Sweet, wholesome bread, pure milk, and pure water, are reckoned among the commonest blessings of every-day life. The applicant for board in a hotel or "respectable family" is stared at in surprised disdain when he stipulates for one, or all three. Every "establishment," high-priced or low, is expected, according to the proprietor, to provide these things honest in the sight of men, however weak he may be in the matter of entrees, and no matter how grasping he is reputed to be as to extras.

In a private house the bread, at least, is taken for granted. The milkman may be responsible for the fluid he dispenses, and the water-service of city or town for what the hydrant brings into the house, but she for whom our Saxon ancestors invented the significant name of " loaf-giver" is guarantee for the quality of the daily bread she breaks to her household. In general, she wears the responsibility lightly. If the bread " turns out well " at the semi-weekly baking, she is satisfied. She is also resigned to the "turn" in the direction of acidity and to the slack-bake, and measurably submissive when the dough has taken cold, and the quartette of batches she "reckons as about enough " for her family until next baking-day, when drawn from the oven and set up on edge in a row at the back of the table to cool, suggest to the college-bred son - attracted to the kitchen by the scent of hot loaves - " a requiem in four flats."

" Luck has a deal to do with bread-making," soliloquizes the loaf-giver. " But I find that, good or bad, it is all eaten up."

One ultra-parsimonious house-mother once told me that she comforted herself when her baking turned out badly by thinking that poor bread went farther than good.

Even the conscientious house-wife is less critical of her own and her cook's ill-success in this important department of domestic labor than of streaked cake and watery potatoes, not to mention liquid jellies and curdled custards. In town there is the baker to fall back upon if the product of the oven be absolutely uneatable, and every country store keeps bread (save the mark) ! There are thousands of families in this day where what is known at the South as "light bread," at the North as "homemade loaf," is never mixed or baked. The staff of life is represented to parents and children by the unnaturally light bricks and twists left at the door, or brought around the corner from the counter where they were laid smoking-hot early in the day. The dust of street and shop, and bacteria shaken from the clothing and drifting down with the breath of customers, have settled upon them; flies have crawled over them; they have absorbed damps and odors, and lost what freshness they had while new. The seller wraps the loaf up loosely in brown paper, the small boy, hurried off by his mother from marbles or hop-scotch, tucks it under his arm, rushes home and shies it upon the kitchen table. If it skate off upon the floor, it is only bread. A wipe of a soiled towel sets all right before it is sliced for the next meal.

To people who have been habitually nourished upon honest home-made loaves and flaky rolls, such stuff as I have mildly described is an abomination, analyzed loathingly as a compound of chaff, alum, and ammonia, upon which a sparrow would starve. By comparison with the fragrant succulence of the "genuine article," the best quality of French bread - even the Vienna roll - becomes at length tasteless and unsatisfying. It is a domestic truism that one never wearies of good home-made bread. The stale crusts thereof have more flavor and nutritive power than the baker's loaf.

That there are cooks who can never learn to make really excellent bread is an accepted proverb. I have a sickening memory of a month passed in a household where this chronic inability was condoned by an otherwise strict mistress. Delilah, the colored queen of the kitchen, had mastered every other secret of excellent cookery. Her muffins, griddle-cakes, batter-bread, and " pones "were delicious of their kind. Three or four varieties of these smoked every morning and evening upon the bountiful board. It was a warm summer, and a stomach used to abstinence in the matter of hot viscidity, especially when the owner thereof came down languid and headachy to breakfast after a torrid night, rebelled actively. At the end of a fortnight, I wrote secretly home for a loaf of cold bread, and devoured it surreptitiously between meals in my own chamber. Delilah died, as she had lived, in the complacent persuasion that "some folks can't make light bread nohow."

My own experience in altering the views of cooks upon this point has been pleasingly successful. The "toughest case" came to me when I had established the fact in my own mind that I had served my generation long enough in the matter of training would-be cooks. Henceforward I would engage none but such as were already grounded in the faith and reasonably skilful in the practice of the culinary art. Anastasia Brady " filled the bill'' in much the same style as Delilah had in her day. She deserved the description she had given of herself as " a most an illigant soup-maker ; " her management of meats and vegetables left nothing to be desired ; in sweets she was satisfactory; her "pop-overs" melted in the mouth; and she had sense enough to round, not to heap, the teaspoon with Cleveland's Baking Powder in manufacturing quick biscuits. Her semi-weekly loaves were solid and stiff, and stuck to the teeth when masticated. I broke my rule, and prepared, nothing doubting, to teach her the art of bread-making. She was willing ; she was ready-witted ; in all things else she was dexterous. She repeated the directions I gave her with intelligent deliberation, and returned cheerfully to her work. I had instructed her verbally how to raise the dough with potato-sponge. Her next production looked like a lax variety of the rock known as " pudding-stone," or a pale species of fruit-cake. It was lumpy, it was heavy, it was clammy. It went, untasted, to the pigs. I never inquired if they ate it.

