The greatest care should be taken to keep furniture fresh and clean. If the house-wife is neat and careful her property will last much longer than otherwise, and her dwelling will always possess a charm too often wanting in more pretentious dwellings.

Furniture which is French polished should be carefully dusted every day, and polished once a week with the furniture polish to be bought at any good chemist's. Generally these polishes are better and really cheaper than any that the housekeeper can make herself. "The chemical and mechanical action of different substances on articles of furniture is very little understood by persons in general, and consequently the most absurd directions are frequently issued for the preparation of cleaning materials, and also for preventing injury from certain agents. The substances from which furniture is chiefly exposed to injury are water, oils, spirits of various kinds, such as brandy, eau-de-Cologne, benzine, etc., and acids.

Varnishes, or polished surfaces of wood are easily injured by volatile mineral spirits, such as those used for lamps, or by any alcoholic spirit, as brandy, or wine. The polish is composed of gums and resins which are soluble in spirits. Many of these polishes or varnishes are made by dissolving the materials in alcohol, then when they are applied the spirit evaporates and the gum or resin is left in a thin polish or varnish on the wood. Of course, if wine, brandy, or spirits of wine fall on it, a portion of it is again dissolved, and the brilliancy of the surface is destroyed. The only remedy for these kinds of stains or marks is to have the table, or whatever it may be, repolished.

Heat has the same effect on French polish. A hot plate, or dish, or cup, or mug, placed on it, leaves its shape as a dull mark on the table. Therefore, dining tables are better not French polished, but well rubbed with oil. When furniture is not French polished, it is well to rub it with linseed oil, slightly coloured with alkanet root. Every time the dinner table is rubbed all the leaves should be put in, so that the portions of the table may be of the same colour, for oil darkens mahogany, and if the leaves are not rubbed every time there will soon be a great difference of shade between them and the table.