Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 May 1881 — USEFUL HINTS. [ARTICLE]

USEFUL HINTS.

One gallon of neatsfoot oil, mixed with four ounces of lampblack, makes a good harness oil. Decaying cabbage is said to be particularly efficacious in breeding diphtheria. While you are removing the cabbage from your cellar, take out all the other decaying vegetables. Recife for polishing furniture: Make a mixture of three parts linseed oil and one part spirits of turpentine. It not only covers the disfigured surface, but restores the wood to its original color, and leaves a luster upon ■ the surface. Put on with a woolen cloth, and when dry rub it*with woolen. To prevent the soles of boo(p or shoes from squeaking, rasp with a coarse rasp the insole and outsole and every other piece of leather that comes in contact in friction by the action of the foot; then apply freely good wheat or rye paste. If- this is freely attended to from heel to toe, the boot or shoe will not squeak. Recipe for a pleasant and durable j>erfume: Take thirty drops of oil of bergamot and the same quantity of oil of lavender; add fifteen drops of neroli, five drops of oil of verbena, and the same of oil of cloves; of essence of musk, ambergris and jasmine each half a drachm. Mix all in two ounces of rectified spirit of wine, and you will have the famous “ Bouquet de la Reiue.” To make the hair stay in crimp, take 5 cents’ worth of gum arabic, and add to it just enough boiling water to dissolve it. When dissolved, add enough alcohol to make it rather thin. Let it stand all night, and then bottle it to prevent’ the alcohol from evaporating. This put on the hair at night, alter it is done up in paper or pins, will make it stay in crimp the hottest day, and is perfectly harmless. One who haq tried everything says that, after an experience of fifteen years, he has fpund nothing equal to the following as a cement for leather belting : Common glue and isinglass, equal parts, soaked for ten hours in just enough water to cover them. Bring gradually to a bdlling heat, and add pure tannin until the whole becomes ropy or appears like the white of eggs. Buff Off the surfaces to be joined, apply this cement, and clamp firmly. The following is said to be an excellent method of fastening cloth to the top of tables, desks, etc.: Make a mixture of two and a quarter pounds of wheat flour, two table-spoonnils- of powder d resin, and two table-spoonfuls of powdered alum ; rub the mixture in a suitable vessel, with water, to a uniform, smooth paste; transfer this to a small kettle over the fire, and stir till the paste is perfectly homogeneous without lumps. As soon as the mass has become so stiff that the stirrer remains upright in it, transfer it to another vessel and cover it up so that no skin may form on its surface. This paste is applied in a very thin layer to the sunace of the table ; the cloth, or leather, is then mid and pressed upon it, and smoothed with a roller. The ends are cut off after drying. If leather is to be fastened on, this must first be moistened with water. The paste is then applied, and the leather rubbed smooth with a cloth.