Ices are generally regarded as expensive luxuries, and are an admirable instance of how completely custom rules the majority of our housekeepers. There are many houses where the dinner may consist of soup, fish, entrees, joint, game, and wine; and yet were we to suggest a course of ice, the worthy housekeeper would hesitate on the ground of extravagance, showing how much we are the slaves of habit. It is, as a rule, hopeless to argue with persons whose definition of economy is - what they have always been accustomed to since they were children; their definition of extravagance - anything new, or, as they will probably express it, any new-fangled notion.

The fact remains, however, that there is many a worthy Signor who sells ices in the streets at Id. each, and manages to make a living out of the profit, not only for himself, but for his Signora as well. Under these circumstances, the manufacture of these extravagances is worthy of enquiry.

Ices can be made at home very cheaply with an ice-machine, which can now be obtained at a - comparatively speaking - small cost. With a machine there is absolutely no trouble, and directions will be given with each machine, so that any details here, which vary with the machine, will be useless.

Ices can be made at home without a machine with a little trouble, and to explain how to do this it is necessary to explain the theory of ice-making, which is exceedingly simple. I will not allude to machines dependent on freezing-powders, but to those which rely for their cold simply on ice and salt mixed.

We will suppose we want a lemon-water ice, i.e., we have made some very strong and sweet lemon-ade, and we want to freeze it.

It is well known that water will freeze at a certain temperature - call it freezing-point. By mixing chopped ice and salt, and a very little water together, a far greater degree of cold can be immediately produced - viz., a thermometer would stand at 32 degrees below freezing-point were it plunged into this mixture.

An ice-machine is a metal pail placed in another pail much larger than itself. The "sweet lemonade" is placed in the middle pail, and chopped ice and salt placed outside it. The proportion of ice to salt should be double the weight of the former to the latter.

It is now obvious that if we have filled the two pails - the one with the "sweet lemonade," and the other with the ice and salt, that very soon our lemonade will be a solid block of ice. To prevent this it must be constantly stirred, and as the lemonade will of course freeze first against the sides of the pail, these sides must be constantly scraped. Inside the inner pail consequently there is a stirrer, which, by means of a handle, continually scrapes the sides of the pail.

It is obvious that if the stirrer is fixed, and the pail itself made to revolve, that that is the same thing as if the pail were fixed and the stirrer made to revolve.

To make lemon-water ice, therefore, place the lemonade in the inner pail, surround it with chopped ice and salt, two parts of the former to one of the latter, turn the handle, and in a few minutes the ice is made.

Now, suppose you have not got a machine, proceed as follows: - Take an empty clean round coffee-tin, the larger the better. I mention coffee-tin as the most probable one to be in the house, but any round tin will do. Get a clean piece of wood the same width as the inside diameter of the tin, only it must be a great deal longer. We will suppose the tin rather more than a foot deep, and five inches in diameter. Our piece of wood, which should be clean and smooth, must be nearly five inches wide, say, a quarter of an inch thick, and about two feet long.

Next get a small tub, say, nine inches deep; place the round tin in the middle, with the sweet lemonade inside. Next place the piece of wood upright in the tin, so that the wood touches the bottom. Next surround the tin with chopped ice and salt up to the edge of the tub, fill it as high as you can, and then cover it round with a blanket, i.e., cover the ice and salt. Now get some one to hold the wooden board steady. Take the tin in your two hands and turn round and round, first one way and then another. In a very short time you will find the tin to contain - Lemon-water ice.

The following hints, rather than receipts, for making ices, i.e., for making the liquid, which must be frozen as directed above, are given not because they are the best receipts, but because cream, which is the basis of all first-class ices, is often too expensive to be used constantly.

Of course real cream is far superior to any substitute, but I am writing for those who cannot afford it.