It is in the very nature of emergencies that they cannot be forseen or prepared for. They are things like those encountered by the knight-errant as he rode through the unknown forest—things which are never twice the same and which must be met and dealt with, without forethought or consideration. And they are most successfully dealt with in an adventurous spirit, as things to call out one's courage and address, and put them to the proof.

I know that is a difficult spirit to attain. Mistakes and failures and the remarks which families feel themselves at liberty to make about such things are disheartening and painful. "The funny side" is the best defense always against one's own distress and the thoughtlessness of other people. I have found that a person who sees the funny side of a calamity or of a difficulty gives more help in housekeeping than any one else. Happy the home which contains such a person, thrice happy one in which that person is its mistress.

A woman who is inclined to take household failures and accidents too seriously may comfort herself with the thought that what she fails to do to-day, she will probably succeed in to-morrow; and also with the reflection that an occasional uncomfortable accident is good for her family. A few spoonfuls of scorched soup eaten for courtesy's sake is valuable food. Likewise, household accidents can be used to plant in the family mind that calamities are to be shared by all. It is not merely a reproach to the housekeeper that the family maid does not set the table correctly, or that the family potatoes are burned.

Probably if a husband remarks, "Your gravy is cold," it is just as well for his wife to reply delightedly, "No colder than your beans."

Not awfully clever perhaps, but better than hurt feelings.

1. COOKING EMERGENCIES

Stale bread or cake can be freshened by plunging it into cold water and then setting it in the oven for a few minutes. It must be used at once.

Pieces of stale bread may be thoroughly dried in the oven, then put through the meat chopper and kept in a glass jar for covering croquettes, fried oysters, etc.

Pieces of meat which in appearance and quantity will not be suitable for a meal may often be used by arranging some vegetable on the same dish. The pieces can be warmed in gravy and wreathed with carrots or peas. Or they can be put through the grinder, packed into a mould lined with boiled rice and the whole heated. Or they can be chopped, put into ramakins, covered with potato crust and slightly browned. These are merely samples of the many ways in which vegetables can be made to conceal the fact that there is not meat enough for a main dish.

Left-over breakfast food of any of the cooked varieties can be made into delicate little cakes which will make up for the lack of a vegetable or do for a luncheon dessert. If there are about two cupfuls or less, mix with one egg and a saltspoonful of salt. Fry in very hot grease using about a dessertspoonful of batter for each cake. They will sputter and be hard to turn, but that merely indicates their good qualities.

If thickening remains lumpy instead of stirring smooth, strain it through a fine wire strainer.

Curdled mayonnaise need not be wasted. If a new dressing is begun and stirred until it begins to thicken, the curdled dressing may then be stirred in as if it were oil.

Cream tomato soup can be kept from curdling if a bit of soda not larger than a pea is stirred into the milk. This holds good for any cream soup or for milk which is to be boiled.

A piece of soda not larger than a pea boiled with vegetables will keep them green.

Boil this same quantity of soda with old, tough vegetables and they will soften.

It makes less odour through the house, and makes the vegetables themselves less strong, if cabbage, cauliflower, onions and some kinds of beans are drained two or three times while boiling, and covered again with fresh hot water. It is better not to put a cover over such things.

If potatoes baked in the meat pan will not brown, they can be browned in a frying pan on top of the stove.

When water has boiled off vegetables and they are burning, remove the pot from the stove and turn the contents quickly and lightly into another pot. Let everything which is inclined to stick, stick. Put hot water on the vegetables and return them to the stove if they need more cooking. Put water and a tablespoonful of baking soda into the burnt pot.

Yolks of eggs, also lemons, will keep longer if laid in cold water.

Pieces of charcoal wrapped in bits of cheese cloth and laid with meat or tucked inside poultry help to keep either sweet.

If the cook must be a long while absent from the kitchen while fowls are roasting, strips of bacon pinned across their breasts and legs will baste the fowls for her.

