 The Story of Crisco from A Calendar of Dinners with 615 Recipes by Marian Harris Neal. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Introduction The word fat is one of the most interesting in food chemistry. It is the great energy producer. John C. Olson, A. M. P. H. D., in his book, Pure Food, states that fats furnish half the total energy obtained by human beings from their food. The three primary solid cooking fats today are butter, lard, Crisco. There are numbers of substitutes for these, such as butterine, oleomargarin, and lard compounds. The following pages contain a story of unusual interest to you. For you, eat. The Story of Crisco The culinary world is revising its entire cookbook on account of the advent of Crisco, a new and altogether different cooking fat. Many wonder that any product could gain the favor of cooking experts so quickly. A few months after the first package was marketed, practically every grocer of the better class in the United States was supplying women with the new product. This was largely because four classes of people, housewives, chefs, doctors, dietitians, were glad to be shown a product which at once would make for more digestible foods more economical foods, and better tasting foods. Cooking and History Cooking methods have undergone a marked change during the past few years. The nation's food is becoming more and more wholesome as a result of different discoveries, new sources of supply, and the intelligent weighing of values. Domestic science is better understood and more appreciated. People of the present century are fairer to their stomachs, realizing that their health largely depends upon this faithful and long-suffering servant. Digestion and disposition sound much the same, but a good disposition often is wrecked by a poor digestion. America has been termed a country of dyspeptics. It is being changed to a land of healthy eaters, consequently happier individuals. Every agent responsible for this national digestive improvement must be gratefully recognized. It seems strange to many that there can be anything better than butter for cooking, or of greater utility than lard, and the advent of Crisco has been a shock to the older generation, born in an age less progressive than our own, and prone to contend that the old-fashioned things are good enough. But these good folk, when convinced, are the greatest enthusiasts. Grandmother was glad to give up the fatiguing spinning wheel, so the modern woman is glad to stop cooking with expensive butter, animal lard, and their inadequate substitutes. And so the nation's cookbook has been hauled out and is being revised. Upon thousands of pages the words lard and butter have been crossed out, and the word Crisco written in their place. A Need Anticipated Great foresight was shown in the making of Crisco. The quality, as well as the quantity, of lard was diminishing steadily in the face of a growing population. Prices were rising. The high cost of living was an oft-repeated phrase. Also, our country was outgrowing its supply of butter. What was needed, therefore, was not a substitute, but something better than these fats, some product which not only would accomplish as much in cookery, but a great deal more. When, therefore, Crisco was perfected and it was shown that here finally was an altogether new and better fat, cookery experts were quick to show their appreciation. In reading the following pages, think of Crisco as a primary cooking fat or shortening, with even more individuality, because it does greater things than all others. Man's Most Important Food, Fat No other food supplies our bodies with the drive, the vigor, which fat gives. No other food has been given so little study in proportion to its importance. Here are some interesting facts, yet few housewives are acquainted with them. Fat contains more than twice the amount of energy yielding power or calorific value of proteids or carbohydrates. One half our physical energy is from the fat we eat in different forms. The excellent book, Food and Cookery for the Sick and Convalescent by Fanny Merritt Farmer states, quote, In the diet of children, at least, a deficiency of fat cannot be replaced by an excess of carbohydrates and that fat seems to play some part in the formation of young tissues which cannot be undertaken by any other constituent of food, end quote. The book entitled The Chemistry of Cooking and Cleaning by the two authorities, Ellen H. Richards and S. Maria Elliott, states that the diet of school children should be regulated carefully with the fat supply in view. Girls especially show at times a dislike for fat. It therefore is necessary that the fat which supplies their growing bodies with energy should be in the purest and most inviting form and should be one that their digestions welcome rather than repel. The first step in the digestion of fat is its melting. Crisco melts at a lower degree of heat than body temperature because of its low melting point, thus allowing the digestive juices to mix with it and because of its vegetable origin and its purity, Crisco is the easiest of all cooking fats to digest. When a fat smokes in frying, it breaks down. That is, its chemical composition is changed. Part of its altered composition becomes a non-digestible and irritating substance. The best fat for digestion is one which does not decompose or break down at frying temperature. Crisco does not break down until a degree of heat is reached above the frying point. In other words, Crisco does not break down at all in normal frying because it is not necessary to have it smoking hot for frying. No part of it therefore has been transformed in cooking into an irritant. That is one reason why the stomach welcomes Crisco and carries forward its digestion with ease. Working Towards an Ideal A part of the preliminary work done in connection with the development of Crisco, described in these pages, consisted of the study of the older cooking fats. The objectionable features of each were considered. The good was weighed against the bad. The strength and weakness of each was determined. Thus was found what the ideal fat should possess and what it should not possess. It must have every good quality and no bad one. After years of study a process was discovered which made possible the ideal fat. The process involved the changing of the composition of vegetable food oils and the making of the richest fat or solid cream. The Crisco process at the first stage of its development gave at least the basis of the ideal fat, namely a pure vegetable product differing from all others in that absolutely no animal fat had to be added to the vegetable oil to produce the proper stiffness. This was but one of the many distinctive advantages sought and found. Not marketed until perfect. It also solved the problem of eliminating certain objectionable features of fats in general such as rancidity, color, odor, smoking properties when heated. These weaknesses therefore were not