonful 105 1% ounces 70 134 ounces 130 1%; ounces 200 1 8 1 ki) 1 ball 80 one-inch cube 65 1 glass 160 1 glass 80 1 heaping teaspoonful 1 1 heaping teaspoonful 35 1 medium 0 1 heaping tablespoonful 70 1 medium 1 medium 7 1 medium saucerful 40 1 medium saucerful 1 heaping tablespoonful 1 heaping tablespoonful 355 1 heaping tablespoonful 1 slice (2x4 in) 70 1 heaping tablespoonful 80 1 heaping teaspoonful 33 1 heaping teaspoonful 33 1 teaspoonful 37 1 medium size 15 1 heaping tablespoonful 1 heaping teaspoonful 165 | er affairs, they would pour water in- to a glass until it spilled over, build a fire in the furnace in mid-July and buy shoes several sizes too big for their feet. It takes only a slight dietetic sur- ‘plus to set one on the road toward ! obesity. VonNoorden has estimated that three slices of bread, one-third i of a quart of milk or three quarters of an ounce of butter more than the ! body demands, taken daily, will cause | a gain of twenty pounds in one year. Reduction diets should be coupled | with systematic exercise whenever possible. If some part of the body has accumulated a disproportionate amount of fat, one should pay partic- i ular attention to exercises affecting that locality—being careful not to overdo at first. Any person with in- genuity can devise such exercises, and there are always books on calis- thenics to fall back on. Should Weigh. 15-10 50 over 17 119 122 125 128 119 122 125 128 130 121 124 128 131 133 123 127 132 134 137 127 131 135 138 141 130 134 138 142 145 135 139 143 147 149 139 143 146 151 153 143 147 15 154 157 147 151 155 158 161 151 155 159 163 166 155 159 163 167 170 allows his weight to remain high is running more danger of an early de- mise than he would run if he con- tracted typhoid fever. What is more, if he were stricken with that disease his chance of recovery would be ten per cent. less than normal. A man who is thinner than the average, on the other hand, has less danger of dy- ing in this decade than a man who tips the scales at the normal figure. When a man is in his twenties a deficiency of twenty pounds in weight makes him twelve per cent. more lia- ble to fall before the scythe of the implacable reaper. A slight surplus of flesh seems to assist one in escap- ing diseases that cause death in this period—principally tuberculosis and tynhoid fever. A man in his fifties who is twenty pounds over normal weight has a fif- teen per cent. mortality handicap to face. , Should he be forty pounds over weight his chances of dying are in- creased forty-five per cent. In the one hundred thousand cases covered by these calculations not a single really fat person lived to be eighty years old. Fourteen under- weights, however, reached the four- score mark and one was able to cele- brate merrily his ninetieth birthday, surrounded by his grandchildren long after his adipose associates had pass- ed to that bourne from which no trav- eler returns. A letter written to the American Maga- zine asking information concerning the values of certain foods, as cited in the above article, received the following satis- factory and courteous reply from Dr. Rose: Your letter to The American Mag- azine requesting information on food values was referred to me. Send ten cents to the F. H. Thomas Co., 691 ing for a folder called, “Food Values in Household measures.” This gives a great many that I used. I have tak- en others from various analyses. There is quite a difference in the amount of fat in cuts of meat and in the animal, according to way it was fed, also in the amount which is not edible. Cooked dishes vary in the amounts of butter and sugar used. To cite just one instance, baked ap- ple may be cooked with one, or two, or even no teaspoons of sugar. Your question is a very pertinent one. I have for some time recognized the need of a more detailed and definite table of caloric values and as soon as I have a little time from many things which I am doing I will print a table taken from some which I already have for my own use. . Very sincerely yours, R. H. Rose. make a living among the sparrows? Besides, canaries are quite as useful as sparrows.” “I hardly think,” she said with great determination, “that I can be compared to a pet canary; and Tl have to ask you to be more consider- ate in referring to my husband. He Boylston Street, Boston, Mass., ask-' j may not understand me, but he is | kind, and as good as he knows—" “Excuse me,” interrupted Hallton, | putting his hand to his forehead; “but i I have no recollection of referring to your nusband at all.” ! “You spoke of my breaking away {from him,” she said, “and you called {him a beastly artificial —I won’t re- i peat what you said.” The delicate : curves of her cheeks warmed with the | memory of the unfamiliar appellation, i with faint doubt as to her first idea of {its value. “However, that’s neither | here nor there. I wish te ask you a | simple, straightforward question, Mr. ! Hallton: do you, or do you not, think tit is right for persons to live their | own lives?” For a moment she thought she had | succeaded in bringing him back to a { humble consideration of her case; he | looked at her with something like con- | sternation in his face, his alert, gray eyes blinking rapidly. Light from the | window made her massed hair 2 soft, | golden glimmer above the