Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1877 — Beds and Bedding. [ARTICLE]

Beds and Bedding.

Beds and bedding need especial care; on fine days leave your sleeping-room windows open several hours, if possible, and, if not too conspicuous, leave your beds unmade, and let pillows and mattresses eir in the sun. Thoroughly examine the bedsteads —take out toe slats, which.you will probably find covered with dust—(accumulated dust will also be found on the slats of the spring-beds). Wipe this off with hot salt and water. Sait dissolved in a very little water, should be put on on with a small paint-brush in all the corners and crevices of the bedsteads, to prevent vermin from finding a place. If, by any chance, they are already there, this must be repeated as often as twice a week, until they are exterminated. Also wipe the edges of the mattresses well with a cloth wrung out of salt and water. You must meet this matter promptly,-and give it your personal supervision, for, if not attended to at once, they will get the better of yen and cause you great annoyance. If thero should be any spots on your mattresses —try spreading a paste of starch, mixed with a little cold water—let it remain until quite dry, then brush off; if the spot still remains, put a teaspoonful of borax to a pint of cold water, with a little soap; enough to make a good suds. Bcrub the spot with it, using an old nail-brush or small scrubbing-brush; afterward wiping dry with a ctewi cloth. Some housekeepers, when pillow-ticks get stained, and discolored, put them out on the shed or grass-plot in ahardehower, and afterward ary very thoroughly in the sun. This will undoubtedly renovate the feathers and freshen them; but we think it a better, plan to make new pillow-ticks, and change the feathers into them. The old ones can then be washed and boiled, and bleaohed, and put away until the time when the new ones are soiled and need changing. It is generally considered a disagreeable undertaking to fill pillows —but it can be done, even in your parlor, without the slightest inconvenianee—if you only know how. We learned the art a few years ago, of a dear old lady, with whom we were spending |he summer. She came into the bright sitting-room, one morning, with pillows and ticks, and said she was going to change the feathers from one Into the other. “Nat here,”' we cried, starting up with alarm, ana with visions of ‘down and feathers flying all over the room, getting on our clothes and settling in our hair. But ehe-said, very quietly, “ Don’t move; you won’t know it if you don’t look.” But we did look—and learned that we did not know everything. In each pillow-tick she had left an opening in the side seam about five or sic inches long, and at the top (in the middle), one about three inches long. Taking , a pillow in her hand, she shook the feathers away from the side, and down imto .the middle of the pillow, keeping them there with several pins, while she ripped a slit in the side just as long as the one already in the new one. These openings she now sewed together—making a communication between the two. Then she inserted her hand into the space she had left in the end seam, and we pinned it closely about her wrist, leaving no room for the leathers to fly out. Taking the pins out of the pillow, she drew the feathers easily out of one into the other. When they were all out, she carefully removea her hand and the opening was sewed up. The seam between the two, as fast as ripped, was pinned securely, and afterward sewed up. The pins were taken oht, the pillows beaten up into shape, and it was done. This bit of knowledge has beemaf great use to us; let us hope it will prove as valuable to you.—-Christian World.

A Washington letter-writer says “ Miss Waite, daughter of the Chief Justice, has the rare faculty of being able to talk to several people at once." Rare faculty! Oh, ignoramus-' Did you never hear a woman on moving-day tell the daymen how to carry the bureau down-stairs, scream instructions to the woman taking up the carpets, yell at the boy packing the china, tell the hired girl what to do with the tinware and stove furniture, shriek her husband into a cold sweat for emptying half a bushel of soot out of the stove-pipe od the parlor floor, sniff at the woman across the street who wasn’t going to move and was looking on, and scold seven children for nine different things, with one and tike same wag of her flexible tongue ? Rare faculty, indaed',—Burlington HawkEye.