We are having bad coffee, it is poor in taste, worse in appearance; has that dirty color as if mixed with ink and none of the reddish-brown hue of good coffee. People here don't care much, as milk is the principal beverage except for two or three. That makes no difference, however, for the coffee must be not only good but superlatively so. Proprietor good naturedly says it is the fault of that common twenty-cent coffee, that is the only grade the country store can furnish, and we must wait until the good coffee comes with all the other groceries. But it is not that. If they bring coffee that costs fifty cents a pound it will be as bad when made as this is, unless there be some other method of making adopted. I have blamed the coffee pots and tried and discarded three because they have lost their bright tinned inside and allow the iron to act upon the coffee and have taken to a bright tin pail, with some improvement but great unhandiness. There is one remedy for bad coffee but it is a last resort. In hotel work we go a long way around to avoid using eggs to clear coffee with. It is a constant tax to have to use half a dozen eggs every time coffee is made when eggs may be both dear and hard to get, and we make fine coffee without, by dripping through a sack into an urn that has an earthen jar or porcelain lining inside instead of metal. But here the common family coffee pot is the only utensil to use unless we send to Lake port for an urn.

Tried the egg remedy and it proved satisfactory. Put the ground coffee in small deep pan with a cup of cold water, broke in one egg and mixed well by stirring, put it into the pot of boiling water and when it boiled up again set it off the fire and poured in a little cold water to make it settle. The coffee is fine now, although of a low-priced sort but only as long as it remains in that coffee pot. Poured off some into another coffee pot to be clear of grounds and in fifteen minutes it had turned to the same muddy, inky fluid we had before, while that in the pot it was made in remained good and bright the whole day.

The worriment about poor coffee is almost universal. The egg-clearing way is well-known, but there is, even after that, some attention to be paid to the vessel it is kept in. It may be that the good effect of the egg was greatest in coating over the inside of the coffee pot it was cooked in. At this place eggs are cheap and we shall use whatever may be necessary to keep the coffee bright and clear, and not buy an urn.

The 'bus has brought a passenger. Put him on the new register, quick! A majestic looking gentleman, and they say he is all the way from Rome. Later.

The passenger only came to try to contract to deliver us a carload of watermelons every week. The extent of our business will not warrant such a contract at present. I would rather have fifteen cents' worth of onions, ten of turnips and ten of carrots and parsley for my soups. He thinks we might club together with the other houses. After dinner he will go and see them and then he starts back to his home in Rome (Ga.)