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Care of Stoves

Blackening and polishing stoves is hard work. Indeed, one of the best known lady writers on economy and household art, has said that a blackened stove may be a nuisance. It may be so in more ways than one. Few housekeepers, says our authority, have time to blacken their stoves every day, or even every week. Many wash them in either clean water or dish-water. This keeps them clean, but they look very brown. After a stove has been blackened, it can be kept looking very well for a long time by rubbing it with paper every morning. If I occasionally find a drop of gravy or fruit juice that the paper will not take off, I rub it with a wet cloth, but do not put on water enough to take off the blacking. VI. The Uses of Waste Paper.

A CORRESPONDENT in Little Rock, Arkansas, truly says: Comparatively few housekeepers are aware of the many uses to which waste paper may be put. After a stove has been blackened, it can be kept looking very well for a long time by rubbing with paper every morning. Rubbing with paper is a much nicer way of keeping the outside of a tea-kettle, coffee-pot and tea-pot bright and clean, than the old way of washing them in suds. Rubbing with paper is also the best way of polishing knives and tinware, after scouring. This saves wetting the knife handles. If a little flour be held on the paper in rubbing tinware and spoons, they shine like new silver. For polishing mirrors, windows, lamp-chimneys, etc., paper is better than dry cloth. After it has been so used it is none the worse for kindling fires. Preserves and pickles keep much better, if brown paper, instead of cloth, is tied over the jar. Canned fruit is not so apt to mold if a piece of writing paper, cut to fit the can, is laid directly on the fruit. Paper is much better to put under a carpet than straw. It is warmer, thinner, and makes less noise when one walks over it. Two thicknesses of paper placed between other coverings on a bed, are as warm as a quilt. If it is necessary to step upon a chair, always lay a paper on it and thus save the paint or woodwork from damage. A fair carpet can be made for a room not in constant use, by pasting several thicknesses of newspaper on the floor, over them a coat of wall-paper, and giving them a coat of varnish.

VII. Cleaning Soiled Marble.

MUCH annoyance is frequently experienced from soiling marble table-tops, kitchen slabs or other marble objects. It is said that if slacked lime is mixed with a strong solution of soap into a pasty mass and spread over the spot, and allowed to remain for twenty-four or thirty hours, then carefully washed off with soap and water, and finally with pure water, the stain will be almost entirely removed, especially if the application be repeated once or twice.