with half a sliced lemon, the skin on. Pour on boiling water, sweeten
and cork it.
CHAPTER XX.
THE PROVIDING AND CARE OF FAMILY STORES.
The art of keeping a good table consists not in loading on a variety
at each meal, but rather in securing a _successive_ variety, a table
neatly and tastefully set, and every thing that is on it cooked in the
best manner.
There are some families who provide an abundance of the most expensive
and choice articles, and spare no expense in any respect, yet who have
every thing cooked in such a miserable way, and a table set in so
slovenly a manner, that a person accustomed to a _really_ good table
can scarcely taste a morsel with any enjoyment.
On the contrary, there are many tables where the closest economy is
practiced; and yet the table-cloth is so white and smooth, the dishes,
silver, glass, and other table articles so bright, and arranged with
such propriety; the bread so light and sweet; the butter so beautiful,
and every other article of food so well cooked, and so neatly and
tastefully served, that every thing seems good, and pleases both the
eye and the palate.
A habit of _doing every thing in the best manner_ is of unspeakable
importance to a housekeeper, and every woman ought to _aim_ at it,
however great the difficulties she may have to meet. If a young
housekeeper commences with a determination to _try_ to do _every thing_
in the best manner, and perseveres in the effort, meeting all obstacles
with patient cheerfulness, not only the moral but the intellectual tone
of her mind is elevated by the attempt. Although she may meet many
insuperable difficulties, and may never reach the standard at which
she aims, the simple effort, _persevered_ in, will have an elevating
influence on her character; while, at the same time, she actually will
reach a point of excellence far ahead of those who, discouraged by many
obstacles, give up in despair, and resolve to make no more efforts, and
let things go as they will. The grand distinction between a noble and
an ignoble mind is, that one _will_ control circumstances; the other
yields, and allows circumstances to control her.
It should be borne in mind that the constitution of man demands _a
variety_ of food, and that it is just as cheap to keep on hand a good
variety of materials in the store-closet, so as to make a frequent
change, as it is to buy one or two articles at once, and live on them
exclusively, till every person is tired of them, and then buy two or
three more of another kind.
It is too frequently the case that families fall into a very limited
round of articles, and continue the same course from one year to
another, when there is a much greater variety within reach of articles
which are just as cheap and as easily obtained, and yet remain
unthought of and untouched.
A thrifty and generous provider will see that her store-closet is
furnished with such a variety of articles that successive changes can
be made, and for a good length of time. To aid in this, a slight sketch
of a well-provided store-closet will be given, with a description of
the manner in which each article should be stored and kept, in order
to avoid waste and injury. To this will be added modes of securing a
_successive variety_ within the reach of all in moderate circumstances.
It is best to have a store-closet open from the kitchen, because the
kitchen fire keeps the atmosphere dry, and this prevents the articles
stored from molding, and other injury from dampness. Yet it must not be
kept warm, as there are many articles which are injured by warmth.
A _cool_ and _dry_ place is indispensable for a store-room, and a
small window over the door, and another opening outdoors, give a great
advantage, by securing coolness and circulation of fresh air.
_Flour_ should be kept in a barrel, with a flour-scoop to dip it, a
sieve to sift it, and a pan to hold the sifted flour, either in the
barrel or close at hand. The barrel should have a tight cover to keep
out mice and vermin. It is best to find, by trial, a lot of first-rate
flour, and then buy a year’s supply. But this should not be done
unless there are accommodations for keeping it dry and cool, and
protecting it from vermin.
_Unbolted flour_ should be stored in kegs or covered tubs, and always
be kept on hand as regularly as fine flour. It should be bought only
when freshly ground, and only in moderate quantities, as it loses
sweetness by keeping.
_Indian meal_ should be purchased in small quantities, say fifteen or
twenty pounds at a time, and be kept in a covered tub or keg. It is
always improved by scalding. It must be kept very cool and dry, and if
occasionally stirred, is preserved more surely from growing sour or
musty. Fresh ground is best.
_Rye_ should be bought in small quantities, say forty or fifty pounds
at a time, and be kept in a keg or half-barrel, with a cover.
_Buckwheat_, _Rice_, _Hominy_, and _Ground Rice_ must be purchased in
small quantities, and kept in covered kegs or tubs. Several of these
articles are infested with small black insects, and examination must
occasionally be made for them.
_Arrow-root_, _Tapioca_, _Sago_, _Pearl Barley_, _Pearl Wheat_,
_Cracked Wheat_, _American Isinglass_, _Macaroni_, _Vermicelli_, and
_Oat-meal_ are all articles which help to make an agreeable variety,
and it is just as cheap to buy a small quantity of each as it is to
buy a larger quantity of two or three articles. Eight or ten pounds of
each of these articles of food can be stored in covered jars or covered
wood boxes, and then they are always at hand to help to make a variety.
All of them are very healthful food, and help to form many delightful
dishes for desserts. Some of the most healthful puddings are those made
of rice, tapioca, sago, and macaroni; while isinglass, or American
gelatine, forms elegant articles for desserts, and is also excellent
for the sick.
_Sugars_ should not be bought by the barrel, as the brown is apt to
turn to molasses, and run out on to the floor. Refined loaf for tea,
crushed sugar for the nicest preserves and to use with fruit, nice
brown sugar for coffee, and common brown for more common use. The loaf
can be stored in the paper, on a shelf. The others should be kept in
close covered kegs, or covered wooden articles made for the purpose.
_Butter_ must be kept in the dryest and coldest place you can find, in
vessels of either stone, earthen, or wood, and never in tin.
_Lard and Drippings_ must be kept in a dry, cold place, and should not
be salted. Usually the cellar is the best place for them. Earthen or
stone jars are the best to store them in.
_Salt_ must be kept in the _dryest_ place that can be found. _Rock
salt_ is the best for table-salt. It should be washed, dried, pounded,
sifted, and stored in a glass jar, and covered close. It is common to
find it growing damp in the _salt-stands_ for the table. It should then
be set by the fire to dry, and afterward be reduced to fine powder
again. Few things are more disagreeable than coarse or damp salt on a
table.
_Vinegar_ is best made of wine or cider. Buy a keg or half-barrel of
it, set it in the cellar, and then keep a supply for the casters in
a bottle in the kitchen. If too strong, it _eats_ the pickles. Much
manufactured vinegar is sold that ruins pickles, and is unhealthful.
_Pickles_ never must be kept in glazed ware, as the vinegar forms a
poisonous compound with the glazing.
_Oil_ must be kept in the cellar. _Winter-strained_ must be got
in cold weather, as the _summer-strained_ will not burn except in
warm weather. Those who use kerosene oil should never trust it with
heedless servants or children. Never fill lamps with it at night, nor
allow servants to kindle fire with it, or to fill a lamp with it when
lighted. Inquire for the safest pattern of lamps, and learn all the
dangers to be avoided, and the cautions needful in the use of this most
dangerous explosive oil. Neglect this caution, and you probably will be
a sorrowful mourner all your life for the sufferings or death of some
dear friend.
_Molasses_, if bought by the barrel or half-barrel, should be kept
in the cellar. If bought in small quantities, it should be kept in
a demijohn. No vessel should be corked or bunged, if filled with
molasses, as it will swell and burst the vessel, or run over.
_Hard Soap_ should be bought by large quantity, and laid to harden on a
shelf in a very dry place. It is much more economical to buy hard than
soft soap, as those who use soft soap are very apt to waste it in using
it, as they can not do with hard soap.
_Starch_ it is best to buy by a large quantity. It comes very nicely
put up in papers, a pound or two in each paper, and packed in a box.
The high-priced starch is cheapest in the end.
_Indigo_ is not always good. When a good lot is found by trial, it is
best to get enough for a year or two, and store it in a tight tin box.
_Coffee_ it is best to buy by the bag, as it improves by keeping. Let
it hang in the bag in a dry place, and it loses its rank smell and
taste. It is poor economy to buy ground coffee, as it often has other
articles mixed, and loses flavor by keeping after it is ground.
_Tea_, if bought by the box, is several cents a pound cheaper than by
small quantities. If well put up in boxes lined with lead, it keeps
perfectly; but put up in paper, it soon loses its flavor. It therefore
should, if in small quantities, be put up in glass or tin, and shut
tight.
_Soda_ should be bought in small quantities, then powdered, sifted,
and kept tight corked in a large-mouth glass bottle. It grows damp if
exposed to the air, and then can not be used properly.
_Raisins_ should not be bought in large quantities, as they are injured
by time. It is best to buy the small boxes.
_Currants_ for cake should be prepared, and set by for use in a jar.
_Lemon_ and _Orange Peel_ should be dried, pounded, and set up in
corked glass jars.
_Nutmeg_, _Cinnamon_, _Cloves_, _Mace_, and _Allspice_ should be
pounded fine, and corked tight in small glass bottles, with mouths
large enough for a junk-bottle cork, and then put in a tight tin box,
made for the purpose. Or they can be put in small tin boxes with tight
covers. Essences are as good as spices.
_Sweet Herbs_ should be dried, the stalks thrown away, and the rest be
kept in corked large-mouth bottles, or small tin boxes.
_Cream Tartar_, _Citric_ and _Tartaric Acids_, _Bicarbonate of Soda_,
and _Essences_ should be kept in corked glass jars. _Sal volatile_ must
be kept in a large-mouth bottle, with a ground-glass stopper to make it
air-tight. Use cold water in dissolving it. It must be powdered.
_Preserves_ and _Jellies_ should be kept in glass or stone, in a cool,
dry place, well sealed, or tied with bladder covers. If properly made
and thus put up, they never will ferment. If it is difficult to find a
cool, dry place, pack the jars in a box, and fill the interstices with
sand, very thoroughly dried. It is best to put jellies in tumblers, or
small glass jars, so as to open only a small quantity at a time.
The most easy way of keeping _Hams_ perfectly is to wrap and tie them
in paper, and pack them in boxes or barrels with ashes. The ashes must
fill all interstices, but must not touch the hams, as it absorbs the
fat. It keeps them sweet, and protects from all kinds of insects.
After smoked beef or hams are cut, hang them in a coarse linen bag in
the cellar, and tie it up to keep out flies.
Keep _Cheese_ in a cool, dry place, and after it is cut, wrap it in a
linen cloth, and keep it in a tight tin box.
Keep _Bread_ in a tin covered box, and it will keep fresh and good
longer than if left exposed to the air.
_Cake_ also should be kept in a tight tin box. Tin boxes made with
covers like trunks, with handles at the ends, are best for bread and
cake.
_Smoked herring_ keep in the cellar.
_Codfish_ is improved by changing it, once in a while, back and forth
from garret to cellar. Some dislike to have it in the house anywhere.
All _salted provision_ must be watched, and kept under the brine. When
the brine looks bloody, or smells badly, it must be scalded, and more
salt put to it, and poured over the meat.
CHAPTER XXI.
ON SETTING TABLES, AND PREPARING VARIOUS ARTICLES OF FOOD FOR THE TABLE.
To a person accustomed to a good table, the manner in which the table
is set, and the mode in which food is prepared and set on, has a great
influence, not only on the eye, but the appetite. A housekeeper ought,
therefore, to attend carefully to these particulars.
The table-cloth should always be _white_, and well washed and ironed.
When taken from the table, it should be folded in the ironed creases,
and some heavy article laid on it. A heavy bit of plank, smoothed and
kept for the purpose, is useful. By this method, the table-cloth looks
tidy much longer than when it is less carefully laid aside.
When table-napkins are used, care should be taken to keep the same one
to each person; and in laying them aside, they should be folded so as
to hide the soiled places, and laid under pressure. It is best to use
napkin-rings.
The table-cloth should always be put on _square_, and right side
upward. The articles of table furniture should be placed with order and
symmetry.
The bread for breakfast and tea should be cut in even, regular slices,
not over a fourth of an inch thick, and all crumbs removed from the
bread-plate. They should be piled in a regular form, and if the slices
are large they should be divided.
The butter should be cooled in cold water, if not already hard, and
then cut into a smooth and regular form, and a butter-knife be laid by
the plate, to be used for no other purpose but to help the butter.
A small plate should be placed at each plate for butter, and a small
salt-cup set by each breakfast or dinner-plate. This saves butter and
salt.