a part of this new fat which it would seem was the parent of the ideal. Then after four years of severe tests after each weakness was replaced with strength the government was given this fat to analyze and classify. The report was that it answered to none of the tests for fats already existing. A primary fat. It was neither a butter, a compound, nor a substitute but an entirely new product, a primary fat. In 1911 it was named Crisco and placed on the market. Today you buy this rich, wholesome cream of nutritious food oils in sanitary tins. The Crisco process alone can produce this creamy white fat. No one else can manufacture Crisco because no one else holds the secret of Crisco and because they would have no legal right to make it. Crisco is Crisco and nothing else. Finally economical. At first it looked very much as if Crisco must be a high priced product. It cost its discoverers many thousands of dollars before ever a package reached the consumer's kitchen. Crisco was not offered for sale as a substitute or for housewives to buy only to save money. The chief point emphasized was that Crisco was a richer, more wholesome food fat for cooking. Naturally therefore it was good news to all when Crisco was found also to be more economical. Crisco is more economical than lard in another way. It makes richer pastry than lard and one fifth less can be used. Furthermore it can be used over and over again in frying all manner of foods and because foods absorbs so little Crisco is in reality more economical even than lard of mediocre quality. The price of Crisco is lower than the average price of the best pale lard throughout the year. Crisco's Manufacture It would be difficult to imagine surroundings more appetizing than those in which Crisco is manufactured. It is made in a building devoted exclusively to the manufacture of this one product. In sparkling bright rooms cleanly uniformed employees make and pack Crisco. The floors are of a special tile composition. The walls are of white glazed tile which are washed regularly. White enamel covers metal surfaces where nickel plating cannot be used. Sterilized machines handle the oil and the finished product. No hand touches Crisco until in your own kitchen the sanitary can is opened. Disclosing the smooth richness the cream like appetizing consistency of the product. The banishment of that lardy taste in foods. It was the earnest aim of the makers of Crisco to produce a strictly vegetable product without adding a hard and consequently indigestible animal fat. There is today a pronounced partiality from a health standpoint to a vegetable fat and the lardy greasy taste of food resulting from the use of animal fat never has been in such disfavor as during the past few years. So Crisco is absolutely all vegetable. No staring animal or vegetable is added. It possesses no taste nor odor save the delightful and characteristic aroma which identifies Crisco and is suggestive of its purity. Explanation of hidden food flavors. When the dainty shadings of taste are overshadowed by a lardy flavor the true taste of the food itself is lost. We miss the hidden or natural taste of the food. Crisco has a peculiar power of bringing out the very best in food flavors. Even the simplest foods are allowed a delicacy of flavor. Take gingerbread for example. The real ginger taste is there. The true molasses and spice flavors are brought out. Or just plain everyday fried potatoes. Many never knew what the real potato taste was before eating potatoes fried in Crisco. Fried chicken has a newness of taste not known before. New users of Crisco should try these simple foods first and later take up the preparation of more elaborate dishes. Butter ever popular. For seasoning in cooking the use of butter ever will be largely a matter of taste. Some people have a partiality for the butter flavor which after all is largely the salt mixed with the fat. Close your eyes and eat some fresh unsalted butter. Note that it is practically tasteless. Crisco contains richer food elements than butter. As Crisco is richer containing no moisture one fifth or one fourth less can be used in each recipe. Crisco always is uniform because it is a manufactured fat whose quality and purity can be controlled. It works perfectly into any dough making the crust or loaf even textured. It keeps sweet and pure indefinitely in the ordinary room temperature. Keep your parlor and your kitchen strangers. Kitchen odors are out of place in the parlor. When frying with Crisco as before explained it is not necessary to heat the fat to smoking temperature. Ideal frying is accomplished without bringing Crisco to its smoking point. On the other hand it is necessary to heat lard smoking hot before it is of the proper frying temperature. Remember also that when lard smokes and fills the house with its strong odor certain constituents have been changed chemically to those which irritate the sensitive membranes of the elementary canal. Crisco does not smoke until it reaches 455 degrees a heat higher than is necessary for frying. You need not wait for Crisco to smoke. Consequently the house will not fill with smoke nor will there be black burnt specks in fried foods as often there are when you use lard for frying. Crisco gives up its heat very quickly to the food submerged in it and a tender brown crust almost instantly forms allowing the inside of the potatoes, croquettes, donuts, etc. to become baked rather than soaked. The same Crisco can be used for frying fish, onions, potatoes, or any other food. Crisco does not take up food flavors or odors. After frying each food merely strain out the food particles. We all eat raw fats. The shortening fat in pastry or baked foods is merely distributed throughout the dough. No chemical change occurs during the baking process so when you eat pie or hot biscuit in which animal lard is used you eat raw animal lard. The shortening used in all baked foods therefore should be just as pure and wholesome as if you were eating it like butter upon bread. Because Crisco digests with such ease and because it is a pure vegetable fat all those who realize the above fact regarding pastry making are now one over to Crisco. A hint as to Crisco's purity is shown by this simple test. Break open a hot biscuit in which Crisco has been used. You will note a sweet fragrance which is most inviting. A few years ago if you had told dispeptic men and women who could eat pie at the evening meal and that distress would not follow probably they would have doubted you. Hundreds of instances of Crisco's healthfulness have been given by people who at one time have been denied such foods as pastry, cake and fried foods but who now eat these rich yet digestible Crisco dishes. You or any other normally healthy individual whose digestion does not relish greasy foods can eat rich pie crust. The richness is there but not the unpleasant after effects. Crisco digests readily. The importance of giving children Crisco foods. A good