After having thus far guided the house-mother, we must say a few words on marketing. It is certainly best to go to market (if distance permits) in person.

The senses will help in selecting the best materials for feeding the family, and there are occasionally times when, from a great abundance, or from an impossibility of keeping them, articles generally expensive may be had at a moderate price. After settling, therefore, what to have, it is well to go and buy it at the shop or market itself - a near market is a great economy by the bye - there is a chance of real bargains at it - and at all times it is cheaper than the shops (if we except Covent Garden). Ready money, of course, gets a fair advantage at it. Vegetables are the most uncertain articles as to price (speaking from a London experience), very often the same vegetable in every respect is selling at one shop at a comparatively high price, and at another close by, for nearly half the sum. For these, and for fruit, it is especially worth catering oneself.

Butcher's meat is pretty generally cheaper at market. A good butcher is generally a dear one apparently, but such is not the case if his meat be really better than the cheap one's. Prices of meat vary too often to give them.

Bread has a fixed price and rises or falls with the market-price of flour.

Milk is generally 4d. a quart. Butter 1s. 8d. to 2s., at present. The Aylesbury is the best. Devonshire has a peculiar flavour liked by some people. Buy at a trustworthy dairy.

If, however, circumstances forbid an early walk marketing, then I can give no better advice than that of Dr. Kitchener to "employ trustworthy tradesmen," who will send for orders and obey them to the best of their ability. In this case each daily order should be written down in a private memorandum-book, and when the weekly bills or books come in, they should be compared with this list. Fix the sum you can allow for housekeeping, and never exceed it.

We will conclude this part of our subject by giving Dr. Kitchener's rules for marketing, which are for persons of good income.

"The best rule is to pay ready money for everything, and to deal with the most respectable tradesmen in your neighbourhood.

"If you leave it to their integrity to supply you with a good article, at the fair market price, you will be supplied with better provisions, and at as reasonable a rate as those bargain-hunters, who ' travel around, around about' a market till they are trapped to buy some unchewable old poultry, tough mutton, stringy cow-beef, or stale fish, at a very little less than the price of prime and proper food.

"With savings like these they toddle home in triumph, cackling all the way like a goose that has got ankle-deep into good luck.

"All the skill of the most accomplished cook will avail nothing unless she is furnished with prime provisions. The best way to procure these is to deal with shops of established character. You may appear to pay perhaps ten per cent, more than you would were you to deal with those who pretend to sell cheap, but you would be much better served. Every trade has its tricks and deceptions; those who follow them can deceive you if they please, and they are too apt to do so if you provoke the exercise of their overreaching talent. Challenge them to a game at ' Catch who can,' by entirely relying on your own judgment, and you will soon find nothing but very long experience can make you equal to the combat of marketing to the utmost advantage. If you think a tradesman has imposed upon you, never use a second word if the first will not do, nor drop the least hint of an imposition; the only method to induce him to make an abatement is the hope of future favours, pay the demand, and deal with the gentleman no more; but do not let him see that you are displeased, or as soon as you are out of sight your reputation will suffer as much as your pocket has.

Before you go to market, look over your larder and consider well what things you require - especially on a Saturday. No well-regulated family can suffer a disorderly caterer to be jumping in and out to make purchases on a Sunday morning. You will be enabled to manage much better if you will make out a bill of fare for the week on the Saturday before; for example, for a family of half a dozen: -

Sunday

Roast beef and pudding.

Monday

Fowl, what was left of pudding, fried, or warmed in a Dutch oven.

Tuesday

Calf's head, apple pie.

Wednesday

Leg of mutton.

Thursday

Ditto, broiled or hashed, and pancakes.

Friday

Fish, pudding.

Saturday

Fish, or eggs and bacon. "It is an excellent plan to have certain things on certain days. When your butcher or poulterer knows what you will want, he has a better chance of doing his best for you; and never think of ordering beef for roasting except for Sunday. When you order meat, poultry, or fish, tell the tradesman when you intend to dress it; he will then have it in his power to serve you with provision that will do him credit, which the finest meat in the world will never do, unless it has been kept a proper time to be ripe and tender".

Weights And Measures

As all families are not provided with scales and weights, referring to the ingredients generally used in cakes and pastry, a comparative list of those weights and measures may be useful. Wheat-flour, - one pound is one quart; butter, when soft, one pound one ounce is one quart; loaf sugar, broken, one pound is one quart; white sugar, powdered, one pound one ounce is one quart; eggs, eight unbroken eggs are one pound; best brown sugar, one pound two ounces is one quart; sixteen large table-spoonfuls are half a pint; eight large table-spoonfuls are one gill; a common sized tumbler holds half-a-pint; a common sized wine-glass holds half-a-gill.