All the flour should be wiped from small cakes, and the crumbs be kept
from the bread-plate.
In preparing dishes for the dinner-table, all water should be carefully
drained from the vegetables, and the edges of the platters and dishes
should be made perfectly clean and neat.
All soiled spots should be removed from the outside of pitchers,
gravy-boats, and every article used on the table; the handles of the
knives and forks must be clean, and the knives bright and sharp.
In winter, the plates and all the dishes used, both for meat and
vegetables, should be set to the fire to warm, when the table is being
set, as cold plates and dishes cool the vegetables, gravy, and meats,
which by many is deemed a great injury.
Cucumbers, when prepared for table, should be laid in cold water for an
hour or two to cool, and then be peeled and cut into fresh cold water.
Then they should be drained, and brought to the table, and seasoned the
last thing.
The water should be drained thoroughly from all greens and salads.
There are certain articles which are usually set on together, because
it is _the fashion_, or because they are _suited_ to each other.
Thus, with _strong-flavored meats_, like mutton, goose, and duck, it is
customary to serve the strong-flavored vegetables, such as onions and
turnips. Thus, turnips are put in mutton broth, and served with mutton,
and onions are used to stuff geese and ducks. But onions are usually
banished from the table and from cooking on account of the disagreeable
flavor they impart to the atmosphere and breath.
_Boiled Poultry_ should be accompanied with boiled ham or tongue.
_Boiled Rice_ is served with poultry as a vegetable.
_Jelly_ is served with mutton, venison, and roasted meats, and is used
in the gravies for hashes.
_Fresh Pork_ requires some acid sauce, such as cranberry, or tart
apple-sauce. _ Drawn Butter_, prepared as in the recipe, with eggs in
it, is used with boiled fowls and boiled fish.
_Pickles_ are served especially with fish, and _Soy_ is a fashionable
sauce for fish, which is mixed on the plate with drawn butter.
There are modes of _garnishing dishes_, and preparing them for table,
which give an air of taste and refinement that pleases the eye. Thus,
in preparing a dish of fricasseed fowls, or stewed fowls, or cold fowls
warmed over, small cups of boiled rice can be laid inverted around the
edge of the platter, to eat with the meat.
On _Broiled Ham_ or _Veal_, eggs boiled or fried, and laid one on each
piece, look well.
_Greens_ and _Asparagus_ should be well drained, and laid on buttered
toast, and then slices of boiled eggs be laid on the top and around.
_Hashes_ and preparations of pigs’ and calves’ head and feet should be
laid on toast, and garnished with round slices of lemon.
_Curled Parsley_, or _Common Parsley_, is a pretty garnish, to be
fastened to the shank of a ham, to conceal the bone, and laid around
the dish holding it. It looks well laid around any dish of cold slices
of tongue, ham, or meat of any kind.
In setting a tea-table, small-sized plates are set around, with a
knife, napkin, and butter-plate laid by each in a regular manner,
while the articles of food are to be set, also, in regular order. On
the waiter are placed tea-cups and saucers, sugar-bowl, slop-bowl,
cream-cup, and two or three articles for tea, coffee, and hot water, as
the case may be. On the dinner-table, by each plate, is a knife, fork,
napkin, and tumbler; and a small butter-plate and salt-cup should also
be placed by each plate.
CHAPTER XXII.
WASHING, IRONING, AND CLEANSING.
Many a woman without servants, or with those untrained, must do her own
washing and ironing, or train others to do it, and this is the most
trying department of housekeeping. The following may aid in lessening
labor and care.
It saves washing and is more healthful to use flannel shirts. Farmers,
sailors, and soldiers have found by experience that they are more
comfortable than cotton or linen, even in the hottest days. Many
gentlemen use them for common wear, changing to a cotton-flannel
night-gown for sleeping. So young children can have a flannel jacket
and flannel drawers sewed to the jacket in front, and buttoned behind,
and change them at night for cotton-flannel made in the same way. The
under-garments for women may be made of the same material and pattern,
and this will save washing and promote health.
Some ladies economize time and labor by wearing three-cornered lace
articles for the neck, trimmed with imitation Valenciennes lace, wash
them in their wash-bowl, whiten in soap-suds in a tumbler or bowl in
their window, stiffen with gum-arabic, and after stretching, press
under weights between clean papers. This is a happy contrivance when
on a journey or without servants. Those who wish to save all needless
labor in washes should have under-garments and night-gowns made in sack
forms or other fashions that save in both material and labor. They also
should omit ruffles and other trimmings that increase the labor of
ironing.
There is nothing which tends more effectually to secure good washing
than a full supply of all conveniences. A plenty of soft water is a
very important item. When this can not be had, lye or soda can be put
in hard water, to soften it. Borax is safer than soda, which turns
white clothes yellow, and injures texture. Buy crude borax, and for a
common washing use half an ounce. A _borax soap_ is thus made: To a
pound of bar-soap, cut in small pieces, put a quart of hot water and an
ounce of powdered borax. Heat and mix, but do not boil, cool and cut
into cakes, and use like hard soap. Soak the white clothes in a suds
made of this soap over night, and it saves much rubbing. Two wash-forms
are needed; one for the two tubs in which to put the suds, and the
other for bluing and starching-tubs. Four tubs, of different sizes, are
necessary; also, a large _wooden_ dipper, (as metal is apt to rust;)
two or three pails; a grooved washboard; a clothes-line, (sea-grass or
horse-hair is best;) a wash-stick to move clothes when boiling, and a
wooden fork to take them out. Soap-dishes, made to hook on the tubs,
save soap and time. Provide, also, a clothes-bag, in which to boil
clothes; an indigo-bag, of double flannel; a starch-strainer, of coarse
linen; a bottle of ox-gall for calicoes; a supply of starch, neither
sour nor musty; several dozens of clothes-pins, which are cleft sticks,
used to fasten clothes on the line; a bottle of dissolved gum-arabic;
two clothes-baskets; and a brass or copper kettle, for boiling clothes,
as iron is apt to rust. A closet for keeping all these things is a
great convenience. Tubs, pails, and all hooped wooden ware, should be
kept out of the sun, and in a cool place, or they will fall to pieces.
COMMON MODE OF WASHING.
Assort the clothes, and put those most soiled in soak the night before.
Never pour hot water on them, as it sets the dirt. In assorting
clothes, put the flannels in one lot, the colored clothes in another,
the coarse white ones in a third, and the fine clothes in a fourth
lot. Wash the fine clothes in one tub of suds. When clothes are
very much soiled, a second suds is needful, turning them wrong side
out. Put them in the boiling-bag, and boil them in strong suds for
half an hour, and not much more. Move them, while boiling, with the
clothes-stick. Take them out of the boiling-bag, and put them into a
tub of water, and rub the dirtiest places again, if need be. Throw them
into the rinsing-water, and then wring them out, and put them into the
bluing-water. Put the articles to be stiffened into a clothes-basket
by themselves, and, just before hanging out, dip them in starch,
clapping it in, so as to have them equally stiff in all parts. Hang
white clothes in the sun, and colored ones (wrong side out) in the
shade. Fasten them with clothes-pins. Then wash the coarser white
articles in the same manner. Then wash the colored clothes. These must
not be soaked, nor have lye or soda put in the water, and they ought
not to lie wet long before hanging out, as it injures their colors.
Beef’s-gall, one spoonful to two pailfuls of suds, improves calicoes.
Lastly, wash the flannels in suds as hot as the hand can bear. Never
rub on soap, as this shrinks them in spots. Wring them out of the first
suds, and throw them into another tub of hot suds, turning them wrong
side out. Then throw them into hot bluing-water. Do not put bluing into
suds, as it makes specks in the flannel. Never leave flannels long in
water, nor put them in cold or lukewarm water. Before hanging them out,
shake and stretch them. Some housekeepers have a close closet, made
with slats across the top. On these slats, they put their flannels,
when ready to hang out, and then burn brimstone under them, for ten
minutes. It is but little trouble, and keeps the flannels as white as
new. Wash the colored flannels and hose after the white, adding more
hot water. Some persons dry woolen hose on stocking-boards, shaped like
a foot and leg, with strings to tie them on the line. This keeps them
from shrinking, and makes them look better than if ironed. It is also
less work than to iron them properly.
Bedding should be washed in long days, and in hot weather. Empty straw
beds once a year.
The following cautions in regard to calicoes are useful. Never wash
them in very warm water; and change the water when it appears dingy,
or the light parts will look dirty. Never rub on soap; but remove
grease with French chalk, starch, magnesia, or Wilmington clay. Make
starch for black calicoes with coffee-water, to prevent any whitish
appearance. Glue is good for stiffening calicoes. When laid aside, not
to be used, all stiffening should be washed out, or they will often
be injured. Never let calicoes freeze in drying. Some persons use
bran-water (four quarts of wheat-bran to two pails of water), and no
soap, for calicoes; washing and rinsing in the bran-water. Potato-water
is equally good. Take eight peeled and grated potatoes to one gallon of
water.
_To cleanse Gentlemen’s Broadcloths._—The best way, which the writer
has repeatedly tried with unfailing success, is the following: Take one
beef’s-gall, half a pound of saleratus, and four gallons of warm water.
Lay the article on a table, and scour it thoroughly, in every part,
with a clothes-brush dipped in this mixture. The collar of a coat, and
the grease-spots, (previously marked by stitches of white thread,)
must be repeatedly brushed. Then take the article and rinse it up and
down in the mixture. Then rinse it up and down in a tub of soft cold
water. Then, without wringing or pressing, hang it to drain and dry.
Fasten a coat up by the collar. When perfectly dry, it is sometimes the
case, with coats, that nothing more is needed. In other cases, it is
necessary to dampen with a sponge the parts which look wrinkled, and
either pull them smooth with the fingers, or press them with an iron,
having a piece of bombazine or thin woolen cloth between the iron and
the article.
TO MANUFACTURE LYE, SOAP, STARCH, AND OTHER ARTICLES USED IN WASHING.
_To make Lye._—Provide a large tub, made of pine or ash, and set it on
a form, so high that a tub can stand under it. Make a hole, an inch in
diameter, near the bottom, on one side. Lay bricks inside about this
hole, and straw over them. To every seven bushels of ashes add two
gallons of unslacked lime, and throw in the ashes and lime in alternate
layers. While putting in the ashes and lime, pour on boiling water,
using three or four pailfuls. After this, add a pailful of cold soft
water once an hour, till all the ashes appear to be well soaked. Catch
the drippings in a tub and try its strength with an egg. If the egg
rise so as to show a circle as large as a ten-cent piece, the strength
is right; if it rise higher, the lye must be weakened by water; if
not so high, the ashes are not good, and the whole process must be
repeated, putting in fresh ashes, and running the weak lye through
the new ashes, with some additional water. _Quick-lye_ is made by
pouring one gallon of boiling soft water on three quarts of ashes, and
straining it. Oak ashes are best.
_To make Soft Soap._—Save all drippings and fat, melt them, and set
them away in cakes. Some persons keep, for soap-grease, a half-barrel,
with weak lye in it, and a cover over it. To make soft soap, take the
proportion of one pailful of lye to three pounds of fat. Melt the fat,
and pour in the lye, by degrees. Boil it steadily, through the day,
till it is ropy. If not boiled enough, on cooling it will turn to lye
and sediment. While boiling, there should always be a little oil on the
surface. If this does not appear, add more grease. If there is too much
grease, on cooling, it will rise, and can be skimmed off. Try it, by
cooling a small quantity. When it appears like jelly on becoming cold,
it is done. It must then be put in a cool place and often stirred.
_To make cold Soft Soap_, melt thirty pounds of grease, put it in a
barrel, add four pailfuls of strong lye, and stir it up thoroughly.
Then gradually add more lye, till the barrel is nearly full, and the
soap looks _about right_.
_To make Potash-Soap_, melt thirty-nine pounds of grease, and put it
in a barrel. Take twenty-nine pounds of light ash-colored potash, (the
_reddish_-colored will spoil the soap,) and pour hot water on it; then
pour it off into the grease, stirring it well. Continue thus till all
the potash is melted. Add one pailful of cold water, stirring it a
great deal every day, till the barrel be full, and then it is done.
