An Agreeable Disinfectant

Sprinkle fresh ground coffee on a shovel of hot coals, or burn sugar on hot coals. Vinegar boiled with myrrh, sprinkled on the floor and furniture of a sick room, is an excellent deodorizer.

How To Prevent Mold

A small quantity of carbolic acid added to paste, mucilage and ink, will prevent mold. An ounce of the acid to a gallon of whitewash will keep cellars and dairies from the disagreeable odor which often taints milk and meat kept in such places.

How To Make Tracing-Paper

Dissolve a ball of white beeswax, one inch in diameter, in half a pint of turpentine. Saturate the paper in this bath and let it dry two or three days before using.

How To Preserve Brooms

Dip them for a minute or two in a kettle of boiling suds once a week and they will last much longer, making them tough and pliable. A carpet wears much longer swept with a broom cared for in this manner.

How To Clean Brass-Ware, etc.

Mix one ounce of oxalic acid, six ounces of rotten stone, all in powder, one ounce of sweet oil, and sufficient water to make a paste. Apply a small portion, and rub dry with a flannel or leather. The liquid dip most generally used consists of nitric and sulphuric acids; but this is more corrosive.

An Erasive Fluid for the Removal of Spots on Furniture, and all kinds of fabrics, without injuring the color, is made of four ounces of aqua ammonia, one ounce of glycerine, one ounce of castile soap and one of spirits of wine. Dissolve the soap in two quarts of soft water, add the other ingredients. Apply with a soft sponge and rub out. Very good for cleaning silks.

To Remove the Odor of Onion from fish-kettle and saucepans in which they have been cooked, put wood-ashes or sal soda, potash or lye; fill with water and let it stand on the stove until it boils; then wash in hot suds, and rinse well.

How To Clean Marble Busts

First free them from all dust, then wash them with very weak hydrochloric acid. Soap injures the color of marble.

To Remove old Putty from Window Frames, pass a red hot poker slowly over it and it will come off easily.

Hanging Pictures

The most safe material and also the best, is copper wire, of the size proportioned to the weight of the picture. When hung the wire is scarcely visible, and its strength is far superior to cord.

How To Keep Milk Sweet

Put into a panful a spoonful of grated horse-radish, it will keep it sweet for days.

How To Take Rust From Steel Implements Or Knives

Rub them well with kerosene oil, leaving them covered with it a day or so; then rub them hard and well with finely powdered unslaked lime.

Poison Water

Water boiled in galvanized iron becomes poisonous, and cold water passed through zinc-lined iron pipes should never be used for cooking or drinking. Hot water for cooking should never be taken from hot water pipes; keep a supply heated in kettles.

Scouring Soap For Cotton And Silk Goods

Mix one pound of common soap, half a pound of beef-gall and one ounce and a half of Venetian turpentine.

A Paint For Wood Or Stone That Resists All Moisture

Melt twelve ounces of resin; mix with it, thoroughly, six gallons of fish oil and one pound of melted sulphur. Rub up some ochre or any other coloring substance with a little linseed oil, enough to give it the right color and thickness. Apply several coats of the hot composition with a brush. The first coat should be very thin.

How To Ventilate A Room

Place a pitcher of cold water on a table in your room and it will absorb all the gases with which the room is filled from the respiration of those eating or sleeping in the apartment. Very few realize how important such purification is for the health of the family, or, indeed, understand or realize that there can be any impurity in the rooms; yet in a few hours a pitcher or pail of cold water - the colder the more effective - will make the air of a room pure, but the water will be entirely unfit for use.

How To Fill Cracks In Plaster

Use vinegar instead of water to mix your plaster of Paris. The resultant mass will be like putty, and will not "set" for twenty or thirty minutes; whereas, if you use water the plaster will become hard almost immediately, before you have time to use it. Push it into the cracks and smooth it off nicely with a table knife.

How To Take Spots From Wash Goods

Rub them with the yolk of egg before washing.

How To Take White Spots From Varnished Furniture

Hold a hot stove lid or plate over them and they will soon disappear.

How To Prevent Oil From Becoming Rancid

Drop a few drops of ether into the bottle containing it.

How To Make Tough Meat Tender

Lay it a few minutes in a strong vinegar water.

How To Remove Discoloration From Bruises

Apply a cloth wrung out in very hot water, and renew frequently until the pain ceases. Or apply raw beefsteak.

How To Remove Finger-Marks

Sweet oil will remove finger-marks from varnished furniture, and kerosene from oiled furniture.

How To Remove Paint From Black Silk

Patient rubbing with chloroform will remove paint from black silk or any other goods, and will not hurt the most delicate color or fabric.

How To Freshen Gilt Frames

Gilt frames may be revived by carefully dusting them, and then washing with one ounce of soda beaten up with the whites of three eggs. Scraped patches might be touched up with any gold paint. Castile soap and water, with proper care, may be used to clean oil paintings; other methods should not be employed without some skill.

Slicing Pineapples

The knife used for peeling a pineapple should not be used for slicing it, as the rind contains an acid that is apt to cause a swollen mouth and sore lips. The Cubans use salt as an antidote for the ill effects of the peel.