HOW TO BUILD A FIRE
Before attempting to use a range (or stove) one should know something about its construction, and the appliances that are afforded for its regulation. An ordinary cooking range is supplied with dampers, drafts and checks to regulate the direction and intensity of the heat.
When the range is clean and cold examine it carefully. A lever will be found (often directly above the oven door) which when pulled out or pushed in (or turned to right or left) will allow the heat and the smoke to go directly into the chimney flue, or through the range and around the oven indirectly into the flue. Well down below the fire-box is the draft (a door), which when open allows the outside (cold) air to rush in and force the fire to burn more rapidly. Above the fire-box, near the top of the stove, are the checks (a door with slides) that allow the outside (cold) air to come in above the burning fuel, and depress its combustion.
It is readily seen when the smoke damper and the draft are open, with the checks closed, that the greatest intensity of heat and the most rapid combustion are obtained. In this way the top part of the stove directly over the fire-box may be heated quickly and intensely. When an emergency arises this is the quickest way to boil the water in the kettle or to cook immediately on the top of the stove. However, the tax on fuel is excessive and wasteful when the damper and drafts both are open. When damper and drafts are closed and the check open, the fire burns most slowly and the heat radiated is least intense.
A wood fire
When ready to lay the fuel and build the fire in a cold stove, be sure that the fire-box and ash-pits are clean and free from ashes and clinkers. Then open the damper and the drafts and close the checks. The fuel should always be put in from the top after removing the lids over the fire-box. Place the paper, slightly crumpled (never a number of sheets flat together), on the grating in the bottom of the fire-box. Lay the kindling on the paper loosely with the sticks across one another so that air may circulate freely between them. Place stove wood on the kindling in the same manner. Light the paper from below after replacing the lids on the stove. When the fire is burning freely close damper and drafts.
A quick wood fire
When a quick wood fire is required for only a few moments’ use, lay the fuel as usual, except to use about one-third the amount of paper and kindling and only two or three sticks of stove wood. Build the fire well back in the fire-box next to the oven, with the smoke damper and drafts wide open. The draft is much stronger in the back of the fire-box and the fire therefore burns more readily.
A hard-coal fire
If hard coal (anthracite) is to be used, wait until the wood is burning well and then cover with a thin layer of coal. As soon as this is thoroughly ignited put in more coal and close the damper into the chimney flue. The fire-box should never be filled more than two-thirds full.
A soft-coal fire
A soft-coal fire is laid in the same way, except that this fuel requires less kindling and ignites more readily than anthracite. The stove wood may be omitted if the kindling is of good size. In using bituminous (soft) coals the flues need cleaning oftener; but in any case these should be kept free from soot. Especially the flues around the oven should be cleaned once in ten days. If neglected the oven does not bake well, becomes too hot or will not heat at the bottom, and causes much annoyance.
Kerosene and other explosive oils should not be used to kindle the fire. When the stove wood or kindling is damp, patience and an extra supply of paper will be more effectual and less dangerous.
Bricks for kindling
Common building bricks, that can be obtained from any mason, make a good substitute for kindling wood. Put half a dozen into a covered tin slop pail in the corner of a closet in a box, where there is no danger of fire, and keep them well covered with kerosene. All that you have to do to start the morning fire is to lay a brick thus soaked in grate or stove or upon the hearth, pile other fuel upon it and apply a match. The brick will burn well for forty minutes. If it is in the way, remove it then. The same brick may be used for months.
FINAL FAMILIAR TALK
EMERGENCIES, BROKEN CHINA, AND—“IN CASE OF”—
A ready command of expedients is the hall-mark of the canny housekeeper. The ability to snatch safety from apparent ruin, like a brand from the burning, is a faculty with some. It may be acquired by many, if not all. The experienced housemother is slow to believe in the possibility of irreparable disaster. There is no such word as “defeat” in her dictionary. Absolute success is not always to be had, but there are grades of success in cookery, as in political preferment. When Mrs. Faintheart sits down to weep over spilt milk, Mrs. Resolute bethinks her of something that will take the place of the milk.
She reminds herself also that milk is greasy, and the spot not easily removed if it is allowed to soak into the silk, woolen or other unwashable fabric. By the time the milky-way spreads itself over carpet or gown she has a soft brush, warm water and household ammonia in hand, sponges, scrubs and rinses—this last with warm, clear water—then rubs dry with a soft linen cloth.
In case of a broken ink-bottle, or upset inkstand upon a carpet, wash immediately with skim-milk, using a clean sponge. Soak the ink and the milk up together, squeezing the sponge hard each time. When the ink disappears, cleanse the sponge well and wash the place again with warm water and ammonia. Lastly, scrub with a clean, stiff brush dipped in warm water and ammonia, following the threads of the carpet. If these directions are obeyed faithfully the carpet will be brighter than before the accident.
In case of claret or fruit stains upon table-cloth or napkin hold the stained part tightly over a bowl and pour boiling water through it for three or four minutes, using clean water every time.
In case of mildewed linen, rub together equal parts of white soap (old Castile is best) and powdered starch. Make a soft paste of these with lemon juice, and coat the mildew on both sides of the linen thickly with the paste. Lay in the hot sun for several hours, wetting the paste well with lemon juice every hour. Wash off the coating with clear water, and if any sign of the mildew remains renew the application.
