1880.1 
4,77 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
about this from the teachers, or know of the severe 
sicknesses that sometimes cause their removal from 
.school, I always wish I could change their diet. If 
to this lack of good nourishment be added, as is 
■often the ease, habitual exposure to cold during 
•cold weather, from lack of sufficient clothing, the 
■case is still worse for the growing brain, as well as 
for the growing body. Vitality, which should be 
spent upon growth and repair, is unduly drawn 
upon to keep up the necessary warmth of the 
body. When the surface of the body is not 
kept at a proper temperature either by the at¬ 
mosphere or by warm clothing, or by both, the 
-circulation of the blood is disturbed, and nervous 
force or vitality is drawn from some internal organs, 
which are weakened thereby, and perhaps become 
permanently diseased in consequence. It seems to 
me a great piece of cruelty to send children to 
school poorly fed and insufficiently clothed, so that 
the poor body is constantly uneasy in some way 
and unwilling to give the brain a fair chance to do 
the work required. To such a child the tasks of 
school seem hard and distasteful, and if it is forced 
to do them under such conditions, it is at the ex¬ 
pense of the health of both brain and body. 
Pure air is absolutely necessary to the best con¬ 
ditions—pure air all of the time, night and day, in¬ 
doors and out. The blood is the building material 
of the whole body, brain and all, and this is made 
of our food, good blood or poor, according to the 
food and drink we take, and in proportion as it is 
cleansed by pure air at every breath taken into the 
lungs. Exercise of any organ is necessary to its 
best development, but there is more danger, under 
present educational systems, of over-working the 
brains of children than of under-working them. 
Teachers sometimes sneer at this idea. “ If you 
could see,” they say, “ how lazy the pupils are, how 
little work it is possible to get from most of them, 
by our best endeavors, you would see that it is the 
teachers who are over-worked, instead of the pu¬ 
pils.” Yes, I do see, and I most heartily pity the 
teachers. The children at school seldom do an un¬ 
reasonable amount of work, provided they were in 
any fit condition to work at all, which most of them 
are not. And what can the poor teachers do ? Few 
of them are intelligent enough to know what is the 
matter, and, to tell the truth, many of the teachers 
are in the same predicament as the pupils—incapa¬ 
ble of doing their best work because of impure 
air, bad food, stimulating drink, improper cloth¬ 
ing, late hours, too little wholesome sleep, and a re- 
. suiting bad condition of the improperly kept brain. 
There is a deal of talk nowadays, on both sides of 
the ocean, about our systems of education. Every 
body sees that on the whole children are not edu¬ 
cated as we could wish. It is my belief that the 
parents need exhortation and reproof more than 
any other class. They must send their children to 
.the school in a much better condition. 
v Keep the Little Folks Healthy, 
:and nature alone will do the work to a surprising 
^extent. That is to say, she alone will do better 
-work for a healthy child who has a good home than 
-all your educational systems put together can do 
for a sickly child with poor home influences. Let 
'these healthy children grow up to be healthy teach¬ 
ers and parents, and this muddle about education 
will clear itself up. Healthy children love to learn. 
Knowledge is the natural food of the mind, and 
they crave it. They do not always like to “ sit on 
a bench and say ‘ A,’ ” but they want to know about 
everything, and healthy teachers and parents love 
to answer the questions they ask. At present it is 
a common thing for both teachers and pupils to be 
over-worked, and to have to leave school for a pe¬ 
riod of brain rest. Sometimes the breakdown is 
sudden, but the worst cases often come about 60 
gradually as scarcely to seem like breakdowns until 
the work of exhaustion is so complete as to be al¬ 
most hopeless. These cases take a long time for 
recovery, and sometimes entire recovery is impos- 
sible. It is a wicked thing for parents to be care¬ 
less of their children’s rights in this respect. 
When the whole of life is a school, and education 
is never finished, how foolish to be in haste; for 
here especially “haste makes waste.” A tired brain 
should be thoroughly rested by each night’s sleep 
and nourished by each day’s food and air. If this 
is not the case, it becomes gradually impoverished. 
If this takes place while the brain is still growing, 
or in youth, the case is very sad. This furnishes 
a satisfactory explanation to the many cases that 
we know of early precocity and mature stupidity. 
Staining: the Book-Case. 
Our book-case is made of plain pine. When it 
was made we could not afford glass doors, nor 
paint, nor varnish. The grain of the pine was very 
pretty, but it became a serious trouble to keep it 
clean. Now we have stained it with good success, 
I think; and next week I think we will add a little 
varnish. But I am pleased with the staining, and 
I will tell how it was done. I said I would do it 
myself, and I looked up a recipe. It said, “ use 
tobacco,” but like little Robert Reed, 
“I’ll never use tobacco, no !” 
I haven’t a kettle that I could defile by boiling 
up tobacco in it, so we must have something else. 
