and cheerful service?  An ill-lighted kitchen is almost sure to be a dirty one, where germs will thrive and multiply.  Let sanitary kitchens be provided, and we shall have more patient mistresses and more willing servants.—­Sel.

A sluggish housemaid exclaimed, when scolded for the uncleanliness of her kitchen, “I’m sure the room would be clean enough if it were not for the nasty sun, which is always showing the dirty corners.”—­Sel.

If we would look for ready hands and willing hearts in our kitchens, we should make them pleasant and inviting for those who literally bear the “burden and heat of the day” in this department of our homes, where, emphatically, “woman’s work is never done.”  We should no longer be satisfied to locate our kitchens in the most undesirable corner of the house.  We should demand ample light,—­sunshine if possible,—­and justly too; for the very light itself is inspiring to the worker.  It will stir up cheer and breed content in the minds of those whose lot is cast in this work-a-day room.—­Sel.

    Any invention on the part of the housekeeper intended to be a
    substitute for watchfulness, will prove a delusion and a
    snare.—­Sel.

    “The first wealth is health,” says Emerson.

A knowledge of sanitary principles should be regarded as an essential part of every woman’s education, and obedience to sanitary laws should be ranked, as it was in the Mosaic code, as a religious duty.—­Sel.

Much of the air of the house comes from the cellar.  A heated house acts like a chimney.  A German experimenter states that one half of the cellar air makes its way into the first story, one third into the second, and one fifth into the third.

CEREALS AND THEIR PREPARATION FOR THE TABLE

Cereal is the name given to those seeds used as food (wheat, rye, oats, barley, corn, rice, etc.), which are produced by plants belonging to the vast order known as the grass family.  They are used for food both in the unground state and in various forms of mill products.

The grains are pre-eminently nutritious, and when well prepared, easily digested foods.  In composition they are all similar, but variations in their constituent elements and the relative amounts of these various elements, give them different degrees of alimentary value.  They each contain one or more of the nitrogenous elements,—­gluten, albumen, caseine, and fibrin,—­together with starch, dextrine, sugar, and fatty matter, and also mineral elements and woody matter, or cellulose.  The combined nutritive value of the grain foods is nearly three times that of beef, mutton, or poultry.  As regards the proportion of the food elements necessary to meet the various requirements of the system, grains approach more nearly the proper standard than most other foods; indeed, wheat contains exactly the correct proportion of the food elements.