THE HOUSEHOLD
Information of the Class Ladies Often Need.
Little Dishes Which are Nice But Inexpensive- A Collection of Seasonable Receipts- Other Mints for Home Conforts.

   [We shall be under obligations to lady readers for any suggestions likely to improve this department. Contributions will be received and inquiries responded to when possible.]
   No branch of cookery is more useful than that of knowing how to concoct, at short notice, a few nice little dishes for breakfast, luncheon or supper. What is wanted is something inexpensive, light and easily made. Often, in the country, where visitors are staying, it is very convenient to be able to vary the meals by introducing among the substantial dishes a few little tempting morsels like the following:
        EGGS WITH ANCHOVY SAUCE.
   Boil some eggs hard, cut them in halves, take out the yolk and pound it in a mortar with a little anchovy paste; then replace this in the cup formed by the white of the egg, and garnish the dish with a little watercress.

        EGGS AND MINCED VEAL.
   Take some remnants of roast veal, trim off all browned parts, and mince it very finely; fry a shallot; when it is a light straw color, add a large pinch of flour and a little stock; then the minced meat, with chopped parsley, pepper, salt and nutmeg to taste; mix well, add more stock of necessary, and let the mince gradually get hot by the side of the fire; lastly add a few drops of lemon juice. Serve with sippets of bread fried in butter round, and poached eggs on the top.

        EGG PLANT.
   Peel and cut them in slices lengthwise, arrange them in layers on well-buttered tin, (previously rubbed with garlic.) Put between the layers a sprinkling parsley, sweet herbs, pepper, and salt to taste; pour over them some liquefied butter; add a sprinkling of grated cheese and a few baked bread crumbs; bake in the oven and brown with a salamander.

        OYSTER POTATO BALLS.
   Beard a dozen small plump oysters, cover them singly with a plain mashed potato paste, roll them with flour or beaten-up egg and bread crumbs into balls and fry them in butter or dripping. Put into each ball when you make it up a teasponful of the oyster liquid.

        BREAKFAST PIE
   The following receipt for a breakfast pie, Epicurus himself would have declared delicious: Make a standing crust; then a mixture of six eggs, a quart of milk, some finely powdered sweet herbs, a teaspoonful of white pepper; then line a pie dish with the crust; slice some ham very fine. Put a layer of ham, then part of your custard, and so on till the dish is full. Bake about two hours. When cold lift it out of pie dish.

        WELSH RAREBIT.
   A correspondent writes: "The Following receipt for Welsh rarebit I can guarantee as an old English one. It can best be made in a chafing dish, except the indispensable toast, which must be done, of course before hot coals: Take a slice of rather new cheese, say one-half pound, cut into thin chips, do the same with one-eighth of a pound of Gruyere cheese. Have your chafing-dish hot, with one-eighth of a pound of fresh butter melted, and stir in the cheese, stirring hard. Add a salt-spoonful of dry mustard, a claret glassful of good ale, or the same quantity of port wine. Pour it hot over the toast.
     ANOTHER WAY.
   Melt over a hot fire a piece of butter, size of an egg. Cut up into it one-and-a-half or two pounds of mild cheese. After melting for five or ten minutes pour into it a half a glass of new ale. Ale is much better than milk. Season to taste. After this has been on the fire for about fifteen minutes pour it on some hot toast.

    Among the more pretentious dishes especially adapted to the approaching holiday season one of the best is.
        "JOHN BULL PLUM PUDDING".
   One pound of flour, one pound stoned raisins, one pound currants, quarter of a pound sugar, one ounce citron, one pound suet, chopped fine; six eggs beaten very light; one gill good brandy. In both of these puddings some of the flour (sifted) should be reserved to mix with the dry fruit. To be boiled six hours. Keep boiling water at hand to replenish as it boils away. To be eaten with hard or liquid sauce as taste may dictate. Turn the pudding a few times when you first put it to boil.

        CHEAP PLUM PUDDING.
   One cup suet, one cup raisins, one cup currants, and citron mixed, one egg, one cup sweet milk, half a teacup molasses, one teaspoonful of soda, three and a half cups of flour, a little salt. Boil three hours. Serve with hard or liquid sauce.

        MINCE PIES.
   Two pounds of boiled beef-heart, chopped when cold; two pounds beef suet, chopped fine; two pounds of pippin apples, chopped; two pounds raisins, stoned and chopped; two pounds currants, picked, washed and dried; two pounds of powdered white sugar; nearly three pints of good brandy; half a pound of citron, cut in small strips; one teaspoonful of salt, six grated nutmegs, half an ounce powdered mace, an ounce of cinnamon (not good measure.) After mixing well, taste and judge for yourself.

        OTHER HOUSEHOLD HINTS.
   A correspondent has asked how cockroaches may be exterminated from a house. A gentleman writes that common red wafers, to be found at any stationers, will answer the purpose. The cockroaches eat them and die.
   Another authority says: "My house was perfectly infested with these pests, and I believe I tried every 'certain death' powder that was ever invented, without avail. If "Tormented" will sprinkle powdered borax plentifully around where "they most do congregate," and renew it occasionally, in a short time not a roach will be seen. This is a safe and most effectual exterminator.

        TO CLEAN SILVER.
   I would suggest that silver is ruined by servants who rub it with whiting and other things give them to clean with, without properly washing it. Silver may be kept bright and nice by washing well, with a soft cloth and soap, and rinsing in very hot water, occasionally polishing with a little electro-silicon, or washing with silver soap, and a soft brush, always rinsing off with very hot water and rubbing with a soft cloth. I have silver which has been in use for eighteen years, and has never been rubbed with anything but soap and hot water, or occasionally a little spirits of ammonia in the water, and it is bright and nice to-day, free from scratches and the black, gummy look incidental to servants care of silver. YANKEE.

        TO KEEP THE HAIR FROM FALLING OUT.
   Wash the head every week in salt water, and rub the skin of the head with a dry, course towel. Then apply a dressing composed of bay rum and sweet oil, with which a few drops of tincture of cantharides have been mingled. This will stimulate the skin and keep the hair from falling out and turning gray. The dressing for the hair may be scented with cinnamon oil or some such warming essence.

IOWA ITEMS
   Pilot Lake Grange, Dallas county, is by the ears, some of the members accusing others of theft, and causing the arrest of one Patron, whose trial culminated in a grand row in the justice's office.
   Mr. Matt Schaffer, of Leon, was found dead in the woods near his home last Friday. His clothes was covered with mud but there were no marks of violence on his person, and the cause of his death is a mystery.
   Ruth McDonald, a Muscatine poetess, writes a very pretty little gem to the Mississippi river, urging it to stop and tell her her dream. The river assured us, in passing, that it would take too much dam work to stop, but correspondents might drip it a tow-line, and it will beach sure to send them a little billow doux in return.
   Mr. Charles Carlin, of Sioux City, has gone his ways without pausing to say goodbye to anybody. And all the hotel men and clothiers, and saloon keepers, and livery stable men are vieing with each other in their earnest efforts to learn his address. His washerwoman is also an humble, but none the less sincere mourner.
     Pleasanton, Decatur county, was greatly excited last Wednesday, by an attempt of Mr. Albert McLain, who separated from his wife and family a year ago, to kidnap her youngest child. The mother fought like a tigress for her baby, and although she was terribly beaten and cut about the head, she fought the fellow until help arrived and her assailant was compelled to run away without the child. The man was arrested the following day.
    Council Bluffs is down with the mumps, and all the children in that lovely city are lopsided.
    Owen McCabe, who killed Patrick McMahon, at Monticello, three months ago, has just been sentenced to five years imprisonment in the Penitentiary.
    Richard Grant White- Richard Grant White- the name sound familiar enough; "Words and their Uses," who is he? Ah, yes, now we have it; he is a brother of the Postmaster at Mount Vernon; that's all that makes him what he is.
    Rev. J.C. Otis, for many years pastor of the Baptist church in Glenwood, died at his home, in that city, last Saturday night. Mr. Otis located in Glenwood eleven years ago and under his tireless and efficient ministrations the church became one of the most flourishing in southern Iowa. He was universally esteemed in the neighborhood and is mourned by the entire community.
    Mr. Z. Thomas, of Brooklyn, emptied a barrel of kerosene into a number of smaller vessels the other day, and at the conclusion of his labors he was seized with an illness resembling in its symptoms strychnine poisoning. The doctors pumped him out and filled him up, and loaded him and emptied him, and before he got well he wished the kerosene had never benzine in his store.
    Mr. J.A. Nellis had a steer which was a kind of nuisance on the farm, and so he decided to sell it. He drove it into Wilton, where the amiable beast made a raid on Andrew Horrell, a boy of only eight years of age, elevated him over a fence and jumped over on top of him, lifted his scalp and broke two of his ribs. If a man has a rabid steer he wants to sell, he should always consider it a solemn duty incumbant.
    Mott, the fraud of Memphis, Missouri, the medium whose flimsy pretenses and frauds have been exposed a hundred times, threatened to invade this State and seek a location somewhere within our borders. The citizens offer him a town lot and fifty dollars if he will come and settle in Council Bluffs. And the worst thing that we could wish Council Bluffs would be that he might accept the offer and settle there. When he got well settled, however, they might get at him and kill him.
    Last Wednesday morning was the anniversary of the hanging of Howard, in Des Moines, and his obstinate ghost, on that occasion  waltzed madly around the country jail, frightening into fits the prisoners who had nothing whatever to do with his taking off, but never molesting or making afraid the scalawags who stretched the neck of the body which the ghost aforesaid had the honor to represent. If the ghost had any sense it would show more discrimination in its haunting.
    Thomas J. Harron, the oldest printer in Dubuque, died last Saturday afternoon of consumption, at the age of thirty-six years. He commenced working at the case in Dubuque, in the old Miner's Express office, more than twenty years ago, and during the closing years of his life, he held cases in the Times office. Like all printers, he was a whole souled, generous fellow, unselfish as the day was long.

Ruffled Hair.
    Dubuque, Iowa, Dec. 21- F. Offenhauser, the hairdresser, charged by the Evening News with infamous conduct toward girls in his employ, has sued that paper for defamation of character, claiming $10,000 damages.

Family Fracas in Northwestern Iowa
    Sioux City, Ia., Dec. 26- A shooting affray occurred about three miles from Smithland, in this county, Thursday night, in which an old man named Spencer was shot at twice by his son William and once by his brother-in-law J.E. Otis, the latter's shot taking effect in the neck, producing a dangerous though not fatal wound. The cause of the trouble as young Spencer stated it, is that his father has several times recently been discovered in criminal connection with his own daughter, a young girl represented to be unsound in intellect and incapable of realizing the terrible crime of which she was the victim. After the shooting, Otis and William Spencer went to the nearest magistrate and surrendered themselves. They were held to answer at the next term of the District Court.

Assaulted and Robbed.
Chicago Times.
    Council Bluffs, Iowa, Dec. 23- Red Oak is agitated over the occurrence of a fiendish, unprovoked and undoubtedly successful attempt at murder. A young man was working on a farm about a half a mile from the city. A young lady of the house where he was employed was being courted by a young man named Dobbins. The latter fancied that the laborer was attempting to court the same girl, and became fired with jealousy and rage in consequence. On Tuesday evening Dobbins met his rival in Red Oak, and made an unsuspected and murderous assault upon him with a "billy." The laborer was a very quiet and unoffending person, and was not anticipating any trouble in the matter. In the assault his nose was broken and terribly disfigured by Dobbins, and his head bruised and cut in a frightful and sickening manner. There are hopes of his recovery. While lying on the ground, and before assistance arrived, he was robbed of eighty-five dollars by some unknown person. Dobbins fled the city, but was arrested.

Recruit for Fort Madison.
     Sioux City, Iowa, Dec. 21- O.F. Odell, whose trial at Yankton, for assault with intent to kill Abel Stafford was concluded on yesterday, was found guilty and sentenced to three years at hard labor in the Fort Madison, Iowa, State prison. Judge Bennett overruled the motion for a new trial. It is stated that Odell's counsel will take an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Thirsting for Blood.
Chicago Times.
    Ottumwa, Iowa, Dec. 23- The preliminary examination of Joseph Green, a negro, who attempted to commit a rape on a white woman in this city last Saturday night, and being detected in the act by a Swede lamp-lighter, drew a pistol and inflicted on him a severe wound, was to have taken place to-day. At nine o'clock in the morning a crowd began gathering in front of the city hall, where the historic lamp-post on which John Smith was executed is standing, in anticipation of the appearance of the negro, and threats of lynching were freely indulged in. The officers were afraid to bring out the prisoner and his counsel secured a postponement of the examination until one o'clock p.m. When that time arrived the streets in front of the hall of justice were completely blocked with a quiet, determined set of men composed mostly of Swedes and Irish, and if the negro had been found on the streets, he would no doubt have been hung. Great excitement prevailed, and the authorities seriously contemplated calling out the Sheridan guards, a military company of the city, to maintain order and protect the prisoner. His counsel, however, concluded to waive examination, and he now stands committed to answer the charges. There is still a feeling of uneasiness among the authorities, and fears are entertained that the jail may be forced and the negro taken out and hanged. The negroes of this city, with few exceptions, take the part of the prisoner, and this causes a deep feeling among the whites, and a determination among them to bring this fellow to justice, and to hang the next one who attempts to rape on a white woman.

$800 a Month and Board.
    Sioux City, Dec. 22- Last year the firm of N. Hattenbach & Son, of this city, started a gift enterprise on a large scale and sold a large number of tickets in the eastern States and other localities, but before the time for the drawing arrived, a United States officer came and arrested Hattenboch and his son. They had several hearings before the United States Commissioner, and were finally given the choice of paying $500 fine and $300 costs, or going to jail for thirty days. They chose the latter mode of settlement with the government, and were taken to Council Bluffs and placed in jail. Their term of imprisonment expired yesterday and they returned to this city this morning, having saved $800 and two month's board in thirty days.

Supreme Court Consolidations.
    Bloomington, Dec. 22- Miss Sallie W. Davis, only daughter of Judge Davis, of this city was married this evening to Henry Stewart Swayne, of Toledo, a son of Judge Swayne. Rev. Samuel Taggert performed the service. A large number of distinguished guests were present.

Fatal Accident at Fairfield.
Special Dispatch to the HAWK-EYE.
    Fairfield, Iowa, Dec. 23- A most heart-rending affair occurred in this city about seven this evening. James Bailey and James Bartholomew were examining a revolver in Beck's grocery when it was accidentally discharged, the ball entering Bartholomew's left temple and causing instant death. The shooting was purely accidental as the two men were best of friends. Bartholomew was about twenty-three years of age and much respected in the community.

Killed by an Avalanche.
    Sioux City, Dec. 22- News reached here to-day from San Juan, California, of the death of D.B. Carson, formerly of this city and W. Jackson, of Covington, Nebraska. They were caught while descending the mountains on the tenth inst. in an avalanche of snow, and carried down the mountain a distance of 1500 feet, and were dead when taken out. Carson leaves a family, who now live at Troy Mills, Linn county, Iowa.

Had His Arm Torn Off.
    Dubuque, Iowa, Dec. 21- James Garvie, a farmer living near Blue Cut, Jackson county, had his arm torn off by a threshing machine a day or two since.

FIRES.
Conflagration at Red Oak.
    Council Bluffs, Dec. 23- A fire at Red Oak, at two o'clock this morning, destroyed the entire east side buildings on the public square. That side of the square was built solid with frame houses. The fire broke out in a one story building belonging to H. Hoppen, of Newark, New Jersey, and occupied by D.J. Ockerson as a wareroom. The fire, notwithstanding the calmness of the air, spread rapidly,and in about two hours that whole side of the square, excepting the building in which was the drug store of Wheelock & Clark, was in ashes. The Hopper building was insured in the Keokuk State Company for $500. Next south was a good two-story building, owned by W.T. Johnson, of Ottumwa, and occupied by Lewis & Childs, hardware dealers; no insurance on the building; loss $2,000. Lewis & Childs' loss is about $6,900; insured in the Commercial, of St. Louis, for $1,000. The next two were one-story buildings. The first was owned by H.A. Thompson and occupied as a warehouse by Lewis & Childs; loss on the building, $500. The second was owned by Mike Osborn and occupied by Mrs. H.P. Lewis, as a millinery store; loss on buildings $500-no insurance. The corner building was owned and occupied by Joseph Fisher, as a grocery store; loss $2,000 insurance on building $1,000 in the Mercantile of Chicago, and on goods $400, in the Commercial of St. Louis. A two-story building next north to the one which the fire originated, was owned by Whitten and Dearborn, and used as a harness manufactory; loss on building and goods about $3,000; insured in the Mercantile, of Chicago, for $1,000 and in the Globe, of Chicago, for $1,000. The next was a one story building owned by L.W. Crandall; loss $300; no insurance. This building was occupied by J.M. McLean as a dry goods store. McLean's loss is $500. The next two buildings were owned and occupied by Isaac Payne, as a restaurant and a tobacco store; loss about $2,000; some insurance on goods. The next was the harness shop of Thomas G Ohagan; loss on goods $2,000; no insurance. The next building was owned by Thomas Rogers; loss $500; no insurance. The next building was a one-story frame owned by T.W. Crandall which was torn down to prevent the further spreading of the fire. Wheelock and Clarke's drug store was the corner building. The goods were carried out in a hasty manner and damaged to the extent of some $200. The loss of Mr. Ockerson, who occupied the building in which the fire originated, is about $1,000. The total loss is about $20,000. The fire is believed to have been the work of an incendiary.

Snatched a Pocket Book.
    Davenport, Iowa, Dec. 21- This afternoon while two young ladies were walking up Perry street, one of them, Miss Emeline Nesbitt, had occasion to open her portmonnie for the purpose of handing her companion some money, when a man came up behind them, snatched the purse, and ran across the street into an alley, and out of sight, before pursuit could be given. The city seems to be infested with tramps.

Two Boys Drowned.
   Des Moines, Dec. 23- Two sons of John C. Sidebotham, aged respectively eleven and fourteen years, broke through the ice on the Railroad pond to-day and were drowned.

Western Patents.
    The following Western Patents were issued from the United States Paten Office for the week ending Dec. 7, 1875, as reported for The HAWK-EYE from the Western Patent Office Agency, by W.B. Richards, Solicitor of Patents, Galesburg, Illinois.
    IOWA
    Pumps- Wm. McBarnard, Clarksville.
    Clothes line props- Christian C. Schwaner, Winterset.
    Instrument for aiding animals in giving birth- Wm. Dulin, Big Grove.
    Brick machines- J.M. Mitchell, Dunlap & L.B. Kennedy, Keokuk.
    Feeding belts for corn shellers- Wm B. Quarton, Fremont.