sweet, in- | jured, girlish seriousness of her face; i her lips softened, curved downward, I like a troubled child’s. But Hallton turned from her to look out of the window. “Your own life, your own life!” he | exploded again. “Why, you great, ; big, beautiful doll, that’s your own | life—a doll’s life! When :s z doll not a doll?” He got out of his chair and i jerked his coat together at the tHroat. i His lower jaw protruded; he looked | through rather than at her, and his | eyes were sick and tired. “Even your i talk is the talk of an automaton; you thaven’t an idea without a forest of quotation-marks around it,” he said. “If you weren’t so good looking, you'd be a private in that big brigade of fe- male nincompoops who write their soul-troubles tc the author of the lat- est successful books. Your beauty re- moves ycu from that class—at least as long as I look at you.” He bowed to her, with an expres- sions slightly resembling a sneer. “Your beauty makes you z tempta- { tion; for you'd soon be looking for another cage, or another doll’s house. and any man might be glad to feed you. If I weren’t so busy, and you weren’t so devoid of character, com- mon sense, everything ‘else that—" “Oh, you brute!” she cried, recoil- ing from the crassly material admira- tion ir: his eyes. “How dare you speak to me like that?” “Perfect!” He bowed with his hand on his heart. “I press the button, and vou utter the absolutely obvious re- marks. You are a masterpiece—such a doll as would grace any home of the middle of the last century. And my advice to you is to go back to your home and to your devoted husband. I take it for granted that he is devoted: the prices which you mechanical beau- ties command usually include devotion by the bucketful. But perbaps I'm unnecessarily harsh because I see you slipping through my fingers." Good day, Mrs. Wendell; and good luck!” She saw him go with a feeling that the universe had suddenly been invert- ed and that she was scrambling around amid a Noah’s ark load of dis- placed properties. It was not so much that he had disturbed her ideals, her plans, her dream of freedom, but that he could have treated her so cavalier- ly; that he could have been so impo- lite, so unreasonable, 6 ‘brutal; that he could so completely have failed to understand her—that was what left her as dazed and terrified as a lost . child. “Oh, he is a cad, a perfect beast!” she gasped to herself as she fled up the broad stairway to her room. She threw herself down on the hard little bed, crumpled silks, crumpled hair, crumpled rose-petals of cheeks, crumpled pansies-and-dew of eyes. All her sweetness and delicacy wilted and drooped and quivered in the cold, gathering gloom of the little room. The city snarled and rumbled and hissed and groaned outside, and its great composite voice was the voice of loneliness incarnate. “Oh, there’s no one to take care of me!” she sobbed suddenly, and burst into a flood of tears.—By Allan Upde- graff, in Century Magazine. vette it ome Peanuts Great Texas Crop. State Senator Woodward, of Erath county, Texas, one of the youngest members of the Legislature and the “peanut king of Texas,” said to the Washington “Post,” regarding the production of that lucious nut: “The growth of the peanuts in the South is going to be one of our greatest indus- tries. Its importance can hardly be overestimated. The time is coming when in Texas alone the value of the peanut crop is going to run into mil- lions of dollars annually. This year I will have between 700 and 800 acres of peanuts to gather from my fields. I expect an average production of 35 bushels to the acre, and they will bring $2.40 a bushel, which is about twice the price for them in ordinary times. “The by-products of this crop are going to prove of extraordinary val- ue. The nuts ars now being crushed in the mills, and from them an oil is extracted which, after refining, can hardly be told from the best quality of olive oil. For culinary purposes and for nutritive worth this oil is not excelled by any in the world. The day is coming when it will probably take the place of olive oil to a great extent in the United States. “Chemists not long ago invented a process of combining peanuts with skim milk, from which they produce = butter that can scarcely be distin- guished from the best cow butter. This process has not yet been adopted in our country, but sooner or later it will be ir operation and will greatly augment one of the most necessary of food supplies. Texas has 1,001,000 acres of land which could easily be planted to peanuts with a certainty of a large yield. Peanuts will grow any- where in our sandy soil. The Texas peanut is of small size, belonging to what is called the Spanish variety, which has 30 per cent. more of oil than its brother, the jumbo peanut.” Fishing Conversation. A little fishing trip he took, And he is talking yet About the fish he chanced to hook But somehow didn’t get. —Detroit Free Press. FOR AND ABOUT WOMEN. DAILY THOUGHT He who receives a good turn should never forget it; he who does one should never remember it.—Charron. Simple Home-Made Dyes.