726 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
October 22 
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| Woman and 
| The Home. 
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FROM DAY TO DAY. 
One of the odd business signs to be 
noted in New York is one offering to 
make contracts for the removal of ver¬ 
min. This is a recognized occupation in 
large cities, and these professional ver¬ 
min destroyers are employed in hotels, 
apartment-houses and public buildings 
for the purpose of keeping vermin in 
check. Usually these men profess to have 
special materials, unknown to the general 
public, for doing this work, but no doubt 
their system of regular periodical in¬ 
spection has much to do with their 
success. The owner of an apartment- 
house finds it an economy to employ one 
of these men, for some of the tenants 
are sure to be careless, and the vermin 
spread quickly, deteriorating the[]rent- 
ing value of the house. 
Good Housekeeping gives the follow¬ 
ing advice regarding the removal of 
stains : Coffee : Lay the stained portion 
of the cloth over a bowl and pour boiling 
water through it. Fruit: Boiling water 
as above ; if ineffectual, rub with a solu¬ 
tion of oxalic acid and rinse in warm 
water. Ink : Dip in boiling water, rub 
with salts of sorrel, and rinse well. 
Blood : Soak in cold water. For ticking 
and thick goods make a thick paste of 
starch and water; leave till dry, and 
brush off. Scorch : Dip in soapsuds and 
lay in the sun ; if fibers are not much in¬ 
jured, dip repeatedly in saturated solu¬ 
tion of borax, and rinse. Mildew : Wet 
with soapsuds, lay in sun ; spread with 
a paste of soft soap and powdered chalk 
and sun it ; soak in buttermilk and sun. 
Paint: Turpentine for coarse goods, 
benzine or naphtha for fine. Grease: 
Moisten with strong ammonia water, lay 
blotting paper over and iron dry ; if silk, 
use chloroform to restore color, or cover 
with powdered French chalk, and iron. 
At a meeting of the New York Rainy 
Day Club, Dr. W. C. Phillips gave his 
ideas concerning correct and sensible 
dress. He observed : 
The great trouble in woman’s dress is that 
women neglect their feet and ankles, and there 
is more danger of taking cold in that way than 
any other. We have more scraps in my family 
about that one thing than anything else. I have 
stood on the corner of a street on a stormy night 
and seen women getting off a car warmly dressed 
in thick sealskin coats, with collars standing up 
over their heads, and thin, paper-soled shoes on 
their feet. The next morning, when those women 
wakened and found they had taken cold, each 
one probably said: “Oh, dear! If I had only 
wrapped my neck a little warmer, I shouldn’t 
have had this nasty cold.” I believe women 
should wear nearly as thick shoes as men, of 
heavy calfskin. 
The heavy calfskin sh' s referred to 
were in high favor last Winter. It may 
be noted, however, that they are more 
in favor among women of the leisure 
class than among the workers, who still 
cling to lighter footgear. There is really 
a good deal of economy in wearing the 
heavy calf walking shoes out of doors, 
and changing to a lighter weight in the 
house. 
Mrs. T. A. Hoyerstad is engaged in 
giving lectures and demonstrations on 
cooking, in connection with the Minne¬ 
sota farmers’ institutes. Her work has 
aroused a great deal of interest. She 
gives three lectures, each accompanied 
by a demonstration. The first lecture, 
as stated by the American Kitchen 
Magazine, is on the cooking of meats, 
the second on bread-making, while the 
third is devoted to the preparation of 
fruit and vegetables. Mrs. Hoverstad 
makes a strong point of the value of 
culinary knowledge in the selecting and 
preparing of food for children. She 
shows why they thrive best upon foods 
with much protein and mineral matter 
in them, and why less, relatively, of car¬ 
bohydrates are wanted. Great stress is 
laid upon the importance of so cooking 
foods that they will be appetizing as 
well as easily digestible. She rightly 
estimates that this art is of great econ¬ 
omic value, since it enables the thrifty 
housewife to make any meal a source of 
enjoyment, and gives her power to util¬ 
ize as food what would otherwise be 
wasted. Women speak of bad luck when 
they fail in cooking, but ordinarily such 
luck and ignorance or inattention go 
hand in hand. 
A COM FOR TABLE COMBINA TION SUIT. 
I was a good deal surprised recently, 
while calling on my neighbor, Mrs. 
Brown, to see her lay a brand-new, all- 
wool undervest on the table, and de¬ 
liberately cut off the skirts of it about 
three inches below the waist line, and 
then proceed to cut the binding from a 
new pair of drawers that matched the 
vest. She laughed at my look of aston¬ 
ishment. “ I tried wearing them as they 
are,” she explained, “ and could not 
stand the double thickness about the 
hips, so I am going to make a single 
garment of them.” 
As we talked, she worked, and I 
watched her. She ripped the placket of 
the vest where it is stitched across below 
the buttonholes, then the facing on the 
one side and the binding on the other, 
up about half an inch, after which she 
cut the opening down so that the vest 
was like a sack. Next, she took pieces 
from the drawers’ binding, which was 
gray like the vest facing, and pieced 
down the facing and binding, bound the 
buttonhole piece with a bit of tape from 
the strings of the drawers, and stitched 
it all on the machine. Then she made 
two more buttonholes and sewed on two 
buttons. 
Next, she took the two legs of the 
drawers and trimmed them a little, slant¬ 
ingly, so that the fronts were, perhaps, 
inch shorter than the backs. Then 
pinning the creases in the sides of the 
legs to the corresponding seams in the 
vest, so as to have the fullness evenly 
distributed, she basted them, having the 
front edge of the leg even with the front 
edge of the vest, and the back edge ex¬ 
actly in the middle of the back. As she 
stitched them together, she stretched 
the seam, so that no subsequent strain 
could ever break the stitches. Then she 
sewed together the two tapes from the 
drawers, and opening the seam she had 
just stitched, basted the tape over it on 
the wrong side, stitched it down on each 
edge, and the garment was finished 
ready to wear. 
“ The vests were the right size,” she 
said, “but they make the drawers so 
very narrow around the hips, that I 
bought the very largest size of those. 
That makes the completed garment large 
enough and very comfortable, and allows 
for shrinking, if it should shrink—which 
will not happen if I wash it. Best of 
all,” she added, as she held up the skirts 
of the vests, for she had remodeled the 
other suit the day before, “ here is mate¬ 
rial for strong, large patches to set in 
knees and elbows when they wear 
through, and so give my combination 
suits a new lease of usefulness.” 
“ How do you wash them so they will 
not shrink ? ” I asked. 
“ An abundance of tepid, soapy water, 
and an abundance of tepid rinsing water; 
no scrubbing, but plenty of sousing up 
and down in the water, and once through 
the wringer, at the end. That is the 
way I wash mine, and they never 
shrink.” Elizabeth bobbins. 
Mailed to 
address on 
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