Divers Women Part 11

"I heard Ralph Wells say, in a Sabbath-school convention last summer," said Miss Day, "'that it is he that doeth His will that is to know concerning the doctrine, and that no spectacles are so precious for right understanding of the Word as a conscience void of offence toward G.o.d and man.' He also said in reference to Bible study, 'Wonderful is the light one gains by simply looking out the references.' Another good thing that I remember from him, and that I have practised ever since is, that we 'ought to learn a verse of Scripture each day.'"

"There is one precious way in which the Scriptures are to be used that has not been mentioned yet," said one who had been silent thus far, but whose face expressed lively sympathy with all she heard, "we do not get the comfort from the promises that we might. The Lord says, 'Put me in remembrance, let us plead together.' I think we ought to take advantage of such a gracious permission, and bring a promise when we come before the Lord in prayer.

"I had an old neighbour once who owned bank stock to the amount of fifty thousand dollars, and yet he got it into his head that if he were not very saving, he should go to the poor-house. This grew upon him so, that he shut up all the rooms in his house, which was large and pleasant, and he and his wife lived in the kitchen, hovering in the coldest weather over a small fire because he thought he ought not to afford any more, when he had only to go to the bank and present his cheque to get all he needed. So we have only to put our names in the promises and plead them, and they are fulfilled to us. Instead of that, we go mourning about in the kitchen and down cellar, instead of sitting in the 'chamber of peace.'"

"I am sorry to say that our hour is more than up," Mrs. Lewis said.

"Let us glance over what we have learned in the study of the Word: We need the teaching of the Holy Spirit. We are to pray for light on it.

We are to love it, obey it, meditate on it, search it, desire it, talk of it, try all things by it, sound our experience by it, plead its promises, commit it to memory, trust in it. It is to be our food; no other food will feed an immortal soul. It is to be our joy, to give to us comfort, peace, faith, hope, patience, wisdom, and I will put the cap-stone on this beautiful arch by--'I commend you to G.o.d and to the Word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.'"

BUCKWHEAT CAKES.

It was a little house, and a little new family; just two of them, and just six months since they were made into a family, and set up housekeeping. As a matter of course everything in the house was new also. One may prate of antiquities, and the a.s.sociations clinging about them that render them beautiful, but after all, every couple will always look back with delight to the time all their surroundings were fresh and pretty, yes, even though they were not pretty; there is a charm in a new pine table, or a bright new tin pan. This house was a little gem, from the delicately appointed guest chamber to the cement-lined cellar.

Mr. and Mrs. Philip Thorne sat at their breakfast-table sparkling with new china and silver, in a dining-room so cheery with pretty carpet, plants, singing-bird, warmth and suns.h.i.+ne, that the beggar-girl who peeped in at the window might well wonder "if heaven were nicer than that." The coffee-urn sent up a fragrant little cloud as Mrs. Thorne turned it into delicate cups with just the right quant.i.ty of cream and sugar, so that it was just the right colour that coffee should be. The steak was tender and juicy, the baked potatoes done to a turn, and yet there was a slight cloud hanging over that table that did not come from the coffee-urn.

"Joanna does not understand making buckwheat cakes very well, I imagine," said Mr. Thorne, eyeing the doubtful looking pile she had just deposited on the table.

"Joanna did not make these, I made them with my own hands," responded Mrs. Thorne. Said hands were very white and small, but truth to tell, they were not much more skilled than were Joanna's.

"Then it must be the baking that spoils them," Mr. Thorne said.

"Why, Philip, how do you know that they are spoiled? I'm sure they look all right," said his wife.

"That is just where you and I do not agree, my dear. They are white-looking, they ought to be a rich brown."

"Whoever heard of brown buckwheat cakes; they are always very light coloured."

"I beg your pardon, but they are not, as far as my observation goes,"

said her husband; "then these are thick, they ought to be thin and delicate-looking."

"You are thinking of something else, Philip," said Mrs. Thorne, patronisingly. "Buckwheat cakes never look differently from these; I have noticed them at a great many places."

"You never ate them at my mother's or you could not say so, my dear."

Mrs. Thorne stirred her coffee vigorously. Was Philip going to turn out to be one of those detestable men who always go about telling how "their mother" used to do; "my mother," as if there was no other mother in the world that amounted to anything.

"I always have noticed," she said, "that a person imagines, after being from home a few years that there is nothing quite so good as he used to get at home; even the very same things never tasted quite as they used to. The reason is plain: taste changes as one grows older."

This very sage remark was just a little annoying to Mr. Thorne; he was ten years the senior of his wife, and did not like allusions to "growing older." "No one need try to convince me," he answered quite warmly, "that I shall ever cease to enjoy the dishes my mother used to get up if I live to be as old as Methuselah! She is the best cook I ever knew, and she never made cakes like these."

"My mother is a pattern housekeeper," said Mrs. Thorne, with a little flash of her blue eye, "and her cakes look precisely like these."

"The proof of the pudding is in the eating, you will admit, I suppose. Joanna need bring in no more cakes for me; they have a sour, bitter taste which is decidedly unpalatable."

And he arose from the table, pa.s.sed into the hall and out of the front door without his usual leave-taking.

Satan once worked immense mischief by means of an apple; now he must needs come into that pretty dining-room and hide in a plate of buckwheat cakes. The first approach to a quarrel in this household, and the first buckwheat cakes of the season! The truth is, when Mr.

Thorne had said the day before, "What if we have some buckwheat cakes?" that Ruey did not feel all the confidence in her ability that her answer implied; but then there was her receipt-book; "they could not be difficult," she reasoned. The receipt said: "Mix warm water, flour and yeast, and let rise until morning,"--these instructions she had faithfully followed, and here was the result.

