_Fruit and Berries._--Fruit should be washed and wiped dry when it is brought from the market. It is then ready for use in any way that may be desired. Thick skinned fruits such as pears and apples are peeled before they are cooked. Dried fruit is usually soaked before it is cooked. It is desirable that berries which come from the market or store should be washed. This can best be accomplished by putting them in a coarse sieve or colander and holding them under a gently running faucet. It is a good thing to spread them on a clean paper or cloth to dry. When berries are picked in the garden, one may have the luxury of eating them unwashed. _Mixtures._--There are certain articles of food, different and differently prepared from any hitherto mentioned, which might be called as a class, mixtures. They are dishes made by mixing several food substances together, and are called bread, cake, pudding, pastry, sauces and many other names. _Bread._--Of these mixtures bread is the most important and the most difficult to make. Receipts for bread are the simplest ones we have, yet a detailed description of bread-making might easily fill a book. To read such a description for the first time would very probably shock a careful housewife. She has learned to protect her stores of food from any processes of fermentation; she regards the growth of fungus in the cellar or of mould on the back of the refrigerator as an indication of unhealthful dampness, perhaps of dirt; she probably has some terror of germs and bacteria. Is it not rather shocking then, to learn that, without fermentation, fungus and bacteria, she could not make the sweet, clean bread which she bakes every two or three days. When she has thought out these puzzling facts, she will find that each one of her bakings is a sermon from the text that all things work together for good if one knows the secret of their use. Yeast is a form of bacteria--a germ--a microscopic fungus which floats about in the air. I find that a Government Report on the subject calls this "wild yeast." One cannot resist following out the idea thus suggested, and saying that this wild species may be caught by the housewife in mixtures of warm hops, potato and flour and "domesticated" for use in bread making.