After forty years of active housekeeping one housemother would deliberately record her conviction that there is but one satisfactory method of securing the appearance of tender fowls upon her table. When your poultry-merchant sells you chickens tender under the wings, with smooth, white complexions, hairless, and altogether promising, according to the best authorities, yet which come to table tough and tightly jointed - take your custom to another man, and let him, as well as the discarded, because dishonest, vendor, know just why you do it.

Some of the fairest fowls in our town and country markets are artistically "doctored" and might delude the most experienced purchaser. The deception is the less excusable because every tolerably skilful cook can make a tough bird tender and eatable by processes known even to humble followers of the craft. It is cruel to allow her to treat a two-year old as she would a half-yearling, and reap disappointment as the result of her generous confidence in the poulterer.

Fowls should always be dressed and drawn by the poulterer before they are sent home. When it is not done, the duty of the cook upon receipt of the birds is to empty the bodies forthwith of offal and giblets. These are first to spoil, and, in spoiling, taint the flesh. The gizzard should be cut open and cleaned, and, with the liver and heart, be put over the fire in boiling salted water. Boil fifteen minutes and let them get cold in the water. Take out, wipe, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and keep in a cool place until they are needed for gravy or soup.

Wash the fowl out with cold water three times, dissolving a little soda in the first water, then rinsing thoroughly. Wipe perfectly dry inside and out, and dust the cavity of the body with pepper. Hang now in a cool place until you are ready to cook it.