The story of my life ; or, The sunshine and shadow of seventy years / by Mary A. Livermore ... with hitherto unrecorded incidents and recollections of three years' experience as an army nurse in the great Civil War, and reminiscences of twenty-five years' experiences on the lecture platform ... to which is added six of her most popular lectures ... with portraits and one hundred and twenty engravings from designs by eminent artists ...

MY FIRST INSTRUCTIONS IN COOKING.40

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thermometer in hand, I mounted the stairs to my husband's
study, and laid -my "1newest grief " before him. He had
become used to listening to my perplexities, and accustomed
to my interruptions.
"11Do you know at what degree the thermometer must
stand in a brick oven, when it is hot enough for baking? "
"itOh, we never used thermometers to gauge the heat of
an oven when I was a boy; my mother would hold her hand
in the oven, till she could count twenty. When she could
do that, the oven was at the right heat."
By an by, I ran across another problem. I was baking
cake, and was puzzled to know when it was baked sufficiently. Was there any rule which would determine?
Another ascent of the stairs, - another invasion of my poor
husband's, premises, - another question from the domestic
catechism.0
"11Excuse me for coming again, but, really, I don't seem
to know anything- I'm baking cake, an~d you know half
the time it doesn't get done in the middle. Can you tell me
how a person can be sure that a loaf of cake is baked
through? "
"11This was my mother's test. She ran a broom straw
through the middle of the cake. If it came out clean the
cake was done. But if it was moist and sticky, it needed
more baking. I have tried cake for her with a broom straw
many a time."
"11What am I to do with these packages of 'cooking
soda'I and ' cream of tartar?' No directions have come
with them for their use."~
"11In that new cook-book I brought you last night there