Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1885 — Hints to Housekeepers. [ARTICLE]

Hints to Housekeepers.

Never let your children come to the table until you are quite sure that they won’t undertake to do all the talking. This you should make a lafr when you have company. Tell the company there isn’t room for them. You are never safe with the children at the table. If there is anything you don’t want known it will be told them. The'boy who never noticed that the spoons were plated will shout, as though giving you valuable information: “O, see the gold coming through the spoons! And that same boy will say he wishes it was Sunday, and when your guests ask him why, he will reply: “Because we always have pie Sunday.” You will find out he knows a great deal that you never suspected he knew, and you will be at a loss to ascertain how he ever equipped himself with the facts. A boy at the table is a wellspring of displeasure. If his sister is kissed by any one he is always the person to witness the performance, and tells of it at the table before a crowd. He is always the one to give to the world the fact that His sister uses powder, wears false teeth, and is 32 years old. If there is a mortgage on the place, the boy hears you speak of it, and then goes around talking about it as though* "it were something to be pointed to With pride and pleasure. Everything ' you say in the bosom of your family that should not be repeated the boy repeats, and he always has the faculty of repeating it at the wrong time and to the wrong person. If you say the clergyman’s sermons are too long or to dry, the boy will take it all in, and say nothing until the clergyman comes around to make his regular visit, and then he will let it out just after you have entered the room. If you say the doctor is not fit to cure hams, he will jump up on the doctor’s knee, when he calls, and cunningly say: “O, doctor, mamma says you ain’t fit to cure hams!” The old adage that boys will be boys ought to be changed to boys will be fiends. One boy is more bother than half a dozen girls. The boy is always in mischief. ’ When he is in school he is studying up some kind of deviltry to perpetrate when school is out. Or else he is playing tricks on the teacher. When he is at home he is twisting the cat’s tail, or disturbing her hearthstone dreams with a bean-shooter. If there is no cat to torment he will torment his little sister by making faces at her or dressing the dog up in her doll’s clothes.