268 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
[July, 
Home Topics. 
BY JSilTH ROCHESTER. 
Use the Sunshine. 
“The sunshine is a glorious birth,” giving 
warmth, giving light, giving life to all nature. It 
Fig. 1.— COFFEE TREE—LEAVES, FLOWERS, & FRUIT. 
takes us long to find out our best friends, and we 
have scarcely begun to appreciate our sunshine. 
We hide away in dark, damp houses, and groan, 
and ache, and cough our lives away ; while a little 
more sunshine, used all day, and every day, when 
it can be had, would make our lives not simply en¬ 
durable, but joyful. I have learned to dread win¬ 
dow-blinds, and even white window curtains that 
can not be entirely drawn aside during the day. I 
like a full blaze of daylight in my living and my 
sleeping rooms, except on very hot days, when 
every living thing must crawl into the shade. But 
there is, perhaps, no day so extremely hot, as to 
justify a twilight dimness of light all day long, in 
rooms where people live. No rooms can be healthy 
that are kept dark. Children can not thrive, any 
more than plants, unless they live habitually in the 
light. Invalids neglect one of their best means of 
recovery to health, when they retire to darkened 
rooms, and learn to dread the light. It is true that 
persons, who have lived for years in dimly-lighted 
rooms, feel pained by the brightness of better 
lighted apartments, and dread to go out-doors 
without veils and parasols; but that is only be¬ 
cause darkness has made them sickly creatures, 
out of all harmony with healthy conditions. Some 
housekeepers love darkness rather than light, be¬ 
cause their deeds are evil. They do not wish their 
dusty corners to come to the light, and be re¬ 
proved. Others place an inordinate value upon the 
bright colors of their carpets, not knowing that 
bright faces and bright spirits are far more im¬ 
portant than carpets, and that bright faces and 
bright spirits depend much upon the sunshine. 
I wish every housekeeper would turn all her bed¬ 
ding into the bright sunshine every pleasant day, 
and on rainy days some artificial heat might be used 
instead. We hope for the time when bathing facili¬ 
ties will abound, when clean bodies will lay them 
down to sleep in clean beds, and sleep will indeed 
be balmy. If any reader does not understand this, 
let her sun only the sheets of her bed, and her 
night-clothing, for two hours every forenoon, half- 
a-dozen times, and she will notice how perceptible 
is the fresh, clean smell they have at night. Merely 
to air a bed in a shady room, is not half so well. 
The bright sunshine, (perhaps I ought to say the 
hot sunshine, for I notice that the bright winter 
sunbeams do not entirely produce the same effect,) 
seems to take out all of the perspiration, all of the 
personal odor, which is apt to linger about bedding 
and clothing in the summer. When it is conve¬ 
nient to air freshly ironed garments in the sun¬ 
shine, this is much better than to hang them by the 
fire. You will find that they have a different smell, 
and one that is very fragrant. 
Tile Baby Carriage. 
We can do very well without cradles for our ba¬ 
bies. I don’t know as my children or myself have 
suffered for lack of one. But a 
baby-carriage seems indispensable. 
Without one, how can a child too 
young to walk get plenty of out¬ 
door life ? I wish that good baby- 
carriages were cheaper, so that every 
child might have the use of one. 
Some of the cheap carriages are so 
heavy, so hard to draw or push, that 
it is quite a task to use them. Many 
of the two-wheeled carriages come 
under this condemnation, but not 
all. There is a danger in the use of 
two-wheeled and three-wheeled 
coaches, which is avoided by the use 
of a carriage with four wheels—the 
danger of tipping over when the 
child leans too heavily forward, to 
one side, or when one presses upon 
one side of the handle ; but the four- 
wheeled coaches are expensive, and 
a careful nurse can get along well 
enough with either of the others, 
vdiick is well made in other respects. It should be 
hung so as to give an easy motion to the child, and 
a light weight to the person moving it. The body 
should be so shaped that a young baby can lie 
straight in it easily, without getting humped shoul¬ 
ders. If the carriage is pushed from behind, it is 
difficult to keep good watch of the little one, unless 
the shade is adjustable like the umbrella shades, and 
these do not afford the same protection from wind 
as the close old-fashioned covers. 
To Protect tile Purity of Children. 
This is a subject of great anxiety with good moth¬ 
ers, and many such read the article entitled “ Don’t 
touch the Children ” in the Agriculturist for May. 
he might be learning to “ loaf ” in the little store 
close by, which seemed to be full of men and to¬ 
bacco smoke in the evening, or lest he might have 
learned to endure the profanity and obscenity in 
which many railroad employees indulge. To lose a 
child by death is not the saddest loss to a mother. 
But one thing is certain : it is useless to think of 
preserving the infantile innocence of our children 
unless we keep their minds infantile in other re¬ 
spects, and this is not desirable. Neither is it de¬ 
sirable to preserve the innocence of infancy un¬ 
changed. It is simple ignorance of good and evil, 
and no one is fit to live a manly or womanly life 
who does not know the difference between good 
and evil. Yet none of us would hasten to make 
our children familiar with evil. We must only 
recognize the fact that if they live in this world 
they will have to meet with various forms of wick¬ 
edness, and we should study how best to prepare 
them to walk unscathed through life’s ordeal. 
It has been customary to keep from children 
much knowledge which it would really he better 
for them to receive “ in the cool innocency of child¬ 
hood,” while yet those passions are dormant, 
which may some day become the means of terrible 
temptations. The question is—who shall impart 
such information ? Only the pure in heart ought 
Fig. 2.— PICKING THE COFFEE. 
Fig. 3.— -THE COFFEE BERRIES SPREAD IN THE YARD TO FERMENT AND DRY. 
For nearly a year my children lived close by a 
railroad depot, and people wondered that I was not 
in constant alarm lest they would get killed or se¬ 
riously injured by the passing trains, they appeared 
to be so fearless in their investigations. But this 
danger was never uppermost in my mind. If my 
t?oy was late in coming home, my first fear was lest 
to attempt it, but if mothers are faithful to their 
duty, the task will pretty surely be theirs. I feel 
sure that it is the best way to give truthful answers 
to children’s curious questions about additions to 
the family. Those who have not tried it, have no 
idea how easily this curiosity can be satisfied 
without falsehood, if it is not allowed to feed 
