Page:The English housekeeper, 6th.djvu/45

Rh laid their apples on the floor of a spare room, sometimes of the barn, or of an outhouse, each sort by itself, and then covered them with a linen sheet. The people told us that their apples never became frozen, and attributed this to the dryness of the atmosphere. Apples and pears may also be preserved in the following way. Gather them on a dry day: wipe, and roll them, singly, in very soft paper, then pack them in jars, each containing about a gallon. Put a cover on the jar, and cement it closely, so as to keep out the air; and place the jar in a dry cellar. When a jar is opened, the fruit will eat the better for being taken out of the paper, and exposed to the air of a warm room for two or three days. Large baking pears may be suspended by their stalks on lines, placed across near the ceiling of a room. There are many ways of preserving grapes; but the best way is, to gather them with about five or six inches of the branch to each bunch, to seal the end with common sealing wax, and hang them to lines in a dry room. Examine them frequently, and cut out the mouldy berries. Nuts of all kinds may be preserved in jars, the covers cemented, the jars in a dry cellar.

In this short sketch of what a store-room ought to be, even in the plainest houses in the country, many things requisite to the fitting up of a complete one are omitted. But one thing more necessary to be observed than any other, must not be omitted; which is, that it must be always in order, and everything kept in its proper place, or the main object in having it will be defeated. A store-room out of order can be compared to nothing but a drawer in a state of confusion. A lady once dressing in haste, to keep an appointment for which she was already too late, needed the assistance of all about her, to aid in her search for different articles necessary to complete her toilet. I sought a pair of gloves, and discovered many single ones of various sorts and colours, but no two to form a perfect match. And with this ill success must have ended my labours, if the drawer had not been regularly put to rights: and by the time that scarfs were folded, ribands rolled, collars smoothed, and scissors disentangled from sewing silk, half a dozen gloves were paired.

The saving of time occasioned by observing order, and the waste of time occasioned by want of order, are