up. How much loss
there is in a year in the careless use of knives and plate! Whenever
possible both of these get into the hands of the cook. Her own tools
from neglect or misuse have become blunt or worse, and she takes the
best blade and the plated or silver spoon whenever she has a chance.

The plate gets thrown in a heap into an earthenware bowl to be bruised
and scratched. The knives are either put insufficiently wiped through
the cleaner, which is thus spoiled and made fit rather to dirty than
clean knives, or they are left lying in hot water to have the handles
loosened and discoloured.

Probably jars, tin boxes, and canisters are provided in sufficient
quantity to put away and keep stores properly. But for all that, as it
would seem in a most ingenious manner, loss and waste are contrived. Raw
sugar is kept in the paper until it rots through it. Macaroni, rice, and
such things are left a prey to mice or insects. The vinegar and sauce
bottles stand without the corks. Delicate things, which soon lose their
fine aroma, as tea, coffee, and spices, are kept in uncovered canisters:
the lid is first left off, then mislaid. The treacle jar stands open for
stray fingers and flies to disport themselves therein. Capers are put
away uncovered with vinegar, and when next wanted are found to be
mouldy. Perhaps the juice of a lemon has been used; the peel, instead of
being preserved, is thrown away, or left lying about till valueless.
Herbs, which should have been at once dried and sifted, are hid away in
some corner to become flavourless and dirty, and so on with every kind
of store and provision.

It is impossible to calculate how many pennies are lost daily, in a
large number of houses, by the absolute waste of pieces of bread left to
mould or thrown out because trouble to utilise them cannot be taken.
Whoever thinks anything of the small quantities of good beer left in the
jug; it is so much easier to throw it away than put it in a bottle? Or
who will be at the trouble of boiling up that "drop" of milk, which,
nevertheless, cost a penny, and would make, or help to make, a small
pudding for the next day? Then, again, how many bits of fat and suet are
lost because it is too much trouble to melt down the first, and preserve
the other by very simple and effectual means?

Butter in summer is allowed to remain melting in the paper in which it
is sent in, or perhaps it is put on a plate, to which some pennyworths
of the costl