This is the cheapest and best kind of soap. It is best to sell ashes
and buy potash. The soap is better, if it stand a year before it is
used; therefore make two barrels at once.
_To prepare Starch._—Take four table-spoonfuls of starch; put in as
much water, and rub it, till all lumps are removed. Then add half a cup
of cold water. Pour this into a quart of boiling water, and boil it for
half an hour, adding a piece of spermaceti, or a lump of salt or sugar,
as large as a hazelnut. Strain it, and put in a very little bluing.
Thin it with hot water.
_Beef’s-Gall._—Send a junk-bottle to the butcher, and have several
gall-bladders emptied into it. Keep it salted, and in a cool place.
Some persons perfume it; but fresh air removes the unpleasant smell
which it gives, when used for clothes.
DIRECTIONS FOR STARCHING MUSLINS AND LACES.
Many ladies clap muslins, then dry them, and afterward sprinkle them.
This saves time. Others clap them till nearly dry, then fold and cover,
and then iron them. Iron wrought muslins on soft flannel, and on the
wrong side.
_To do up Laces nicely_, sew a clean piece of muslin around a long
bottle, and roll the lace on it; pulling out the edge, and rolling
it so that the edge will turn in, and be covered as you roll. Fill
the bottle with water, and then boil it for an hour in a suds made
with white soap. Rinse it in fair water, a little blue; dry it in the
sun; and, if any stiffening is wished, use thin starch or gum-arabic.
When dry, fold and press it between white papers in a large book. It
improves the lace to wet it with sweet-oil, after it is rolled on the
bottle, and before boiling in the suds. _Blonde laces_ can be whitened
by rolling them on a bottle in this way, and then setting the bottle
in the sun, in a dish of cold suds made with white soap, wetting it
thoroughly, and changing the suds every day. Do this for a week or
more; then rinse in fair water; dry it on the bottle in the sun, and
stiffen it with white gum-arabic. Lay it away in loose folds. _Lace
veils_ can be whitened by laying them in flat dishes, in suds made
with white soap; then rinsing, and stiffening them with gum-arabic,
stretching them, and pinning them on a sheet to dry.
ARTICLES TO BE PROVIDED FOR IRONING.
Provide the following articles: A woolen ironing-blanket, and a linen
or cotton sheet to spread over it; a large fire, of charcoal and hard
wood, (unless furnaces or stoves are used;) a hearth free from cinders
and ashes, a piece of sheet-iron in front of the fire, on which to
set the irons while heating; (this last saves many black spots from
careless ironers;) three or four holders, made of woolen, and covered
with old silk, as these do not easily take fire; two iron-rings or
iron-stands, on which to set the irons, and small pieces of board
to put under them, to prevent scorching the sheet; linen or cotton
wipers; and a piece of bees-wax, to rub on the irons when they are
smoked. There should be at least three irons for each person ironing,
and a small and large clothes-frame, on which to air the fine and
coarse clothes. It is a great saving of space as well as labor to have
a clothes-frame made with a large number of slats, on which to hang
clothes. Then have it fastened to the wall, and, when not used, pushed
flat against the wall. Any carpenter can understand how to make this.
A bosom-board, on which to iron shirt-bosoms, should be made, one foot
and a half long and nine inches wide, and covered with white flannel.
A skirt-board, on which to iron frock-skirts, should be made, five
feet long and two feet wide at one end, tapering to one foot and three
inches wide at the other end. This should be covered with flannel,
and will save much trouble in ironing nice dresses. The large end may
be put on the table, and the other on the back of a chair. Both these
boards should have cotton covers made to fit them, and these should
be changed and washed when dirty. These boards are often useful when
articles are to be ironed or pressed in a chamber or parlor, and where
economy of space is needful, they may be hung to a wall or door by
loops on the covers. Provide, also, a press-board, for broadcloth, two
feet long and four inches wide at one end, tapering to three inches
wide at the other.
If the lady of the house will provide all these articles, see that the
fires are properly made, the ironing-sheets evenly put on and properly
pinned, the clothes-frames dusted, and all articles kept in their
places, she will do much toward securing good ironing.
ON SPRINKLING, FOLDING, AND IRONING.
Wipe the dust from the ironing-board, and lay it down, to receive the
clothes, which should be sprinkled with clear and warm water, and laid
in separate piles, one of colored, one of common, and one of fine
articles, and one of flannels. Fold the fine things, and roll them in a
towel, and then fold the rest, turning them all right side outward. The
colored clothes should be laid separate from the rest, and ought not
to lie long damp, as it injures the colors. The sheets and table-linen
should be shaken, stretched, and folded by two persons.
Iron lace and needle work on the wrong side, and carry them away as
soon as dry. Iron calicoes with irons which are not very hot, and
generally on the right side, as they thus keep clean for a longer
time. In ironing a frock, first do the waist, then the sleeves, then
the skirt. Keep the skirt rolled while ironing the other parts, and
set a chair, to hold the sleeves while ironing the skirt, unless a
skirt-board be used. In ironing a shirt, first do the back, then the
sleeves, then the collar and bosom, and then the front. Iron silk on
the wrong side, when quite damp, with an iron which is not very hot,
as light colors are apt to change and fade. Iron velvet by turning up
the face of the iron, and after dampening the wrong side of the velvet,
draw it over the face of the iron, holding it straight and not biased.
TO WHITEN ARTICLES, AND REMOVE STAINS FROM THEM.
Wet white clothes in suds, and lay them on the grass, in the sun. It
will save from grass stain, to have a clean white cloth under the
articles to be whitened. Lay muslins in suds made with white soap, in
a flat dish; set this in the sun, changing the suds every day. Whiten
tow-cloth or brown linen by keeping it in lye through the night, laying
it out in the sun, and wetting it with fair water, as fast as it dries.
Scorched articles can often be whitened again by laying them in the
sun, wet with suds. Where this does not answer, put a pound of white
soap in a gallon of milk, and boil the article in it. Another method
is, to chop and extract the juice from two onions, and boil this with
half a pint of vinegar, an ounce of white soap, and two ounces of
fuller’s earth. Spread this, when cool, on the scorched part, and, when
dry, wash it off in fair water. _Mildew_ may be removed by dipping the
article in sour buttermilk, laying it in the sun, and, after it is
white, rinsing it in fair water. Soap and chalk are also good; also,
soap and starch, adding half as much salt as there is starch, together
with the juice of a lemon. Stains in linen can often be removed by
rubbing on soft soap, then putting on a starch paste and drying in the
sun, renewing it several times. Wash off all the soap and starch in
cold fair water.
MIXTURES FOR REMOVING STAINS AND GREASE.
=Stain Mixture.=—Half an ounce of oxalic acid in a pint of soft water.
This can be kept in a corked bottle and is infallible in removing
iron-rust and ink-stains. It is very poisonous. The article must be
spread with this mixture over the steam of hot water, and wet several
times. This will also remove indelible ink. The article must be
washed, or the mixture will injure it.
=Another Stain-Mixture= is made by mixing one ounce of sal ammoniac,
one ounce of salt of tartar, and one pint of soft water.
=To remove Grease.=—Mix four ounces of fullers earth, half an ounce
of pearlash, and lemon-juice enough to make a stiff paste, which can
be dried in balls, and kept for use. Wet the greased spot with cold
water, rub it with the ball, dry it, and then rinse it with fair cold
water. This is for _white_ articles. For silks and worsteds use French
chalk, which can be procured of the apothecaries. That which is soft
and white is best. Scrape it on the greased spot, under side, and
let it lie for a day and night. Then brush off that used, and renew
it till the spot disappears. Wilmington clay-balls are equally good.
Ink-spots can often be removed from white clothes by rubbing on common
tallow, leaving it for a day or two, and then washing as usual. Grease
can be taken out of wall-paper by making a paste of potter’s clay,
water, and ox-gall, and spreading it on the paper. When dry, renew it,
till the spot disappears.
Stains on floors, from _soot_ or _stove-pipes_, can be removed by
washing the spot in sulphuric acid and water. Stains in colored silk
dresses can often be removed by pure water. Those made by acids, tea,
wine, and fruits can often be removed by spirits of hartshorn, diluted
with an equal quantity of water. Sometimes it must be repeated several
times.
=Tar=, =Pitch=, and =Turpentine= can be removed by putting the spot
in sweet-oil, or by spreading tallow on it, and letting it remain for
twenty-four hours. Then, if the article be linen or cotton, wash it as
usual; if it be silk or worsted, rub it with ether or spirits of wine.
=Lamp-Oil= can be removed from floors, carpets, and other articles by
spreading upon the stain a paste made of fuller’s earth or potter’s
clay, brushing off and renewing it, when dry, till the stain is
removed. If gall be put into the paste, it will preserve the colors
from injury. When the stain has been removed, carefully brush off the
paste with a soft brush.
=Oil-Paint= can be removed by rubbing it with _very pure_ spirits
of turpentine. The impure spirits leave a grease-spot. _Wax_ can be
removed by scraping it off, and then holding a red hot poker near the
spot. _Spermaceti_ may be removed by scraping it off, then putting
a paper over the spot, and applying a warm iron. If this does not
answer, rub on spirits of wine.
=Ink-Stains= in carpets and woolen table-covers can be removed by
washing the spot in a liquid composed of one tea-spoonful of oxalic
acid dissolved in a tea-cupful of warm (not hot) water, and then
rinsing in cold water. When ink is first spilled on a woolen carpet,
pour on water immediately, and sop it up several times, and no stain
will be made. Often on other articles, a stream of cold water poured
on the _under side_ of the ink-spot will so dilute the ink that it can
be rubbed out in cold water.
=Stains on Varnished Articles=, which are caused by cups of hot water,
can be removed by rubbing them with lamp-oil, and then with alcohol.
Ink-stains can be taken out of mahogany by one tea-spoonful of oil of
vitriol mixed with one table-spoonful of water, or by oxalic acid and
water. These must be brushed over quickly, and then washed off with
milk.
=Silk Handkerchiefs= and =Ribbons= can be cleansed by using French
chalk to take out the grease, and then sponging them on both sides
with lukewarm fair water. Stiffen them with gum-arabic, and press them
between white paper, with an iron not very hot. A table-spoonful of
spirits of wine to three quarts of water improves it.
=Silk Hose= or =Silk Gloves= should be washed in warm suds made with
white soap, and rinsed in cold water; they should then be stretched
and rubbed with a hard-rolled flannel, till they are quite dry.
Ironing them very much injures their looks. _Wash-leather_ articles
should have the grease removed from them by French chalk or magnesia;
they should then be washed in warm suds, and rinsed in cold water.
_Light Kid Gloves_ should have the grease removed from them, and
then wash them on the hands with borax water and soft flannel—a
tea-spoonful to a tumbler of water. Then stretch and press them. Dark
Kid Gloves wash in the same way.
CHAPTER XXIII
MISCELLANEOUS ADVICE AND RECIPES.
=How to keep cool in Hot Weather.=—Sit in a room covered with matting
or without any carpet, and keep the floor wet with pure water and a
watering-pot. In hot nights, place a double wet sheet on the bed and
a woolen blanket over it, and it will cool the bed which is heated
through the day, and does not cool as fast as the evening air. A hot
bed is often the cause of sleeplessness. Wear wristlets and anklets of
wet flannel. Shut all doors and windows early in the morning to keep
in cool air, and let in air only through windows that are on the shady
side of the house. If chambers open upon the hot roofs of piazzas or
porticoes, cover them with clean straw or hay, and wet them with a
watering-pot. In all these cases, the heat is taken from the air and
from all surrounding things by the absorption of heat as the water
changes to vapor.
=Indelible Ink.=—Put six cents’ worth of lunar caustic in a small
phial, and fill with rain-water. To prepare the cloth, put a
great-spoonful of gum-arabic into a larger bottle, with a drachm of
salt of tartar, fill with water, and, when dissolved, wet the cloth,
and press it smooth with a warm (not hot) iron. Put the articles, when
marked, in the sun.
=To preserve Eggs.=—Pack eggs in a jar small end downward, and then
pour in a mixture of four quarts of slacked lime, two table-spoonfuls
of cream tartar, and two of salt. This will cover about nine dozen for
several months.