digestion will mean much to the youngster's health and character. A man's seldom seems to be stronger than his stomach for indigestion handicaps him in his accomplishment of big things. As more attention is given to present feeding less attention need be given to future doctoring. Equip your children with good stomachs by giving them wholesome Crisco foods foods which digest with ease. They may eat the rich things they enjoy and find them just as digestible as many apparently simple foods if Crisco be used properly. They may eat Crisco donuts or pie without being chased by nightmares. Sweet dreams follow the Crisco supper. The great variety of Crisco foods. There are thousands of Crisco dishes. It is impossible to know the exact number because Crisco is used for practically every cooking purpose. Women daily tell us of new uses they have found for Crisco. Many women begin by using Crisco in simple ways for frying for baking in place of lard. Soon however they learn that Crisco also takes the place of butter. Butter richness without butter expense say the thousands of Crisco users. Tasty scalloped dishes, salad dressing, rich pastry, fine grained cake, sauces and hundreds of other dishes where butter formerly was used now are prepared with Crisco. A woman can throw out more with a teaspoon than a man can bring home in a wagon. Kitchen expense comes by the spoonful. Think of the countless spoonfuls of expensive butter used daily where economical Crisco would accomplish the same results at one third the cost. It should be remembered that one fifth less Crisco than butter may be used because Crisco is richer than butter. The moisture, salt and curd which butter contains to the extent of about 20% are not found in Crisco which is all 100% shortening. Remember also that Crisco will average a lower price per pound throughout the year than the best pale lard and you can use less Crisco than lard which is a further saving. Brief Interesting Facts Crisco is being used in an increasing number of the better class hotels, clubs, restaurants, dining cars, ocean liners. Crisco has been demonstrated and explained upon the Chautauqua platform by domestic science experts these lectures being a part of the regular course. Domestic science teachers recommend Crisco to their pupils and use it in their classes and lecture demonstrations. Many high schools having domestic science departments use Crisco. Crisco has taken the place of butter and lard in a number of hospitals where purity and digestibility are of vital importance. Crisco is kosher. Rabbi Margolies of New York said that the Hebrew race had been waiting 4,000 years for Crisco. It conforms to the strict dietary laws of the Jews. It is what is known in the Hebrew language as a parava or a neutral fat. Crisco can be used with both milchig and flightchig, milk and flesh, foods. Campers find Crisco helpful in many ways. Hot climates have little effect upon its wholesomeness. It is convenient, a handy package to pack but does not melt so quickly in transit. One can of Crisco can be used to fry fish, eggs, potatoes and to make hot biscuits merely by straining out the food particles after each frying and pouring the Crisco back into the can to harden to proper consistency before the biscuit making. Practically every grocer who has a good trade in Crisco uses it in his own home. Crisco is sold by net weight. You pay only for the Crisco, not the can. Find the net weight of what you have been using. Bread and cake keep fresh and moist much longer when Crisco is used. Women have written that they use empty Crisco tins for canning vegetables and fruits and as receptacles for kitchen and pantry use. Crisco's manufacturer scientifically explained to understand something of the Crisco process it is necessary first to know that there are three main constituents in all the best edible oils. Linoline, oleine, steering. The chemical difference between these three components is solely in the percentage of hydrogen contained and it is possible by the addition of hydrogen to transform one component into another. Though seemingly so much alike there is a marked difference in the physical properties of these components. Linoline, which has the lowest percentage of hydrogen is unstable and tends to turn rancid. Oleine is stable and has no tendency to turn rancid and is easily digested. Steering is both hard and digestible. The Crisco process adds enough hydrogen to change almost all the linoline into nourishing digestible oleine. Mark while the difference in manufacture between Crisco and lard compounds. In producing a lard compound to the linoline, oleine, and steering of the original oil is added more steering, usually animal, the hard indigestible fat in order to bring up the hardness of the oil. The resultant compound is indigestible and very liable to become rancid. The following pages contain 615 recipes which have been tested by domestic science authorities in the cooking departments of different colleges and other educational institutions and by housewives in their own kitchens. Many have been originated by Marion Harris Neal and all have been tested by her. We have undertaken to submit a comprehensive list of recipes for your use which will enable you to serve menus of wide variety. We hope that you have enjoyed reading this little volume and that you will derive both help and satisfaction from the recipes. We will go to any length to help you in the cause of better food. We realize that women must study this product as they would any other altogether new article of cookery and that the study and care used will be amply repaid by the palatability and healthfulness of all foods. A can of Crisco is no Aladdin's lamp which merely need be touched by a kitchen spoon to produce magical dishes. But any woman is able to achieve excellent results by mixing thought with Crisco. Let us know how you progress. Yours respectfully, The Proctor Gamble Distributing Company of Canada Limited End of The Story of Crisco from A Calendar of Dinners with 615 Recipes by Marion Harris Neal Surface Tension by Agnes Pockels This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Avayee in April 2020 Surface Tension by Agnes Pockels From Nature No. 1115, Vol. 43, March 13, 1891 I shall be obliged if you can find space for the accompanying translation of an interesting letter which I have received from a German lady who with very homely appliances has arrived at valuable results respecting the behaviour of contaminated water surfaces. The earlier part of Ms. Pockels' letter covers nearly the same ground as some of my own recent work and in the main harmonises with it. The latter sections seem to me very suggestive, raising, if they do not fully answer, many important questions. I hope soon to find opportunity for repeating some of Ms. Pockels' experiments. Rayleigh, March 2. Brunswick, January 10. My Lord, will you kindly excuse my venturing to trouble you with a German letter on a scientific subject? Having