y batch of bread sets an alarm in one's brain. After breakfast one
will be as expectant as if going to a ball in lieu of a baking. Then to
see the difference a little more or less flour will make, and out of
what quantity comes perfection! To feminine vision, more precious than
"apples of gold in pictures of silver" are loaves of bread in dishes of
tin. If one were ever penurious, might it not be of these handsome
loaves of hers? The little housewife will be very gentle to the
persecuted man of Scripture who was so reluctant to get up at midnight
and give away his bread. She will even be charitable to the stingy
merchant scorned by Saadi, of whom it was written, that, "if, instead of
his loaf of bread, the orb of the sun had been in his wallet, nobody had
seen daylight in the world till the Day of Judgment."

Dr. Kane says, he knows how bread can be raised in three hours without
salt, saleratus, or shortening,--knows, but sha'n't tell. This must be
another mystery of the Arctic regions. Certainly that bread could not
have been raised in the sun. But how one quantity was managed the Doctor
is free to say. He kneaded a whole barrel of flour in a pickled-cabbage
cask, and baked it at once by firing several volumes of the "Penny
Cyclopaedia of Useful Knowledge."

After compliments, however, to come in with the cash down of the
practical, here is a veritable bread-making recipe, well-tested and
voted superior. Take a quart of milk; heat one third and scald with it a
half-pint of flour; if skimmed milk, use a small piece of butter. When
the batter is cool, add the remainder of the milk, a teacup of
hop-yeast, a half-tablespoon of salt, with flour to make it quite stiff.
Knead it on the board till it is very fine and smooth; raise over night.
It will make two small loaves and a half-dozen biscuits.

This recipe ought to give good bread week in and week out, so saving you
from the frequent calamity of soda-biscuits. These may be used for
dumplings, or as a sudden extempore, but do not let them be habitual.
True, you will occasionally meet people who say that they can eat these,
when raised ones are fatal. But some persons find cheese good for
dyspepsia, many advocate ice-cream, others can eat only beans, while
some are cured by popped corn. Yet these articles are not likely to
become staples of diet. They would hardly answer a normal appetite; and
any stomach that can steadily withstand the searchingness of soda and
tartaric