Cherry Bounce.
- 4 lbs. of sour and the same quantity of sweet cherries.
- 2½ lbs. white sugar.
- 1 gallon best whiskey.
Crush the cherries to pieces by pounding in a deep wooden vessel with a smooth billet of wood. Beat hard enough to crack all the stones. Put into a deep stone jar, mix in the sugar well, and cover with the whiskey. Shake around briskly and turn into a demijohn. Cork tightly and let it stand a month, shaking it every day, and another month without touching it. Then strain off and bottle.
It is better a year than six months old.
If the Maltese cross appears but seldom in the section devoted to drinks, it is because most of my information respecting their manufacture is second-hand. In my own family they are so little used, except in sickness, that I should not dare to teach others, upon my own authority, how to prepare them. Indeed, the temptation I felt to omit many of them reminded me of a remark made, introductory of preserves, by one of the “Complete Housewives,” who, all five together, drove me to the verge of an attack of congestion of the brain, before I had been a housekeeper for a week. Said this judicious lady:—“Preserves of all kinds are expensive and indigestible, and therefore poisonous. Therefore”—again—“I shall not give directions for their manufacture, except to remark that barberries stewed in molasses are economical, and a degree less hurtful than most others of that class of compounds.”
Then I reflected that I might, upon the same principle, exclude all receipts in which cocoanut is used, because it is rank poison to me; while a dear friend of mine would as soon touch arsenic as an egg. A large majority of the beverages I have named are highly medicinal, and deserve a place in the housekeeper’s calendar on that account. Many, so far from being hurtful, are beneficial to a weak stomach or a system suffering under general debility. None which contain alcohol in any shape should be used daily, much less semi- or tri-daily by a well person.
This principle reduced to practice would prove the preventive ounce which would cure, all over the land, the need for Temperance Societies and Inebriate Asylums.
THE SICK-ROOM.
The sick-chamber should be the most quiet and cheerful in the house—a sacred isle past which the waves of domestic toil and solicitude glide silently. This is not an easy rule to obey. Whoever the invalid may be, whether the mother, father, or the sweet youngling of the flock, the foundations of the household seem thrown out of course while the sickness lasts. You may have good servants and kind friends to aid you, but the hitch in the machinery is not to be smoothed out by their efforts. The irregularity does not annoy you: you do not notice it if the attack be severe or dangerous. All other thoughts are swallowed up in the all-absorbing, ever-present alarm. You count nothing an inconvenience that can bring present relief, or possible healing to the beloved one; disdain for yourself rest or ease while the shadow hangs above the pillow crushed by the helpless head. But when it passes, when the first transport of thankfulness has subsided into an abiding sense of safety, the mind swings back to the accustomed pivot, and your eyes seem to be suddenly unbound. You find, with dismay, that the children have run wild, and the comfort of the whole family been neglected during your confinement to the post of most urgent duty; with displeasure, that the servants have, as you consider, taken advantage of your situation to omit this task, and to slur over that;—in fine, that nothing has been done well, and so many things left altogether undone, that you are “worried out of your senses”—a phrase that too often signifies, out of your temper.