heard of the fruitful research carried on by you last year on the hitherto little understood properties of water surfaces, I thought it might interest you to know of my own observations on the subject. For various reasons I am not in a position to publish them in scientific periodicals and I therefore adopt this means of communicating to you the most important of them. First, I will describe a simple method which I have employed for several years for increasing or diminishing the surface of a liquid in any proportion by which its purity may be altered at pleasure. A rectangular tin trough 70 cm long, 5 cm wide, 2 cm high is filled with water to the brim and a strip of tin about 1.5 cm wide laid across it perpendicular to its length so that the underside of the strip is in contact with the surface of the water and divides it into two halves. By shifting this partition to the right or the left the surface on either side can be lengthened or shortened in any proportion and the amount of the displacement may be read off on a scale held along the front of the trough. No doubt the separatist suffers, as I shall point out presently, from a certain imperfection for the partition never completely shuts off the two separate surfaces from each other. If there is a great difference of tension between the two sides, a return current often breaks through between the partition and the edge of the trough, particularly at the time of shifting. The separatist, however, answers for attaining any condition of tension which is at all possible and in experiments with very clean surfaces there is little to be feared in the way of currents breaking through. I always measured the surface tension in any part of the trough by the weight necessary to separate from it a small disk, 6 mm in diameter, for which I used a light balance with unequal arms and a sliding weight. I will now put together the most important results obtained with this separatist, most of which, though perhaps not all, must be known to you. 1. Behavior of the surface tension of water The surface tension of a strongly contaminated water surface is variable, that is, it varies with the size of the surface. The minimum of the separating weight attained by diminishing the surface is to the maximum, according to my balance, in the ratio of 52 to 100. If the surface is further extended after the maximum tension is attained, the separating weight remains constant, as with oil, spirits of wine and other normal liquids. It begins, however, to diminish again. Directly the partition is pushed back to the point of the scale at which the increase of tension seized. The water surface can thus exist in two sharply contrasted conditions. The normal condition in which the displacement of the partition makes no impression on the tension and the anomalous condition in which every increase or decrease alters the tension. 2. Mobility Upon the purity of the surface depends its mobility and in consequence the persistence of a wave once set in motion. So long, however, as the water surface is in its anomalous condition, the damping of the waves is constant and just at the degree of purity at which the tension seizes to alter the decrease of the damping begins. 3. Footnote This is not quite exact. I found the number of visible passages constant equals 3 in the anomalous state but the velocity of transmission varying in some degree with the tension, the time required for the vanishing of the wave must really become a little longer when the tension is lowered. February 26. Footnote If the balance is loaded with just the maximum weight which the surface tension can hold and the normal surface is contracted till the weight breaks away a measure is obtained of the relative amount of contamination by the ratio of the length of the surface before and after contraction. 4. The purer the surface, the smaller must be the fraction to which it is reduced before it begins to enter the anomalous state. By counting with different relative contaminations how often a wave excited by a small rod at the end of the trough passed along the surface adjusted to a length of 30 cm before it ceased to be visible I obtained approximately the following values for the number of the passages relative contamination 0 number of visible wave passages 17 relative contamination 5 number of visible wave passages 17 relative contamination 10 number of visible wave passages 17 relative contamination 15 15. Number of visible wave passages, 17. Relative contamination, 20. Number of visible wave passages, 12. Relative contamination, 25. Number of visible wave passages, 8. Relative contamination, 30. Number of visible wave passages, 3. The numbers of the upper row indicate the length at which the surface becomes anomalous in thirtieths of its whole length. Those of the second row are, as may be imagined, rather uncertain, particularly the greater ones, although they are the mean of many observations. A perfectly clean surface, whose tension remains constant even under the greatest contraction, can be approximately produced with the adjustable trough by placing the partition quite at the end and pushing it from thence to the middle. The surface on one side is thus formed entirely afresh from the interior of the liquid. 3. Effect on a water surface of contact with solid bodies Every solid body, however clean, which is brought in contact with a newly formed surface, contaminates it more or less decidedly, according to the substance of which the body consists. With many substances, such as camphor or flour, this effect is so strong that the tension of the surface is lowered to a definite value. With others, glass, metals, it is only shown by the increase of relative contamination. The contaminating current, which goes out from the circumference of a body, for example of a floating fragment of tinfoil, is easily made visible by dusting the water with lycopodium or flowers of sulphur. I will call it, for the sake of brevity, the solution current. The solution current of a body, which is introduced into a perfectly clean water surface, just until the relative contamination produced by it has attained a definite value, which is different for every substance. Thus, the solution current for wax seizes at a relative contamination of 0.55, that of tinfoil at a still smaller one, but that of camphor, not until the surface has become decidedly anomalous and the separating weight gone down to within 0.80 of the maximum. If, on the other hand, the surface surrounding a small piece of tinfoil be restored to its previous purity, the current begins again with renewed strength, and it appears that this process may be repeated as often as desired without the solution current ever quite disappearing. From this effect of the contact of solid bodies, it follows that a perfectly pure surface cannot be maintained for long in any vessel, since every vessel will contaminate it. Whether the air and the matter contained in it have a share in the gradual increase of relative contamination, which occurs on water left standing, I know not, but the influence of gases and vapours does not appear to me important in general. The contamination by the sides of the vessel does not, however, always go so far as to diminish the tension, which remains normal, for example, in a glass of water, after four days standing. With a rising temperature, the contamination from all substances seems to increase considerably, but I have not yet investigated this in detail. 