If I Had My Own Blue Box:

From Moore’s Rural New-Yorker in Rochester, NY

March 5^th, 1864

To Color Black

Eds. Rural: – Seeing an inquiry for a recipe for coloring black, I send you mine. Take four ounces extract of logwood, put in an iron kettle over which pour ten quarts of soft water; let it boil. Stir often, take off the scum, wash the goods in soap suds, put them in the dye, let them boil about half an hour, take out, air well. Add one teaspoonful copperas, one-third do. vitriol, put in the goods, scald about 15 minutes, take out, dry, then dip in sweet milk to set the color, wash in good soap suds, iron while damp and you have as handsome black as you could desire. – From a Subscriber’s Wife.

Another – One pound of logwood; three pounds of yarn; one-fourth a pound of copperas put in three gallons of water; when it boils skim off all the scum, put in the yarn, boil one hour, let it cool sufficient to ring, cover the yarn to prevent it from drying, then boil the logwood in the same water; dip and air three times; dry before washing. – Emily Skeer.

Eds. Rural: – Having noticed in the Feb. 6^th No. of the Rural an inquiry for coloring black that will not fade, mother proposes to send you hers, which she has used for a number of years, and knows to be an excellent recipe: – Take one pound of logwood chips, and half an ounce of copperas. This will color two pounds of cloth or yarn, silk or woolen. Put your logwood into sufficient quantity of soft water to cover your cloth, and place it on the stove to soak; then put your copperas into a similar quantity of water; stir till dissolved; then put in your cloth and let it simmer for an hour; take out and hang out to dry. When dry, rinse through two or three waters, and put into the dye. Let it boil very slowly for an hour, then dry and rinse, and you have a black that will neither crock nor fade. It must be stirred frequently while in both copperas water and the dye, to prevent its spotting. – A Rural Reader, Milan, Ohio, 1864.

From Moore’s Rural New-Yorker in Rochester, NY

(Given my newer found liking of omelets, I was delighted to see them show up in this publication a good number of times. Granted, I like mine with whites and lots of veggies.)

February 27^th, 1864

How to Make an Omelet

Seeing and inquiry from “A Young Housekeeper” how to make an “omelet,” I send mine, which I call good: Twelve eggs, well beaten; one cup of sweet cream, and a little salt. Butter your dish, pour in this mixture, set over a slow fire, and stir occasionally until done. – Fannie R., Pavillion, N.Y. 1864

By another correspondent: – Six eggs, well beaten, with one teaspoonful of flour, one teacupful of milk, with one teaspoonful of salt; beat this well; put the milk with the eggs just before you put it in to fry. You must have some melted butter, just enough to fry it in. Run a knife under the edge as it is beginning to fry. – E.M., Wayne, N.Y., 1864.

From Moore’s Rural New-Yorker in Rochester, NY

February 20^th, 1864

Cold Floors

“Keep the head cool and the feet warm,” says the physician. Some people are so unfortunate as to live in hired houses, or are too poor to repair their own, or do not wish to lay out money to fix up the old one, when they expect in a year or two that its place will be occupied by a new one. What are such people to do when the floors are filled with cracks that let in the wind and the cold? No sort of chance to follow the advice of the doctor, in such a case. The cracks change things just end for end. Cold feet and blood and heat to the head. We were in just such a fix. We read in the Family Journal, that newspapers being spread between bed clothes were excellent non-conductors, and rendered beds very warm. We applied the principle to our cold floor.  Before laying down the carpet, we covered the whole floor with newspapers, being careful to break joints. It produced a decided change in the temperature of the room. Feet and legs rejoiced, as they were comparatively comfortable. Please tell your readers, Mr. Editor, that this is about the best use some papers can be put to. – L.L.F.

A New Corset Asked For

Susie Perkins complains, in the Scientific American, that the corsets illustrated and recommended in that paper the past year, do not meet her requirements, and those of the sisterhood of corset-wearers. She talks in this wise:

“The air we ladies have to breathe up there in Vermont circulates all round the world, and is breathed by all the filthy creatures on the face of the earth, by rhinoceroses, cows, elephants, tigers, woodchucks, hens, skunks, minks, grasshoppers, mice, raccoons, and all kinds of bugs, spiders, fleas, and lice, lions, tobacco-smokers, catamounts, eagles, crows, rum-drinkers, turkey buzzards, tobacco-chewers, hogs, snakes, toads, lizards, Irish, negroes, and millions of other nasty animals, birds, insects and serpents; besides, it is filled with evaporations from dead, decaying bodies, both animal and vegetable, and we ladies are obliged to breathe it over after them, ough! Bah!

“Now we want, and must have, some contrivance that will effectually keep this foul disgusting stuff  out of our lungs. We have tried the three kinds of corsets which you noticed in your paper last year; but when we do the best with them that we can, about a teacupful of this nasty air will rush into our lungs in spite of these miserable contrivances, and when we blow it out again another teacupful of the disgusting stuff will again rush in, and when we blow that out still another will rush in; and so we are obligated to keep doing from the time we wake up in the morning till we go to sleep at night, and I do not know but we do all night.

“If these corsets are worth anything to keep this disgusting air out of a body, and we have not put them on right, please come immediately yourself, or send the inventors to show up how. If they are a humbug, I hope their inventors will be tarred and feathered and rode on a rail, and you, for noticing them in the Scientific American, be obliged to breathe about sixty pints of the nasty, foul, nauseous, filthy, disgusting, dirty, defiled, loathsome, hateful, detestable, odious, abominable, offensive, stinking air which surrounds this earth per minute for a hundred years.”

The editors, in their zeal to supply the wants of the correspondent, respond as follows:

“We can suggest but one kind of corset which would effectually meet our fair correspondent’s wishes. Instead of the ordinary laced-up corset, take a piece of strong hempen cord and apply it closely about the neck, tie one end of it to a beam, and let the whole weigh of the body suspend at the other end. We guarantee that if the cord is strong enough it will put an end to all future complaints on this subject.”

From Moore’s Rural New-Yorker in Rochester, NY

February 13^th, 1864

Some writer says – “Our daughters do not ‘grow up’ at all now-a-days; they grow all sorts of ways, as crooked and crooked sticks.”

Our girls hardly get sunshine enough to grow at all in. Indeed many women amongst us never could have fully got their growth, else why are they such tiny morsels, looking as if a puff from old Kewaydin would blow them away?

We need to turn our girls out of doors – that is the long and short of it. They will never be good for anything until we do. The boys knock around and get oxygen enough to expand their lungs, broaden their chests, and paint their faces with health’s own hue; but our lazy, lady daughters! Ah, there is the burden that breaks down the mother’s heart. How are they, so frail, and sensitive, and delicate, ever to get along in this rough world? Mother, you must bestir yourself quickly, or they will be as unfit as your gloomiest imagination can paint them. You are responsible chiefly for making them so tender. Protect them suitably from the weather, and send them out of doors. The pure air will brace up their unstrung nerves, strengthen the weak lungs, and some good gust of wind will in time sweep away the ill-nature and peevish spirit which sitting forever in idleness in luxurious home will not fail to engender.

The next thing you should do for your daughter is to give her some domestic employment. If you keep a dozen servants, your duty to her remains the same. No one can be happy of qualified to make others so, who has no useful work to do. Besides this, she must learn sometime, or she will be poorly qualified for ever being at the head of an establishment of her own. No one in this country can rely upon always having good, trained domestics in her house. The best require some instructions, are liable to leave you from sickness or other causes, and any household is in a pitiable condition where the mistress is not equal for such and emergency.