ers have many things to look after just now. The position of an American housewife is rarely, indeed, a sinecure, but in the country there is always a much larger share of responsibility attached to the office than in towns. In rural life, baking and churning, the pastry and cakes, curing hams, and preparing sausages, pickling and preserving, laying down eggs and butter, and even making the coarser soaps and candles of the family, are included in her department. In towns all these things are found for cash or credit, at the grocers, or bakers, or confectioners. Of course, when the pork is brought in, there is a great deal to be done: some pork is to be corned; hams, and jowls, and bacon are to be looked after; sausage meat, head cheese, and soused pigs' feet, must be prepared.
Salt and smoked meats of all kinds are very much used in this country, more so, probably, than in any part of Europe at the present day. This sort of food made a large portion of the household stock in former ages; four or five hundred years ago fresh meat was only eaten at certain seasons. Beef, and mutton, and even geese, were regularly killed for salting in the autumn, and laid by as winter provisions. At present the amount of salted and smoked food eaten in Europe is much smaller.
With us, particularly in the country, few meals are made without some dish of this kind, either breakfast, dinner, or tea: smoked fish, or broiled or cold ham, for instance, in the morning; ham, or bacon, or tongue, or corned beef, or it may be corned pork, for dinner; and chipped smoked beef, or tongue, for tea. Towards spring, in many villages and hamlets, it is not easy to procure a supply of fresh meat; and salt provisions of all kinds become not only the morceau de résistance, but also the hors
