Inferasi mlk® 
ite IMiIl 
The little girls’ frocks this winter are, 
as a rule, made so very short in the 
skirt that they are rather suggestive of 
brightly-clad little fuchsias. They 
should only come just below the bend 
of the knee. In cold weather, this 
makes leggings a necessity. While 
most of the smart little frocks show 
broad collars, berthas or epaulettes, for 
indoor wear a plain little waist with 
trimmed sleeves is preferable, since 
they are expected to be worn under 
aprons. Many of the aprons are just 
the shape of the summer frocks worn 
with a guimpe, with broad frills at neck 
and arm. The morning aprons are often 
made with full bishop’s sleeves, being 
merely cut away a little at the neck to 
show that they are aprons, and not 
dresses. 
* 
Christmas is drawing near, and appro¬ 
priate gifts for family and friends must 
be promptly considered. Where Christ¬ 
mas presents are bought rather than 
made, midsummer is the very best sea¬ 
son to buy them, when all the large 
shops offer fascinating bargain sales. 
Trifles of ornament and utility may then 
be bought for far less than at holiday 
time, to say nothing of the greater com¬ 
fort in shopping. Some of our Sunday- 
school teachers were recently discussing 
the question of little gifts to their 
scholars. It was suggested that the 
usual and, apparently, inevitable candy 
should be put in little Japanese boxes or 
jars, tied with crape ribbon having a 
little Japanese doll, frog or dragon 
caught in the bow. Then the children 
would have a little souvenir after the 
candy had gone the way of all sweeties. 
The same suggestion holds good in other 
gifts. A mere trifle, a bit of china or 
linen, has such a dainty air if wrapped 
in pretty crape paper, ribbon tied, and 
with a bunch of flowers or odd little 
Japanese gimcrack tucked into the bow. 
THE BIOGRAPHY OF A BEDBUG. 
ILLUSTRATED FROM LIFE. 
Part III. 
M ANY curious notions have found 
their way into bedbug literature. 
Democritus said that the feet of a hare, or 
of a stag, hung ’round the foot of the bed 
at the bottom, did not suffer the bugs to 
breed; but in traveling, adds Didymus, if 
you fill a vessel with cold water, and set it 
under the bed, they will not touch you 
when you are asleep. A superstition, 
which prevailed until recent times, was 
that in order to rid beds effectually of 
the bugs, they must be cleaned during 
the dark of the moon. 
Various medicinal virtues have been 
ascribed to bedbugs. The ancients be- 
lived them to be not only a neutralizer 
of, but a preservative from, the venom of 
serpents, asps in particular. As a proof, 
they tell us that the sting of an asp is 
never fatal to poultry, if they have 
eaten some of the bugs that day. The 
Grecian prescription successfully to neu¬ 
tralize an asp’s poison in man is trans¬ 
lated : 
Some men prescribe seven bedbugs for to drink, 
Mingled with water, and one cup, they think, 
Is better than with drowsy death to sink. 
The dose for children was only four of 
the bugs. For nocturnal fevers, attach 
a couple of the bugs to the left arm in 
some wool that had been stolen from 
shepherds. For day-fevers, inclose the 
bugs in a piece of russet-colored cloth. 
Anatolius saj^s that, if an ox, or other 
quadruped, swallows a leech in drink¬ 
ing, having pounded some of the bugs, 
let the animal smell them, and he imme¬ 
diately throws up the leech. Dr. James, 
in his Medical Dictionary, says : “ The 
smell of them relieves under hysterical 
suffocations ! ” (I should judge that 
there might be some virtue in the last 
two prescriptions). It is said that only 
about 30 years ago, the country people 
of Ohio sometimes still gave bedbugs as 
a cure for the fever and ague. 
The habits of bedbugs are so well 
known that it is unnecessary to go into 
detail here. They, apparently, get in 
their work entirely at night, working 
mostly on the exposed or undressed parts 
of the body. During the day, they re¬ 
main hidden in the cracks and crevices, 
not only of the bedstead, but anywhere 
in the room. One case is recorded of a 
bug that used to come every night nearly 
40 feet from the corner of the room to 
visit an old lady ; and one writer says 
that they sometimes drop into the bed 
from the ceiling. Bedbugs are easily and 
often transported from house to house 
in our clothing or baggage, so that the 
cleanest or newest house is liable to be¬ 
come stocked with the creatures. But 
there is no doubt that bedbugs, like 
carpet beetles, will thrive best where 
there is the most dirt. Thus scrupulous 
cleanliness is the greatest stumbling 
block to a bedbug’s happiness. 
