First, to make a crust on it; second, to keep it cooking gently; and third, to keep it covered all the time. I cook it three or four hours, keep it simmering gently and it keeps nice and juicy. Our grandmothers understood the value of slow cooking, and I believe the secret of their success was the oldfashioned brick oven in which everything cooked gently, evenly and closely covered.

But, you say, this takes too much fuel; but by planning your work this objection is easily over-ruled. In the wintertime, I start cooking this meat -at breakfast time, and when it has cooked up nicely I slip it in on my coal heater in the living room and it cooks there all forenoon without a cent extra spent for fuel. On wash days and ironing days, I have got to have a fire anyway, so I plan to cook this pot roast such days as these, or on baking days.

The Starches and Sugars.

If you will look at this chart, you will see that the potato contains almost nothing to build up the body, for it is composed principally of starch. You see here upon the second chart the pictures of a slice of the raw potato. Inside of these bags are little, hard, dry, wrinkled kernels of raw starch. You may eat those, of course you cannot digest them in this state. They must first be cooked; that is, the heat in cooking these little kernels will turn them into flaky, digestible particles, as you see them in a baked potato when it is baked right.

In this picture of an apple you see that it contains no starch, but sugar. A green apple would be like the potato, containing starch, not sugar, but in a ripe apple it is sugar. All summer long the heat of the sun is cooking the starch in that apple and turning it into sugar, because sugar is nothing except ripe starch, and starch is raw sugar. The sun cannot get at the potato and turn the starch into sugar, so we must do that by cooking. There doesn't seem to be much food in the apple, but there is something more necessary at times than food even-that is medicine. Nature did not know we were going to have so many doctors, druggists and so much patent medicine, so she gave us her medicine. We Americans use

more patent medicine than any other people on the globe, and we buy it, not in the fall, but in the spring. In the fall you are healthy, you do not need medicine, and why? Because you have been living naturally; you have had fresh fruit and fresh vegetables, and so your digestive organs are in good condition. But in the spring we are all run down, we lose our appetites and we have spring fever, so we go and buy sarsaparillas, or such things, or perhaps 15 cents' worth of sulphur and molasses, something with which to have a great, big, spring housecleaning. We would not have to do that if we would keep up our summer conditions in the winter time, not eat so much heavy food, drink a great deal more pure water, and keep to the summer food as nearly as we can, eat all the fruit we can; it is better than any medicine. When I see a man who has a large family of children come into a drug store and buy a lot of such stuff, I wonder if he has any idea how much of that bill he could save if he had a good fruit or vegetable garden. That is the cheapest and best way to save medicine, it is nature's way.

Some Other Essential Foods.

Then there are other things that you must have besides these shown on the chart; you must have the three most important foods of all-sunlight, water and air. You cannot grow any kinds of crops without sunlight, neither, can you grow strong, healthy children. Of course, on a farm they get a great deal more of it than most of our city children, but even on the farms, haven't you noticed that when the children come out in the spring, they do not look like the same children that went into the house in the fall, because they have not been having summer conditions? We have been paying quite a good deal of attention to Japan these last few months, we admire the strength she has shown, and have realized what a healthy, sturdy people they are. Do you know that in our war with Spain, 70 per cent of our soldiers who died, died in camp from diseases that could have been prevented? Do you know that in the war between Russia and Japan, not one single per cent

of the Japanese soldiers who have died have died by disease, and yet we call ourselves a civilized and advanced nation. They lay it to the fact that they are such a cleanly race of people, so attentive to hygiene, they use quantities and quantities of water. It is certainly a good thing to keep the body clean, inside and outside.

Then the air we breathe is the most important food of all. You can live quite a few days without anything to eat, and a number of hours without anything to drink, but you must have something to breathe many times a minute, and I believe your health depends more on good air than on any other one thing. There is nothing that will help so much to cure diseases as pure air. I have seen people with consumption so far gone that you would think nothing would help them. They have simply lived in the out-of-door air and built themselves right up. And still we go into some farm houses that are badly ventilated, even the kitchen and bedrooms, although the dairy barn and chicken house will have the latest ventilating apparatus.

Women Must Have Healthful Recreation.