=To prevent Earthen, Glass, and Iron Ware from being easily
broken.=—Put them in cold water, and heat till boiling, and cool
gradually.
=A good Cement for broken Earthen and Glass.=—Mix Russian isinglass in
white brandy, forming a thick jelly when cool. Strain and cork. When
using it, rub it on the broken edges, and hold them together three or
four minutes.
=To keep Knives from Rust and other Injury.=—Rub bright, and wrap in
thick brown paper. Never let knife-handles lie in water, and do not
let their blades stay in _very hot_ water, as the heat expands the
iron, and makes handles crack.
=To cleanse or renovate Furniture.=—White spots on furniture remove
by camphene, or sometimes by oil or spirits of turpentine. Remove
mortarspots with warm vinegar, and paint-spots with camphene or
burning-fluid. Powdered pumice-stone is better than sand to clean
paint. To polish _unvarnished_ furniture, rub on two ounces of
bees-wax, half an ounce of alconet root, melted together, and, when
cooled, two ounces of spirits of wine, and half a pint of spirits of
turpentine.
=To clean Silver.=—Wet whiting with liquid hartshorn, and this will
remove black spots. Or boil half an ounce of pulverized hartshorn in
a pint of water, and pour it into rags, dry them, and use to cleanse
silver. Polish with wash-leather.
=To cleanse Wall-Paper.=—Wipe with a clean pillow-case on a broom, and
brush gently. Rub bad spots with soft bread-crumbs gently.
=To Purify a Well.=—Get out the water, and then put in three or four
quarts of quick-lime. Any well long unused should be thus cleansed.
=How to treat Roses and other Plants.=—Water them daily with water
steeped in wood-ashes. To destroy slugs, scatter ashes over the plant
at night before the dew falls, or before a coming shower. Water all
plants with washing-day suds, and it makes them flourish. Scatter salt
in gravel-walks to get out grass and weeds. Use old brine for this
purpose. Use sawdust to manure plants; also wood-ashes; even that used
to make lye is good.
=Easy Way to keep Grapes.=—When not dead ripe, have them free from
dampness, take out the decayed, and wrap each bunch in cotton, putting
only two layers in a box. Keep in a dry, cool room, where they will
not freeze.
=Snow for Eggs.=—Two table-spoonfuls of snow strewed in quickly, and
baked immediately, is equal to one egg in puddings or pan-cakes.
=Paper to keep Preserves.=—Soft paper dipped in the white of an egg is
the best cover for jellies and pickles. Turn it over the rim.
=To make Butter cool in hot Weather.=—Set it on a bit of brick,
cover with a flower-pot, and wrap a wet cloth around the pot. The
evaporation cools it as well as ice.
=To stop Cracks in Iron.=—Mix ashes and common salt and a little
water, and fill the cracks.
=To stop Creaking Hinges.=—Put on oil.
=To stop Creaking Doors and make Drawers slide easily=.—Rub on hard
soap.
=To renovate Black Silk.=—Wash in cold tea or coffee, with a little
sugar in them. Put in a little ink if very rusty. Drain and do not
wring, and iron on the wrong side.
=Another Way to clean Kid Gloves.=—Rub them lightly with benzine, and,
as they dry, with pearl-powder. Expose to the air to remove the smell.
=To remove Grease-Spots.=—Put an ounce of powdered borax to a quart of
boiling water. Wash with this, and keep it corked for further use.
=To get rid of Rats and Mice.=—A cat is the best remedy. Another is to
half fill a tub with water, and sprinkle oats and meal on the top. For
a while they will be deceived, jump in, and be drowned or caught.
ODDS AND ENDS.
There are certain _odds and ends_ where every housekeeper will gain
much by having a _regular time_ to attend them. Let this time be
the last Saturday forenoon in every month, or any other time more
agreeable; but let there be a _regular fixed time_ once a month in
which the housekeeper will attend to the following things:
First. Go around to every room, drawer, and closet in the house,
and see what is out of order, and what needs to be done, and make
arrangements as to time and manner of doing it.
Second. Examine the store-closet, and see if there is a proper supply
of all articles needed there.
Third. Go to the cellar, and see if the salted provision, vegetables,
pickles, vinegar, and all other articles stored in the cellar are in
proper order, and examine all the preserves and jellies.
Fourth. Examine the trunk or closet of family linen, and see what needs
to be repaired and renewed.
Fifth. See if there is a supply of dish-towels, dish-cloths, bags,
holders, floor-cloths, dust-cloths, wrapping-paper, twine, lamp-wicks,
and all other articles needed in kitchen work.
Sixth. Count over the spoons, knives, and forks, and examine all the
various household utensils, to see what need replacing, and what should
be repaired.
Seventh. Have in a box a hammer, tacks, pincers, gimlets, nails,
screws, screw-driver, small saw, and two sizes of chisels for
emergencies when no regular workman is at hand. Also be prepared to set
glass. Every lady should be able in emergency to do such jobs herself.
A housekeeper who will have _a regular time_ for attending to these
particulars will find her whole family machinery moving easily and
well; but one who does not will constantly be finding something out of
joint, and an unquiet, secret apprehension of duties left undone or
forgotten, which no other method will so effectually remove.
A housekeeper will often be much annoyed by the accumulation of
articles not immediately needed, that must be saved for future use. The
following method, adopted by a thrifty housekeeper, may be imitated
with advantage. She bought some cheap calico, and made bags of various
sizes, and wrote the following labels with indelible ink on a bit of
broad tape, and sewed them on one side of the bags: _Old Linens, Old
Cottons, Old black Silks, Old colored Silks, Old Stockings, Old colored
Woolens, Old Flannels, New Linen, New Cotton, New Woolens, New Silks,
Pieces of Dresses, Pieces of Boys' Clothes_, etc. These bags were hung
around a closet, and filled with the above articles, and then it was
known where to look for each, and where to put each when not in use.
Another excellent plan, for the table, is for a housekeeper once a
month to make out a _bill of fare_ for the four weeks to come. To do
this, let her look over this book, and find out what kind of dishes the
season of the year and her own stores will enable her to provide, and
then make out a list of the dishes she will provide through the month,
so as to have an agreeable variety for breakfast, dinners, and suppers.
Some systematic arrangement of this kind at regular periods will secure
great comfort and enjoyment to a family, and prevent that monotonous
round so common in many families.
PART SECOND.
CHAPTER I.
NEEDFUL SCIENCE AND TRAINING FOR THE FAMILY STATE.
That women need as much and even more scientific and practical training
for their appropriate business than men, arises from the fact that
they must perform duties quite as difficult and important, and a much
greater variety of them. A man usually selects only one branch of
business for a profession, and, after his school education, secures
an apprenticeship of years to perfect his practical skill; and thus
a success is attained which would be impossible were he to practice
various trades and professions.
Now let us notice what science and training are needed for the various
and difficult duties that are demanded of woman in her ordinary
relations as wife, mother, housekeeper, and the mistress of servants.
First, the department of a housekeeper demands some knowledge of all
the arts and sciences connected with the proper _construction_ of a
family dwelling.
In communities destitute of intelligent artisans, a widow, or a woman
whose husband has not time or ability to direct, on building a house,
would need for guidance the leading principles of architecture,
pneumatics, hydrostatics, calorification, and several other connected
sciences, in order to secure architectural beauty, healthful heating
and ventilation, and the economical and convenient arrangements
for labor and comfort. A housekeeper properly instructed in these
principles would know how to secure chimneys that will not smoke, the
most economical furnaces and stoves, and those that will be sure to
“draw.” She would know how dampers and air-boxes should be placed and
regulated, how to prevent or remedy gas escapes, leaking water-pipes,
poisonous recession of sewers, slamming shutters, bells that will not
ring, blinds that will not fasten, and doors that will not lock or
catch. She will understand about ball-cocks, and high and low pressure
on water-pipes and boilers, and many other mysteries which make a woman
the helpless victim of plumbers and other jobbers often as blundering
and ignorant as herself. She would know what kind of wood-work saves
labor, how to prevent its shrinkage, when to use paint, and what kind
is best, and many other details of knowledge needed in circumstances
to which any daughter of wealth is liable: knowledge which could be
gained with less time and labor than is now given in public schools to
geometry and algebra.
On supposition of a _yard_ and _garden_, with young boys and domestic
animals under her care, she would need the first principles of
landscape gardening, floriculture, horticulture, fruit culture, and
agriculture; also, the fitting and furnishing of accommodations and
provision for domestic animals. And to gain this knowledge would demand
less time than young girls often give to picking pretty flowers to
pieces and saying hard names over them, or storing them in herbariums
never used. And yet botany might be so taught as to be practically
useful.
Next, in _selecting furniture_, a woman so instructed would know when
glue and nails are improperly used instead of the needed dovetailing
and mortising. She would know when drawers, tables, and chairs were
properly made, and when brooms, pots, saucepans, and coal-scuttles
would last well and do proper service. She would know the best colors
and materials for carpets, curtains, bed and house linen, and numerous
other practical details as easily learned as the construction of
“bivalves” and “multivalves,” and other particulars in natural history
now studied, and, being of no practical use, speedily forgotten.
Next, in the _ornamentation_ of a house, she will need the general
principles that guide in the making or selection of pictures, statuary,
in drawing, painting, music, and all the fine arts that render a home
so beautiful and attractive.
Next comes all involved in the _cleansing_, _neatness_, and _order_
of houses filled with sofas, ottomans, curtains, pictures, musical
instruments, and all the varied collection of beautiful and frail
ornaments or curiosities so common. Every girl should be taught to know
the right and the wrong way of protecting or cleansing every article,
from the rich picture-frames and frescoes to the humblest crockery and
stew-pan. And this would include much scientific knowledge as well as
practical training.
Next comes the selection of _healthful food_, the proper care of
it, and the most economical and suitable modes of cooking. Here are
demanded the first principles of physiology, animal chemistry, and
domestic hygiene, with the practical applications. Thus instructed, the
housekeeper will know the good or bad condition of meats, milk, bread,
butter, and all groceries. And a class could be taken to a market or
grocery for illustration, as easily as to a museum or the field for
illustrations of mineralogy or botany. All this should be done before a
young girl has the heavy responsibilities of housekeeper, wife, mother,
and nurse. The art of cookery, in all its departments, has received
more attention than any other domestic duty in former days; but at the
present time no systematic mode is devised for training a young girl to
superintend and instruct servants in this complicated duty, on which
the health and comfort of a family so much depend.
Next, in providing _family clothing_ and in the care of household
stuffs, she will know how to do and to teach in the best manner plain
sewing, hemming, darning, mending, and the use of a sewing-machine,
thus cultivating ingenuity, dexterity, and common sense in judging the
best way of doing things and deciding what is worth doing and what
is not. She will exercise good taste and good judgment in dress for
herself and family, in the selection of materials, in the adaptation of
colors and fashion to age, shape, and employments, and in the avoidance
of unhealthful and absurd fashions; and she will have such knowledge
of domestic chemistry as is needed in the cleansing, dyeing, and
preservation of household clothing and stuffs.
Next comes all involved in the _care of health_. This again involves
the first principles of animal and domestic chemistry, hydrostatics,
pneumatics, caloric, light, electricity, and especially hygiene
and therapeutics. A housekeeper instructed in these will have pure
water, pure air, much sunlight, beds and clothes well cleansed, every
arrangement for cleanliness and comfort, and all that tends to prevent
disease or retard its first approaches. And her knowledge and skill she
will transmit to the children and servants under her care, while the
dumb animals of her establishment will share in the blessings secured
by her scientific knowledge and trained skill.
Next comes the care of _family expenses_ in all departments of economy,
and in which science and training are also demanded: to this add the
enforcement of system and order, hospitalities to relatives, friends,
and the homeless, the claims of society as to calls, social gatherings,
the sick, the poor, benevolent associations, school and religious
duties.
Not the least of the onerous duties of a housekeeper is the training
and government of _servants_ of all kinds of dispositions, habits,
nationalities, and religions.
All these multiplied and diverse duties are demanded of every woman,
whether married or single, who becomes mistress of a house.