Ilow is this disgusting, pestiferous 
bugbear of the thrifty housewife to be 
combated'? In the early part of the 
last century, the eradication of bedbugs 
became so formidable a business in Lon¬ 
don, that it was necessary to call in the 
aid of experts. One of these expert bug- 
hunters, John Southall, describes him¬ 
self on the title page of his quaint 
“ Book of Bugges ” (written about 1730) 
as the “Maker of the Nonpareil Liquor 
for Destroying Bugges and Nits.” He 
seems to have found abundant employ¬ 
ment for a considerable staff of em¬ 
ployees, who worked under his per¬ 
sonal supervision ; and his clients were 
found even among the most well-to-do 
classes. Ilis charges were a half guinea 
(about §2.50) for ridding the most elab¬ 
orate bedsteads, and proportionately 
less for those of an inferior style, an 
ordinary four-poster with plain furni¬ 
ture being undertaken for six shillings 
(about SI.50). I do not know whether 
any of the bedbug experts are doing 
business in London to-day, but in 1862, 
one writer stated that the most eminent 
firm, perhaps, of the bug-destroyers in 
London then was that of Messrs. Tiffin 
& Son; they rejoiced in the title of 
“ Bug Destroyers to Her Majesty and 
the Royal Family.” The following in¬ 
teresting facts regarding his business 
were obtained from Mr. Tiffin Sr. at 
the time : 
“We can trace our business back as 
far as 1695, when one of our ancestors 
first turned his attention to the destruc¬ 
tion of bugs. When I was a boy, my 
father used to go out to his work killing 
bugs at his customers’ houses with a 
sword by his side and a cocked hat and 
bag wig on his head—in fact, dressed 
up like a regular dandy. I remember 
my grandmother, too, when she was in 
the business, going to the different 
houses, and seating herself in a chair, 
and telling the men what they were to 
do, to clean the furniture and wash the 
woodwork. I have customers on our 
books for whose families our house has 
worked these 150 years ; among them 
are noblemen’s names, the first in Eng¬ 
land. We do the work by contract, ex¬ 
amining the house every year. In the 
spring is the best time, before the bugs 
lay their eggs. Yes, I am often sent for 
to catch a single bug. I’ve had to go, 
even 100 or 200 miles, into the country, 
and, perhaps, catch only half a dozen 
bugs after all; but then, that is all there 
were there, so it answers our employer’s 
purpose as well as though they were 
swarming. I have known persons to be 
laid up for months through bug bites. 
I have plenty of cast-off bug skins, of 
all sizes and colors, which I keep by me 
as curiosities, and, sometimes, I have 
found the young bugs collected inside 
the old ones’ skins for warmth, as if 
they had put on their father’s great 
coat.” 
But little of a practical nature, re¬ 
garding methods of fighting bedbugs, 
can be written that the experienced 
housekeeper of to-day does not already 
know. There is no way to prevent your 
dearest friend from unwittingly bring¬ 
ing them into the house with his bag¬ 
gage that may have become infested at 
some hotel on his route ; it should thus 
be thought no lasting disgrace to find a 
bedbug or two in your house. Eternal 
vigilance is the price paid by the house¬ 
wife who has no bedbugs She allows 
no dirt to accumulate anywhere, and, at 
least once a year, every crack and cranny 
in every bed of any sort is treated to a 
thorough dose of some death-dealing 
liquid. If a room become badly infested, 
it is thoroughly cleaned ; fumed with 
sulphur ; the walls repapered or kalso- 
mined ; and the wood-work repainted or 
oiled. There is no let-up to the warfare 
until the last vestige of a bedbug is ex¬ 
terminated. 
The standard bedbug remedy has long 
been a solution of one ounce of corrosive 
sublimate in half a pint of alcohol, and 
one-fourth pint of spirits of turpentine ; 
druggists sell it as “ bedbug poison It 
is a virulent poison, thus must be used 
with great care, and is rather expensive. 
