Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 192, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 August 1911 — The HOME DEPARTMENT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The HOME DEPARTMENT

FOR THE TELEPHONE

USEFUL INSTRUMENT MAY BE MADE AN ORNAMENT. Small Devices That Are of Mwah Value —Liat of Calls Frequently Employed Is Ons of the ' Most Important.

Adorning the telephone isn’t really tn the same clam with painting for-get-me-notea on the plumbing. Telephones in private houses are usually eery much in evidence, and need to be artfully concealed from the public gaze, like the butterflies that ape the cfltors of the flowers on which they alight Needless to say, always keep all the metal parts of the telephone as bright as the brass work of your front door. Perfect cleanliness will atone for a great deal of the unbeautlful — and science has not yet succeeded in making attractive the form of the i'sefnl instrument For your own sake, and that of every one else who uses it make plenty of the inexpensive little transmitter shields. . They consist simply of a disk of waved paper, punched through with a hatpin into a number of little holes, and pasted into a cardboard circle with side flaps to bold It to the transmitter. “No one but my family uses our telephone and we are all perfectly dean?" My dear madam, do you want to catch even a cold in the head from calling up your butcher? The individual transmitted shield Is as important as the Individual drinking cup. There are a hundred of the useful nay, necessary telephone list. Not the big book, of which more later, but the little private list of your relatives and friends and tradesmen—the persons whom you call up most frequently. U may be of linen and embroidered in colored outline, with a touch of paint to complete the semblance; or entirely painted in wa-

tercolors on the heavy, rough paper provided for that purpose; or done simply in India ink on brown or gray cartridge paper. The list proper may very well be written on sheet celluloid; then a changed or dropned number can be erased with rubber or wet sponge and a new one easily inserted In lead pencil The frame is made like a photo-

graph frame (indeed, a paper or cardboard frame would be a very good foundation and can be bought for a few cents at any photo supply store) and the celluloid— 01, if you prefer, bristolboard—list is slipped Into It like a picture. Attach one of the little wire ring hangers and tie on a long thin pencil with a bow of baby ribbon. And there you are! The telephone book itself, with its advertisement-strewn cover, should be beautified, by all means. Maze for it an outside cover, like those so often seen for magazines, but larger, to fit Crash or coarse linen la best in some dark color that will not soil easily. Embroider on It in outline stitch the word “Telephone” and a conventional border. The drawing shows the simple detail of its mak-

ing. Merely catch by a few stitches the comers of the pockets. It Is best to stiffen the back of the book by pasting cardboard to it first An extra pad and pencil with which to take messages should always hang near the telephone; and if it be not fastened to the wall, there should be a felt mat or a flat velvet cushion on which It can stand on the table. With this equipment you need not hide your phone In some dim. dark, “unseeable” corner.