The distinctive duties of _wife and mother_ are such that both science
and training are of the greatest consequence, and a dreadful amount of
suffering has resulted from want of such proper instruction. One of
the most important of these duties is the care of new-born infants and
their mothers. Thousands of young infants perish and young mothers are
made sufferers for life for want of science and training in the mothers
and monthly nurses.
Then the _helpers in the nursery_ have a daily control of the safety,
health, temper, and morals of young children; and a conscientious,
careful, affectionate woman, instructed in the care of health and
remedies for sudden accidents, is a rare treasure. These arduous duties
are now extensively given to the inexperienced and the ignorant. It is
a mournful fact that more science and care are given by professional
trainers to the offspring of horses, cows, sheep, and hogs, than to the
larger portion of children of the American people. Thus comes the fact
that the mortality of the human offspring greatly exceeds that of the
lower animals.
The most difficult and important duties of a woman are those of an
_educator_ in the family and the school. In the nursery, children are
taught the care of their bodies, the use of language, the nature and
properties of the world around them, and many social and moral duties,
all before books are used. Then it is a mother’s duty to select the
school-teacher, and so to supervise, that health and intellectual
training shall be duly secured. To this add the duties of training
and controlling the helpers in the nursery and kitchen, and to a
housekeeper and mother the duties of an _educator_ stand first on the
roll of responsibilities.
But the most weighty of all human responsibilities that rest upon every
housekeeper, whether mother or only mistress of servants, are those
which are consequent on the distinctive teachings of Jesus Christ; for,
as the general rule, it is the mistress who is the chief minister of
religion in the family state.
And this is the age above all the past, when all the foundations of
religious faith are being undermined, and all the most important
principles of morals assailed. What is the conscientious woman to do,
when the truth and authority of the Bible, the doctrine of immortality
after death, and even the existence of a God, are attacked, not only
in newspapers and books, but even in respectable pulpit ministries?
Surely, if she is to be prepared by culture, argument, and reflection
for any of her many responsibilities, it is for those she is to bear
as the _religious educator of the family state_. This topic will be
referred to more definitely in the chapters on the Training of Children
and Care of Servants, and in a note at the close of this volume.
It is for want of facilities for the proper scientific training of
women for these multiform duties that they are so generally not
educated to be healthy, or economical, or industrious, or properly
qualified to be happy wives, or to train children and servants, or to
preserve health in families and schools, or to practice a wise economy
in the various departments of the family state. It is for want of such
scientific training that the most important duties of the family,
being disgraced and undervalued, are forsaken by the cultivated and
refined, and, passing to the unskilled and vulgar, secure neither
honorable social position nor liberal rewards. The poorest teacher of
music, drawing, or French has higher position and reward than those who
perform the most scientific, sacred, and difficult duties of the family
state.
The true remedy for this state of things is to provide as liberally
for the scientific training of woman for her profession as men have
provided for theirs. A wide-spread attempt is organizing for the
establishment of institutions to cover this very ground of educating
woman for the specific duties of her profession. But there are many
thousands who are already beyond the reach of such instruction, and
thousands of others who could never avail themselves of it; and certain
it is, that a gathering together, in a compact volume like the present
one, of many facts and ideas bearing upon these all-important topics,
will be of great advantage to readers, especially in remote districts,
far from the conveniences of cities.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
A HEALTHFUL AND ECONOMICAL HOUSE.
At the head of this chapter is a sketch of what may be properly called
a _Christian_ house; that is, a house contrived for the express purpose
of enabling every member of a family to labor with the hands for the
common good, and by modes at once healthful, economical, and tasteful.
[Illustration: Fig. 7.]
In the following drawings are presented modes of economizing time,
labor, and expense by the _close packing of conveniences_. By such
methods, small and economical houses can be made to secure most of
the comforts and many of the refinements of large and expensive ones.
The cottage at the head of this chapter is projected on a plan which
can be adapted to a warm or cold climate with little change. By adding
another story, it would serve a large family.
[Illustration: Fig. 8.]
Fig. 7 shows the ground-plan of the first floor, the proportions being
marked in the drawing. The piazzas each side of the front projection
have sliding-windows to the floor, and can, by glazed sashes, be made
greenhouses in winter. In a warm climate, piazzas can be made at the
back side also.
The leading aim is to show how time, labor, and expense are saved,
not only in the building, but in furniture and its arrangement. The
conservatories are appendages not necessary to housekeeping, but useful
in many ways.
[Illustration: Fig. 9.]
The entry has arched recesses behind the front doors, (Fig. 8,)
furnished with hooks for over-clothes in both—a box for overshoes in
one, and a stand for umbrellas in the other. The roof of the recess is
for statuettes, busts, or flowers. The stairs turn twice with broad
steps, making a recess at the lower landing, where a table is set with
a vase of flowers, (Fig. 9.)
On one side of the recess is a closet, arched to correspond with the
arch over the stairs. A bracket over the first broad stair, with
flowers or statuettes, is visible from the entrance, and pictures can
be hung as in the drawing.
[Illustration: Fig. 10.]
The large room on the left can be made to serve the purpose of several
rooms by means of a _movable screen_. By shifting this rolling screen
from one part of the room to another, two apartments are always
available, of any desired size within the limits of the large room.
One side of the screen fronts what may be used for the parlor or
sitting-room; the other side is arranged for bedroom conveniences. Of
this, Fig. 10 shows the front side; covered first with strong canvas,
stretched and nailed on. Over this is pasted panel-paper, and the
upper part is made to resemble an ornamental cornice by fresco-paper.
Pictures can be hung in the panels, or be pasted on and varnished with
white varnish. To prevent the absorption of the varnish, a wash of gum
isinglass (fish-glue) must be applied twice.
Fig. 11 shows the back or inside of the movable screen, toward the
part of the room used as the bedroom. On one side, and at the top and
bottom, it has shelves with _shelf-boxes_, which are cheaper and
better than drawers, and much preferred by those using them. Handles
are cut in the front and back side, as seen in Fig. 12. Half an inch
space must be between the box and the shelf over it, and as much each
side, so that it can be taken out and put in easily. The central part
of the screen’s interior is a wardrobe.
[Illustration: Fig. 11.]
[Illustration: Fig. 12.]
This screen must be so high as nearly to reach the ceiling, in order
to prevent it from overturning. It is to fill the width of the room,
except two feet on each side. A projecting cleat or strip, reaching
nearly to the top of the screen, three inches wide, is to be screwed
to the front sides, on which light frame doors are to be hung, covered
with canvas and panel-paper like the front of the screen. The inside
of these doors is furnished with hook for clothing, for which the
projection makes room. The whole screen is to be eighteen inches deep
at the top and two feet deep at the base, giving a solid foundation.
It is moved on four wooden rollers, one foot long and four inches
in diameter. The pivots of the rollers and the parts where there is
friction must be rubbed with hard soap, and then a child can move the
whole easily.
A curtain is to be hung across the whole interior of the screen by
rings, on a strong wire. The curtain should be in three parts, with
lead or large nails in the hems to keep it in place. The wood-work must
be put together with screws, as the screen is too large to pass through
a door.
[Illustration: Fig. 13.]
[Illustration: Fig. 14.]
At the end of the room, behind the screen, are two couches, to be run
one under the other, as in Fig. 13. The upper one is made with four
posts, each three feet high and three inches square, set on casters two
inches high. The frame is to be fourteen inches from the floor, seven
feet long, two feet four inches wide, and three inches in thickness.
At the head and at the foot is to be screwed a notched two-inch board,
three inches wide, as in Fig. 14. The mortises are to be one inch wide
and deep, and one inch apart, to receive slats made of ash, oak, or
spruce, one inch square, placed lengthwise of the couch. The slats
being small, and so near together, and running lengthwise, make a
better spring frame than wire coils. If they warp, they can be turned.
They must not be fastened at the ends, except by insertion in the
notches. Across the posts, and of equal height with them, are to be
screwed head and foot boards.
The under couch is like the upper, except these dimensions: posts,
nine inches high, including casters; frame, six feet two inches long,
two feet four inches wide. The frame should be as near the floor as
possible, resting on the casters.
[Illustration: Fig. 15.]
The most healthful and comfortable mattress is made by a case, open in
the centre and fastened together with buttons, as in Fig. 15; to be
filled with oat straw, which is softer than wheat or rye. This can be
adjusted to the figure, and often renewed.
Fig. 16 represents the upper couch when covered, and the under couch
put beneath it. The cover-lid should match the curtain of the screen;
and the pillows, by day, should have a case of the same.
[Illustration: Fig. 16.]
[Illustration: Fig. 17.]
Fig. 17 is an ottoman, made as a box, with a lid on hinges. A cushion
is fastened to this lid by strings at each corner, passing through
holes in the box lid and tied inside. The cushion to be cut square,
with side pieces; stuffed with hair, and stitched through like a
mattress. Side handles are made by cords fastened inside with knots.
The box must be two inches larger at the bottom than at the top, and
the lid and cushion the same size as the bottom, to give it a tasteful
shape. This ottoman is set on casters, and is a great convenience for
holding articles, while serving also as a seat.
The expense of the screen, where lumber averages four dollars a
hundred, and carpenter labor three dollars a day, would be about thirty
dollars, and the two couches about six dollars. The material for
covering might be cheap and yet pretty. A woman with these directions,
and a son or husband who would use plane and saw, could thus secure
much additional room, and also what amounts to two bureaus, two large
trunks, one large wardrobe, and a wash-stand, for less than twenty
dollars—the mere cost of materials. The screen and couches can be
so arranged as to have one room serve first as a large and airy
sleeping-room; then, in the morning, it may be used as sitting-room one
side of the screen, and breakfast-room the other; and lastly, through
the day it can be made a large parlor on the front side, and a sewing
or retiring-room the other side. The needless spaces usually devoted
to kitchen, entries, halls, back-stairs, pantries, store-rooms, and
closets, by this method would be used in adding to the size of the
large room, so variously used by day and by night.
Fig. 18 is an enlarged plan of the kitchen and stove-room. The chimney
and stove-room are contrived to ventilate the whole house.
Between the two rooms glazed sliding-doors, passing each other,
serve to shut out heat and smells from the kitchen. The sides of the
stove-room must be lined with shelves; those on the side by the cellar
stairs, to be one foot wide and eighteen inches apart; on the other
side, shelves may be narrower, eight inches wide and nine inches apart.
Boxes with lids, to receive stove utensils, must be placed near the
stove.
On these shelves, and in the closet and boxes, can be placed every
material used for cooking, all the table and cooking utensils, and all
the articles used in house-work, and yet much spare room will be left.
The cook’s galley in a steamship has every article and utensil used
in cooking for two hundred persons, in a space not larger than this
stove-room, and so arranged that with one or two steps the cook can
reach all he uses.
In contrast to this, in most large houses, the table furniture, the
cooking materials and utensils, the sink, and the eating-room, are at
such distances apart, that half the time and strength is employed in
walking back and forth to collect and return the articles used.
[Illustration: Fig. 18.]
Fig. 19 is an enlarged plan of the sink and cooking-form. Two windows
make a better circulation of air in warm weather, by having one open at
top and the other at the bottom, while the light is better adjusted for
working, in case of weak eyes.
[Illustration: Fig. 19.]
The flour-barrel just fills the closet, which has a door for admission,
and a lid to raise when used. Beside it is the form for cooking, with
a molding-board laid on it; one side used for preparing vegetables and
meat, and the other for molding bread. The sink has two pumps, for well
and for rain-water—one having a forcing power to throw water into the
reservoir in the garret, which supplies the water-closet and bath-room.
On the other side of the sink is the dish-drainer, with a ledge on
the edge next the sink, to hold the dishes, and grooves cut to let the
water drain into the sink. It has hinges, so that it can either rest
on the cook-form or be turned over and cover the sink. Under the sink
are shelf-boxes placed on two shelves run into grooves, with other
grooves above and below, so that one may move the shelves and increase
or diminish the spaces between. The shelf-boxes can be used for
scouring-materials, dish-towels, and dish-cloths; also to hold bowls
for bits of butter, fats, etc. Under these two shelves is room for two
pails, and a jar for soap-grease.