Furthermore, unless the bugs drank or 
sucked up some of the liquid soon after 
it was applied, there would seem to be 
but little use for the poison ingredient; 
I believe that the turpentine and alcohol 
kill most of the bugs, and that each bug 
must be hit to be killed. Intelligent 
fruit growers no longer think of trying 
to kill their insect enemies, that suck 
their food, by spraying their feeding 
grounds with a Pains-green solution ; 
only biting insects are fought in this 
way. Therefore, I believe that the much 
cheaper benzine, or turpentine, or ker¬ 
osene oil will prove equally as effective 
as the “ bedbug poison” if used as thor¬ 
oughly. Spray, or squirt with an oil 
can, the liquid into every crack (always 
remembering that a bedbug can tuck 
itself away in a very small place) in the 
bedstead, and in the walls and windows,* 
if necessary ; the three substances named 
are all so cheap that they can be used 
much more freely, and, in consequence, 
more effectually, than the poison. 
It is doubtful whether the insect pow¬ 
ders can be used as effectually as the 
liquids. It is said that, in traveling, 
where one is forced to lodge at places 
infested by this insect, protection from 
them can be had by sprinkling a small 
quantity of insect powder between the 
sheets of the bed on retiring. Fumiga¬ 
tion with sulphur, to be effective, must 
be very thoroughly done. I doubt 
whether anything yet suggested will 
kill the eggs of this pest; insect eggs 
are not so easily penetrated by liquids 
as one would imagine. This means that 
one cannot expect always to exterminate 
the pest at a single blow, however hard 
he strikes. In short, to keep this most 
exasperating of household pests at bay, 
a housewife must exercise eternal vigil¬ 
ance, and become a good shot with a 
squirt gun filled with benzine, turpen¬ 
tine or kerosene. 
Bedbugs do not always find it plain 
sailing in this world, for Nature has so 
arranged it that other insects sometimes 
like to include a fat, juicy specimen in 
their bill of fare. The Masked Bedbug 
Hunter, shown in the lower part of fig¬ 
ure 239, is not an uncommon visitor in 
our homes. Although quite a near rela¬ 
tive of the bedbug, it readily impales 
one on the end of its beak, and proceeds 
leisurely to suck out its juices. The 
nymphs of this Masked Hunter have the 
curious habit of enveloping themselves 
in a coating of dust, and bits of rubbish, 
the whole surface, including the legs 
and antenme, being also masked in this 
way, as shown in figure 239. 
Spiders are also said to kill bed¬ 
bugs. Their odor does not deter the 
common cockroach, also, from devour¬ 
ing them with avidity; no doubt trage¬ 
dies of this kind are of nightly occur¬ 
rence in the slums of seaport towns, 
where both of these intruders occur in 
armies of thousands. Here, then, is a 
good word for the cockroach, although 
it may fairly be questioned whether the 
remedy is not almost as bad as the 
disease. m. y. slingerland. 
<1v 
to 
to 
to 
to 
to 
to 
to 
to 
/»> 
/»> 
to 
to 
to 
to 
to 
to 
/ft 
to 
to 
/ft 
/ft 
/ft 
/» 
/» 
to 
f 
1 
‘*7??~ ^ 
/is 
to 
t 
to 
1 
/ft 
to 
to 
to 
to 
to 
Ian Maclaren s 
New Religious Story 
The Minister of St. Bede's 
A young Scottish minister , called to the 
pulpit of an influential church, finds 
his congregation opposed to the mar¬ 
riage of the girl of his heart. It is in 
two parts , the second in the No¬ 
vember Ladies’ HomeJozirnal, 
— illustrated by Alice 
Barber Stephens. 
One Dollar for One Year 
THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA 
1 
l 
vIZ 
$ 
vlf 
1 
\l/ 
v»Z 
Viz 
v»Z 
vIZ 
vIZ 
Viz 
vt/ 
vIZ 
viz 
viz 
vIZ 
vIZ 
v«Z 
vIZ 
vIZ 
vIZ 
v*Z 
vIZ 
vtZ 
vIZ 
vIZ 
vIZ 
vIZ 
v(Z 
I 
VIZ 
vIZ 
vIZ 
I 
vIZ 
vIZ 
vIZ 
vIZ 
$ 
I 
vIZ 
v«Z 
vIZ 
vIZ 
vIZ 
vIZ 
vIZ 
vIZ 
vIZ 
vIZ 
to 
