The national course in home economics

Every fruit that grows contains properties especially needed by our race. At one time fruit upon the table was deemed a luxury designed solely for the wealthy or people of moderate circumstances on special occasions. To-day fruit is a necessity and from no well-set table is it absent. Each variety of fruit has its own health-giving properties — all conducive to happiness and long life. In them is stored up elements that assist digestion, refresh the brain, invigorate the body, and why should we go without — when fresh fruit of some sort can be obtained so cheaply? Physicians now heartily recommend a fruit diet to their patients, and were it to constitute half of the daily diet, intemperance and many other evils would be much lessened. We can personally vouch for a case of a young man who had become addicted to the use of intoxicants. A friend advised him to try the use of oranges before breakfast. He ridiculed but followed his advice, with the result that he became a convert to the fruit diet, and when a craving for alcoholic stimulants arose, he resorted to the immediate use of some sort of fruit, and no longer cared for what had been his bane. As he expressed It, fruit "became meat and drink" to him. There is no better tonic in the world than the juice of one-half of a lemon squeezed into a cupful of hot or cold water, drank without sugar, on rising in the morning. Headaches, languor, biliousness all disappear. We not only have our native fruits to draw from, but eveiy country on earth contributes its choicest fruits, and when their value Is more generally understood, the good effect upon the manners and morals of the world will be productive of grander lives, clearer brains and fewer ailments than now TO PRESERVE APPLES FOR WINTER USE. Keep the apples on open shelves in a cool dark attic that is airy. It is preferable to the cellar, which is often too damp. Use the spotted and decaying ones first to preserve the others as long as possible; if preferred they may be packed in clean, dry straw so they will not touch each other. Still another way is, wrap each apple separately in tissue paper and pack in barrels or boxes, but this is rarely done unless the fruit is scarce and very fine. D. Z. B. TO PRESERVE GRAPES FOR WINTER USE. Select perfect bunches, seal the ends of the stems with sealing wax, hang them in a dark cellar or in any room in which the air is neither so dry as to wither them nor so cold as to freeze them; fasten each bunch separately so as not to touch each other. Lida B. STRAWBERRIES AU NATURAL. Select fresh ripe juicy berries, remove neither hulls nor stems; with a tiny brush remove all sand underneath the sepals. Arrange on a pretty glass dish or on individual dishes. Serve with a spoonful of powdered sugar in small paper cup at side of plate. If berries are not fresh picked place on ice two hours before serving to freshen them. LiLLIE. STRAWBERRIES AU NATURAI No. a. Choose the largest strawberries, leaving the stems on On each sauce plate arrange them around the dish with the strawberries uppermost. Then place a little pyramid of powdered sugar in the center of each plate. The berries are to be eaten by dipping each one in the sugar. A little pat of ice cream may be substituted for the sugar, but in that case the berries should be stemmed and hulled. Mrs. J. C M.