If the fire is too hot for broiling, or if for any reason the broiler may not be used, heat the frying pan hot without greasing it. Lay the meat in the pan first on one side then on the other. The result is much like broiling, some people even prefer this method.

2. SOME SUBSTITUTES FOR ARTICLES CALLED FOR BY RECEIPTS

For milk.—Water, or milk and water, may be used in either cake or bread when receipts say milk with little variation in result except that bread and cake thus made dry more quickly.

Sour milk may be used in mixtures which require sweet if just enough soda is put into it to make it sweet, and the baking powder is measured grudgingly.

Sweet milk may be used when a receipt calls for sour if lemon juice is stirred into it until the milk thickens.

For celery in salad.—Use tender cabbage and celery seed. Or use endive.

For chicken.—Excellent substitutes for chicken croquettes and chicken salad can be made of veal or of young pork.

For cream.—Use milk and double the quantity of butter.

For butter.—In cake, use half butter, half lard and a pinch of salt.

In cookies, one may risk using three-quarters lard, if the lard is very good and the available butter very poor. In less delicate cookery lard, sweet drippings or chicken oil may be used. Before using any of these substitutes salt them a little.

3. STAINS AND SPOTS

Fruit and wine stains.—If fruit juice or wine is spilled at table, cover the spot with salt. The salt lessens the stain, saves the appearance of the table, and diverts attention from the culprit who did the spilling.

Boiling water poured through fruit or wine stains will usually remove them entirely. If it does not, try a weak solution of oxalic acid.

Coffee and tea.—Pour boiling water through the stains until they disappear.

Ink and iron rust.—Cover a spot of either ink or iron rust with salt wet with lemon juice and lay it in the sun. Repeat until the spot disappears.

Or, use salts of lemon and sunshine in the same way.

Or, if the material stained is white linen or cotton try chlorinated soda.

Sometimes ripe tomato will remove ink stains.

Sometimes soaking them in milk will take them out.

Often an ink-eradicator such as is sold to remove writing from paper will take ink spots out of white material.

Paint.—Turpentine will remove paint from fabrics, also from glass or iron.

Mildew and grass stains.—Try lemon, salt and sun applied as for iron rust.

Try diluted oxalic acid.

If the material stained is white, try boiling it in buttermilk.

Try alcohol for grass stains.

Or rub them with molasses and then thoroughly wash the fabric.

Grease spots.—If the article may be washed, try washing it with cold water and white soap.

Or, moisten it with a strong solution of household ammonia and water, cover with blotting paper and iron dry.

Or, sponge with a mixture of four parts alcohol to one part salt.

Powdered French chalk will often remove grease spots from silk or woollen materials.

Tar, carriage grease or machine-oil may usually be removed by rubbing the material with lard and then thoroughly washing it with soap and water.

Spots of candle grease will disappear if they are covered with blotting paper or coarse fibred brown paper and ironed with a hot iron.

Kerosene.—Kerosene spilled on books, rugs or furniture will quickly disappear if they are held near a hot fire or a gas jet. Not nearer than your hand can bear. Sometimes if the article is left in strong sunshine all day, the spots will disappear.

Blood stains.—Wash first with clear cold water.

If the stain is obstinate wet with kerosene, then wash in warm suds.

Stained hands.—They are improved by the application of any of the following: vinegar, lemon juice, pumice, ripe tomatoes or dishwater.

Note.—Colour taken out by an acid can usually be restored with an alkali. Colour taken out with an alkali can usually be restored with an acid.

4. ANNOYING CREATURES

Ants.—Powdered borax sprinkled on shelves and along baseboards and door sills will keep ants away.

Ants will not walk over broad, thick chalk lines. Such lines drawn round boxes and jars some distance above the shelf or floor on which they stand will protect them from ants.

Ants and other crawling insects may be kept out of a cupboard which stands on legs, if its legs are set in bowls or cans of water.

