What to Eat, How to Serve it

by Christine Terhune Herrick

CHINA AND GLASS

THAT housekeeper must be a noteworthy exception to the majority of the members of that honorable body whose heart does not yearn to possess a goodly store of china and glass. She may begin her married life with the resolve to content herself with very little, but she will find, in this form of acquisition as in nearly every other, that appetite comes with eating, and the more she has the more she wants. Curiously enough, she learns also that although she may get along very comfortably for a long while without certain articles, she has not owned them a month without reaching a state of mind where she cannot understand how she ever managed to keep house lacking the new possessions.

In these days a bride is usually pretty well supplied with handsome china and glass by the friends who send them to her as wedding presents. She receives from them at least the luxuries of table furniture, if not the necessities. Among her gifts she has almost always one or more fine cut-glass bowls or dishes, and possibly several small bonbon, pickle, or olive saucers. An ice-cream set is also a favorite gift, and the bride usually receives also a set of after-dinner coffee cups and saucers and at least a dozen fruit-plates. A few young couples are so fortunate as to number a complete dinner set among their presents; and they may deem themselves lucky indeed, for the cost of this necessary purchase makes a big hole in the sum that the bride received, or that she has laid aside for household plenishing.

Of course there are some young married people to whom money is, so to speak, no object, who have but to go to a shop and order whatever pleases their fancy. But they are few and far between. To most newly made housekeepers the filling of their china closets must be slow work, and each new addition is generally the evidence of a bit of economy or good management, or else a memento of some Christmas or holiday, and all the more valued on that account. Even when the proud young manager is beginning to view with pride the accumulation of months, she is sadly liable to find their ranks lessened some woful day by one of those accidents which will happen so long as china and glass are breakable commodities. The cheese-dish, the berry-bowl, or the cake-plate has come to grief in Bridget's or Gretchen's or Dinah's hands.

"Shure, ma'am, it jist slipped out of me hands as I was a-wipin' it," or, "It came in two pieces when I put it into the wather. Feth an' it must have been cracked before."

Of course a dish will get broken occasionally. Once in a while one will go to pieces even under the careful touch of the mistress, and no hireling can be taught to handle fragile things as carefully as will their owner. A potent aid in inculcating caution is the habit of deducting from a servant's wages the price of the pieces broken. This rule should not be enforced in the case of a really careful maid, but only with one who shows a decided tendency to heedlessness. Even with this penalty there will be chips and cracks that will prove almost as great a trial to the mistress as a total fracture. To the importance of these minor accidents the average serving-maid seems serenely unconscious.

"Norah, if I treated you as you deserve, I would take the value of this out of your wages," said a mistress, ruefully contemplating a Limoges chocolate pot, from the lip of which a triangular fragment had been neatly chipped.

"Indade, ma'am, an' can't ye use it as well as iver ye did?" was the surprised reply.

Without going as far as one woman, who used to declare she would rather have a piece of china completely smashed than to see it cracked, one may safely say that the good housekeeper never perceives even a trifling breakage in any piece of her table-ware without a real pang at heart. To avert these accidents she is wise if she intrusts to no hands but her own or those of an exceptionally careful maid the cleansing of her most precious belongings of porcelain and crystal. Sometimes, however, a woman's other duties are so pressing that she cannot spare the time to wash the delicate dishes which she prides herself upon having in constant use, and then she must simply make up her mind to be resigned to the losses she must sustain if she permits her servants to take entire charge of these breakables.