Part 52

Take white lead, such as you buy in a keg, thicken with as little of the oil as possible, and mix some dry red lead with it. Put in just enough burnt umber to make it the color of black walnut, a little Japan drier and a very little varnish. Paint the edges of the glass and let it dry, or this will not stick. After cementing the aquarium, let it stand two weeks to harden before putting water in it.

Washing fluid for removing stains

You can take all the red laundry marks out of a linen by using the following washing fluid. It will also take rust, ink and mildew out without leaving a trace:

Five pounds washing-soda, one gallon of cold water, put to a boil. While boiling add one pound of chloride of lime and stir well; set aside to settle; strain through a cloth and cork up in a jug. Put your soiled clothes in ten quarts of water, or enough to cover them, with two handfuls of chipped soap and one pint of the jugged fluid. Let them boil, raising them up once in a while with the clothes-stick. If the marks do not disappear, add a little more of the fluid, but not too much, or it will eat into the clothes.

To kill an evil odor

Dried orange-peel, allowed to smolder on a piece of red-hot iron, or on an old shovel, will kill any bad odor in a room and leave a fragrant one behind.

To clean oil paintings

Cut a raw potato in half, rub quickly over the surface of an oil painting, after which polish with a silk handkerchief to remove dust or dirt.

To keep leather from cracking

Add a drop or two of neat’s-foot oil to the shoe-blacking to prevent the leather from cracking. It is also fine to use on damp boots or shoes.

How to keep palms

If you want your palms to thrive in an ordinary sitting-room, sponge the leaves once a week with lukewarm water, to which a little milk has been added. Then stand the plant for two hours in lukewarm water deep enough to completely cover the pot. This is the proper way to water palms.

One way to remove iron rust

One method of taking iron mold out of linen is to hold the spots over a pitcher of boiling water and rub them with the juice of sorrel and salt, and then, when the cloth is thoroughly wet, to dip it quickly in lye and wash at once.

To clean a light cloth gown

Lay the gown on a table, spread out smoothly and cover with powdered fuller’s earth shaken through a sieve. Hang, without shaking, in a dark closet for twenty-four hours; then shake and brush in the open air.

To get rid of plant-lice

Put the plants into a closet from which you have cleared everything else, and set on the floor a pan containing refuse broken tobacco. Light the tobacco, and shut the closet up for five or six hours. Soak the earth in the pots with tobacco tea, made by pouring boiling water upon the tobacco stems and letting it cool. You can brush up the tiny insects by the hundred. To make sure they will not come to life, burn all you sweep up.

To take dry ink out of a carpet

Rub into the spot as much thick buttermilk, made into a paste with table salt, as the place will hold. This may tone down the inkiness. Cover the wet paste with paper to exclude light and dust, and leave it alone for six hours. Wash, then, with household ammonia and warm water; rub dry, and make a second application of salt and buttermilk, covering as before.

To get rid of the smell of paint

To remove the smell of paint from a room leave in it over night a pail of water with three or four sliced raw onions in it. Shut the door, and in the morning the paint smell will have gone, the onions and water absorbing it.

To clean gold thread

Tarnished gold embroidery may be cleansed by dipping a brush in pulverized burnt alum, then brushing the embroidery thoroughly.

To polish patent leather

To polish patent leather remove every particle of dust, and apply a mixture of one part linseed oil to two parts cream. It should be well mixed and applied with a flannel. Rub the leather well with a soft, dry cloth.

To clean linoleum

If the linoleum be wiped first with a cloth dipped in warm water, and wrung as dry as possible, then wiped over with skimmed milk once a week, the colors will be lightened, and the varnish, which protects the colors, will be longer preserved. Soften obstinate spots with a little linseed oil. If the whole floor is treated once a month with linseed oil, using as little as possible, and rubbing all superfluous oil off, it will wear longer and the color will be brighter. If the varnish is entirely removed in any part, a mixture of one part lac varnish and three parts oil will restore it.

To renew cane-seat chairs

Cane chair seats that have sagged may be tightened by washing in _hot_ soapsuds and leaving to dry in the open air.