Under the cook-form are shelves and shelf-boxes for unbolted wheat,
corn-meal, rye, etc. Beneath these, for white and brown sugar, are
wooden can-pails, which are the best articles in which to keep these
constant necessities. Beside them is the tin molasses-can with a tight,
movable cover, and a cork in the spout. This is much better than a jug
for molasses, and also for vinegar and oil, being easier to clean and
to handle. Other articles and implements for cooking can be arranged
on or under the shelves at the side and front. A small cooking-tray,
holding pepper, salt, dredging-box, knife, and spoon, should stand
close at hand by the stove, (Fig. 20.)
[Illustration: Fig. 20.]
The articles used for setting tables are to be placed on the shelves at
the front and side of the sink. Two tumbler-trays, made of pasteboard,
covered with varnished fancy papers and divided by wires, (as shown in
Fig. 21,) save many steps in setting and clearing table. Similar trays,
(Fig. 22,) for knives and forks and spoons, serve the same purpose.
The sink should be three feet long and three inches deep, its width
matching the cook-form.
[Illustration: Fig. 21.]
[Illustration: Fig. 22.]
[Illustration: Fig. 23.]
Fig. 23 is the second or attic story. The main objection to attic
rooms is their warmth in summer, owing to the heated roof. This is
prevented by so enlarging the closets each side that their walls meet
the ceiling under the garret floor, thus excluding all or most of the
roof. In the bedchambers, corner dressing-tables, as Fig. 24, instead
of projecting bureaus, save much space for use, and give a handsome
form and finish to the room. In the bath-room must be the opening to
the garret, and a step-ladder to reach it. A reservoir in the garret,
supplied by a forcing-pump in the cellar or at the sink, must be well
supported by timbers, and the plumbing must be well done, or much
annoyance will ensue.
[Illustration: Fig. 24.]
The large chambers are to be lighted by large windows or glazed
sliding-doors, opening upon the balcony. A roof can be put over the
balcony and its sides inclosed by windows, and the chamber extend into
it, and be thus much enlarged.
[Illustration: Fig. 25.]
The water-closets must have the latest improvements for safe discharge,
and there will be no trouble. They will cost no more than an outdoor
building, and they relieve one from the most disagreeable house-labor.
A great improvement, called _earth-closets_, will probably take the
place of water-closets to some extent; though at present the water is
the more convenient.
The method of ventilating all the chambers, and also the cellar, will
be described in another place. Fig. 25 represents a shoe-bag, that can
be fastened to the side of a closet or closet-door.
[Illustration: Fig. 26.]
Fig. 26 represents a piece-bag, and is a very great labor and
space-saving invention. It is made of calico, and fastened to the side
of a closet or a door, to hold all the bundles that are usually stowed
in trunks and drawers. India-rubber or elastic tape drawn into hems
to hold the contents of the bag is better than tape-strings. Each bag
should be labeled with the name of its contents, written with indelible
ink on white tape sewed on to the bag. Such systematic arrangement
saves much time and annoyance. Drawers or trunks to hold these articles
can not be kept so easily in good order, and moreover, occupy spaces
saved by this contrivance.
[Illustration: Fig. 27.]
Fig. 27 is the basement. It has the floor and sides plastered, and is
lighted with glazed doors. A form is raised close by the cellar stairs,
for baskets, pails, and tubs. Here, also, the refrigerator can be
placed, or, what is better, an ice-closet can be made, as designated in
the illustration. The floor of the basement must be an inclined plane
toward a drain, and be plastered with water-lime. The wash-tubs have
plugs in the bottom to let off water, and cocks and pipes over them
bringing cold water from the reservoir in the garret and hot water from
the laundry stove. This saves much heavy labor of emptying tubs and
carrying water.
The laundry closet has a stove for heating irons, and also a kettle
on top for heating water. Slides or clothes-frames are made to draw
out to receive wet clothes, and then run into the closet to dry. This
saves health as well as time and money, and the clothes are as white as
when dried outdoors. The entrance to the kitchen is either through the
basement or through the eating-room windows, made to slide.
The wood-work of the house, for doors, windows, etc., should be _oiled_
chestnut, butternut, whitewood, and pine. This is cheaper, handsomer,
and more easy to keep clean than painted wood.
In Fig. 7 are planned two conservatories, and few understand their
value in the training of the young. They provide soil, in which
children, through the winter months, can be starting seeds and plants
for their gardens and raising valuable, tender plants. Every child
should cultivate flowers and fruits to sell and to give away, and thus
be taught to learn the value of money, and to practice both economy and
benevolence.
According to the calculation of a house-carpenter, in a place where
the _average_ price of lumber is four dollars a hundred, and carpenter
work three dollars a day, such a house can be built for sixteen hundred
dollars. For those practicing the closest economy, two small families
could occupy it, by dividing the kitchen, and yet have room enough. Or
one large room and the chamber over it can be left till increase of
family and means require enlargement.
A strong horse and carry-all, with a cow, garden, vineyard, and
orchard, on a few acres, would secure all the substantial comforts
found in great establishments, without the trouble of ill-qualified
servants.
And if the parents and children were united in the daily labors of the
house, garden, and fruit culture, such thrift, health, and happiness
would be secured as is but rarely found among the rich.
Let us suppose a colony of cultivated and Christian people, having
abundant wealth, who now are living as the wealthy usually do,
emigrating to some of the beautiful Southern uplands, where are rocks,
hills, valleys, and mountains as picturesque as those of New-England,
where the thermometer but rarely reaches 90° in summer, and in winter
as rarely sinks below freezing-point, so that outdoor labor goes on all
the year, where the fertile soil is easily worked, where rich tropical
fruits and flowers abound, where cotton and silk can be raised by
children around their home, where the produce of vineyards and orchards
finds steady markets by railroads ready-made; suppose such a colony,
with a central church and school-room, library, hall for sports, and
a common laundry, (taking the most trying part of domestic labor from
each house)—suppose each family to train the children to labor with
the hands as a healthful and honorable duty; suppose all this, which
is perfectly practicable, would not the enjoyment of this life be
increased, and also abundant treasures be laid up in heaven, by using
the wealth thus economized in diffusing similar enjoyments and culture
among the poor, ignorant, and neglected ones in desolated sections
where many now are perishing for want of such Christian example and
influences?
CHAPTER III.
ON HOME VENTILATION.
When “the wise woman buildeth her house,” the first consideration
will be the health of the inmates. The first and most indispensable
requisite for health is pure air, both by day and night.
If the parents of a family should daily withhold from their children
a large portion of food needful to growth and health, and every night
should administer to each a small dose of poison, it would be called
murder of the most hideous character. But it is probable that more
than one half of this nation are doing that very thing. The murderous
operation is perpetrated daily and nightly, in our parlors, our
bedrooms, our kitchens, our school-rooms; and even our churches are no
asylum from the barbarity. Nor can we escape by our railroads, for even
there the same dreadful work is going on.
The only palliating circumstance is the ignorance of those who commit
these wholesale murders. As saith the Scripture, “The people do perish
for lack of knowledge.” And it is this lack of knowledge which it is
woman’s special business to supply.
The above statements will be illustrated by some account of the manner
in which the body is supplied with healthful nutriment. There are two
modes of nourishing the body, one is by food and the other by air.
In the stomach the food is dissolved, and the nutritious portion is
absorbed by the blood, and then is carried by blood-vessels to the
lungs, where it receives oxygen from the air we breathe. This oxygen is
as necessary to the nourishment of the body as the food of the stomach.
In a full-grown man weighing one hundred and fifty-four pounds, one
hundred and eleven pounds consists of oxygen, obtained chiefly from the
air we breathe. Thus the lungs feed the body with oxygen, as really as
the stomach supplies the other food required.
The lungs occupy the upper portion of the body from the collarbone to
the lower ribs, and between their two lobes is placed the heart.
[Illustration: Fig. 28.]
[Illustration: Fig. 29.]
[Illustration: Fig. 30.]
[Illustration: Fig. 31.]
Fig. 28 shows the position of the lungs, though not the exact shape.
On the right hand is the exterior of one of the lobes, and on the left
hand are seen the branching tubes of the interior, through which the
air we breathe passes to the exceedingly minute air-cells of which
the lungs chiefly consist. Fig. 29 shows the outside of a cluster of
these air-cells, and Fig. 30 is the inside view. The lining membrane of
each air-cell is covered by a net-work of minute blood-vessels called
_capillaries_, which, magnified several hundred times, appear in the
microscope as at Fig. 31. Every air-cell has a blood-vessel that brings
blood from the heart, which meanders through its capillaries till it
reaches another blood-vessel that carries it back to the heart, as seen
in Fig. 32. In this passage of the blood through these capillaries,
the air in the air-cell imparts its oxygen to the blood, and receives
in exchange carbonic acid and watery vapor which are expired at every
breath into the atmosphere.
By calculating the number of air-cells in a small portion of the lungs,
under a microscope, it is ascertained that there are no less than
eighteen millions of these wonderful little purifiers and feeders of
the body. By their ceaseless ministries, every grown person receives,
each day, thirty-three hogsheads of air into the lungs to nourish and
vitalize every part of the body, and also to carry off its impurities.
[Illustration: Fig. 32.]
But the heart has a most important agency in this operation. Fig. 33 is
a diagram of the heart, which is placed between the two lobes of the
lungs. The right side of the heart receives the dark and impure blood,
which is loaded with carbonic acid. It is brought from every point of
the body by branching veins that unite in the upper and the lower _vena
cava_, which discharge into the right side of the heart. This impure
blood passes to the capillaries of the air-cells in the lungs, where it
gives off carbonic acid, and, taking oxygen from the air, then returns
to the left side of the heart, from whence it is sent out through the
_aorta_ and its myriad branching arteries to every part of the body.
[Illustration: Fig. 33.]
When the upper portion of the heart contracts, it forces both the pure
blood from the lungs, and the impure blood from the body, through
the valves marked V, V, into the lower part. When the lower portion
contracts, it closes the valves and forces the impure blood into the
lungs on one side, and also on the other side forces the purified blood
through the aorta and arteries to all parts of the body.
As before stated, the lungs consist chiefly of air-cells, the walls of
which are lined with minute blood-vessels; and we know that in every
man these air-cells number _eighteen millions_.
Now every beat of the heart sends two ounces of blood into the minute,
hair-like blood-vessels, called capillaries, that line these air-cells,
where the air in the air-cells gives its oxygen to the blood, and in
its place receives carbonic acid. This gas is then expired by the lungs
into the surrounding atmosphere.
Thus, by this powerful little organ, the heart, no less than
twenty-eight pounds of blood, in a common-sized man, is sent three
times every hour through the lungs, giving out carbonic acid and watery
vapor, and receiving the life-inspiring oxygen.
Whether all this blood shall convey the nourishing and invigorating
oxygen to every part of the body, or return unrelieved of carbonic
acid, depends entirely on the pureness of the atmosphere that is
breathed.
Every time we think or feel, this mental action dissolves some
particles of the brain and nerves, which pass into the blood to be
thrown out of the body through the lungs and skin. In like manner,
whenever we move any muscle, some of its particles decay and pass
away. It is in the capillaries, which are all over the body, that this
change takes place. The blood-vessels that convey the pure blood from
the heart divide into myriads of little branches that terminate in
capillary vessels like those lining the air-cells of the lungs. The
blood meanders through these minute capillaries, depositing the oxygen
taken from the lungs and the food of the stomach, and receiving in
return the decayed matter, which is chiefly carbonic acid.
This carbonic acid is formed by the union of oxygen with _carbon_ or
_charcoal_, which forms a large portion of the food. Watery vapor
is also formed in the capillaries by the union of oxygen with the
hydrogen contained in the food and drink.
During this process in the capillaries, the bright red blood of the
arteries changes to the purple blood of the veins, which is carried
back to the heart, to be sent to be purified in the lungs as before
described. A portion of the oxygen received in the lungs unites with
the dissolved food sent from the stomach into the blood, and no food
can nourish the body till it has received a proper supply of oxygen in
the lungs. At every breath a half-pint of blood receives its needed
oxygen in the lungs, and at the same time gives out an equal amount of
carbonic acid and water.
Now this carbonic acid, if received into the lungs undiluted by
sufficient air, is a fatal poison, causing certain death. When it is
mixed with only a small portion of air, it is a slow poison, which
imperceptibly undermines the constitution.
