To Preserve Brooms

Dip them for a minute or two in a kettle of boiling suds once a week and they will last much longer, making them tough and pliable. A carpet wears much longer swept with a broom cared for in this manner.

To Clean Brassware

Mix 1 ounce of oxalic acid, 6 ounces of rotten stone, all in powder, 1 ounce of sweet oil, and sufficient water to make a paste. Apply a small proportion and rub dry with a flannel or leather. The liquid dip most generally used consists of nitric and sulphuric acids, but this is more corrosive.

Polish or Enamel for Shirt Bosoms is made by melting together 1 ounce of white wax and 2 ounces of spermaceti; heat gently and turn into a very shallow pan; when cold cut or break in pieces. When making boiled starch the usual way, enough for a dozen bosoms, add to it a piece of the polish the size of a hazel nut.

To Keep Out Mosquitoes

If a bottle of the oil of pennyroyal is left uncorked in a room at night, not a mosquito, nor any other bloodsucker, will be found there in the morning.

Destruction Of Rats

The following recipe for the destruction originated with Dr. Ure, and is highly recommended as the best-known means of getting rid of these most obnoxious and destructive vermin. Melt hog's lard in a bottle plunged in water, heated to about 150 degrees of Fahrenheit, mix with it half an ounce of phosphorus for every pound of lard, then add a pint of proof spirit, or whisky, cork the bottle firmly after its contents have been heated to 150 degrees, taking it at the same time out of the water, and agitate smartly until the phosphorus becomes uniformly diffused, forming a milky looking liquid. This liquid, being cooled, will afford a white compound of phosphorus and lard, from which the spirit spontaneously separates, and may be poured off to be used again for the same purpose, but not for drinking, for none of it enters into the combination, but it merely serves to comminute the phosphorus, and diffuse it in very small particles through the lard. This compound, on being warmed very gently, may be poured out into a mixture of wheat flour and sugar, incorporated therewith, and then flavored with oil of rhodium, or not, at pleasure. The flavor may be varied with oil of aniseed, etc. This dough being made into pellets, is to be laid into rat holes.

By its luminousness in the dark, it attracts their notice, and, being agreeable to their palates and noses, it is readily eaten, and proves certainly fatal.

To Kill Cockroaches

A teacupful of well-bruised plaster of Paris, mixed with double the quantity of oatmeal, to which a little sugar may be added, although this last-named ingredient is not essential. Strew it on the floor or into the chinks where they frequent.

Earwigs are very destructive insects, their favorite food being the . petals of roses, pinks, dahlias and other flowers. They may be caught by driving stakes into the ground, and placing on each an inverted flowerpot, for the earwigs will climb up and take refuge under the pot, when they may be taken out and killed. Clean bowls of tobacco pipes, placed in like manner on the tops of smaller sticks, are very good traps, or very deep holes may be made in the ground with a crowbar, into which they will fall, and may be destroyed by boiling water.