be fit for the pig when it was made. Here was a pretty state of
things! What were we to do? must we give up all hope of eating our own
butter, and regard the money as lost which we had just expended for
the churn, etc.? After a few minutes' bewilderment, the idea occurred
to both of us at the same moment: "Cannot we make the butter, and be
independent of these household rebels?"

"But," said I, dolefully, "we don't in the least know how to set about
it."

"What of that?" replied H.: "where was the use of expending so much
money in books relative to a country life as you did before we left
town, if they are not to enlighten our ignorance on country matters?
But one thing is certain, we cannot make butter till we have learnt
_how_; so let us endeavor to obtain the requisite knowledge to do so
to-morrow."

We accordingly devoted the remainder of the day to consulting the
various books on domestic and rural economy we had collected together
previous to leaving London. Greatly puzzled we were by them. On
referring to the subject ob butter-making, one authority said, "you
must never was the butter, but only knock it on a board, in order to
get the buttermilk from it." Another only told us to "well cleanse the
buttermilk from it," without giving us an idea how the process was to
be accomplished; while the far-famed Mrs. Rundle, in an article headed
"Dairy," tells the dairy-maid to "keep a book in which to enter the
amount of butter she makes," and gives butt little idea how the said
butter is to be procured. Another authority said, "after the butter is
come, cut it in pieces to take out cow-hairs;" this appeared to us the
oddest direction of all, for surely it was possible to remove them