We now can understand how it is that all who live in houses where the
breathing of inmates has deprived the air of oxygen, and loaded it with
carbonic acid, may truly be said to be poisoned and starved; poisoned
with carbonic acid, and starved for want of oxygen.
Whenever oxygen unites with carbon to form carbonic acid, or with
hydrogen to form water, heat is generated. Thus it is that a kind of
combustion is constantly going on in the capillaries all over the body.
It is this burning of the decaying portions of the body that causes
animal heat. It is a process similar to that which takes place when
lamps and candles are burning. The oil and tallow, which are chiefly
carbon and hydrogen, unite with the oxygen of the air and form carbonic
acid and watery vapor, producing heat during the process. So in the
capillaries all over the body, the carbon and hydrogen supplied to the
blood by the food unite with the oxygen gained in the lungs, and cause
the heat which is diffused all over the body.
The skin also performs an office similar to that of the lungs. In
the skin of every adult there are no less than seven million minute
perspirating tubes, each one-fourth of an inch long. If all these
were united in one length, they would extend twenty-eight miles.
These minute tubes are lined with capillary blood-vessels, which are
constantly sending out not only carbonic acid, but other gases and
particles of decayed matter. The skin and lungs together, in one day
and night, throw out three-quarters of a pound of charcoal as carbonic
acid, besides other gases and water.
While the bodies of men and animals are filling the air with the
poisonous carbonic acid, and using up the life-giving oxygen, the
trees and plants are performing an exactly contrary process; for
they are absorbing carbonic acid and giving out oxygen. Thus, by a
wonderful arrangement of the beneficent Creator, a constant equilibrium
is preserved. What animals use is provided by vegetables, and what
vegetables require is furnished by animals; and all goes on, day and
night, without care or thought of man.
The human race in its infancy was placed in a mild and genial clime,
where each separate family dwelt in tents, and breathed, both day and
night, the pure air of heaven. And when they became scattered abroad to
colder climes, the open fire-place secured a full supply of pure air.
But civilization has increased economies and conveniences far ahead
of the knowledge needed by the common people for their healthful use.
Tight sleeping-rooms, and close, air-tight stoves, are now starving
and poisoning more than one half of this nation. It seems impossible
to make people know their danger. And the remedy for this is the light
of knowledge and intelligence which it is woman’s special mission to
bestow, as she controls and regulates the ministries of a home.
The poisoning process is thus exhibited in Mrs. Stowe’s “House and Home
Papers,” and can not be recalled too often:
“No other gift of God, so precious, so inspiring, is treated with such
utter irreverence and contempt in the calculations of us mortals as
this same air of heaven. A sermon on oxygen, if we had a preacher who
understood the subject, might do more to repress sin than the most
orthodox discourse to show when and how and why sin came. A minister
gets up in a crowded lecture-room, where the mephitic air almost makes
the candles burn blue, and bewails the deadness of the church—the
church the while, drugged by the poisoned air, growing sleepier and
sleepier, though they feel dreadfully wicked for being so.
“Little Jim, who, fresh from his afternoon’s ramble in the fields, last
evening said his prayers dutifully, and lay down to sleep in a most
Christian frame, this morning sits up in bed with his hair bristling
with crossness, strikes at his nurse, and declares he won’t say his
prayers—that he don’t want to be good. The difference is, that the
child, having slept in a close box of a room, his brain all night
fed by poison, is in a mild state of moral insanity. Delicate women
remark that it takes them till eleven or twelve o’clock to get up their
strength in the morning. Query, Do they sleep with closed windows and
doors, and with heavy bed-curtains?
“The houses built by our ancestors were better ventilated in certain
respects than modern ones, with all their improvements. The great
central chimney, with its open fire-places in the different rooms,
created a constant current which carried off foul and vitiated air.
In these days, how common is it to provide rooms with only a flue for
a stove! This flue is kept shut in summer, and in winter opened only
to admit a close stove, which burns away the vital portion of the
air quite as fast as the occupants breathe it away. The sealing up
of fire-places and introduction of air-tight stoves may, doubtless,
be a saving of fuel; it saves, too, more than that; in thousands and
thousands of cases it has saved people from all further human wants,
and put an end forever to any needs short of the six feet of narrow
earth which are man’s only inalienable property. In other words, since
the invention of air-tight stoves, thousands have died of slow poison.
“It is a terrible thing to reflect upon, that our northern winters
last from November to May, six long months, in which many families
confine themselves to one room, of which every window-crack has been
carefully calked to make it air-tight, where an air-tight stove
keeps the atmosphere at a temperature between eighty and ninety; and
the inmates, sitting there with all their winter clothes on, become
enervated both by the heat and by the poisoned air, for which there is
no escape but the occasional opening of a door.
“It is no wonder that the first result of all this is such a delicacy
of skin and lungs that about half the inmates are obliged to give
up going into the open air during the six cold months, because they
invariably catch cold if they do so. It is no wonder that the cold
caught about the first of December has by the first of March become a
fixed consumption, and that the opening of the spring, which ought to
bring life and health, in so many cases brings death.
“We hear of the lean condition in which the poor bears emerge from
their six months’ wintering, during which they subsist on the fat which
they have acquired the previous summer. Even so, in our long winters,
multitudes of delicate people subsist on the daily waning strength
which they acquired in the season when windows and doors were open, and
fresh air was a constant luxury. No wonder we hear of spring fever and
spring biliousness, and have thousands of nostrums for clearing the
blood in the spring. All these things are the pantings and palpitations
of a system run down under slow poison, unable to get a step farther.
“Better, far better, the old houses of the olden time, with their
great roaring fires, and their bedrooms where the snow came in and the
wintry winds whistled. Then, to be sure, you froze your back while you
burned your face, your water froze nightly in your pitcher, your breath
congealed in ice-wreaths on the blankets, and you could write your name
on the pretty snow-wreath that had sifted in through the window-cracks.
But you woke full of life and vigor, you looked out into the whirling
snow-storms without a shiver, and thought nothing of plunging through
drifts as high as your head on your daily way to school. You jingled
in sleighs, you snow-balled, you lived in snow like a snow-bird, and
your blood coursed and tingled, in full tide of good, merry, real life,
through your veins—none of the slow-creeping, black blood which clogs
the brain and lies like a weight on the vital wheels!”
It is ascertained by experiments that breathing bad air tends so to
reduce all the processes of the body, that less oxygen is demanded and
less carbonic acid sent out. This, of course, lessens the vitality and
weakens the constitution; and it accounts for the fact that a person
of full health, accustomed to pure air, suffers from bad air far more
than those who are accustomed to it. The body of strong and healthy
persons demands more oxygen, and throws off more carbonic acid, and is
distressed when the supply fails. But the one reduced by bad air feels
little inconvenience, because all the functions of life are so slow
that less oxygen is needed, and less carbonic acid thrown out. And the
sensibilities being deadened, the evil is not felt. This provision of
nature prolongs many lives, though it turns vigorous constitutions into
feeble ones. Were it not for this change in the constitution, thousands
in badly ventilated rooms and houses would come to a speedy death.
One of the results of unventilated rooms is _scrofula_. A distinguished
French physician, M. Baudeloque, states that
“The repeated respiration of the same atmosphere is _the_ cause of
scrofula. If there be entirely pure air, there may be bad food, bad
clothing, and want of personal cleanliness, but scrofulous disease will
not exist. This disease _never_ attacks persons who pass their lives
in the open air, and _always_ manifests itself when they abide in air
which is unrenewed.”
This writer illustrates this by the history of a French village where
the inhabitants all slept in close, unventilated houses. Nearly all
were seized with scrofula, and many families became wholly extinct,
their last members dying “rotten with scrofula.” A fire destroyed a
large part of this village. Houses were then built to secure pure air,
and scrofula disappeared from the part thus rebuilt.
We are informed by medical writers that defective ventilation is one
great cause of diseased joints, as well as of diseases of the eyes,
ears, and skin.
Foul air is the leading cause of tubercular and scrofulous consumption,
so very common in our country. Dr. Guy, in his examination before
public health commissioners in Great Britain, says: “Deficient
ventilation I believe to be more fatal than _all other causes_ put
together.” He states that consumption is twice as common among
tradesmen as among the gentry, owing to the bad ventilation of their
stores and dwellings.
Says Dr. Dio Lewis, whose labors in the cause of health are well known:
“As a medical man I have visited thousands of sick-rooms, and have not
found in _one in a hundred_ of them a pure atmosphere. I have often
returned from church doubting whether I had not committed a sin in
exposing myself so long to its poisonous air. There are in our great
cities churches costing fifty thousand dollars, in the construction of
which not fifty cents were expended in providing means for ventilation.
Ten thousand dollars for ornament, but not ten cents for pure air!
“Unventilated parlors, with gas-burners, (each consuming as much oxygen
as several men,) made as tight as possible, and a party of ladies
and gentlemen spending half the night in them! In 1861, I visited a
legislative hall, the legislature being in session. I remained half
an hour in the most impure air I ever breathed. Our school-houses
are, some of them, so vile in this respect, that I would prefer
to have my son remain in utter ignorance of books rather than to
breathe, six hours every day, such a poisonous atmosphere. Theatres
and concert-rooms are so foul that only reckless people continue to
visit them. Twelve hours in a railway-car exhausts one, not by the
journeying, but because of the devitalized air. While crossing the
ocean in a Cunard steamer, I was amazed that men who knew enough
to construct such ships did not know enough to furnish air to the
passengers. The distress of sea-sickness is greatly intensified by the
sickening air of the ship. Were carbonic acid _only black_, what a
contrast there would be between our hotels in their elaborate ornament!
“Some time since I visited an establishment where one hundred and fifty
girls, in a single room, were engaged in needle-work. Pale-faced, and
with low vitality and feeble circulation, they were unconscious that
they were breathing air that at once produced in me dizziness and a
sense of suffocation. If I had remained a week with them, I should, by
reduced vitality, have become unconscious of the vileness of the air!”
There is a prevailing prejudice against _night air_ as unhealthful
to be admitted into sleeping-rooms, which is owing wholly to sheer
ignorance. In the night every body necessarily breathes night air
and no other. When admitted from without into a sleeping-room, it is
colder, and therefore heavier, than the air within, so it sinks to
the bottom of the room and forces out an equal quantity of the impure
air, warmed and vitiated by passing through the lungs of inmates. Thus
the question is, Shall we shut up a chamber and breathe night air
vitiated with carbonic acid or night air that is pure? The only real
difficulty about night air is, that usually it is damper, and therefore
colder and more likely to chill. This is easily remedied by sufficient
bed-clothing.
One other very prevalent mistake is found even in books written by
learned men. It is often thought that carbonic acid, being heavier
than common air, sinks to the floor of sleeping-rooms, so that the low
trundle-beds for children should not be used. This is all a mistake;
for, as a fact, in close sleeping-rooms the purest air is below and the
most impure above. It is true that carbonic acid is heavier than common
air, when pure; but this it rarely is except in chemical experiments.
It is the property of all gases, as well as of the two (oxygen and
nitrogen) composing the atmosphere, that when brought together they
always are entirely mixed, each being equally diffused. Thus the
carbonic acid from the skin and lungs, being warmed in the body,
rises, as does the common air, with which it mixes, toward the top of
a room; so that usually there is more carbonic acid at the top than at
the bottom of a room.[1] Both common air and carbonic acid expand and
become lighter in the same proportions; that is, for every degree of
added heat they expand at the rate of 1/480 of their bulk.
[1] Professor Brewer, of the Yale Scientific School, says: “As a fact,
often demonstrated by analysis, there is generally more carbonic acid
near the ceiling than near the floor.”
Here, let it be remembered, that in ill-ventilated rooms the carbonic
acid is not the only cause of disease. Experiments seem to prove that
other matter thrown out of the body, through the lungs and skin, is
as truly excrement and in a state of decay as that ejected from the
bowels, and as poisonous to the animal system. Carbonic acid has
no odor; but we are warned by the disagreeable effluvia of close
sleeping-rooms of the other poison thus thrown into the air from
the skin and lungs. There is one provision of nature that is little
understood, which saves the lives of thousands living in unventilated
houses; and that is, the passage of pure air inward and impure air
outward through the pores of bricks, wood, stone, and mortar. Were such
dwellings changed to tin, which is not thus porous, in less than a week
thousands and tens of thousands would be in danger of perishing by
suffocation.