I tied on a broad apron and descended in person to the kitchen. Investing the operation with such decent solemnity as might befit a religious rite, I made potato-sponge, set it, in due season worked in a measured quantity of flour; after the batch was puffy and had cracked all over the floury surface, I divided it into loaves, put them into pans ; waited to see them light ; set them with my own hands in the oven, and presto ! as the jugglers say, Bread ! It was soft, spongy, and delicious, and did not go far. In thirty-six hours the bread-box was empty, and Anastasia craved earnestly the privilege of making the next batch herself. I superintended the work in each stage. Result again - Bread.

Happy Anastasia now threw away the corks, i.e., my personal supervision, and plunged boldly into the deep water of independent action. I did not see the sponge, or the earlier form of the dough it was expected to raise. Returning home at eleven o'clock at night from an all day and evening absence, I discovered Anastasia sitting up with her, as yet, unbaked dough. It was as flatly lifeless as the poor girl's spirits, after twenty-four hours of trial and waiting.

"I'm allers that onlooky wid me bread, mem ! " sobbed the unhappy experimentalist. "There's a spell on me."

My own next lesson was from what, compared with my thirty odd years of housewifery, was very like teaching out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. A young housekeeper with a head upon her shoulders, and eyes in the head, with a brain back of them, told me of a similar case, and how she conquered circumstances. She had invented a "bread-making-made-easy" process for the benefit of such spell-bound, unlucky specimens as my latest incumbent, having had one of the same kind to deal with. She gave me the recipe, and I straightway repaired to Anastasia's dominions. Her brow blackened at the word "bread." She was mortified, sore, resentful of destiny, and obstinately hopeless as to further endeavors.

"Listen ! "I said, gently. "Here is something / want to try. It is never too late to improve one's self in anything. I am an old housekeeper, but I learn something every day."

At my order she sifted two quarts of best family flour into a bowl with a half teaspoonful of salt and a teaspoonful of white sugar. She heated almost to scalding a pint of milk, with a heaping teaspoonful of butter; added to it a pint of boiling water, and let the mixture become lukewarm before pouring it into a hole made in the sifted flour. With milk and water went half a cupful of blood-warm water, in which half a cake of compressed yeast had been dissolved, until not a rough grain was to be seen. The mass was worked with a wooden spoon to a soft dough, then turned upon a board and kneaded faithfully for ten minutes before it was set to rise in a bread-pan with a perforated cover and left in a warm corner. In six hours it was ready to be made into loaves. The dough was divided into three equal parts; each kneaded for five minutes and put into a well-greased pan; a clean cloth was thrown over all and they were left alone for another hour before baking.

The result was eminently satisfactory, and henceforward we had sweet, light, wholesome bread as long as Anastasia lived single and with us. I hope and believe, that, as a married housekeeper, she continues to esteem it less troublesome, as it is certainly more economical and nutritious to spend half an hour twice, or even three times, a week in making bread, than to send " just around the corner'' for refined sawdust.

Another easy recipe for the family loaf has been laid upon my desk since I began this. A housekeeper writes:

"I had a horror of the trouble and time spent in bread-making until a neighbor showed me how to overcome my difficulties. I get half-a-gill of baker's yeast, or dissolve half a cake of compressed yeast in warm water and put it into a glass quart jar. Into this I pour a pint of the water in which I boil potatoes for dinner (lukewarm), and leave it to work in a pretty warm place. In a few hours it is all white and frothy and running over the top of the jar. I work up two quarts of flour, a little salted, with it.

Sometimes I take more flour and add the rinsings of the quart jar, using about half a cupful of warm water for this. I stir it up well, and only knead it long enough to get it into shape ; cover it up in the bread-bowl, and when it is light, cut into loaves and set to raise. My bread is delightful - as all my family will tell you. You must have the best family flour for it. Won't you try my way''

I have not - as yet - but I should like to have some discouraged housemother give both recipes a fair test, and report the result.                                                                             M. H.