How to keep patent-leather shoes

Put them on, and as soon as they are warmed by the natural heat of the foot, rub with the palm of the hand until you are sensible that the moisture of the skin is lubricating the leather. Five minutes spent in this way whenever you wear the shoes will keep them in good order. About once a week put three drops of neat’s-foot oil into your hand, hold it until blood-warm, and rub it thoroughly into the leather. Cold weather induces cracking in patent leather. Gentle warmth prevents it.

To clean russet shoes

Russet shoes may be kept clean and bright by rubbing them with a slice of banana and polishing with a cloth.

To clean black cloth

Use warm water and alcohol in the proportion of about one or two tablespoonfuls of alcohol to a pint of water; goods sponged with it and pressed will look like new. Alcohol is not harmful to any goods, but ammonia will leave certain colors streaked unless evenly distributed. Alcohol is excellent for cleaning and brightening jet trimming.

To remove grease spots from cloth

Get at the back of the spots; _i. e._, the wrong side of the stuff, and rub into each spot as much powdered French chalk as it will hold. Leave it all night. Then lay soft blotting or tissue paper over the chalk and press with a warm iron, changing the paper as the grease “draws” through. Brush out the chalk, and the spot should have disappeared, unless a trace remains on the right side of something, which is not grease, but adherent dust. Sponge this with household ammonia.

To take out mildew

Make a thick paste of table salt and buttermilk, and cover the mildew with it. Lay in the hot sun for a day, renewing the paste at the end of four hours. If obstinate, repeat next day. Should a trace of the stain remain, cyanide of potassium will eradicate it. Moisten the spot with water, rub in the powder and lay in the sun for four hours, moistening the place twice in this time. Then wash at once with pure water. You can get the cyanide of potassium from the drug store. It is a deadly poison, if taken internally.

How to dry-clean a lace curtain

Pin a sheet snugly to the carpet, and pin the curtain smoothly to the sheet. Go all over it with flour you have dried in the oven, rubbing it into the lace with what is known as a “complexion brush” until the whole surface is coated and the curtain will hold no more. Throw a sheet over all and leave for twenty-four hours. At the end of this time unpin the curtain, lift carefully, shake out the flour and hang in the outer air and sunshine (the day must be dry) to let the flour blow out of it. Lastly, lay it upon the ironing-table, wrong side up, cover with clean cheese-cloth, or thin muslin slightly dampened, and press firmly with a warm, not a hot, iron.

Powdered starch may be used instead of flour. Curtains treated carefully in this way will look almost as fresh as when new.

A trio of useful hints

Perfumed olive oil sprinkled on library shelves will prevent mold on books.

Mud stains can be removed from black cloth by rubbing them with a raw potato.

The juice of a raw onion applied to the sting of an insect will remove the poison.

How to add to one’s stature

If you will take simple stretching exercises two or three times a day for a year your height will increase. Rising on toes and stretching the tips of the fingers as far toward the ceiling as they will go, and sweeping hands over front, touching tips of fingers or palm of hand to floor, keeping both knees straight, are excellent exercises if one would grow.

A skin tonic

A bag made of cheese-cloth, doubled and filled with bran, a teaspoonful of orris root and a half cake of Castile soap, chopped fine, makes an excellent skin tonic for the bath. After using it for several weeks the skin will be smooth, firm and white.

How to care for the hands

When the hands are stained by fruit or vegetables, remove the stains before the hands come in contact with soap or soapy water. Remove the stains with an acid, such as lemon, vinegar or sour milk, then wash in clear water.

When using soap and water for any purpose, rinse off all the soap before wiping the hands. Always wipe the hands perfectly dry. Do not change soaps if you can avoid it, and always use a good soap.

To soften and whiten the hands

Use some sort of cream on them at night, then powder them and put them in loose gloves kept for this purpose.

Habitual use of Holmes’ Fragrant Frostilla will keep the hands smooth, white, and prevent chapping in the winter.

To keep piano keys clean and white

Dampen a piece of muslin with alcohol, and with it rub the keys. If this does not remove the stains, use a piece of cotton flannel wet with cologne water. The keys can also be bleached white by laying over the keys cotton flannel cloths that have been saturated with a solution of oxalic acid.