Ruey Thorne, unlike some young wives, did not think it interesting to profess utter ignorance of domestic matters; on the contrary, she had an ambition to excel as a housekeeper. She had a general knowledge of many things, but every housekeeper knows that practice only brings perfection. It is one thing to watch Bridget making bread a few times, and another thing entirely to make it one's self. So much of Ruey's knowledge was theory, not yet reduced to practice, that she imagined herself much more skilful than she really was, consequently she did not claim her husband's forbearance on account of inexperience. Philip was not rich, and she had a desire to be an economical wife, so she did not employ an experienced cook and chambermaid, but tried to accomplish it all by the aid of a raw German girl.

"Of course I shall want to direct all my work," she had remarked with housewifely pride. If Philip had only understood it all a little better, he need not have brought out his mother's veteran cakes in such cruel comparison with these very young ones.

That day was not a very comfortable one for either of them. The blue eyes flashed out a tear occasionally, and she told herself, "Who would have thought that Philip cared so much for eating! His mother's cakes indeed! As if anybody could equal my dear precious mother in anything!" While he told himself that he "wouldn't have thought Ruey would have flashed up in that way for so slight a cause, and to him, too, humph! He would just like to have her taste his mother's cakes; it would open her eyes a little."

Later in the day they told the same parties, "I'm just ashamed of myself that I got s.p.u.n.ky about such a little thing, I wish Philip would come. I'll have m.u.f.fins for tea just to please him. I know I can make m.u.f.fins;" and "Poor little Ruey, I went off like a bear this morning; I must hurry home; I'll just step in at Barnard's and get that little panel of lilies for her."

So the m.u.f.fins and lilies were laid, peace offerings on the domestic altar, and the skies were clear again.

The next morning Ruey betook herself to her neat little kitchen to reconstruct those cakes. She would see if it were not possible to suit her husband in this. "Let me see, he said they were too thick; I will thin them then. He said they were sour and bitter; sugar is sweet and ought to remedy that." So in went the water to thin them, and the sugar to sweeten them. "He said," she further mused, "that they ought to be brown; brown they shall be, if fire will do it." So she proceeded to make a furious fire, in order to heat the griddle.

"Now," she said to Joanna, "carry in the coffee and chops, then come and bake the cakes."

The husband and wife were engaged in cheerful chat when the first instalment of cakes arrived; a few crumpled, burnt sc.r.a.ps of something.

"Why, what is this?" said Mr. Thorne.

"_Cakes!_" said Joanna, triumphantly. "She fixed 'em;" pointing to Mrs. Thorne.

The two looked at the cakes, then at each other, and broke into peals of laughter.

"The griddle must be too hot," said Mrs. Thorne, and she vanished into the kitchen. She sc.r.a.ped the smoking griddle, and washed it and greased it, then she stirred the grey liquid and placed two or three spoonfuls on the griddle, then she essayed to turn them--sticking plaster never stuck tighter than those cakes adhered to that griddle; she worked carefully, she insinuated her knife under just the outer edge of the cake, then gradually approached the centre, but when the final flop came, they went into little sticky hopeless heaps. "They are too thin," she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Joanna, bring flour. Now we shall have it all right." Then another set took their places on the griddle; these held together, they turned--triumph at last! but they did not look inviting. Mrs. Thorne tasted one, she then made a wry face. "Joanna," she said, with forced calmness, "you can throw this batter away." Then she went back to the dining-room, looking very hot and red, and said meekly to Philip: "The cakes are a failure this morning, we will try it again tomorrow."

Philip, who had lost himself in the morning paper, roused up to say:

"Don't trouble about them any more; we have enough else that is nice."

"The cakes will be all right another time, Philip; there was a mistake made, they were too thin this morning; mother never makes them thin."

Philip looked as if he would like to say:

"I don't care what your mother does; my mother's cakes are nice and thin, and can't be beaten;" but he didn't.

Mrs. Thorne had no intention of abandoning buckwheat cakes as a failure, not she; it was not her way to give up easily and yield to discouragement; difficulties only strengthened her determination to conquer.

"I'll see if I am to be vanquished by a buckwheat cake," she said, studying her receipt-book that same evening. "I shouldn't wonder if there was not yeast enough in those others," she said, as she mixed some fresh b.u.t.ter and added an extra quant.i.ty of yeast. "Keep them warm while rising," the receipt read. She placed them near the register near the dining-room and retired with a complacent feeling that now all the conditions had been surely met.

"The total depravity of inanimate things." Mrs. Thorne had reason to believe in that doctrine next morning, when she entered her dining-room and found a small sea of batter on her carpet, surrounding the pail and widening in all directions, though this stuff could hardly be called "inanimate;" it oozed from under the pail cover in a most animated manner.

"It is light, at least; that is one consolation." said Mrs. Thorne, trying to be philosophical as she ruefully surveyed her carpet, then hastily calling Joanna to clean it up--"Philip should not see that."

When the cakes were brought in this morning, Ruey cast a little triumphant look at Philip. By dint of a hot griddle and much grease they had a streak of brown here and there.

"Horrible!" exclaimed Mrs. Thorne, after her first mouthful; "these cakes are sourer than vinegar." Philip should not be the first to speak of any lack, as if she were not supposed to know more about such matters than he. "What does ail them? I'm sure I made them exactly right this time. I must tell Joanna to put some sugar in them."

"My dear wife, if you will allow me, I would suggest soda instead of sugar."