4. Currents between surfaces of equal tension Between two normal surfaces, which are unequally contaminated by one and the same substance, a current sets in from the more to the less contaminated when the partition is removed, much weaker indeed than that exhibited in the anomalous condition by differences of tension, but all the same distinctly perceptible. With equal relative contamination by the same substance, no current, of course, sets in. It is otherwise when the contamination is produced by different substances. I contaminated the surface on one side of the partition by repeated immersion of a metal plate, on the other by immersion of a glass plate, which had both been previously carefully cleaned and repeatedly immersed in fresh water surfaces. I then made the relative contamination on the two sides equal, that is, one half, by pushing in the outer partitions by which the surfaces were enclosed. After the water had been dusted with lycopodium, the middle partition was removed. I repeated this experiment eight times, with different changes devised as checks. On the removal of the partition, a decided current set in each time, from the surface contaminated by glass to that contaminated by metal. And when I replaced the partition after the current had ceased and investigated the contamination on both sides, I always found it greater on the metal than on the glass side. Thus, equal relative contamination by different substances does not indicate equality of that osmotic pressure which is the cause of the current between surfaces of equal tension. For further proof of this result, I have made experiments with other substances. For example, with a floating piece of tinfoil on one side and of wax on the other, when, after they had been acting for a long time, and then the relative contaminations had been equalized, a current resulted from the wax to the tinfoil, and again, with camphor on the one, and small pieces of wood and wax on the other side, which showed a current from the wax and wood to the camphor. Since, therefore, the water surface assumes dissimilar qualities from contact with different substances, the conviction is forced upon me that it is these bodies themselves – glass, metal, wax, etc., which are dissolved, though only feebly, in the surface, and thereby render it capable under sufficient contraction of becoming anomalous. 5. Further Observations on Solution Currents The following facts agree with this view. If a newly formed water surface be contaminated by small floating slices of wax until the letter sees to give solution currents, the relative contamination amounts to 0.55. If now another fresh surface is brought to the same relative contamination by tinfoil and the corresponding contraction, and then a slice of wax from the first surface be introduced, it will develop a considerable solution current. This therefore depends on the substance with which the surrounding surface was previously contaminated. Substances which are properly soluble in water, such as sugar and soda, exhibit a dissimilar behavior when immersed in the surface, only they continue to act in the anomalous condition. A crystal of sugar placed in a normal but not perfectly pure surface produces a great fall of tension. If the surface be then made normal again by immersing and withdrawing strips of paper, and if this process be repeated several times, a normal surface is at last attained, which is contaminated by sugar only, and on the tension of this the sugar produces no further effect. A piece of soda held in the surface containing sugar greatly lowers the tension, and on the other hand on a surface rendered repeatedly anomalous by soda, soda acts but slightly, and sugar powerfully. In this experiment, the sugar and soda crystals being instantly wetted, they do not really act by solution currents, for the latter can only be produced by a dry body. The action here is an indirect one by intervention of the deeper layers. February 26 6. Behavior of the surfaces of solutions The effect of soluble matter on the surface tension has absolutely nothing to do with the change which the cohesion of the water undergoes through matter dissolved in the body of the liquid, for both sugar and soda solutions have a higher maximum tension than pure water, and yet these same substances introduced into the surface produce a fall in the separating weight. In order to investigate the behavior of the surfaces of solutions more closely, I introduced the saturated solution of common salt into the adjustable trough. The freshly formed surface of the solution of salt maintained its normal separating weight, 1.154 of that of water, even when most contracted, though it must necessarily have contained as much salt as the interior of the liquid. The entrance of the anomalous condition then does not depend on the absolute quantity of the contaminating substance contained in the surface, but when I placed some salt in contact with the normal surface of the saturated solution it gave a solution current and lowered the tension as in the case of pure water. I obtained similar results with a solution of sugar. From these experiments I concluded, a. that the surface layer of water can take up more of soluble substances than the internal liquid, b. that the surface of a solution is capable of becoming anomalous under contraction, always and only when it contains more of the dissolved substance than the interior of the liquid. The surface layer really possesses a higher dissolving power is further shown by the experiment, which is well known to you, in which a thin disk of camphor, so hung that it is half immersed in the cleanest possible water surface, is cut through in the course of a few hours. I will add, b. that a newly formed surface of a saturated solution of camphor is normal according to my observations, that is, that its tension remains nearly constant under contraction and that small pieces of camphor floating on it still give solution streams and have slight motions. The solution stream seems in this case to seize, just when the surface begins to be anomalous. What I have further observed regarding solutions in the surface and the like seems to me less remarkable, and in part of it still very uncertain. I therefore confine myself to these short indications, but I believe that much might be discovered in this field if it were thoroughly investigated. I thought I ought not to withhold from you these facts which I have observed, although I am not a professional physicist, and again begging you to excuse my boldness, I remain with sincere respect, yours faithfully, Agnes Pockels. End of Surface Tension by Agnes Pockels. Tactless People by Anna Korah-Mowat Ritchie. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. We believe it is generally admitted that the most agreeable associates in the everyday intercourse of society are those who put us in a good humor with ourselves. Tactless People have a wonderful faculty of affecting the very opposite. However well-tuned may be the instrument they touch, their rough, inconsequent fingers always strike some jarring string. Wounded Sensibility exaggerates their bluntness into insult. Confusion enters the doors where they pass in. Discord follows in their steps. There is an anecdote told of a certain officer who, having lost an arm in battle, ever after, judged of the high breeding and good nature of the persons presented to him by noticing whether their eyes wandered to the empty coat sleeve. He knew that those who appeared perfectly unconscious of his loss were influenced by considerate delicacy, while those whose eyes were constantly turned to the former locality of the deficient member had souls of a rude texture insensible to fine perceptions or sympathetic emotions. Tactless People belong to this last mentioned order of beings and seem to possess a special gift of spying out and pitiless dragging to light imperfections which politeness ignores. Their scrutinizing eyes are ever upon a voyage of discovery. And who does not shrink from their merciless scanning? Who has not felt that being observed when observation is not sympathy is just being tortured? Yet from this torture we never need hope to escape while a member, especially a feminine member, of the tactless family is present. Be sure that her link's eyes will detect the first unwelcome thread of silver that winds its shining way among raven locks. And will, as certainly proclaimed, the unsuspected intruder. But she makes the announcement with no malicious intent. She is quite unconscious of wounding one yet unconciled to the sore necessity of growing old. Your tactless friend seems physically unable to avoid personalities. Let a pair of smiling lips disclose pearls of striking unnatural whiteness and regularity. And she is immediately impelled to descant upon false teeth. She unfailingly discusses the angularity and with grace of meager people before those who are vainly seeking flesh in cod liver oil, and every other known promoter of rounded outlines. And she invariably expresses her disgust for unseemly rotundity. Or unfortunates who are modernizing themselves by futile efforts to reduce their unsymmetrical proportion through compression and starvation, or to conceal them by manifold arts of the toilette. Tactless people are especially given to criticize dress. Woe to the hapless fair one who has been forced by poverty into some little untasteful expedient, or who bears about her a darn or a slight fracture which she nervously hoped might escape notice. Be all on peradventure a pair of rebuking tactless eyes will forthwith fasten upon the imperfection. Beware too the hands of the tactless. They are human magnets to attract and draw out defects. If a vase of flowers is turned to the wall to hide an unsightly cracked, if a cushion is arranged on the sofa to conceal an unlucky rent, if a curtain is adjusted over a window to veil a broken pane, if a footstool is carefully placed over an oil stain on the carpet, their hands, as if by instinct, drag away the friendly screen and reveal the hidden offense. As for French gold and plated silver and paced diamonds and imitation lace, dyed silks, cleaned gloves and other genteel shams and expedients, there is not the faintest chance that they will pass current with your tactless guest. If perforce her lips are silent, the close investigation and significant glances of her telltale eyes quickly announce that she is not duped by the imposture. Then if there is a sore subject to any one present, it is always stumbled upon, though with no unkind intention, by these tactless people. They will discourse about profligate sons and thankless daughters before sorrowing parents, and rail at unworthy husbands before heartbroken wives, and bemoan the rigidness of marriage before ill-matched partners. If a girl has been jilted, they innocently endeavor to entertain her with an account of the wedding of a gay young friend. If a sick child lies gasping in its mother's arms, the consolation they offer is a history of the deaths they have known from just such illnesses. They are very much surprised if an impression slowly reaches them that they have created confusion or occasioned distress. They assure you that they had no such design, and doubtless they had none. It was only the absence of that sixth sense called tact, which rendered them so obnoxious as companions, and which always will cause their presence to be dreaded and shunned. Singularly enough, their own sensibilities are remarkably acute. No one can be more quickly wounded than they if their blood speeches are retorted and the arrows sent back hit their own vulnerable points. Do we estimate tact too highly in thinking it a positive virtue? One of the indispensable elements of an agreeable character? Was it not Dr. Johnson who said that politeness was benevolence in trifles? Should politeness be the offspring of good feeling evinced in social minutiae? Tact as certainly springs from the amiability which is thoughtful to spare others' pain. Many a woman endowed with noble attributes and rich in sterling virtues has passed through life little beloved, little appreciated, and seldom sought after because she was lamentably deficient in this one conciliating, harmonizing quality of tact, because she always rendered those with whom she associated discontented with themselves, and that engendered discontent with her. A writer who evidently weighed the importance of the social art of making oneself acceptable to others by rendering others pleased with themselves, jocosely advises a man who has failed in inspiring a woman with love for him to fill her above the brim with love for herself, assuring him that all which runs over will be his. That counselor understood the value of the word tact. End of Tactless People by Anna Coro-Mawet Ritchie Read by Kelly Taylor. Women and Holy Orders by the Right Reverend Arthur C. A. Hall This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. It is desirable, clearly, to define the purpose and limitations of this article. There is no intention to disparage or undervalue the work of women in the church, nor to deal here with the distinct question of their participation in councils of the church, whether parochial, diassen, or other. The question to be considered is whether they are admissible to holy orders. 