A washing compound

Shave a pound bar of good, common laundry soap; put it into a kettle holding about six or eight quarts. Add two quarts of water to the soap, and boil until all of it is dissolved. Take it to the dooryard, or on the porch outside of the house in the open air, and add one-half pint of gasoline before the soap cools off. It will immediately foam and boil up until the kettle is full. Let it stand until it has cooled off somewhat.

The clothes should be soaked first in lukewarm water, or even cold water, wrung out and put into suds made of this compound and quite hot water, then rubbed as usual; or it can be used in the washing-machine. Some may also be put in the boiler without the least danger.

It softens the water and loosens dirt, and the clothes keep white. It does not injure colored goods any more than the laundry soap by itself would.

As usual, in using gasoline, be sure to take proper precautions about mixing it anywhere near fire.

Starch for black lawns, etc.

Boil two quarts of wheat bran in six quarts of water for half an hour. Let it get cold, then strain. You will need neither soap nor starch if you use this. If thick, add cold water. This preparation will both cleanse and stiffen.

Whitewash that will not rub off

Dissolve glue in hot water and add in the proportion of a pint of this water to four gallons of whitewash; or dissolve an ounce of gum arabic in a pint of boiling water and stir in, observing the same proportions. Before applying this or any other wash, scrape the wall clean and smooth. Do not leave any of the old on.

How to clean a straw hat

Go all over it with damp corn-meal, rubbing it in well. Next apply dry meal, work thoroughly into the straw and leave it on for some hours. Brush out the meal and wash freely with peroxide of hydrogen. Let it dry in the shade.

The care of hardwood floors

The daily care of the hardwood floor is very simple. A room that is much used must first be swept with a soft-haired brush, then wipe with a long-handled dust-mop or with a cotton flannel bag put over a broom. If there are spots on the floor they should be rubbed with a flannel cloth. If this does not remove them, clean with a little turpentine on a piece of cloth. The floor should be thoroughly cleaned and polished twice a year. If any water should get spilled on them it must be wiped up at once. Any liquid spilled on a waxed floor will produce a stain if left to dry, which can only be removed by hard rubbing and the encaustic.

A good floor polish

Melt not quite half a pound of beeswax and pour it into a quart of turpentine, then add five cents worth of ammonia. Put it in a tin pail and set it in another vessel containing hot water, and leave it on the back part of the stove to heat. Keep warm while using, for it goes on better. Apply with a flannel cloth, and polish with a piece of Brussels carpet.

To clean hairbrushes

Put a tablespoonful of ammonia into a basin of tepid water and dip the brushes up and down in it until they are clean. Dry with the bristles down, and they will be like new.

To wash blankets

Pour into a tub half a pint of household ammonia and lay a blanket over it; cover immediately with lukewarm water. This sends the fumes of the ammonia through the blanket and loosens the dirt. The blanket should then be stirred about with a stick and pressed until all the dirt seems to be in the water, then rinse in a tub of clear water of the same temperature as the first, run lightly through a wringer and hang out to dry.

To keep tinware from rusting

If the tinware is new rub over carefully with fresh lard and heat thoroughly before it is used.

How to clean marble

To two parts of common baking-soda add one of pumice-stone and one of fine salt. Sift the mixture through a sieve and mix it with water, then rub it well all over the marble and the stains will all be removed. Wash with a strong solution of salt and water, rinse with clear water and wipe dry.

To remove old tea and coffee stains

Wet the stains with cold water, cover with glycerine and let stand for two or three hours, then wash in cold water and soap. Repeat if necessary.

To wash windows and mirrors

A little turpentine dissolved in warm water is the best thing with which to wash windows and mirrors. A little alcohol will also do wonders in brightening glass.

To remove grass stain

Cover the stain with common cooking molasses and let stand for two or three hours. Wash in lukewarm water. Repeat the process if necessary.

To take out machine grease

Cold water, ammonia and soap will take out machine grease where other things would fail on account of making the colors run.

