Читать книгу One Thousand Ways to Make a Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money - Harold Morse Dunphy - Страница 27

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Many men lose their positions, from one cause or another, but it isn’t every one of them who has a resourceful, skilful and determined wife to help him out. Here is one who had:

This man who had been a salesman was “let out” because his firm could no longer manufacture the goods he had been selling, and, as times were hard, another position could not be obtained. The family had never saved anything, and, their grocer changing suddenly to the cash system, left them with only half a dozen potatoes, a few pounds of flour, half a pound of lard, a cup of sugar, a little salt—and three hungry boys, to say nothing of the parents.

It was then that the plucky wife and mother rose to the occasion and saved the day. But it required a lot of grit and hard work. She peeled, sliced and boiled three of the six precious potatoes, adding water as the boiling went on. Then she put into a pan three tablespoonfuls of flour, one of sugar, and one of salt, scalding them with the hot water in which the potatoes had been boiled, and adding two quarts of cold water, making the mixture lukewarm.

Five cents from the small hoard of the family bought yeast one-half of which was saved for the next time, after moistening it with water and pouring it into the mixture. Covering the pan tightly, she set it aside until morning while the family went supperless to bed.

The hustling little woman was up at five o’clock the next morning and put twelve pounds of flour into a large pan, mixed in two heaping tablespoonfuls of lard, two of sugar and two of salt, then added the yeast mixture, which made an ordinary bread dough, and set it in a warm place to rise.

At eight a. m. she molded the dough into rolls, twelve rolls to each pound, two and one-half inches across and pressed down to an inch in thickness. These she put into a greased pan, not allowing them to quite touch each other, as they sell better when baked separately. By ten o’clock her eldest boy, who rode a wheel, had been excused from school, came home to do the selling. With five dozen light brown rolls in a basket, he started out to sell them at 10 cents a dozen.

In less than half an hour he was back for three dozen more, and returned in a short time with an order for the remainder, which the mother refused to accept, as she was keeping those for her own hungry family.

Plan No. 19. God helps those who help themselves

The next day she went through with the same program, except on a larger scale, and still was unable to supply the demand for her beautifully browned hot rolls that were ready for delivery just before meal time, and looked so tempting.

Her boy being out of school on Saturday, she mixed two pans of cake dough, one white and one brown, and spread them into a large bread pan so as to marble brown and white, and making a cake one and one-half inches thick, when baked.

Iced thinly, in plain white, and cut into two and one-half-inch squares, these sold readily for 20 cents a dozen, and were delicious. At the end of four days the little woman had made $10, and Monday morning her husband, still out of a position, offered to do the selling and delivering—greatly to her delight and the profit of both—for the sales increased until they had more demands for their products than they could supply.

She also began to bake delicious bread and pies, as well as rolls and cakes, and sold every article at a good price, that meant a handsome profit. This was the beginning of a successful bakery business for this family.