To wash cupboards and shelves with a strong solution of alum and water (1 lb. to 2 qts.) is a protection against any kind of insect.

Mice.—An excellent defense against mice is a velvet-footed, self-possessed, Epicurean Philosopher in the shape of a cat.

Traps are good if one may not have a cat.

Seek diligently for holes large enough to admit mice and have them stopped. If you discover one unexpectedly and have nothing else at hand, thrust a piece of yellow soap into the hole. I have not yet found among mice the counterpart of the gentleman who cleaned his teeth with yellow soap for the sake of self-discipline.

Poison is a poor expedient for ridding the house of mice. Whatever may be said in the advertisements, poisoned rats and mice frequently die in the walls or in the cellar and make life miserable in the neighbourhood.

It is with reluctance that I suggest attacks upon mice. I must hasten to finish them, for a little later in the evening a tiny, palpitating, silken, gray ball with bright eyes will come and sit on my desk and eat crumbs. What if he should sit down on this page and see what my housewifely conscience compels me to write, but not always to act upon!

Moths.—Gum-camphor, tar-camphor, turpentine, pepper, a large collection of patent substances, extreme cold and extreme heat are all objectionable to moths.

Ways of packing articles to protect them from moths have been given in the chapter on house cleaning.

Careful sweeping and dusting, and frequent airing of clothing and hangings are excellent and natural preventatives of moths.

Water-bugs and cockroaches.—Keep places where they congregate dry and clean. Practically all the well-known roach foods and roach salts effectually prevent these creatures, but none are effectual in places which are allowed to be dirty or damp.

Bedbugs.—If a housewife has ever had the least trouble with these creatures there is one warning to take to heart and constantly obey: Watch! Complete extermination is extremely difficult. Sometimes after two or three years of absence they appear again. Besides there is always danger that they may be brought into the house from a street car or a laundry or some such place.

If one finds a few of these creatures, apply creosote, or corrosive sublimate, or some patent poison to the bed or cracks where they were found. Apply the poison with a feather or a squirt. Be sure to mark the bottles containing it with the word "Poison" and keep them where they will not easily be found by others than the housewife.

If one makes the horrifying discovery that a room is really infested with these creatures, then indeed one must fight hard and unceasingly. Paint and varnish are a great help in such cases. If the room is papered, remove the paper, fill every crack first with poison, then with plaster of Paris. Paint or calcimine the walls instead of papering them again. Fill every crack in the woodwork with putty, have a moulding put over the place where the baseboards meet the floor, and paint or varnish all the woodwork so thick that there are no cracks. Wash the bed and the furniture in the room and varnish all their underneath and unfinished parts. Then, every day when the room is put in order, seek these flat, brown creatures everywhere.

5. BURNS AND STINGS

Keep in the kitchen a few soft, old white rags for wrapping burns, cuts, bruises and other injuries. Keep also for these hurts a bottle containing two teaspoonfuls of borax dissolved in one quart of water; or two ounces boracic acid dissolved in one quart of water. Either of these mixtures is healing, soothing and antiseptic. Always wrap burns; air aggravates them. Keep them wet with one of these solutions and the pain will soon be allayed. Wrap burned fingers separately, or they will stick together.

An excellent remedy for scalds is always at hand in the kitchen—the flour dredger. Cover the scalded place thick with flour and keep it covered.

Stings and bites of insects should be kept wet with ammonia for ten or fifteen minutes, or covered with baking soda wet with water. Clean mud from a garden bed or a flowerpot is also excellent for them.

6. SERVING OF MEALS FOR THE SICK

Meals for people who are in bed are an emergency of housekeeping. In their preparation, economy should not be exercised unless it is grievously necessary. Sick people are easily annoyed and often have no appetite; sometimes they have even a disgust for food. The necessity then is that their food should be the best, the freshest, the most inviting and the most carefully cooked.