1. Authority might be thought to settle the question. When Paul's words are certainly applicable, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God. 1 Corinthians 11.16 The committee appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to consider the Ministry of Women in their report contained in a book bearing this title, say, we find no evidence for the admission of women to the priesthood, save among heretical or obscure sex there have been no Christian priestesses. Montanus apparently allowed a woman to celebrate the Eucharist, but Turtullian's testimony to the practice of the church, AD 200, is clear. It is not allowed to a woman to speak in church, nor yet to baptize or offer, nor to claim a share in any work of men, to say nothing of the sacrodotal office. Again, the committee make this summarizing statement. The twelve apostles were men, and the seventy who were sent forth to preach the kingdom were men. The sacrament of the Lord's Supper was instituted in the presence of the apostles only. The Apostolic Commission, recorded in John 20, 19-23, was delivered to men. The evangelistic charge narrated in Matthew 28, 16-20, would appear to have been delivered to the eleven disciples. These facts, taken together, are proof that there were functions and responsibilities which at first our Lord assigned to men, and did not assign to women. As regards spiritual privilege, there was entire equality between the sexes. As regards religious vocation and public duties, there was no such identity. All branches of the church have hitherto interpreted this testimony of the Catholic gospels to mean that the government of the church and the responsibility for the ministry of the word and the sacraments were entrusted to men. In the face of these admissions it may well be asked whether a national church, whatever exactly that may be, has the right on its own authority, or acting by itself, to make such an innovation on the general practice of the Catholic Church as admitting women to holy orders would be. Whether it has the right or not, it is certain that such action on the part of the Anglican Communion would make an insuperable bar to reunion with other historic branches of the Catholic Church, which the Committee of the Lamb Beth Conference urges we should do nothing to retard. That this would be the effect of such action is made abundantly clear in letters from representatives of the Greek and Russian churches in England, printed in the Church Times for December 31st, 1920. The Archmandrite of the Greek Church wrote, My answer to the questions cannot but ground itself on the cannons of the church, which explicitly forbid women to take any active part in ministrations in Orthodox churches during the liturgy, or any other religious service performed in the presence of a mixed congregation of the faithful. The Roman Catholic Church adheres to the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, who after weighing contrary arguments, including that based on the gift of prophecy to women, concludes that the male sex is required for the sacrament of orders, and that though all the ceremonies of ordination were performed in the case of a woman, she would not be ordained. Are we to follow the lead of the more radical of Protestant bodies, like the Universalists in this country, concerning whom the writer was told some years ago by one who had studied at Tufts College and had been a Universalist minister before seeking holy orders in the Church, one that practically all Universalists in New England were now a Unitarian in belief, and two that there were more women than men in the Divinity School at Tufts. That such an innovation would be contrary to the mind of the New Testament and of the early Church is beyond dispute, that it would be productive of further divisions and confusion is equally certain, too, but it is pleaded that we must not allow ourselves to be hampered by the dead hand of tradition. It is to be shown then that authority is not arbitrary, but based on reason. So St. Paul bases his regulations and restrictions concerning women's behavior in the Church on, a, the subordination of the female sex to the male, which is in no wise inconsistent with personal equality, b, on the different functions of men and women, c, on natural instinct as to what is proper and becoming. These sexes are differently constituted physiologically and psychologically, and by these differences they are fitted for different kinds of work in Church, as in the state and in the family. As a sex, women are not fitted for positions of rule and government. Their emotional, affectionate, and sympathetic temperament, however valuable in other ways, is a certain disqualification for the exercise of authority. A judicial, balanced, impartial control temper and attitude is required and ought to be found in those who hold the pastoral office. And these are not distinguishing characteristics of the female sex. The office of priest and pastor is distinctly that of a ruler. It is not chiefly concerned with speaking and preaching, nor with the mere administration of sacraments. The minister of the word and sacraments has a judicial office to enforce requirements and conditions for the Church's privileges. The faithful and wise steward whom his Lord makes ruler over his household is a figure of the Church's pastor. Moreover we may certainly ask, if the priesthood may be conferred on women, why not the episcopate? If pastorship, why not chief pastorship? The chief rule in spiritual things over all men and women. It is often times by working out arrangements to their fair possibilities that their inherent unworkableness and contradiction of principle is shown. They are referred to the institution of deaconesses as a warrant for admitting women to holy orders. But the point is that deaconesses are not in holy orders. They are to be regarded historically and among ourselves as officers or servants of the Church commissioned for special work, as persons of old and minor orders, superior to but like lay-readers appointed and licensed, rather than in the structure sense ordained. The position and functions of deaconesses in the primitive Church were uncertain and they gradually disappeared as special needs for their assistance, diminished at the baptism of women or in visiting those secluded from contact with men. Professor Cuthbert Turner, then whom there is no higher authority on early Church history, has thus summed up the evidence concerning deaconesses in early times. 1. No woman ever undertook a public function in the face of the Church, i.e. a mixed congregation. 