Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 April 1881 — USEFUL HINTS. [ARTICLE]

USEFUL HINTS.

To bjemovb wheel grease from woolen naterial without injuring the oolor of the fabric, use good benzine. The quickest and best way to boil milk is to put it into a tin dish and set that into a kettle of boiling water. Thus scorching is avoided. A surgeon in the German army calls attention of all who have to do with horses to the danger of using the pock-et-handkerchief to wipe away any foam which may have been thrown upon their clothes. Glanders have been communicated in that way. “ The surest way to preserve your books,” says a bibliophile, “ is to treat them as you wouli your children, who are sure to sicken if confined in an atmosphere which is impure, too hot, too cold, too damp or too dry. It is just the same with the progeny of literature.” To remove fishy taste from game : Pare a fresh lemon very carefully without breaking the thin white inside skin, put inside a wild duck and keep it there i'cfrty-eight hours, and all the fishy taste so disagreeable in wild fowl will do removed. Every twelve hours remove the lemon and replace with a fresh ono. A lemon thus prepared will absorb unpleasant flavors from aH meats and game. Epsom salts, or sulphate of magnesia, dissolved in beer, together with a small quantity of dextrine, or artificial gum, applied to a pane of glass with a brush, will, on crystallizing, produce the identical designs formed on gloss by frost in cold weather, with this improvement, that the liquid may receive any color whutever at the option of the operator. A fictitious amber for manufacturing purposes is prepared by melting pure bleached shellac and keeping it over the fire until it runs clear, with care to prevent burning. It may be poured into molds of the size of pieces required. The operation requires considerable management. The darkest and haidest pieces of gum copal are also substituted for amber. The copal may be fused with the shellac.

This is the way to do up lace curtains: Having washed and dried them in the usual manner, starch and redry them. Any number may be prepared in this way, thus saving the trouble of making starch every time that you wish to put them upon the frame. Take the number that you are to use at once, dip them into cold blueing water and pass them through the wringer. This will not remove the starch ; it will only put Ihem into a condition so that when stretched and dry the meshes of the lace will be clear and free from starch, which will not be the case if taken diroctly out of hot starch. The following recipe is said to be muct used in Europe for producing artificial black walnut. By its use, it is claimed, ordinary white woods have imparted to them the appearance of the most beautiful specimens of walnut, and are adapted to the finest cabinet work. The process is as follows : The wood, first thoroughly dried and warmed, is coated once or twice with # strong aqueous solution' of extract ot walnut peel. When half dried, the wood thus treated is brushed with a solution compound of one part (by weight) of bichromate of potasca in five parts of boiling water; and, after drying thoroughly, is rubbed and polished. By this treatment the color is said to be fixed in the wood to the depth of one-twelfth to onesixteenth of an inch -and in the majority of cases the walnut appearance is declared to be very perfectly imitated.