It is also important that food should be really hot or really cold when it is intended to be. Coffee or tea served in a little pot or in a covered pitcher rather than in a cup will be hotter and not spilled over into the saucer. Plates and cups which are to contain hot food should be heated very hot, they will be cool enough for use by the time they have been carried upstairs. If the tray must be carried any distance cover hot food with heated plates and bowls. For butter or ice cream or any food which must be cold to look or taste agreeable, chill the plate on which it is to be served and cover it with a chilled bowl or plate. In hot weather put the butter on a little lettuce leaf, or lay a tiny piece of ice beside it.

The appearance of an invalid's tray is often the cause of appetite or of the lack of it. The linen should always be perfectly fresh, the food in small quantities and daintily arranged. The dishes may well be the daintiest and prettiest in the house, and should be small enough for easy use. A flower or a geranium leaf is a pleasant addition to the tray.

Before bringing a meal to an invalid, go and see that she is comfortable. If one has not an invalid's table, it is well to put a pile of books or boxes on each side of the sick person on which the ends of the tray can rest. It takes strength and nerve to balance something on one's lap when half lying down.

7. GUESTS

Including guests in the chapter on emergencies is not intended as a discourtesy. They owe the classification to the fact that they are sometimes unexpected and always need a little special thought and care, however simply they are received.

It does not seem to me that the people who make no preparations whatever for guests are any more in the right than those who make themselves sick-in-bed getting ready for them.

It is not necessary to sweep the whole house, clean the attic and whitewash the cellar in preparation for a guest, but it does seem that a room should be carefully made ready for them and that more space should be cleared for their possessions than two hooks in the closet and perhaps a bureau drawer.

Certain things which it is pleasant to have in a guest room are in the following list:

An empty closet and empty drawers.

Drinking water, at night, because a guest cannot wander round at night seeking what he needs.

A candle and matches close to the bed, because something may happen to the lighting arrangements, or the guest may forget where they are.

A wash cloth, a piece of soap, a brush and comb, pins and a whisk broom, because these things are easily and frequently forgotten by a traveller.

A wrapper, a pair of bedroom slippers, and a Bible. These three are especially for transient guests as they are apt to be heavy and large to carry in a travelling bag.

If the guest-room bed is very daintily covered, it is well to have a place, other than the bed, where a guest may lie down.

The bed should be opened at night because a stranger often feels a helpless ignorance of the intricacies of shams and counterpanes and unaccustomed methods of bed making.

The degree of preparation made for meals offered to guests should be governed by the occasion. When people are formally invited into your home for a meal, it is natural that special preparations should be made for them, and quite right, provided the repast does do not exceed what you can afford or serve without evident anxiety. Unexpected guests and guests who stay a few days or more ought to be taken into the regular life of the family, with only such departures from the usual order as the use of finer linen, or flowers on the table, or the preparation of some dish which the guest is known to care for.

There are several small reasons why it is not wise to make a sudden change in the family ways for the sake of impressing a guest. One is that some candid member of the family is sure to speak of the change or betray it by awkwardness; another is that the guest is sure to find out the alteration by this means or some other; and another is that "company manners" and "company menus" produce an awful restraint which even a cordial family and a genial guest cannot break through.

Then there are two large reasons for not trying to impress a guest; it is artificial and untrue, and it kills natural, simple hospitality. If entertaining is made a great trouble and expense, many people cannot do it. And this is a real misfortune because the reception of guests is a necessary part of family life. It is a pleasure, it brings new knowledge and new experience, it is an opportunity for kindliness, it diverts people's minds from themselves and besides, it is a sacred duty.

A good many times I have seen trouble in a family or in a school completely done away by the coming of an interesting guest. Probably every one knows instances when a guest has brought a great happiness or a great blessing. For there is much truth as well as loveliness in those old tales of angels entertained unawares, of the weary stranger sheltered who proves to be the king, and of travellers lodged for a night who departing leave exhaustless gifts.