The painter, near, furnished a stain made of burnt 
umber and some mixing material. I know there 
was turpentine in it, and I think there was oil. I 
know there was before we got through with it. It 
seemed simply a thin paint, and as it covered up 
the grain of the wood (we tried it first on a pine 
box); I didn’t like it. The painter furnished a fluid 
(seemingly turpentine) to thin it, but even then it 
failed to show the pretty grain of the pine. I wet 
a cloth in kerosene and rubbed off the stain, and 
lo ! 1 had just what I wanted. We quickly colored 
our book-case, and it looks as much like black- 
walnut as any stained wood I ever have seen. 
A Neat and Easily Made Lamp Mat. 
A lady friend favors us with a sample of a paper 
Lamp Mat, from which the accompanying engrav¬ 
ings are made. The con¬ 
struction of this household 
ornament is very simple. 
Any kind or quality of thin 
paper may be used ; the one 
in question is made from an 
ordinary newspaper, but a 
more showy mat would 
doubtless result from using 
a pleasing shade of paper, 
or even four well chosen 
colors—the number of strips 
in the mat. A single strip is 
shown in fig. 1, and con¬ 
sists of a piece of paper, 
nearly a foot in length— 
this will depend somewhat 
Fig. 1. stkip or paper. on t | le s i ze 0 f the mat de¬ 
sired. Each of these strips of paper is folded 
smoothly so as to be of six or eight thicknesses, and 
as wide as one half of the required width of the 
smooth inner portion of the mat. The ends of the 
Fig. 2.— THE LAMP MAT COMPLETE. 
strip are cut with scissors into uniformly fine 
shreds, leaving a portion in the center twice as 
long as wide. The four strips, thus prepared, are 
then placed together, in the form of a square, one 
end above and the other below its neighbors, and 
stitched in place by a fine thread. In this way the 
ends of the four strips make an entire border to 
the mat, consisting of the long fringe of the finely 
cut ends of the paper as shown in fig. 2. The cut¬ 
ting of the fringes is the hardest part, as it must 
be done with care that the shreds are straight and 
uniform in thickness. The whole work can be made 
in an hour, and with a slight outlay for pretty 
colored papers, a useful and ornamental mat can be 
cheaply and quickly provided for the lamp. 
A Handy, Hanging Match Holder. 
Our little match-holder that hangs below the oil 
chamber of the student 
lamp, is one of the ap¬ 
preciated conveniences 
of the household. In 
fact, we have one for 
each large lamp, and 
wherever the lamp goes, 
the matches are there 
ready to be used in light¬ 
ing it. The latest comer, 
the neatest, and “the 
one for the parlor”— 
we use it for the sitting- 
room—is made with an 
egg-shell for the cup 
and is covered with 
worsted, and decorated 
as shown in the accom¬ 
panying engraving. A 
wide range for the ex¬ 
ercise of taste is allow¬ 
ed in the construction of 
this little convenience. 
The cup may be of tin 
or china, and the cover¬ 
ing of Bristol board 
with initials, or the word 
matches worked on— 
but, to our notion, this 
, , . . , ,, ., A LAMP MATCH HOLDER, 
latter is not called for; 
in this age and country matches are known by all. 
Decorations for Humble Homes. 
To such as would gladly make their plain parlors 
a little more attractive, and whose walls must go 
unadorned, if they cannot manufacture ornaments 
themselves, the following hints will be acceptable. 
Statuary. —Doubtless some of your readers have 
old-fashioned Plaster of Paris mantel ornaments 
that a quarter of a century since were the admira¬ 
tion of all of the members of the family, but which, 
long ago, stained and faded by time, were consigned 
to the garret. Some of these may be converted 
into very pretty “ bronzes ” by the application of 
bronze shoe-dressing. Those that are gaudily 
painted in red, blue, and green cannot be bronzed 
in this manner, as the color would not be uniform. 
Of course, none of them will rival Rogers’ Statuary 
in elegance, but to eyes unskilled in such matters, 
the deception might not be noticed, and very few 
would ever recognize old friends under such a guise. 
A Rustic Cornucopia. —If you are making a 
wall-basket as a receptacle for dried grasses, grain 
heads, etc., do not cover it with wall paper, but try 
to give it a rustic look in harmony with its contents. 
Cut a three-cornered piece of card-board; lap two 
edges and tack them together with needle and 
thread, making a long horn. Trim the top off with 
scissors, so that the back is pointed upwards and 
the front curves downwards three or four inches 
lower than the back. Cover and line it by pasting 
on brown wrapping-paper. Then cut strips of the 
same paper three-fourths of an inch wide, and fold 
them into what children call “cat-stairs.” Tack 
these closely together around the horn, beginning 
at the curved top, being careful to preserve the 
same curve all the way to the point. Gradually cut 
the strips narrower, as they should not be more 
than one-fourth of an inch wide, to go on neatly 
at the point. Finish with a coat of varnish, and 
have a neat, lasting ornament for your wall. E. K. B. 
