425 
1874.1 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
f HIE H©0§KH©ILIO)o 
ESP (For other Household Items , see “Basket ” pages). 
A Useful Piece of Furniture. 
In many rural households, the space allotted to 
the kitchen is often cramped and narrowed too 
much. Women are not often consulted when 
houses are built, and it is usually the kitchen that 
suffers for lack of room. A piece of kitchen fur¬ 
niture, therefore, that will answer three distinct 
purposes, is a great convenience. Here is one 
(figure 1) that is at once a settee, a trunk, and an 
ironing table or bake board. There is a box or 
trunk, in which one may stow away many things 
that usually lie about, having no special place 
allotted for them otherwise. The lid of this trunk 
Fig. 2.—AS A TABLE. 
forms the seat of the settee. The ends are raised 
up, forming the arms. The back of it is pivoted 
upon one side of the ends, and when it is turned 
down, as seen in figure 2, it forms a table. When 
it is turned down, it is held in its place by two 
small hooks, seen in the illustration at figure 1. 
-._-—« ® ———• »- 
Household Carpentery. 
The short days and long cool evenings, remind us 
of the approach of Christmas, and already many 
are thinking of Christmas presents, and preparing 
for them. In the majority of cases the most 
appropriate present is one of little intrinsic value, 
so far as the materials are concerned, but upon 
which pleasant labor has been expended, so that 
the present becomes truly valuable to the 
recipient, for the reason that it is the handiwork of 
the giver, who has wrought many kind and loving 
thoughts into the gift. In the case of Christmas 
presents, the point of all others to be decided, is, 
“ what shall I give ? ’’—This being determined, all 
the rest becomes comparatively easy. Among the 
articles that are frequently purchased for presents, 
are little parlor or chai ber ornaments, such as 
brackets, match-boxes, ok-racks, and other little 
tasteful and useful articles made from wood. 
Those offered for sale are made upon the large 
scale by machinery, but very beautiful things of 
this kind can be made by hand, if one has a fair 
amount of skill and a good share of patience. The 
materials and the tools cost but little ; of course 
the finer the wood, the handsomer will be the 
work, but black walnut makes up sufficiently 
handsome, and can be had almost anywhere; for 
small articles the wood of cigar boxes answers 
well, especially if care be taken to select the finer 
kinds, and pine and other light colored woods may 
be stained, if no other material is at hand. The 
wood should not be over one-fourth of an inch 
thick, and for small work it may be only half that 
thickness. A saw is required which has very fine 
teeth, with an exceedingly narrow blade to allow 
of ready working in curved lines, and it must be 
mounted in a 
manner adapt¬ 
ed to the work. 
A very neat saw 
is now sold for 
this kind of 
work, and is 
shown in figure 
1. The saw can 
be readily putin 
and taken out 
of the frame, Fig. 1.— the saw. 
by turning the 
small thumb-screws at the ends of the arms. The 
work may be done on a ordinary table, or a bench 
may be provided, consisting of a smooth board J of 
an inch thich, 12 inches long, and 8 wide, in one end 
of this a piece is cut out like a letter Y, and the 
board screwed to a table, so that this cut end pro¬ 
jects about two inches. Having determined what 
to make, the next thing is to fix upon the design, 
which may be made as elaborate as one chooses; 
sets of designs of various articles made of full 
size to serve as patterns, are furnished with the 
saw above figured, 
but any one with a 
little ingenuity, 
can make a design 
to suit the fancy. 
Take the back of 
the match box, 
figure 2, as an illus¬ 
tration ; this has 
its two lengthwise 
halves exactly 
alike, hence only 
half the pattern 
need be drawn. The 
ha) pattern being 
sa • ’►'factorily out¬ 
lined upon a piece 
of stiff paper, the 
paper is then doub¬ 
led and the pattern 
cut out, using a 
sharp pen-knife 
with a smooth 
board to cut upon. 
Upon unfolding the pattern, both sides will be exact¬ 
ly alike. In drawing, use a ruler for all straight lines, 
as any inaccuracy will be more readily noticed in this 
part of the work than in any other. The pattern is 
then laid upon the wood, and its lines traced with a 
pencil. All the openwork parts of the design, 
from which the wood is to be cut out, will need to 
Fig. 2.— MATCH-BOX. 
