Home plate

“ But as Joe kept on, day in and day out, lacing out tremendous hits that landed in the bleachers and at times sailed over the fence, the doubters grew silent, or joined in the wild applause as Joe jogged around the bases and crossed the plate standing up.
The keenest interest was manifested in the race that the Yankees were making to land the flag in the American League. If they should come out on top, the World Series would be held between New York teams, and Rose and Joe could be seen in action against each other. ”

“ These, too, must be light and airy. The kitchen should not be used as a sitting-room; it is the place in which food is prepared, and should be a place which can be kept exquisitely clean. It should have tiled walls and ceiling, a cemented floor on a slight slant with a gutter, so that it may be washed down with a hose. The larder and pantry should be arranged in a like fashion. The larder must be cool, well ventilated, and the food stored in it protected from dust and dirt. In our ideal home, both cook and mistress know something of the work of dust and flies as disease carriers. ”

“ A plate-rack is not only always quaint and decorative, but is most useful and labour-saving. A pestle and mortar should be among the utensils of every kitchen, as well as a vegetable mill, and a small hard-wood board, used [31] exclusively for the cutting of fruit, vegetables, etc., which are to be sliced, saves many a cut finger, as the plate usually used is not the proper shape or texture for such a slippery process. ”

“ But the Giants had proved to themselves that Hooper could be hit, and it was with renewed confidence that they took their places in the field.
Joe in the meantime was mowing his opponents down with the regularity of a machine. His mighty arm swung back and forth like a piston rod. He had never cared for the spitball, as he knew that sooner or later it destroyed a pitcher’s effectiveness. But in his repertoire of curves and slants he had weapons far more deadly. His fast straight one whizzed over the plate like a bullet. ”

“ Distances between sink, range, dishes, and store-room, should be as short as possible, while the ventilation and lighting of the kitchen should be particularly good. Every step up and down from kitchen to shed, or kitchen to cellar, is an extra drain on the overtaxed woman. Small, cheap contrivances, such as dish-mops, iron dish-cloths, pan-scrapers, small scrubbing-brushes, wire screen garbage-pans, and many others, lighten the work and make it possible for the housewife to be more dainty in her personal appearance. ”

“ Those kitchens of the north are the very type of comfort, with their vast corner-cupboards, their cleanliness—you might literally eat off the brick floors; they are always paved with brick—their long oat-cake racks and tempting meat, all home-cured, hung from the ceiling. ”

“ Some of the festoons are rich with blossoms, others, more slender, are of leaves only, while a few are made of cloth; the full garlands are usually hung from above the shield, while the thinner style is draped in any place and manner acceptable to the designer, and with more or less of gracefulness, as his skill permitted. This style of plate calls for nothing more than its legitimate features to render it effective and satisfactory, and in general the plates are in the pure style ”

“ The formerly unused parlor might be transformed into a living-room, the former living-room into a dining-room, and the old dining-room into a kitchen. The details by which this evolution is made must, of necessity, be worked out by those who are to occupy the house. That home is enjoyed best which is planned by those who have to pay the bills ”

“ His name is well known by his invention of the buckled plate, which he patented in 1852. These plates form the best flooring ever made, combining the maximum of strength with the minimum of depth and weight ”

“ On these shelves, and in the closet and boxes, can be placed every material used for cooking, all the table and cooking utensils, and all the articles used in house work, and yet much spare room will be left. The cook's galley in a steamship has every article and utensil used in cooking for two hundred persons, in a space not larger than this stove-room, and so arranged that with one or two steps the cook can reach all he uses. ”

“ We will next notice the economy of time, labor, and expense secured by this cottage plan. The laundry work being done in the basement, all the cooking, dish-washing, etc., can be done in the kitchen and stove-room on the ground floor. But in case a larger kitchen is needed, the lounges can be put in the front part of the large room, and the movable screen placed so as to give a work-room adjacent to the kitchen, and the front side of the same be used for the eating-room. Where the movable screen is used, the floor should be oiled wood. ”

“ A French kitchen, with its white-washed walls, its shining range and rows upon rows of gleaming copper-ware, is an attractive subject for a painter; and there is no reason why an American kitchen, in a house distinguished for beauty in all its family and semi-public rooms, should not also be beautiful in the rooms devoted to service. We can if we will make much even in a decorative way of our enamelled and aluminum kitchen-ware ”

“ The heating and lighting are good. In nearly every home may be found a living room where the family assembles for rest and recreation. Here they read, sew, chat, and discuss the news. Similar scenes occurred in the colonial days, but in quite a different room. The kitchen took the place of our modern living room. The life of the colonists centered in it, for in the kitchen was the fireplace, often the one source of heat in the whole house. Its warmth and cheer and its use as a place for cooking made it the heart of the home. ”

“ The Rowfant Club of Cleveland uses a small plate representing the corner of a library; the open window admits the fading light of the sun, which is sinking into the sea; the lattice swings idly, and the pile of books on the table proclaim a busy day. ”

“ When the joint is put on the table, warm plates in a pile are set at the left of, or before the carver, and when a portion is served, the plate is lifted by the servant and placed before the person for whom it is intended, without the use of a tray. The plates placed on the table when it is laid are used for holding the soup plates, and are not removed until the ones holding the portions of the next course are exchanged for them; if the succeeding course is to be passed, warm or cold plates, as the course requires, are in turn exchanged for them ”

“ There is also a good oven for baking bread, pastry, and biscuits, and a hot closet above; a kitchen table, with drawers and sliding shelves, under which is a cupboard for preserves, a pestle and mortar, vegetable and washing boxes; under the stove and hot plate are two recesses for fuel ”

