64 PLAIN AND PLEASANT TALK 



ripening is not delayed through years, but which come up 

 and ripen and die within the limits of a single season. 

 They need no artificial treatment to accelerate the fruiting, 

 because it ordinarily makes no difference whether the corn 

 crop comes in September or October. It is better to select 

 varieties of corn which ripen within the limits of the season 

 natural to the region where it is planted. Then there will 

 be no occasion to break roots, or to apply any other arti- 

 ficial and violent process to accelerate maturation. 



CLEAN OUT YOUR CELLARS. 



I SPEAK to those who have cellars. If not already done, 

 thoroughly purge this subterranean story of your house. 

 Every decayed onion, cabbage stump, potato vine or tuber, 

 turnip, parsnip, carrot, and all the dirt they have made, all 

 straw and rubbish, rake them up and out with them. The 

 cellar is no place for them at any time of year. If you still 

 retain a few potatoes for table use, let them be picked over 

 and all decayed ones removed. One of the best housewives 

 of our acquaintance, greeted us not long since, with an invi- 

 tation to come and see her cellar : " I have swept down 

 eveiy cobweb, whitewashed the walls, swept up the floor, 

 and sowed it with salt." Decayed vegetable matter is a 

 fertile cause of disease, and there is enough of it out of 

 doors, in this country, without heaping it up in the cellar 

 for the special purpose, it would almost seem, of breeding 

 fevers. Whitewash the walls, for lime purifies as well as 

 beautifies. Rake down the cobwebs, they are the infallible 

 marks of a slattern. Every spider that is allowed to peer 

 out of his corner in a house, up-stairs or down, undisturbed, 

 points his long black leg in thanksgiving at the house- 

 wife, " Hurra for folks that are not too particular." Old 



