Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 July 1875 — “Going Housekeeping.” [ARTICLE]

“Going Housekeeping.”

Every expectant bride looks .forward with delight to the time when she shall really keep house —be the mistress of her own little establishment. Probably many a farmer’s daughter is even now, at the , very time of this writing, puzzling over the knotty problem of how to procure “ the setting out” on very limited resources. Once there was a farmeris daughter whose father could give her but SIOO to procure her housekeeping articles. It was not a great deal of money with which to furnish a house, but people have begun with still less ready money—people, too, who now live in “ ceiled "houses.” But what do you think this silly girl did? Why, she was determined to have a handsome chamber set and spent all her money in the furniture of one room—did not buy even a carpet, mind you! A few plain articles were purchased by the bridegroom; the mothers of the pair each contributed kitchen stuff; but everything was of the plainest, save the elegant chamber set. Do you think the couple enjoyed their incongruous home? Be sure that the young man did not! Now, a small sum of money well laid out can bring a great deal of comfort to a little house where the inmates are “ well willed.” Begin with your living room. Don’t think you must have everything to start with. The prudent girl generally has her own small hoard of household goods which she began collecting in girlhood. The first patch-work is thriftly wrought into a cover for a bed-quilt. The pretty tidies, toilet sets, etc., made by her own hands during the many hours pleasantly whiled away by means of crotchet work, knitting needles and tatting shuttle make an encouraging display when viewed as a whole. Perhaps, too, she has sold some of her pretty wares, and with the money received as their equivalent purchased some articles for future housekeeping—a set of table ware, perhaps. In these days a girl can buy a supply of very nice plated ware for less than the cost of her grandmother’s tablespoons of solid silver. A set of the best plated forks will outlast, well, a dozen sets of cheap steel ones, and save a great amount of work in the matter of scouring as the years go by. Besides, they certainly look better than the ordinary steel forks; and because the young housekeeper is not wealthy, she may at least be “genteel.” If your table linen is coarse, let it be white. Brown linen gives such a somber view to a table, and when it begins to fade looks dingy and dirty, even when fresh from the ironing table. Care in such apparently small matters as these frequently effects an entire change in a home. As illustrative: Once there was another farmer’s daughter who had for “ setting out” purchases *100; but she spent her money wisely, and eked out its resources by her own industry. Her kitchen, which was a very cheery room, was covered with a rag carpet of her own making. There was an easy lounge of home construction under the front windows, and no end of little inexpensive conveniences on every side. She had once bought a whole piece of bright-flowered chintz for quilting, but there were a number of yards left over, and it served beautifully to drape her home-made work-stand, toilet table and covered stove-box, which served as a seat in her own room, for which she could not yet afford a chair. It would not require a fortune-teller to forecast the appearance of these two homes after fifteen years had glided by. No one would be surprised to find the first more dingy and cheerless than when its fires were first lighted, and a thriftless air over everything without or within. The other had that blessing promised to the hand of tbe diligent. This is for the benefit of all embryo housekeepers. t—Ohio Farmer.

—A New Hampshire paper says: “ There are four persons in Conway, N. H. (John Broughton, Mark Broughton, -Mrs. Mark Merrill and Mrs. Elijah Stewart), who are blood relations to the Queen of England. Their grandmother was a cousin to William IV., making them third cohsins to the Prince of Wales.” , —Some miscreant is found to have sawed almost in two the ladder leading into the deepest part of a silver mine near Eureka, Nev. It is supposed that the object of the deed was revenge for past bad treatment.