“ Saucers for vegetables are contrary to all etiquette. The only extra plates ever permitted are the bread and butter plates which are put on at breakfast and lunch and supper above and to the left of the forks, but never at dinner. The crescent-shaped salad plate, made to fit at the side of the place plate, is seen rarely in fashionable houses. When two plates are made necessary by the serving of game or broiled chicken or squab, for which the plate should be very hot, at the same time as the salad which is cold, the crescent-shaped plate is convenient in that it takes little room. ”

“ If flowers and shrubs be cultivated around the doors and windows, and the yard near them be kept well turfed, it will add very much to their agreeable appearance. The walls should often be cleaned and white-washed, to promote a neat look and pure air. The floor of a kitchen should be painted, or, what is better, covered with an oilcloth. To procure a kitchen oilcloth as cheaply as possible, buy cheap tow cloth, and fit it to the size and shape of the kitchen. Then have it stretched, and nailed to the south side of the barn, and, with a brush, cover it with a coat of thin rye paste. ”

“ A costly display of plain and enriched British plate of peculiar elegance of design and execution, chiefly work from silver models, together with suites of spoons, tongs, and caddies, knives and forks en suite, to which may be added table and gravy spoons, soup ladles, fish knives, slices, with the more consequential objects proper to the dining table. ”

“ As each plate is filled, take it to the first person served—your mother, if you are a family party, and either your mother or a woman guest first, if you have company; some people always have the mother served first even if guests are present, and others prefer the other way; but always serve the ladies first, whether guests are there or not. Slip out the cold plate and lay down the hot one at the right, as you have before, and put the cold plates neatly in a pile on the sideboard. Pass the vegetables next, offering them at the left, and then the bread in the same way. ”

“ The kitchen floor should be simply boarded; if only used to cook in, it should have merely one or two large squares of oilcloth or cocoa-nut matting by the stove, kitchen table, or where the cook and kitchen-maid stand to work, and the furniture should resolve itself into a couple of good tables, one the ordinary kitchen table, the other much on the same lines but smaller, and placed close to the window, to be used for pastry making and the finer parts of cooking, and which should both be scrubbed daily, and on which grease should never be allowed to remain for one minute. ”

“ As compared with its immediate predecessor, the differences in this style of plate are seen to be principally the liberating of the decorative features from the stiffness which thralled them in the Jacobean. Not now resembling ponderous carvings in oak and mahogany, but rising free and unrestrained, the rose branches and sprigs seem to be copied from Nature herself; not arranged with careful nicety and labored uniformity as formerly, but springing from any convenient niche, they add grace and delicacy to the whole design. ”

“ Such wall treatment will go far toward making a beautiful kitchen. Add to this a well-arranged dresser for blue or white kitchen china, with a closed cabinet for the heavy iron utensils which can hardly be included in any scheme of kitchen beauty; curtained cupboards and short window-hangings of blue, or "Turkey red"—which are invaluable for colour, and always washable; a painted floor—which is far better than oil-cloth, and one has the elements of a satisfactory scheme of beauty. ”

“ The dining-room shares with the hall a purpose common to the life of the family, and, while it admits of much more variety and elaboration, that which is true of the hall is equally true of the dining-room, that it should be treated with materials which are durable and have surface quality, although its decoration should be preferably with china rather than with pictures. It is important that the colour of a dining-room should be pervading colour—that is, that walls and ceiling should be kept together by the use of one colour only, in different degrees of strength. ”

“ Besides, the back-yard, the outbuildings, the poultry-yard, a small vegetable garden, wash-houses, &c., ought to be near the kitchen. It is a matter of importance too that the kitchen should not have a south aspect. And we must not forget that your sister, who knows how a house ought to be managed, has taken the precaution to say in her laconic programme: ‘Kitchen not underground.’ She is right: underground kitchens are unhealthy for those who live in them, present difficulties in the way of surveillance, and diffuse their odour through the ground floor. ”

“ A home-made table, suggesting those scattered about country picnic grounds, a few cheap chairs, a row of chests and cupboards variously remodelled from a common foundation of dry-goods boxes, and a stove, ingeniously evolved out of the cylinder and head of a portable engine, comprised the furniture. ”

“ In the Five Towns a man will carry not seven but twenty-seven dozen plates on a swaying plank for eight hours a day up steps and down steps, and in doorways and out of doorways, and not break one plate in seven years! Judge, therefore, the simple but terrific satisfaction of a Five Towns audience in the hugeness of the calamity. Moreover, every plate smashed means a demand for a new plate and increased prosperity for the Five Towns. ”

“ But the life of our larger cities is growingly inimical to kitchens. In the more distinguished sections, unfortunately, one must be more than ordinarily well-to-do to live in a house that has a kitchen: otherwise one lives in an apartment and has a kitchenette. ”

“ In certain cases, where the closest economy is needful, two small families can occupy the cottage, by having a movable screen in both rooms, and using the kitchen in common, or divide it and have two smaller stoves. Each kitchen will then have a window and as much room as is given to the kitchen in great steamers that provide for several hundred. ”

“ Figure 25.—A, A fireplace at Mount Vernon, Washington's home, typical of those used before cooking stoves were introduced. This type of fireplace, if not too large, is often retained (B) when a kitchen is remodeled into a living room. Note the Dutch oven at the right, formerly used for baking. ”

“ Of course you don't; you're a man; but for one thing, your china closet hasn't even a window of its own. How do you expect glasses to be made clean and silver bright in such a place? Now observe my plan: Not only is the kitchen light, but the entry where the ice comes in, the pantry where the food is prepared, the butler's pantry, the stairs to the cellar and to the second floor, and Mugby Junction, are all light. ”