258 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
HOUSE FURNITURE. 
BY MINNIE MYRTLE. 
A house may be comfortably furnished in 
these days, with what it used to require to 
purchase a bedstead, a feather-bed and a 
bureau. 
“ Give me some boards, a hammer and 
nails, and I will furnish a house,” said a 
young lady, not long since, who was about 
to be married, and yet whose tastes had 
been most expensively cultivated; and if 
she had been compelled, by necessity, she 
would have surrounded herself with very 
comfortable articles for all household pur¬ 
poses, with these simple materials. 
We hope, for the credit of human intelli¬ 
gence and progress, that feather-beds have 
been discarded from every house in the land. 
We used to read the following lines with 
great commiseration for her whose misera¬ 
ble state they depict— 
“ See, saw, Margaret Daw 
Sold her bed and slept on straw ”— 
but now, we should have much greater pity 
for those who were so stupid as to sell their 
straw and sleep on feathers. No family 
need complain that has plenty of clean straw 
for beds, and a mattress made of fine hay is 
good enough for the parlor chamber of the 
richest lord in the land. Husks combed 
upon njlax-hatchel , or hackle , are better still, 
and birch split into fine threads, will make a 
very hard bed, but one that will last a life¬ 
time. All these substances are very cheap, 
and much more easily kept in order than 
feathers, for it is scarcely any labor at all to 
make beds when there is no beating and 
smoothing to do. 
Feather-beds are unhealthy, because they 
keep the body at almost fever-heat, and keep 
it also at an unequal temperature, as the 
part which is in contact with the feathers is 
much warmer than the other. 
We can remember, too, when it was 
thought necessary that every bedstead in 
the house should be of heavy, hard wood, 
and fashioned by a skillful cabinet-maker, 
and every bureau of mahogany. Of course 
no family could have many, as each of these 
articles is very expensive. But now a whole 
cottage may be prettily furnished for what 
was once required for one room. What is 
usually denominated “ Cottage furniture,”is 
made of pine wood, tastefully painted, and 
we have seen all the necessary articles for 
a sleeping-room—bedstead, bureau, wash- 
stand with marble top, chairs, and various 
little et ceteras —for less than forty dollars, 
the price of one old-fashioned feather-bed. 
We were not long since in a family where 
there were some half dozen children, who 
each slept in a bed by himself—as it is al¬ 
ways best they should do—and each little 
bedstead was pine slabs nailed together and 
painted, at a cost, perhaps, of fifty cents 
each. The children were remarkably health) 
—and certainly in no worse condition for 
their simple accommodations. 
Lounges have become almost universal, 
and made of light wood and covered with 
strong chintz, may occupy any apartmeni 
at less expense than one old-fashioned bed¬ 
stead. We have seen very comfortable 
wash-stands, made by fitting an octagon¬ 
shaped board to the top of a barrel, and nail¬ 
ing to it a curtain to fall around and conceal 
the barrel. And where two or more persons 
are obliged to occupy the same room, a 
screen may be made like the two wings of 
ordinary clothes-bars, with curtains of blue, 
or green, or parti-colored cambric, so that 
the morning and evening ablutions may be 
performed as entirely alone as if in a sepa¬ 
rate room. To say any thing of the import¬ 
ance of morning and evening ablutions, we 
hope, is quite unnecessary in these days of 
light and knowledge. 
Chairs may be almost dispensed with, by 
substituting boxes of two, three, and four 
feet in length, according to the position they 
are to occupy, with cushions upon the top, 
and neat chintz coverings for the sides. 
Very pretty vases may be made of paste¬ 
board covered with fancy paper, open at the 
bottom to admit the mug or tumbler which 
holds the flowers ; and prettier than mahog¬ 
any picture-frames are those of paste-board 
covered with the layers of the cones of the 
pine and fir tree, tastefully arranged and var¬ 
nished. 
We have even seen barrels converted into 
very comfortable and cozy-looking chairs, 
by sawing away half the front, leaving the 
oack whole, and making the sides a little 
lower for arm-resters. A board for a seat, 
and the whole neatly covered, is a chair fit 
for a prince. 
Stair carpets have gone out of fashion 
even for the rich, and white paint has gone 
out of fasnion for almost every thing. Stairs 
and the wood finish of all rooms are more 
agreeable to the eye, and richer, grained or 
made to imitate walnut, curly maple and 
some kinds of oak. Finger-marks are not 
so visible upon this color, and it does not 
need to be so often repainted, which are 
very cogent reasons for adopting it. 
Some other improvements upon old fash¬ 
ioned housekeeping may be enumerated at a 
future day. 