What to do till the doctor comes

_Croup_: Hot fomentations, flannels wrung out of boiling water, should be applied to the throat, and, if necessary, a warm bath given. Give a teaspoonful of wine of ipecac, or the same quantity of powdered alum stirred into syrup, molasses or honey. Sometimes a few drops of kerosene on brown sugar will relieve the tightness.

_Whooping cough_: Steaming the throat with thirty drops of pure carbolic acid in two and one-half pints of boiling water is said to be an excellent remedy. A half teaspoonful of kerosene will often relieve the paroxysms of coughing when nothing else will do it.

Antidotes for poisons

For laudanum, morphine and opium: First give a strong emetic of mustard and water, then very strong coffee and acid drinks; dash cold water on the head, and keep in constant motion.

For arsenic: Give, just as quickly as possible, an emetic of mustard and salt, a tablespoonful of each in a cupful of warm water; then follow with sweet-oil, warmed butter, or milk. You may also use the white of an egg in half a cupful of milk or lime water. Get a doctor as soon as possible.

For ammonia: Give lemon juice or vinegar.

For acids: Give magnesia, soda, or soap dissolved in water every two minutes; then use the stomach-pump, or an emetic.

For belladonna: Give an emetic of mustard, salt and water; then drink plenty of vinegar and water, or lemonade.

For “white lead” and “sugar of lead”: Give an emetic, then follow with castor oil, epsom salts or some other good cathartic.

HOW TO BUILD A FIRE

Before attempting to use a range (or stove) one should know something about its construction, and the appliances that are afforded for its regulation. An ordinary cooking range is supplied with _dampers_, _drafts_ and _checks_ to regulate the direction and intensity of the heat.

When the range is clean and cold examine it carefully. A lever will be found (often directly above the oven door) which when pulled out or pushed in (or turned to right or left) will allow the heat and the smoke to go _directly_ into the chimney flue, or through the range and around the oven _indirectly_ into the flue. Well down _below_ the fire-box is the _draft_ (a door), which when open allows the outside (cold) air to rush in and force the fire to burn more rapidly. Above the fire-box, near the top of the stove, are the _checks_ (a door with slides) that allow the outside (cold) air to come in _above_ the burning fuel, and depress its combustion.

It is readily seen when the smoke _damper_ and the _draft_ are open, with the _checks_ closed, that the greatest intensity of heat and the most rapid combustion are obtained. In this way the top part of the stove directly over the fire-box may be heated quickly and intensely. When an emergency arises this is the quickest way to boil the water in the kettle or to cook immediately on the top of the stove. However, the tax on fuel is excessive and wasteful when the _damper_ and _drafts_ both are open. When _damper_ and _drafts_ are closed and the _check_ open, the fire burns most slowly and the heat radiated is least intense.

A wood fire

When ready to lay the fuel and build the fire in a cold stove, be sure that the fire-box and ash-pits are clean and free from ashes and clinkers. Then open the _damper_ and the _drafts_ and close the _checks_. The fuel should always be put in from the top after removing the lids over the fire-box. Place the paper, slightly crumpled (never a number of sheets flat together), on the grating in the bottom of the fire-box. Lay the kindling on the paper loosely with the sticks across one another so that air may circulate freely between them. Place stove wood on the kindling in the same manner. Light the paper from below after replacing the lids on the stove. When the fire is burning freely close _damper_ and _drafts_.

A quick wood fire

When a quick wood fire is required for only a few moments’ use, lay the fuel as usual, except to use about one-third the amount of paper and kindling and only two or three sticks of stove wood. Build the fire well back in the fire-box next to the oven, with the smoke _damper_ and _drafts_ wide open. The draft is much stronger in the back of the fire-box and the fire therefore burns more readily.

A hard-coal fire

If hard coal (anthracite) is to be used, wait until the wood is burning well and then cover with a thin layer of coal. As soon as this is thoroughly ignited put in more coal and close the _damper_ into the chimney flue. The fire-box should never be filled more than two-thirds full.

A soft-coal fire

A soft-coal fire is laid in the same way, except that this fuel requires less kindling and ignites more readily than anthracite. The stove wood may be omitted if the kindling is of good size. In using bituminous (soft) coals the flues need cleaning oftener; but in any case these should be kept free from soot. Especially the flues around the oven should be cleaned once in ten days. If neglected the oven does not bake well, becomes too hot or will not heat at the bottom, and causes much annoyance.