In case of ants in cupboard or refrigerator, scour the shelves well with hot water and borax. Dry in the sun if the shelves are portable, then sprinkle thickly with dry borax. It is odorless and harmless, and may be used freely.
In case of soured dough, stir an even teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda, better known as baking-soda, into a cupful of warm water; turn the over-risen dough upon a board and work in the soda-water, gradually, until all is absorbed. If the dough is so soft that it runs, add a little sifted flour as you go on. Knead thoroughly and set for the last rising, taking care this is not in a hot place. I have seen an apparently hopeless batch of dough redeemed in this way.
In case of meat that has a “close” smell, yet is not actually tainted, wash well in soda and water, rubbing it well into every crack and line; wash off with fresh iced water; leave in salted iced water for half an hour, wash again with fresh, wipe quickly until perfectly dry, and cook at once.
In case of boiling milk more than eight hours old in summer, or twelve in winter, drop in a bit of baking-soda the size of a pea for each quart when you put the milk over the fire. I have boiled cream in this way without curdling it. Bear in mind that the first stage of decomposition is acid, and treat suspected food with soda as the most convenient and harmless of alkalies.
In case of curdled mayonnaise, whip the yolk of a fresh egg smooth and thick and stir into the curdled dressing.
Nothing brings me more closely in touch with my sister housemother than the request, “Will you tell me what to do in case of”—let the exigency be a shattered hope, an aching heart, a hankering after a mission, or broken china.
The dismay of the housewife over the destruction of her brittle treasures dates far back of the poetical precision who makes her ability to be “mistress of herself though china fall,” the test of breeding. I suspect, if the truth were known, we should learn that the potsherd, picked up from the ash-heap by hapless, skin-smitten Job, marked an evil day in the calendar of his shrewish wife and the unlucky servant through whose carelessness pot, or cup, or platter came to grief. Furthermore, that the broken utensil belonged to a set that could not be matched in any china-shop in the length and breadth of Uz.
I read, yesterday, in one of the “Be-thrifty-and-you-will-be-prosperous” essays, that are as rusty needles in the thick of the thumb of the woman of experience, an anecdote of a notable manager who still uses the same “snow-drop figure” napery affected by her mother and her grandmother before her, and the same pattern of china and cut-glass that set forth their tables. Hence—the hateful “Hence” that breaks off the needle-point in the flesh!—“she has no difficulty in matching worn-out and fractured articles of household use.” Queen Victoria had a similar fad. When the chair and sofas of Windsor got shabby they were spirited away, one by one, without her knowledge (presumably), and recovered with stuff of the same design and color, artistically dimmed and frayed so as to resemble the old exactly. Queens can afford to have expensive and almost impossible whims. The drawback to imitation of Mrs. Guelph’s and Mrs. Notable’s sentimental economics is that crockery, glass and linen merchants do not carry dead stock. When a pattern becomes unfashionable it disappears from the market. The moral and exasperating “Hence” should have a corollary in the shape of a card, telling us where Mrs. Notable finds benevolent tradesmen who replenish her stores with snow-drop damask and fifty-year-old designs in “fragiles.”
A friend writes to me of the death of her colored butler, after twenty-three years’ service in her family.
“He was not particularly bright or brisk,” she says, “and had some grave faults. But he did not break or chip one piece of glass or china while he was with us. Do you wonder that we mourn him?”
Considered as a means of grace and of daily discipline in the fine order of breeding indicated by our poet, our waitress—whatever her race, age, or previous condition of sovereignty—leaves little to the liveliest imagination. She “blazes” her trail through our households by nicks, cracks, breaks and “crazed” glazing.
There is a hill near Rome composed entirely of broken pottery. The modern housekeeper does not enter into the social speculations of archæologists as to its origin and history. Women loved china in those older days as fondly as we love it. Perhaps—for it was an age of idols, many and curious—they set it among their household goods. At any rate, when it was shattered, they gave it decent burial. If the dust-heaps and ash-barrels of Christian America were made to give up the like relics deposited in guilty haste and secrecy within their unhallowed depths the woeful pile would dwarf the Tower of Babel by comparison, and represent as many tears as any national cemetery.
In view of the frail constitution of our well-beloved china, we ought not to set our hearts upon it any more than we ought to love our babies, whose tenure upon life is more slight than spider’s silk. One and all, we do set our affections, and feast our eyes, and pamper our souls’ desires upon the adornments of buffet and china-closet. Tea, coffee and chocolate are more delicious when sipped from Sevres and Limoges; our sensitive finger-tips recoil from the blunt edges of pressed glass. To set stone china and thick tumblers before tired and hungry John would insult one who deserves the best of everything.
Since, then, we must, in justice to him and to ourselves, have fine china and glass, and our waitress’s tumultuous voyagings among them will strew back yards and vacant lots with the worthless flotsam and jetsam of what was dear and precious, what shall be done? To the housekeeper whose time has not a prohibitive monetary value, my advice is simple and direct: Have choice china—the choicest you can afford—and take care of it yourself.
SIDE-BOARD AND CHINA-CLOSET