An inexperienced housewife, sometimes, will, for once, adventure upon soap-making “in the old of the moon.” Albeit such an attempt is but an unavailing expenditure of grease and patience. The incredulous tyro is forced to remember sadly the precepts, _receipts_, and warnings of her wiser and less philosophical mother. She repenteth her folly in apron of tow-cloth and ashes. Satan seemeth, indeed, to be the father of all lyes. Death is in the potash. The carefully preserved contents of the soap-grease barrel disdain an alliance with such bedevilled trash. The potash, in its turn, has lost its Russian-like appetite for grease, and turns up its nose at the odorous drippings and unctuous pot-scum. The vexed young matron mingles her sweat and tears with the boiling, steaming, ill savored, ill assorted mass, which does, indeed, seem to “bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,” in a bewitched caldron. All is in vain. Crying wont help it. Coaxing wont do. Stirring is unavailable. For once agitation is ineffectual. Invocation is useless. The soft soap wont come. Human nature gives way. The compost heap receives the ingredients which were intended for the soap barrel. Gentle reader, didst ever go on a sleigh-ride in the full of the January moon? We speak not now of one of your city rides, half the way over almost naked pavements, to some suburban hotel—but a regular-built, old-fashioned country sleigh-ride, with a supper and ball at the end of it. No? Can we depict such a scene to you? With many doubts and fears we undertake the work—a pleasant task if it can be well accomplished.