Kerosene and other explosive oils should not be used to kindle the fire. When the stove wood or kindling is damp, patience and an extra supply of paper will be more effectual and less dangerous.

Bricks for kindling

Common building bricks, that can be obtained from any mason, make a good substitute for kindling wood. Put half a dozen into a covered tin slop pail in the corner of a closet in a box, where there is no danger of fire, and keep them well covered with kerosene. All that you have to do to start the morning fire is to lay a brick thus soaked in grate or stove or upon the hearth, pile other fuel upon it and apply a match. The brick will burn well for forty minutes. If it is in the way, remove it then. The same brick may be used for months.

FINAL FAMILIAR TALK

EMERGENCIES, BROKEN CHINA, AND—“IN CASE OF”—

A ready command of expedients is the hall-mark of the canny housekeeper. The ability to snatch safety from apparent ruin, like a brand from the burning, is a faculty with some. It may be acquired by many, if not all. The experienced housemother is slow to believe in the possibility of irreparable disaster. There is no such word as “defeat” in her dictionary. Absolute success is not always to be had, but there are grades of success in cookery, as in political preferment. When Mrs. Faintheart sits down to weep over spilt milk, Mrs. Resolute bethinks her of something that will take the place of the milk.

She reminds herself also that milk is greasy, and the spot not easily removed if it is allowed to soak into the silk, woolen or other unwashable fabric. By the time the milky-way spreads itself over carpet or gown she has a soft brush, warm water and household ammonia in hand, sponges, scrubs and rinses—this last with warm, clear water—then rubs dry with a soft linen cloth.

In case of a broken ink-bottle, or upset inkstand upon a carpet, wash immediately with skim-milk, using a clean sponge. Soak the ink and the milk up together, squeezing the sponge hard each time. When the ink disappears, cleanse the sponge well and wash the place again with warm water and ammonia. Lastly, scrub with a clean, stiff brush dipped in warm water and ammonia, following the threads of the carpet. If these directions are obeyed faithfully the carpet will be brighter than before the accident.

In case of claret or fruit stains upon table-cloth or napkin hold the stained part tightly over a bowl and pour boiling water through it for three or four minutes, using clean water every time.

In case of mildewed linen, rub together equal parts of white soap (old Castile is best) and powdered starch. Make a soft paste of these with lemon juice, and coat the mildew on both sides of the linen thickly with the paste. Lay in the hot sun for several hours, wetting the paste well with lemon juice every hour. Wash off the coating with clear water, and if any sign of the mildew remains renew the application.

In case of ants in cupboard or refrigerator, scour the shelves well with hot water and borax. Dry in the sun if the shelves are portable, then sprinkle thickly with dry borax. It is odorless and harmless, and may be used freely.

In case of soured dough, stir an even teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda, better known as baking-soda, into a cupful of warm water; turn the over-risen dough upon a board and work in the soda-water, gradually, until all is absorbed. If the dough is so soft that it runs, add a little sifted flour as you go on. Knead thoroughly and set for the last rising, taking care this is not in a hot place. I have seen an apparently hopeless batch of dough redeemed in this way.

In case of meat that has a “close” smell, yet is not actually tainted, wash well in soda and water, rubbing it well into every crack and line; wash off with fresh iced water; leave in salted iced water for half an hour, wash again with fresh, wipe quickly until perfectly dry, and cook at once.

In case of boiling milk more than eight hours old in summer, or twelve in winter, drop in a bit of baking-soda the size of a pea for each quart when you put the milk over the fire. I have boiled cream in this way without curdling it. Bear in mind that the first stage of decomposition is acid, and treat suspected food with soda as the most convenient and harmless of alkalies.

In case of curdled mayonnaise, whip the yolk of a fresh egg smooth and thick and stir into the curdled dressing.

Nothing brings me more closely in touch with my sister housemother than the request, “Will you tell me what to do in case of”—let the exigency be a shattered hope, an aching heart, a hankering after a mission, or broken china.