—It had gone to the laundry a gay-colored blouse “of flaming orange, just the shade that artists delight in, but it had returned subdued and almost som- ber—dingy, anyway—and tha girl who had made it and enjoyed it so much was wondering somewhat de- jectedly what she could do witk it. If it were white, she could still wear it, but that muddy, bedraggled- looking color was quite impossible. “Why don’t you dye it again your- self?” queried the friend who had come home with her. “That is not a hopeless case; I have often done mine Sve, when the color has heen washed out. “But I have nothing to dye it with,” came the objection, ‘and, besides, it is such a lot of bother to use dyes. You have to cook them on a stove, don’t you? I wanted to wear this tomor- row, too.” “Have you any orange-coloved tis- sue paper in the honse 7’ was the next question. “No, that is not at all ir- relevant. I have made a dye with that, which I have used to good ad- vantage. I had an orange-colored silk blouse, too, and it faded and I did not know what to do. It just happen- ed that at that time I was making a costume of crepe paper of almost that same color, a Hawaiian costume. I took some pieces of the paper and put them in water, to see if the color would come out. It did, and it made a beautiful dye. I plunged my silk blouse into it, soaked it a little while, kept moving it about so that it would not get streaked, then dried and iron- ed it and it looked very well, indeed. Of course, I cannot guarantee that it would always work, but I should not hesitate to try it with any color that I wished, if I could get any tissue or crepe paper the right shade or nearly right. It does not take much. I used Just a few odds and ends of ‘the orange paper which I had left. “Did you ever try red ink and wa- ter for dye? That works well, too, I have found. I had a pale pink crepe de chine blouse that faded badly. I put a little red ink in a bowl of water and dipped it in. It was not deep enough pink ‘at first, so I took the blouse out, sprinkled in some more and stirred it around thoroughly be- fore I dipped it again. My blouse came out the most beautiful shell pink you could ask. “I have tried red ink for dyeing oth- er things. In fact, I first heard of it when I was visiting my cousin down in Florida, in a little place far from any town. She was trimming a hat and wanted a pink feather for it. She had a small white ostrich plume, which was just right except for the color. To my astonishment, I saw her wash that feather in soap and water and then, when it was dry, dip it into a bowl of water, colored pink with a few drops of red ink. It came out a most exquisite delicate pink. When it was dry, she curled it herself on a dull knife, and the result was all that anyone could demand. Then I tried my hand at it. I wanted some pink roses for a hat. My cousin had son.e white ones which she gave me, and I merely tried her scheme, dipping them into water with a little red ink stirred into it and before long, had the daintiest blush pink roses that I could ask, at a small expenditure of time and trouble. I find it quite worth while experimenting in such ways as these; it is interesting, too, and one has the consolation of knowing, in the case of a faded blouse like yours, that she cannot make it any worse, as it is unwearable in its present state, but she may render it quite presentable once more, at least for a time. Of course, these dyes might prove to be what chemists call ‘fugitive.’ A laun- dering would likely impair the color again.” Simple methods for cleaning spots and stains from clothes are often in- valuable to the housewife. Clothes free from soil add much to personal appearance. . To remove grass stains the follow- ing suggestions are offered by Miss M. Jane Newcomb, assistant in home economics extension at The Pennsyl- vania State College: Wash in cold water without soap, rub with molas- ses, let stand a few mirutes and wash in warm water. For tea and coffee stains boiling water should be poured through the spot. If the stain is obstinate, rub with glycerine or borax. As a last re- sort use Javelle water, which is made as follows: Put one-half pound of washing soda in an agate pan and add one quart of boiling water, mix one- half pound chloride of lime in two quarts of cold water 2nd ailow the mixture to settle, then pour the clear liquid secured from the lime and wa- ter into the dissolved soda. Javelle i should be kept in a colored bot- e. To remove ink spots moisten with salt and lemon juice and lay the gar- ment in the sun. Another method con- sists in applying alternately a few drops of oxalic acid and a few drops of Javelle water and rinsing the gar- ment in warm water. This operation should be repeated until the spot has disappeared. Iron rust may be removed by the lemon juice and salt treatment advis- ed for ink spots. To remove mildew, wash the garment in a solution of chloride of lime or Javelle water. Russia is considering a scheme for the universal conscription of women labor. Women cigar and cigarette workers in Japan receive from 10 to 25 cents per day. Women workers in the British mu- nition factories receive a little over 9 cents an hour. Miss Julia A. McGowan has been appointed as court stenographer in New York city. Owing to the increased demand for experienced inspectors, the United States Arsenal at Springfield, Mass., is considering the advisability of em- Dleying women to inspect arms made ere. “oi
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers