Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 February 1904 — Jangle Housekèping. [ARTICLE]

Jangle Housekèping.

The negro housewife in the West Indian Jungle finds housekeeping very easy. Fruit and vegetables grow wild all about the hut, and thp river abounds with fish.

On wash day all she has to do Is to pick a few of the berries of the soapberry tree, take her clothes to the river and use the berries as Bhe would use ordinary soap. Even her cooking pots grow on the trees, the caldbasi* cut in halves being used for this purpose. Calabashes are used also for bowls, basins and jugs for carrying water from the river, while the small ones make excellent cups.

In the afternoon, when she is ready for her cup of tea, the negress picks half a dozen leaves from the lime trash growing at her door, boils them, squeezes the juice from a sugar cane for sweetening, and the coeoauut supplies the milk. Thus she has a delicious cup of tea without depending on the grocer for it. # She makes the mats for her floor out of the dried leaves of the banana, plaited and sewed together, as the old country people in this country muke their rag mats. a