My own practice as a wood-carver teaches me to prefer using that perfect tool, the hand, in its ever adaptable way, to using it servilely to grind out sausages. By the time one has prepared the meat to feed the machine, set it in working order, and taken it to pieces again to clean it, one might as soon have used a sharp knife, and the meat would have tasted better than it does when its juice is squeezed out and its fibre torn to rags, so that the insipid _rissoles_ made from it need half a bottle of Harvey's sauce to make them eatable. It may be a matter of taste, but the difference seems to me as great as between music played on a piano and noise ground out of a barrel-organ. Washing-machines, I have found to my cost, are a failure also, at least in hired hands. I bought one of the best, but as I had also a washing-tray, the machine, warranted to do everything, was neglected, and its lid employed as a table; as we too often see with our pianos, telling thereby a tale of forgetfulness. The mangling part of the machine, which was sometimes used by semi-compulsion, always had its screw left turned on at full pressure, so that the spring would have been powerless in a week, had I not loosened it myself. Washing at home had better not be attempted in the case of ladies doing their own work. We want to lighten the labour of the house; since, if we endeavour to do too much, we shall either become household drudges, or else decline the work altogether. But supposing a family has time and opportunity to do the laundry work at home, a tablespoonful of liquid ammonia and a dessertspoonful of turpentine used in the washing water, where a quarter of a pound of soap has been finely sliced, will be found to remove dirt from the clothes without rubbing, saving labour, much soap, and the wear and tear of the things. In the case of large families, besides the greater economy of washing at home, which is, however, doubtful when extra labour is hired, the immunity from infectious diseases being brought home in the linen is a powerful motive for undertaking the work, and doubly so where there is a garden, as it is so much better for our health to wear linen dried in the fresh air, rather than in the small courts of the neighbourhood where our laundresses usually dwell, or in the close passages of their houses. Kent's patent knife-cleaner is as much used, and as useful, as any of these domestic machines, though I prefer the leather-covered board. Pyro-silver knives seem to save labour, as they are cleaned like any spoon; wiped first, as all greasy knives should be, with paper, then washed in warm water and wiped with a cloth. My own pyro-silver knives keep very well and remain bright, but as they have valuable handles of elaborate Burmese ivory-carving they are carefully used. I have heard people say that the pyro-silver does not wear well, being easily scratched and otherwise injured.