26 MV HANDKERCHIEF GARDEN. 



Spoil your children too ? What's the use of carpets, 

 if the grand sunshine full of health and cheerfulness 

 is to be shut out ? Better burn your old carpets and 

 let the sunlight fall on bare floors. Better a row of 

 plants in your parlor window, and delicious summer 

 cabbages in July, than a best room shut up dark while 

 the pale-faced children mope in your stuffy north 

 kitchen. These things are not for fun. Its simply 

 good business to hasten the handkerchief harvest and 

 thus reap the big profits. Besides this, you have been 

 carrying the children for weeks on canned goods. A 

 taste of the first salad from the garden will save the 

 doctor's bill and tone up every little stomach in the 

 most encouraging way. 



Our house faced south-east, and this gave us four 

 sunny windows down-stairs, two facing south-east and 

 two south-west, in rooms warmed by a furnace. There 

 was also one sunny window up-stairs, in a room part- 

 ly warmed by a chimney, and the spare heat from the 

 hall. In the two kitchen windows shelves were put 

 up, and in the parlor and dining-room small narrow 

 tables covered with cretonne were used. A good idea 

 in putting up shelves for plants in the lower part of 

 a window is to have a piece of shelving made to fit the 

 window and about eight inches wide. On the edge of 

 the window seat screw two small brass hooks. Op- 

 posite these, on the upper side of the shelf, fix two 

 screw-eyes. On the under side of the shelf in the 

 middle fasten a single iron bracket. To fix such 

 a shelf in place, put the screw-eyes over the hooks 

 and the bracket prevents it from falling. Such a 

 device saves all nailing into the wood-work and the 

 shelf can be unhooked and removed at any time in a 

 moment, in case the maid wants to wash the windows. 

 I first saw this little notion carried out by my friend 

 and neighbor, Bronson Howard, who is as clever with 