2. No order of women ministers was ever universal, and an order of limited currency cannot be regarded, and has never in fact been regarded as on a level with the order's universal in the Church. In other words, deaconesses were not in holy orders. What John Wordsworth in his Ministry of Grace says, the practical development of deaconesses was confined to the East and more particularly to such centers as Antioch and Constantinople, though it appears elsewhere. There is scarcely any mention of the office in the West in the first four centuries, and when it is afterwards noticed, it is usually with disfavor. The first mention of it at Rome seems to belong to the 8th century. With these limitations we can entirely accept what is said in the report of the Archbishop's Committee. Notwithstanding local variations in practice and long disuse, it is beyond all question that the deaconate of women had a very real existence. There has been no decision of the Church as a whole against it. No Council of Importance has condemned it, and it is impossible to maintain that the disuse has been of so complete or decisive a nature as to render the revival of the order incompetent to any part of the Church. This was the line really taken by the Lambeth Conference, even if accompanied by some unfortunate suggestions concerning the ministrations of deaconesses. These recommendations, it should be noted, were adopted by a small majority of the bishops present at the time, 117 votes to 81, this majority being a minority of the members of the Conference, 252. The Conference distinctly refused to endorse the proposals of its committee on the subject in direct divergence from the report of the Committee, which said that the ordination of a deaconess confers upon her holy orders, and that she received the character of a deaconess. In the resolutions of the Conference, the term holy orders was avoided in connection with deaconesses. Not only was it not used, but it was discarded. Authority to minister the chalice at a sick community was refused to them, and any further advance beyond the deaconate was explicitly denied to women. In 1848 declared, the office of a deacon is for women the only order in the ministry which has the stamp of apostolic approval, and is for women the only order of the ministry which we can recommend that our branch of the Catholic Church should recognize and use. In any appeal to the authority of Lambeth, while we may regret some things that were done or said about deaconesses, what was not done or said, though asked for and recommended by the committee, must be taken into account. The American Church, as I have said elsewhere, is not likely to change its stand in the matter, either in accounting, deaconesses, as in holy orders, or by withdrawing its rule that the deaconess must be unmarried or widowed, and that the office or appointment shall be vacated by marriage. 3. Leaving considerations of authority and reason, we pass two questions of expediency. A. Women, it is pleaded, demand such a change in old established discipline. If you do, some gifted, some restless and willful, possessed with the idea that the equality of persons of both sexes involves the identity of their functions, but by the great majority of church women the idea is regarded with abhorrence. They have their own position, their own gifts and influence and opportunities, and they have no desire, perhaps at the loss of some of these, to intrude on masculine prerogatives. By no class of worshipers would such a change in our rules be more bitterly resented than by devout church women. Take a particular class of women that should not be ignored in such matters, those specially dedicated to the surface of our Lord and His Church in religious communities. They are constant in worship. They value highly the sacramental life. They are diligent in spiritual as well as in corporal works of mercy. Do they desire to lead the general congregation of worship, to minister to the pulpit or at the altar, to be burdened with the charge of priesthood? B. In what would be the effect on men? Would they be one or further alienated from religion and religious observances, as these took on more and more of a feminine color and tone? Is not one common and not altogether groundless complaint now that we need a more virile presentation of Christianity in the pulpit and elsewhere? Will our efforts to recruit young men for the ministry be helped or hindered by the invitation being extended to their sisters and female friends? We lament now that we do not yet the strongest men. Is this condition likely to be remedied by the association and competition of women with men in the ministry? C. Practical inconveniences have to be faced. Already in mixed juries difficulties have arisen and the presentation of evidence of a repulsive or indelicate nature. Would women priests hear the confession of men? Or as bishops deal with cases of discipline in which sensual sins are involved? It is impossible to avoid the question of marriage. Must clergy women all be of a certain age? Shall they be unmarried? The less distinctly set apart known to be unmarriageable, grave inconveniences will arise. This is the crux of deaconesses. Some authorities expect a deaconess to remain unmarried, but earnestly protest against any vow or rule of celibacy, which would serve as a protection. Throw the young deaconess into close association with young clergymen and young doctors, and then are disappointed and grieved if she abandons her intention. Is this fair to any of those concerned? If clergy women are married, how are the rights of a husband and family to be harmonized with the demands of the ministry? How are the primary duties of motherhood to be fulfilled by these ordained women? Are they as been recommended in the case of deaconesses to be dispensed for a time, and how often, from the exercise of their office that they may bear in rear children, returning when these duties are fulfilled to the pastoral care? Surely this will not be a fresh reason, and on the part of religious leaders, for the restriction of families. These mere suggestions are sufficient to cover the whole proposal with ridicule. Two arguments in favor of the innovation must be noticed. One, the great differences in the status of women in the apostolic age and now. Two, that the same arguments which are used above were urged awhile and not so very long ago against the admission of women to other professions, particularly those of medicine and surgery, of law, of politics. Now prejudice in these directions is largely overcome. A reply may be asked, A, whether the general success of women as distinct from a few exceptional instances, and these lines has been so marked as to encourage further ventures along other lines. B, do women doctors or surgeons practice to any extent among men? To have a distinct clergy for each sex would make a schism in the body of Christ deeper than that of Jew and Gentile. C, whatever may be said about women's capacity for employment in these secular professions, the objection to their ordination to the sacred ministry is based not on social conventions, but on deeply rooted distinctions implanted by nature between the sexes. There is an instinctive shrinking amounting to abhorrence from such proposals as Catholic Christians, we repeat firmly, we have and will have no such custom. End of Women and Holy Orders by the right Reverend Martha C. A. Hall.