The Vermont Watchman

FINGER-BOWLS AND MINCE PIES.

"To-day is a finger-bowl day," said a winsome little girlie to me, when her mother urged me to stay to dinner, "we'll have oranges." "That is one of my ways of teaching the children table manners," said my friend. "I remember being so embarrassed as a young girl, when I was invited out to dinner, by oyster plates or finger-bowls, etc., and so I try to accustom my children to all these little things at home. Once a week we have fruit and use finger-bowls; once in a while we have raw oysters and use my pretty set of plates and oyster forks; every Sunday we have nuts cracked with the table nut-cracker, and coffee served in tiny cups; the children's coffee is really milk, but they learn to use the little cups." "I should think all that would make extra work for your one servant; do tell me how you manage," I said. "Stay to dinner and see," was the laughing rejoinder, and I stayed. When the bell rang, I rose to go at once to the table, but my friend said, "That is the children's bell; the boys wash their hands and Daisy goes down to get seated at the table with her pinafore tied on." I made a note of that idea at once and shall try it at home. How often Rob or Dick have to be sent away to wash a little of the dirt off their fingers, or the grown people are kept waiting while Blossom climbs up into her chair and gets her "feeder" adjusted. In a few minutes another bell rang and we went to the table. At my friend's right hand was a small stand with six finger-bowls on plates, with a colored napkin between each bowl and the plate. At her husband's right hand was another stand with plenty of extra plates and saucers. The oranges were already in the center of the table, taking the place of the pretty china flower-pot, holding a geranium in full bloom, which graced the table on other days. The older children helped the dishes in front of them, my friend saying that she had found this quite possible by trusting them first with rice or potatoes and gradually leading up to tomatoes or maccaroni. There was no waiting by the servant, except when the dishes were removed and the crumbs brushed off. "That is the only extra bit of work I give Bridget," said my friend, "and I feel it very important that children should be used to seeing the crumbs removed. We do not have dessert every day, by any means; never if Bridget is overworked." When the plates were removed, Mrs. D. passed the finger-bowls and dessert plates, a silver dessert knife being laid by each plate. It was pretty to see little Daisy lift her finger-bowl and put it by her side, and then, when her elder brother had cut her orange in quarters for her, manage it so daintily and rinse her fingers as prettily as any young lady "in society." The boys, too, used their finger-bowls with ease, and would know how to go through quite a state dinner. This is a little matter, of no very great importance, but it may be a useful hint to some other mother of young children, as it has been to me. One reader wishes to know when finger-bowls should be put on the table. When the dessert is served. If pudding or pie is served before the fruit (and finger-bowls are used only with fruit) the bowls are put on then and the pie or pudding is eaten first; then the fruit-plate, which is under the finger-bowl, is used. At this same dinner we fell to talking of mince pies; how to make them without wine or brandy. Mrs. D.'s recipe is two bowls of apple to one of meat, a pound of raisins, one of currants and a quarter of a pound of citron. Her bowl was a "slop-bowl" of an old tea-set. Sugar and spice according to taste and cider to moisten all. Another friend used the juice from her sweet pickled peaches as she did not approve of cider, while still another recommends making a syrup of the sugar and using the juice of two or three lemons in it. All this is hearsay with me, for mince-pies are unwholesome affairs and troublesome to make, therefore as my "John" fortunately does not crave them, I go without.—Hope Ledyard, in Congregationalist.