I do not believe that woman was put into this world only to cook and scrub. I think there are other things just as important. Many women are so self-sacrificing that they have no time or thought for themselves, but really the most unselfish thing anybody can do is to take such good care of themselves that nobody else has to do it for them, and then we can take care of others, too. So many say they haven't time to rest and take life easy, that there are only a few years to work, and they must work hard and then drop out and die. Yes, you can

do that, or you can live a little bit easier and work for many more years. Too many people work, and work, and never have a thought for anything but their work. Every farmer thinks that sometime the time may come when he will have a big enough farm, a big enough bank account, and he can afford to rest, but it generally comes too late and some one else has the benefit of it. It certainly does pay to rest a little, to live a little every day as we go along.

DISCUSSION.

Capt. Arnold - I was very much pleased with the lady's talk, but one thing she did not finish up. She talked about what a man was worth, but she didn't put a figure on the average man. Some one here suggested he was worth 30 cents.

Mrs. Laws-I do not often meet that kind of men.

Mr. Liebau-The lady made a very nice speech, and she is so young yet. I hope to see her here with the same speech when she is 30 years older.

Mr. Convey-How do you regard vinegar in household use? Do you think it is desirable to use vinegar in pickling?

Mrs. Laws-Vinegar by itself is not: so bad, but as a mixture it is very bad. Ripe pickled olives are not nearly so bad as green pickled olives, and our pickles are generally made of unripe things and they are very bad for children. We often see at hotels, the mother will grab the pickle jar the first thing and take out a fat, green pickle to hand to the boy because he is crying. You do not need to look more than once at the boy to notice his yellow, sallow complexion to know that he is unhealthy.

Recess until 1:30 P. M.

Mr. Howard.

When I was a little fellow some ten years of age I used to catch pocket gophers on my father's farm, receiving from him 10 cents a piece for their tails. Taking money earned in this manner, I went one fine spring day to a neighbor's about a mile distant and purchased two pigs, a black one, and a white one with the prettiest pink skin you ever saw. They were only two weeks old and I carried them home in a sack and put them in a pen father told me I could use. The pigs had been there but a few minutes, however, when the white one found a hole in the fence and in a moment had wiggled through and was running squealing

across the field toward a tract of timber some 40 rods distant. I turned to my father and older brother with the cry that my pig would get in the woods and be lost. They assured me that he would find his way home and I could go and get him the next day and bring him back. But to my mind that hundred-acre tract of timber with the big bluff rising out of the middle of it was a veritable wilderness from which no little pig would ever find his way out, so with fear in my heart I started after that pig as though my life depended upon it. At the far side of the old rail fence I captured the runaway and brought him safely back.

Through the summer I fed them skim milk and corn and pig-weeds and clover and tid-bits from the kitchen, and about Christmas time they were butchered along with the rest, and father hauled them by team some 30 miles to Eau Claire, where they brought seven cents a pound. When father came home and handed me two shining twenty-dollar gold pieces as the proceeds of the sale of my pigs I was the happiest boy in Wisconsin.

Thus early in life I was impressed with the fact that there was money in hogs, and since I have been farming for myself I have seldom found that they failed to yield a fair profit on the time and feed invested.

Building up a Herd.

As I have had no experience in raising bacon hogs, I will discuss the subject as relating to the production of what is commonly termed the lard hog. It has been my belief and practice that the greatest profit lay in getting a steady, continuous growth from birth to maturity, finishing at as early an

to quick growth and the ability to make economical use of the foods given him.

In selecting brood sows from a drove of pigs, the very thriftiest and best should be chosen. A brood sow should be long, with a wide, square back, straight hips, good strong bone, standing square and well apart on legs, small head and soft hair. If obliged to choose between too coarse and too fine, choose the coarser. The very fat, chunky sow is to be avoided as a breeder.

As a sire must usually be purchased

than the scrub that is lacking in the same degree, but the offspring will be far from satisfactory.

In selecting a sire, great care should be taken to secure one especially strong in the points where the sows with which he is to be mated are inclined to be weak.

Pigs intended for breeding purposes should be separated from those intended for market and should be given a ration containing more protein. Such food as flour middlings, ground barley, peas, with clover pasture in summer