HEN-ROOST GUANO. 
Noticing an article in a former number 
about hen manure, I take this opportunity to 
try to encourage the saving principle among 
the agricultural community. Some individ¬ 
uals are annually paying small sums of 
money for guano to use in their gardens and 
small pots, which will in time amount to 
quite a sum, which they might save were 
they only prudent enough to keep shelves or 
boxes under their poultry roosts. I do not 
mean to say that buying guano is not a profit¬ 
able investment for the farmers. Yet I do 
say that saving their own guano, made on 
their own premises, is more profitable. A 
large amount of this powerful manure or 
fertilizer is allowed to go to waste, with¬ 
out even being thought of, by those individ¬ 
uals who are annually paying sums of money 
for Peruvian Guano, and who think that they 
could not get along without it. It may look 
like a small business to some, but let them 
remember that this mighty globe is composed 
>f small atoms. Well, let me state some 
experience to those who think that saving 
the manure from hen-roosts is a small busi¬ 
ness. I have a flock of about 35 hens, and 
winter a pair of turkeys. 
Last fall my attention was called to the 
subject of saving my hen manure. I con¬ 
structed a hen-roost in one of my manure 
sheds, by nailing up four pieces of boards to 
the timbers overhead, letting them hang 
down about two feet, and then, about a foot 
from the floor overhead, bore holes through 
the board and put in poles, and then laid on 
poles at right angles with the former ones, j 
This forms two poles to perch upon besides 1 
the ends. I take boards a little longer than : 
the frame, and fit them together, flooring over 
the bottom poles as tight as possible, and j 
let them run out at the ends as far as needed 
lo catch what is dropped from the end poles. 
In making the perch I laid my perching poles 
far enough from the edge to prevent the i 
dropping over at the edges. 
I have another on a similar principle. It 
will take but a couple of hours at the most I 
to make a roost of this kind, and but a small ; 
outlay of money for materials, as they can 
be made of old scraps and fragments of 
boards, of which every farmer has enough. 
I built mine at the time the ground froze 
last fall, and shall save six barrels of the 
most powerful fertilizer that exists in the 
knowledge of man. This is encouraging to 
me, and falls short of the amount that I 
shall have by the first of May. I used this 
article in my garden some last year, and, 
from the estimate that I made, in comparison 
with crops that were not manured with 
poultry manure, I judged it to be worth at 
least one dollar per bushel. Thus you see 
that with an outlay of perhaps one dollar, 
in time and material, I shall save this winter 
eighteen dollars worth of manure, which, 
taking out the dollar for time and material, 
leaves me seventeen dollars worth of proper¬ 
ty that has heretofore gone to waste. 
Read this, farmers, and go immediately to 
the work, and you will find that “a penny 
saved is as good as two pence earned.”—A. 
Hutchins, in Maine Farmer. 
SPECIFIC MANURES. 
No very important movement for the gen¬ 
eral good ever yet had uninterrupted success, 
and as it is struggle and opposition that best 
acquaints, even the advocates of any meas¬ 
ure with its strong and weak points, it is 
not best it should ; indeed, for this reason fair 
and honorable opposition is to be desired, 
but the attacks of calumny, deceit and mean¬ 
ness are particularly difficult to be met. 
No set of men ever had more up-hill work 
and greater difficulties to face, than the ad¬ 
vocates of improved agriculture, and that 
they have triumphed througii them, and in 
spite of them, is shown by the strong inter¬ 
est felt by the community in general in agri¬ 
cultural matters; in the establishment of 
means for the diffusion of useful knowledge 
among the rural population, in our well at¬ 
tended autumnal cattle shows, in the grow¬ 
ing use of various.specific manures, &c. 
Any careful observer of the respective 
theories and “ isms“” of the day would de¬ 
cide that the agricultural is the most popu¬ 
lar one, and that it is likely in the end to be 
triumphant; but let no one suppose this pop¬ 
ularity has come unsought, or with small 
effort. How many men have devoted years 
of gratuitous labor to the cause; remember 
the untiring efforts of Pickering, Coleman, 
Buel, Phinney, Lowell and numerous others; 
or in our own day, it is only necessary to 
point to the Massachusetts Board of Agricul¬ 
ture, who, with an immense amount of gra¬ 
tuitous, and apparently almost thankless 
labor, persevere undismayed in their efforts 
to improve and benefit the agricultural con¬ 
dition of their friends and neighbors, wheth¬ 
er of the same town, county or State. 
It is most worthy of laudatory notice, that 
twenty or more men could have been se¬ 
lected from various parts of the State, who 
would be willing to devote a large portion o 
