In an interesting treatise upon " The Germ Theory of Contagious Diseases ''Tyndall remarks :

" There is no respite to our contact with the floating matter of the air." He alludes, moreover, to "our sufferings from its mechanical irritation," and tells how astonished he was by the result of a series of experiments proving that this floating curse is organic matter.

"I had previously thought that the dust of our air was, in great part, inorganic and non-combustible.

He subjoins a foot-note to the effect that "in none of the public rooms of the United States where I had the honor to lecture was this experiment made. The organic dust was too scanty."

In the unscientific and domestic mind this engenders the desponding query, "Is the national dust, then, incombustible?" For years neat housewives have insisted that the contents of dustpans should be burned as soon as collected. Organic matter, including disease-germs and parasitic larvae, are thus destroyed, to the evident advantage of family health, but the bulk of inorganic particles - "the atomes," named by another scientific writer, "which the sun discovers, though they be invisible by candle-light, and makes them dance naked in his beams" - are dispelled for a season only. They reappear unchanged in the attributes of " mechanical irritation," and other undesirable properties, including ubiquity.

** The dust on which we tread was once alive," says the poet No living organism is more lively and viciously omnipresent to us to-day.. The Phoenix was more perishable; original sin could be more easily eliminated. Yet - and there would seem to be an element of injustice here - visible dust is everywhere taken as a token of neglect and untidiness. The writing upon the Babylonian palace-wall was not more condemnatory than the initials of the unwary housewife traced upon the top of a table by the finger of critical spouse or sarcastic (and anonymous) visitor.

"You could have written your name upon the furniture," is a phrase as common as it is crushing.

To avoid the verdict we wage incessant warfare upon an almost intangible foe, and one that is no respecter of things or persons. The most grewsome feature in the case of a cataleptic sufferer whom I once knew was that the dust settled upon the immobile eyeballs and had to be wiped away several times each day. The floor may be swept clean, then scrubbed, then wiped with a dry cloth, and the empty room, after an hour's airing, be carefully closed and not opened for twenty-four hours. At the end of that time a film of dust will be upon cleansed boards, window-frames, and cornices - wherever it can settle and lie. We carry it with us every where, upon our garments, our hair, our skin - until one can imagine the dismayed combatant dropping duster and dust-pan in broken-hearted despair, to mingle finally with what she loathes.

Clearly, then, any practical advice I offer must refer only to the methods of mitigating the evil I have likened to natural depravity.

One of the housewife's most efficient allies is the broom. Careless sweeping makes more dust than no sweeping at all. The first step in the work is to remove all the portable furniture from the room to be treated, the second, to scatter damp - not dripping - tea-leaves thickly over the carpet, if there be one; the third, to sweep with long, even strokes of a good broom the dirt from the four corners into the middle of the floor; the fourth, to collect the heap into a dust-pan and carry it directly to a fire, there to be cremated. Next, wrap a damp cloth securely about the broom and, slowly and gently, brush down the walls. All this time the windows through which the wind does not blow into the room should stand open. The sweeper should keep her mouth shut while at work, that the dust she raises, organic and inorganic, should not eddy down her throat into the lungs. The hair should be protected by a light, round cap shirred upon elastic and covering the ears. Upon the hands should be a pair of very loose gloves, two sizes, at least, too large for her.

When the walls have been swept, let her open all the doors and windows wide - the more air the better. Much of the floating matter must, perforce, be carried upon the beneficent draught into the wide outer world where it belongs. While this goes on, the furniture may be dusted in hall or piazza, and returned, piece by piece, to its proper place. For this process have a wicker paddle made for the purpose of beating stuffed lounges and chairs, a whisk-broom to dislodge the dust from tufted seats and carved corners ; lastly, a soft cloth duster.

I wish my protest against the bunch of feathers, misnamed "a duster," could be prevalent with my sister-housewives. It is the chamber-maid's delight, the lazy woman's stand-by. When the characters unite in one and the same "girl," she will not "take a place" where she cannot have it. Her manner of brandishing it is a gesture of insolent triumph over decency and order. She sweeps it across mirrors and pictures, wriggles it into corners, and pokes it into hollows. It leaves a gray arc of dust within every right angle, and, when conscientiously wielded, cannot possibly do anything better than to scatter into the air clouds of floating matter that must fall again, and shortly.

It was assuredly not a feather-duster the management of which George Eliot describes in "Adam Bede." "How it went into every small corner, and on every ledge in and out of sight; how it went again and again round every bar of the chairs, and every leg, and under and over everything that lay on the table ! If you had ever lived in Mrs. Poyser's household you would know how the duster behaved in Dinah's hand."

Such feats are only practicable to the soft cloth spoken of just now. It must not be too large or too small, and there must not be a particle of starchy dressing in it; it must be of wash-able material, and it must be washed often.

The cheese-cloth square, hemmed on all sides except where there is a selvedge (query - "self-edge ?"), so nearly meets these requirements that many housekeepers prefer it to any other fabric. It is cheap, takes up the dust obediently, does not scratch polished wood or gilt, and grows better with every washing while it hangs together. It has two defects - it soon wears into holes, and no housekeeper with whom I have compared notes on the subject ever yet succeeded in getting back from the laundry five per cent, of the cheese-cloth dusters that are sent down for cleansing. Some ingenious women feather-stitch the hems with Turkey-red cotton for convenience of identification; one adds to this precaution that of drawing with indelible ink a great cross in the middle of each square, and another writes the number of every duster upon it in figures six inches long. The end of the cheap conveniences, plain and marked, is to be degraded into dish-cloths, floor-cloths, wash-cloths - every kind of cloth that your servants like "to have handy." Two days of this sort of misapplication ruin an article whose chief merit is flimsiness, and renders recognition on the part of the inquisitive employer impossible.

For several successive seasons I submitted with resignation, born equally of mean-spiritedness and of philosophy, to this species of petty larceny, employing each summer a worthy and needy seamstress to make up four or five dozen cheese-cloth dusters (feather-stitched with red), and finding myself at the end of the winter's campaign the possessor of, at the most, four disreputable fragments. Nobody had purloined or misappropriated so much as one of them. The general opinion in the kitchen-cabinet was that "they had blown off the line on wash-day— they were that light!" Chancing to mention my evil case to a friend, she advised me to try the chamois-cloth duster. I have used none other since. It is just the right size, the surface is soft and furry, collecting the dust and holding it until the duster is shaken sharply. It is the color of a new chamois skin, and has a border of purple, red, or blue. It can be washed again and again, and outlasts ten cheese-cloth squares. Its individuality is so marked that no amount of soaking in dish-water, or scrubbing of tables, chairs, and candle-sticks can disguise it into the semblance of a kitchen-rag.

If you would know of what quantity of dust such faithful dusting as fingers with brain and conscience behind them remove from your rooms, wash your chamois-cloth duster yourself after two days' use. The grime left in the bottom of the bowl will incite you to renewed diligence in keeping organic and inorganic "atomes "away from your household gods.

With hardwood floors and rugs, the work of dusting is comparatively easy, because so much floating matter is carried out of the house with the rugs, and taken up by the cloth used in wiping the floor. Still, it settles in the shape of non-analyzable fluff in corners, and beneath sofas and cabinets, and veils polished surfaces grayly. The price of comparative cleanliness is daily dusting, done thoroughly - as hirelings never do it. The hall-mark of the eye-server is the neglected soap-dish in the bedroom and the undusted rungs of chairs all over the house. Bear continually and bravely in mind the truism with which this homely chat began :

"There is no respite to our contact with the floating matter of the air.''

M. H