Hard water is the best to boil them in as it preserves the green color. If they take more than half an hour to cook it shows that they are not worth the name of green pease. Very few people gather pease young enough to be at their prime or seem to know how great the difference can be. We get pease from the garden, as good and better than the finest French canned pease, by taking them early.

Have the water boiling when you put the pease in, and a little salt in it and boil gently till done. If old pease, put a pinch of soda in the water and keep stewing an hour or more. Drain off the water and season either with butter, or cream sauce. (See No. 50.)

Who's going to scrub the kitchen? Not I, of course. It is getting pretty dirty by this time, the stove, too. Housekeeper comes along casually as it were, and looks, and looks. She does not say anything; she will never say anything, but some people can look a whole volume. I suppose she had everything dreadful nice and clean at the Water Cure Home at Campmeetingville in the Great Frying Pan Valley.

When I first came here I was allowed my choice of four of the hired girls to take one to be my second cook. Was fool enough to choose the prettiest and smartest. . Guess she will think herself too nice to scrub. Don't like to ask her. Wish I could swap her off for my old Mike or Slim Tim, or Reddy; they were the boys could sling a scrub broom and were not afraid of a kettle of boiling lye - except when they had new boots on, which was about once a month, poor boys, for hot lye is awful hard on boots