How To Cure A Felon

Put your finger in a bag of salt.-H. Fearing.

How To Keep Off Flies

Sponge the pictures with onion water. This will not injure gilt, wood or glass, and will prevent flies from settling.

Wash matting with salt and water to keep it from turning brown.

Wash oil-cloths with milk and water.

To take fruit stains out of cotton or linen, pour boiling hot water through the stain before washing.

To get rid of rats pulverize copperas and sprinkle it in their holes and wherever they are troublesome.

Oil marks on wall-paper, or the marks where inconsiderate people rest their heads, are a sore grief to good housekeepers, but they can be removed without much trouble. Take pipe-clay or fuller's-earth, and make into a paste, about as thick as rich Cream, with cold water; lay it on the stain gently, without rubbing it in ; leave it on all night. It will be dry by morning, when it can be brushed off, and unless an old stain, the grease spot will have disappeared. If old renew the application.

Grease on a carpet, if not of long standing, can be readily disposed of by washing the spot with hot soap-suds and borax-half an ounce of borax to a gallon of water. Use a clean cloth to wash it with, rinse in warm water, and wipe dry.

If spermaceti is dropped on any garment or furniture, first carefully scrape off all that can be removed without injury to the material; then lay brown paper over the spot, or a piece of blotting-paper, and put a warm iron on the paper until the oil shows through. Continue to renew the paper and apply the warm iron until the paper shows no more oil.

Spots on furniture, from anything hot, or from alcohol, can be removed by rubbing hard with sweet-oil and turpentine. When the spots disappear, wash in milk-warm soap-suds, dry quickly, and polish by rubbing briskly with chamois-skin.

When velvet has been wet and becomes spotted, hold the wrong side over steam, and while damp draw the wrong side quickly over a warm iron. It takes two to do this well-one to hold the bottom of the iron upward, and the second to draw the velvet across it.

Paint, pitch or tar can be removed from cloth or wood by rubbing it with turpentine. If the paint has become dry, put a few drops of the turpentine on the spot, and let it stand a short time; then rub the spot, and if all the paint is not removed, repeat the work. When entirely gone, rub off with alcohol.

Paint and putty can be taken off glass by wetting the glass several times with a strong solution of soda. Wet the glass often with it till the spots soften and can be washed off, and then polish with alcohol.

Ivory that has been spotted, or has grown yellow, can be made as clear and fresh as new by rubbing with fine sand paper, and then polishing with finely powdered pumice-stone.

Marble can be nicely cleaned in the following manner: pulverize a little bluestone, and mix with four ounces of whiting; add to these four ounces of soft soap and one ounce of soda dissolved in a very little water. Boil this preparation over a slow fire fifteen minutes, stirring all the time. Lay it on the marble while hot, with a clean brush. Let it remain half an hour; then wash off in clean suds, wipe dry, and polish by quick rubbing.

Grease can be removed from stone steps or passages by pouring on it strong soda water boiling hot; then make fuller's-earth into a thin paste with boiling water; spread it over the stain or spot, and let it remain all night. If the grease has soaked and dried in, it may be necessary to repeat this for two or three nights, scrubbing it off each morning with strong soap-suds and lye. When houses are under repair and being painted, it is important that one should keep watch for such oil spots, as painters are not overcareful in handling their oils, and such spots are very annoying.

If ink has been spilled over rose-wood or mahogany furniture, half a teaspoonful of oil of vitrol in a tablespoonful of water, applied with a feather, will quickly remove it.

A Carpet can be mended by cutting a piece like the carpet a little larger than the hole. Put paste around the edge of the patch, then slip it under the carpet and rub it well with a warm iron until dry. If the figure be matched it makes a very neat job, as well as a quick one.

It is said if feather beds and pillows be left out in a drenching rain every spring and afterward exposed to the sun and air on every side until dry, they will be much freshened and lightened.