Democratic Sentinel, Volume 8, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1884 — Death in the Dish-Cloth. [ARTICLE]

Death in the Dish-Cloth.

“I had some neighbors once—clever, good sort of folks; one fall four of them were sick at one time with typhoid fever. The doctor ordered the vinegar barrels whitewashed, and threw about 40 cents’ worth of carbolic acid into the swill-pail and departed. I went into the kitchen to make gruel; I needed a dish-cloth, and looked about and found several, and such ‘rags!’ I burned them all and called the daughter of the house to get me a dish-cloth, She looked round on the tables. ‘Why,’ said she, ‘ there was about a dozen here this morning ;’ and she looked in the wood-box and on the mantel piece, and felt in the dark corner of the cupboard. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I saw some old, black, rotten rags lying round, and I burned them, for there is death in such dishcloths as these, and you must never use such again.’ “I ‘took turns’ at nursing that family four weeks, and I believe those dirty dish-cloths were the cause of all that hard work. Therefore, I say to every housekeeper, keep your dish-cloths clean. You may wear your dresses without ironing, your sun-bonnets without elastics, but you must keep your dish-cloths clean. You may only comb your hair on Sundays, you need not wear a collar unless you go from home; but you must wash' your dish-cloth. You may only sweep the floor ‘when the sign gets right;’ the window don’t need washing, you can look out the door; that spiderweb on the front porch don’t hurt anything; but, as you love your lives, wash out your dish-cloth. Let the foxtail get ripe in the garden (the seed is a foot deep any way;, let the holes in the heels of your husband’s foot-rags go undarned, let the sage go ungathered, let the children’s shoes go two Sundays without blacking, let two hens sit four weeks on one wooden egg; but do wash out your dish-cloths. Eat without a table-cloth; wash your faces

and let them dry; do without a curtain for your window, and cake for your tea; but, for heaven’s sake, keep your dishcloths clean.*— Western Magazine.