There are some recent scientific discoveries that relate to impure air
which may properly be introduced here. It is shown by the microscope
that _fermentation_ is a process which generates extremely minute
plants, that gradually increase till the whole mass is pervaded by this
vegetation. The microscope also has revealed the fact that, in certain
diseases, these microscopic plants are generated in the blood and
other fluids of the body, in a mode similar to the ordinary process of
fermentation.
And, what is very curious, each of these peculiar diseases generates
diverse kinds of plants. Thus, in the typhoid fever, the microscope
reveals in the fluids of the patient a plant that resembles in form
some kinds of sea-weed. In chills and fever, the microscopic plant
has another form, and in small-pox still another. A work has recently
been published in Europe, in which representations of these various
microscopic plants generated in the fluids of the diseased persons
are exhibited, enlarged several hundred times by the microscope. All
diseases that exhibit these microscopic plants are classed together,
and are called _Zymotic_, from a Greek word signifying _to ferment_.
It is now regarded as probable that most of these diseases are
generated by the microscopic plants which float in an impure or
miasmatic atmosphere, and are taken into the blood by breathing.
Recent scientific investigations in Great Britain and other countries
prove that the _power of resisting_ these diseases depends upon the
purity of the air which has been _habitually_ inspired. The human
body gradually accommodates itself to unhealthful circumstances, so
that people can live a long time in bad air. But the “reserve power”
of the body—that is, the power of resisting disease—is under such
circumstances gradually destroyed, and then an epidemic easily sweeps
away those thus enfeebled. The plague of London, that destroyed
thousands every day, came immediately after a long period of damp, warm
days, when there was no wind to carry off the miasma thus generated;
while the people, by long breathing of bad air, were all prepared, from
having sunk into a low vitality, to fall before the pestilence.
Multitudes of public documents show that the fatality of epidemics is
always proportioned to the degree in which impure air has previously
been respired. Sickness and death are therefore regulated by the degree
in which air is kept pure, especially in case of diseases in which
medical treatment is most uncertain, as in cholera and malignant fevers.
Investigations made by governmental authority, and by boards of health
in this country and in Great Britain, prove that zymotic diseases
ordinarily result from impure air generated by vegetable or animal
decay, and that in almost all cases they can be prevented by keeping
the air pure. The decayed animal matter sent off from the skin and
lungs in a close, unventilated bedroom is one thing that generates
these zymotic diseases. The decay of animal and vegetable matter in
cellars, sinks, drains, and marshy districts is another cause; and the
decayed vegetable matter thrown up by plowing up of decayed vegetable
matter in the rich soil in new countries is another.
In the investigations made in certain parts of Great Britain, it
appeared that in districts where the air is pure the deaths average
eleven in one thousand each year; while in localities most exposed to
impure miasma the mortality was forty-five in every thousand. At this
rate, thirty-four persons in every thousand died from poisoned air,
who would have preserved health and life by well-ventilated homes in
a pure atmosphere. And, out of all who died, the proportion who owed
their deaths to foul air was more than three-fourths. Similar facts
have been obtained by boards of health in our own country.
Mr. Lewis Leeds gives statistics showing that in Philadelphia, by
improved modes of ventilation and other sanitary methods, there was
a saving of three thousand two hundred and thirty-seven lives in two
years; and a saving of three-fourths of a million of dollars, which
would pay the whole expense of the public schools. Philadelphia being
previously an unusually cleanly and well-ventilated city, what would
be the saving of life, health, and wealth were such a city as New York
perfectly cleansed and ventilated?
CHAPTER IV.
ON WARMING A HOME.
The laws that regulate the generation, diffusion, and preservation
of heat as yet are a sealed mystery to thousands of young women
who imagine they are completing a suitable education in courses of
instruction from which most that is practical in future domestic life
is wholly excluded. We therefore give a brief outline of some of the
leading scientific principles which every housekeeper should understand
and employ, in order to perform successfully one of her most important
duties.
Concerning the essential nature of heat, and its intimate relations
with the other great natural forces, light, electricity, etc., we shall
not attempt to treat, but shall, for practical purposes, assume it to
be a separate and independent force.
Heat or caloric, then, has certain powers or principles. Let us
consider them:
First, we find _Conduction_, by which heat passes from one particle to
another next to it; as when one end of a poker is warmed by placing the
other end in the fire. The bodies which allow this power free course
are called conductors, and those which do not are named non-conductors.
Metals are good conductors; feathers, wool, and furs are poor
conductors; and water, air, and gases are non-conductors.
Another principle of heat is _Convection_, by which water, air, and
gases are warmed. This is, literally, the process of _conveying_ heat
from one portion of a fluid body to another by currents resulting from
changes of temperature. It is secured by bringing one portion of a
liquid or gas into contact with a heated surface, and thus it becomes
lighter and expanded in volume. In consequence, the cooler and heavier
particles above pressing downward, the lighter ones rise upward. Thus a
constant motion of currents and interchange of particles is produced,
until, as in a vessel of water, the whole body comes to an equal
temperature. Air is heated in the same way. In case of a hot stove, the
air that touches it is heated, becomes lighter, and rises, giving place
to cooler and heavier particles, which, when heated, also ascend. It is
owing to this process that the air of a room is warmest at the top and
coolest at the bottom.
It is owing to this principle, also, that water and air can not be
heated by fire from above. For the particles of these bodies, being
non-conductors, do not impart heat to each other; and when the warmest
are at the top, they can not take the place of cooler and heavier ones
below.
Another principle of heat (which it shares with light) is _Radiation_,
by which all things send out heat to surrounding cooler bodies. Some
bodies will absorb radiated heat, others will reflect it, and others
allow it to pass through them without either absorbing or reflecting.
Thus, black and rough substances absorb heat, (or light,) colored and
smooth articles reflect it, while air allows it to pass through without
either absorbing or reflecting. It is owing to this that rough and
black vessels boil water sooner than smooth and light-colored ones.
Another principle is _Reflection_, by which heat radiated to a surface
is turned back from it when not absorbed or allowed to pass through;
just as a ball rebounds from a wall; just as sound is thrown back from
a hill, making echo; just as rays of light are reflected from a mirror.
There is no department of science, as applied to practical matters,
which has so often baffled experimenters as the healthful mode of
warming and ventilating houses. The British nation spent over a million
on the House of Parliament for this end, and failed. Our own Government
has spent half a million on the Capitol, with worse failure; and now
it is proposed to spend a million more. The reason is, that the old
open fire-place has been supplanted by less expensive modes of heating,
destructive to health; and science has but just begun experiments to
secure a remedy for the evil.
The open fire warms the person, the walls, the floors, and the
furniture by radiation, and these, together with the fire, warm the air
by convection; for the air resting on the heated surfaces is warmed
by convection, rises and gives place to cooler particles, causing a
constant heating of its particles by movement. Thus, in a room with
an open fire, the person is warmed in part by radiation from the fire
and the surrounding walls and furniture, and in part by the warm air
surrounding the body.
In regard to the warmth of air, the thermometer is not an exact index
of its temperature. For all bodies are constantly radiating their heat
to cooler adjacent surfaces until all come to the same temperature.
This being so, the thermometer is radiating its heat to walls and
surrounding objects, in addition to what is subtracted by the air that
surrounds it, and thus the air is really several degrees warmer than
the thermometer indicates. A room at 70° by the thermometer is usually
filled with air five or more degrees warmer than this.
Now, the cold air is denser than warm, and therefore contains more
oxygen. Consequently, the cooler the air inspired, the larger the
supply of oxygen and of the vitality and vigor which it imparts. Thus,
the great problem for economy of health is to warm the person as much
as possible by radiated heat, and supply the lungs with cool air. For
when we breathe air at from 16° to 20°, we take double the amount of
oxygen that we do when we inhale it at 80° to 90°, and consequently can
do a far greater amount of muscle and brain work.
Warming by an open fire is nearest to the natural mode of the Creator,
who heats the earth and its furniture by the great central fire of
heaven, and sends cool breezes for our lungs. But open fires involve
great destruction of fuel and expenditure of money, and in consequence
economic methods have been introduced, to the great destruction of
health and life.
Whenever a family-room is heated by an open fire, it is duly
ventilated, as the impure air is constantly passing off through the
heated chimney, while, to supply the vacated space, the pure air
presses in through the cracks of doors, windows, and floors. No such
supply is gained for rooms warmed by stoves. And yet, from mistaken
motives of economy, as well as from ignorance of the resulting evils,
multitudes of householders are thus destroying health and shortening
life, especially in regard to women and children who spend most of
their time within doors. This is especially the case where air-tight
stoves are used.
A common mode of warming is by heated air from a furnace. The chief
objection to this is the loss of moisture and of all radiated heat, and
the consequent necessity of breathing air which is debilitating, both
from its heat and also from being usually deprived of the requisite
moisture provided by the Creator in all outdoor air. Another objection
is the fact that it is important to health to preserve an equal
circulation of the blood, and the greatest impediment to this is a
mode of heating which keeps the head in warmer air than the feet. This
is especially deleterious in an age and country where active brains
are constantly drawing blood from the extremities to the head. All
furnace-heated rooms have coldest air at the feet, and warmest around
the head.
What follows illustrates the principles on which several modes of
ventilation are practiced.
It is the common property of both air and water to expand, become
lighter and rise, just in proportion as they are heated; and therefore
it is the invariable law that cool air sinks, thus replacing the
warmer air below. Thus, whenever cool air enters a warm room, it sinks
downward and takes the place of an equal amount of the warmer air,
which is constantly tending upward and outward. This principle of all
fluids is illustrated by the following experiment:
Take a glass jar about a foot high and three inches in diameter, and
with a wire to aid in placing it aright, sink a small bit of lighted
candle so as to stand in the centre at the bottom. (Fig. 34.) The
candle will heat the air of the jar, which will rise a little on one
side, while the colder air without will begin falling on the other
side. These two currents will so conflict as finally to cease, and then
the candle, having no supply of oxygen from fresh air, will begin to
go out. Insert a bit of stiff paper so as to divide the mouth of the
jar, and instantly the cold and warm air are not in conflict as before,
because a current is formed each side of the paper; the cold air
descending on one side and the warm air ascending the other side, as
indicated by the arrows. As long as the paper remains, the candle will
burn, and as soon as it is removed, it will begin to go out, and can be
restored by again inserting the paper.
[Illustration: Fig. 34.]
[Illustration: Fig. 35.]
This illustrates the mode by which coal-mines are ventilated when
filled with carbonic acid. A shaft divided into two passages, (Figure
35,) is let down into the mine, where the air is warmer than the
outside air. Immediately the colder air outside presses down into the
mine, through the passage which is highest, being admitted by the
escape of an equal quantity of the warmer air, which rises through the
lower passage of the shaft, this being the first available opening
for it to rise through. A current is thus created, which continues as
long as the inside air is warmer than that without the mine, and no
longer. Sometimes a fire is kindled in the mine, in order to continue
or increase the warmth, and consequent upward current of its air.
It is on this plan that many school-houses and manufactories have
been ventilated. Its grand defect is, that it fails altogether
when the air outside the house is at the same temperature as that
within. This illustrates one of the cases where a “wise woman that
buildeth her house” is greatly needed. For, owing to the ignorance of
architects, house-builders, and men in general, they have been building
school-houses, dwelling-houses, churches, and colleges, with the most
absurd and senseless contrivances for ventilation, and all from not
applying this principle of science. On this point, Professor Brewer, of
the Scientific School of Yale College, writes thus:
“I have been in public buildings, (I have one in mind now, filled
with dormitories,) which cost half a million, where they attempted to
ventilate every room by a single flue, long and narrow, built into
partition walls, and extending up into the capacious garret of the
fifth story. Every room in the building had one such flue, with an
opening into it at the floor and at the ceiling. It is needless to say
that the whole concern was entirely useless. Had these flues been of
proper proportions, and properly divided, the desired ventilation would
have been secured.” And this piece of ignorant folly was perpetrated in
the midst of learned professors, teaching the laws of fluids and the
laws of health!