in making soap, as it
contracts the nitrous salts which collect in ashes, and prevents the
soap from _coming_, (as the saying is.) Old ashes are very apt to be
impregnated with it.

Three pounds of grease should be put into a pailful of lye. The great
difficulty in making soap '_come_' originates in want of judgment
about the strength of the lye. One rule may be safely trusted--If your
lye will bear up an egg, or a potato, so that you can see a piece of
the surface as big as ninepence, it is just strong enough. If it sink
below the top of the lye, it is too weak, and will never make soap;
if it is buoyed up half way, the lye is too strong; and that is just
as bad. A bit of quick-lime, thrown in while the lye and grease are
boiling together, is of service. When the soap becomes thick and ropy,
carry it down cellar in pails and empty it into a barrel.

Cold soap is less trouble, because it does not need to boil; the sun
does the work of fire. The lye must be prepared and tried in the usual
way. The grease must be tried out, and strained from the scraps. Two
pounds of grease (instead of three) must be used to a pailful; unless
the weather is very sultry, the lye should be hot when put to the
grease. It should stand in the sun, and be stirred every day. If it
does not begin to look like soap in the course of five or six days,
add a little hot lye to it; if this does not help it, try whether it
be grease that it wants. Perhaps you will think cold soap wasteful,
because the grease must be strained; but if the scraps are boiled
thoroughly in strong lye, the grease will all float upon the surface,
and nothing be lost.

* * * * *

SIMPLE REMEDIES.

Cotton wool, wet with sweet oil and paregoric, relieves the ear-ache
very soon.

A good quantity of old cheese is the best thing to eat, when
distressed by eating too much fruit, or oppressed with any kind of
food. Physicians have given it in cases of extreme danger.

Honey and milk is very good for worms; so is strong salt water;
likewise powdered sage and molasses taken freely.

For a sudden attack of quincy or croup, bathe the neck with bear's
grease, and pour it down the throat. A linen rag soaked in sweet oil,
butter, or lard, and sprinkled with yellow Scotch snuff, is said to
have performed wonderful cures in cases of croup: it should be placed
where the distress is greatest. Goose-grease, or any kind of oily
grease, is as good a