Fig. 3. —MANNER OP HOLDING THE WORK. 
have one or more holes made with a large awl, 
admit the saw. The manner of holding the wc 
upon a table is shown in figure 3, a different st; 
of saw is shown there, but the difference is only 
the frame. If the little notched bench referred to 
is used, then the part to be cut should come direct¬ 
ly over the Y-shaped notch. The saw must be 
inserted in the frame so that the teeth point 
towards the handle, as the cutting is done with the 
downward stroke only. The outside lines of the 
pattern being cut, then the upper end of the saw 
is removed, by unscrewing the clamp, and inserted 
in one of the awl holes, and each portion of the 
interior portions of the pattern cut away one after 
another. As with any other mechanical work, a 
certain amount of practice is required before this 
can be done readily ; it will be found that when 
the saw is working in the direction of the grain, it 
is more difficult to guide than when cutting across 
it; if the saw gets fast, as it sometimes will, do 
not use force to remove it, as it is very thin and 
maybe broken; care and patience will overcome 
the difficulties, and the manner of handling the 
work will come with experience. Rough edges 
may be smoothed by the use of sand-paper and a 
file; when a piece has several parts, it is put to¬ 
gether with brads, first boring holes with an awl. 
The best finish for articles of walnut, is to rub 
them over with linseed oil. We shall have some¬ 
thing more to say on this kind of work at another 
time. By reference to the premium list, it will be 
seen that the Publishers have included this saw 
among their premium articles, or it may be obtain¬ 
ed from them for $1.25, post paid. 
-- l —HI l — ■ 
Home Topics. 
BY FAITH ROCHESTER. 
CRYING BABIES. 
A young mother and a neighbor just called in 
a moment to ask me, “ Hid you ever give Soothing 
Syrup to any of your children ?”—“ Never ” !—“ I 
didn’t know but I had better get some for my baby, 
I can’t bear to hear him cry so.”—It is certainly 
very hard for the mother to bear, and it must be 
hard for the baby, but soothing syrup wouldn’t 
help either of them in the end. The baby is 
only three weeks old, and during the last week, 
since the mother dismissed her hired girl, and be¬ 
gan to take the care of her little family, the baby 
has cried a great deal, generally resting pretty well 
at night, however. The parents have rocked it and 
walked with it, and the little thing wants to be 
tended in some way almost constantly. I asked if 
there seemed to be any danger of a rupture from 
its crying. Since no danger appears, I could only 
advise the mother to keep as still and quirt as she 
can herself, eating plain nourishing food and rest¬ 
ing as much as possible, and try time and patience 
instead of soothing syrup. The Agriculturist quoted 
a statement from the California Medical Gazette, a 
few years ago, that this popular syrup contains 
nearly a grain of morphine to an ounce of the 
syrup, so that the dose for a child three months 
old, is equal to ten drops of laudanum. In San 
Francisco, where about 100,000 bottles of soothing 
syrup were sold annually, it was also the case that 
one-third of all the babies there died under the age 
of two years. Soothing syrup indeed ! 
A neighbor recommends to this young mother 
some kind of patent pills, which had a wonderfully 
quieting influence upon his babies years ago ; but 
none of us know what these sugar pills contain. 
Others would recommend, some one thing, and 
some another, all with a view of quieting the baby. 
The child needs a healthy mother more than any¬ 
thing else, and its mother wrongs it bj T her well- 
meant efforts to do more work than her present 
state of health will warrant. Calves and colts are 
not so treated, and they have no need of drops and 
syrups. If baby erics, it is probably uncomfortable 
in some way, though I suspect it has already learned 
to want “tending.” lean hear my neighbor’s lit¬ 
tle one, and it seldom sounds to me like a cry of 
positive pain. If my own babies only cried like 
that, it seems to me that I could bear it more easily 
when they get into a crying spell. I wonder if it 
can possibly be because this one is not my child, 
and so does not pull upon my heart strings ? No, 
I hardly think that explains the difference, for I 
