The sitting rooms in daily use are first to be prepared. Upon entering the room, in the morning, the housemaid should immediately open the windows, to admit the fresh air; she should then remove the fender and rug from the fire-place, and cover, with a coarse cloth, the marble hearth, while the ashes and cinders are collected together and removed. The grate and fire-irons are afterwards to be carefully cleaned. If the grate have bright bars, it should be rubbed with fine emery paper, which will remove the burnt appearance of the bars. Fine polished fire-irons, if not suffered to rust, will only require to be well rubbed with leather; when, however, there is unfortunately any appearance of rust upon them, it must be removed, either with fine emery paper, or with a little putty powder rubbed on the rusty part: but if emery paper be employed, this must be done with care, or the steel will be scratched. The carpet should be swept with the carpet broom, not oftener than once a week, as more frequent use of the broom would wear the carpet too fast; but, each day, it should be swept with a good hair broom, after it has been sprinkled with moist tea leaves. Sofas, and any other nice furniture, should be covered over with a large calico cloth, kept for that purpose, before the sweeping commences; and window-curtains should be hung up as high as they can be, out of the way of the dust. After the carpet is swept, the dust must be removed, either with a soft round brush, or with a very clean linen duster, from the panels of the doors, the windows and window-frames, ledges, and skirting boards. The frames of pictures and looking glasses should never be touched with linen, but the dust should be cleared from them with a painter's brush, or a bunch of feathers. The chairs and tables should be rubbed well every day; and on the mahogany tables a little cold drawn linseed oil should be rubbed in once or twice a week, which will, in time, give them a durable varnish, such as prevent their being spotted or injured by being accidentally wetted. When there are any spots or stains upon a table, they must be washed off with warm water before the oil is put on. The chimney ornaments, glass lustres, or china, should be carefully removed while the mantlepiece is either washed or dusted; and as the housemaid replaces them, she should, with a clean duster, wipe them free from the dust. The window-curtains are then to be dusted with a feather broom, and properly replaced on the hook. About once a week the sills of the windows should be washed with soap and water, and the windows cleaned from the dust every where within reach. The stairs and stair carpets should next be swept down, if time will allow of this duty before breakfast, as it is not a pleasant thing to be done when the family are moving about. And whenever good opportunities occur, such as the chief part of the family being absent from home for a few hours, the housemaid should avail herself of these to take the stair carpets up, and have them well beaten and shaken, while she scours the stairs down, and rubs the brass wires bright. The wainscot-board should also be washed, and the banisters and handrail well rubbed. As soon as the different members of the family are assembled at breakfast, the housemaid should repair to the bed-chambers, open the windows (unless the weather be damp,) draw the curtains up to the head of the bed, throw the bed-clothes upon two chairs placed at the foot of each bed, and leave the feather-beds open to the air. When this has been done in all the rooms in use, she should then bring her chamber bucket, with a jug of hot water, and with the proper towels, empty and clean out all the vessels in each room, and then carry off,' empty, and wash out the bucket and turn it down in some appropriate place, that the water may completely run off from it. She should next carry water-jugs, one with soft water, and another with pump water, into every bedroom, and fill the water-ewers and decanters. The towels should be put before an open window to dry, or be changed; and the washing table put into complete order. The beds, which during this time have been left exposed to the air, have now to be made, and in this another of the female servants should assist, as the feather beds cannot be well shaken, or the mattresses turned, by one person. It is very necessary that feather beds should be well shaken, or the feathers will knot together, and render the bed hard and uncomfortable. After the room is swept, a damp mop or flannel, passed under the beds, the chests of drawers and wardrobes, collects the flue and dust, and this ought to be done every day, as the best mode of keeping bedrooms free from troublesome insects of every kind. After the room is swept, the ledges, panels of doors, and window frames are all to be dusted. Twice during the week bedroom carpets should be taken up and shaken, and the floors under them swept free from dust, and occasionally scoured. In winter, a bedroom should never be scoured, unless the weather be mild and dry, for nothing is so likely to injure health as damp in a bedroom. While the family are at dinner, the housemaid should again repair to the dressing and bedrooms, to put in order those things which have been used and disarranged at the dressing hour. Early in the evening the beds should be turned down, the windows shut, the curtains drawn, the fires, if required, lighted, and the rooms all prepared for the night.-Mrs. Parkes' Domestic Duties. DETACHED PIECES. WHENEVER chance brings within my observation a knot of young ladies busy at their needles, I consider myself as in the school of virtue; and though I have no extraordinary skill in plain work or embroidery, I look upon their operations with as much satisfaction as their governess, because I regard them as providing a security against the most dangerous ensnarers of the soul, by enabling them to exclude idleness from their solitary moments, and, with idleness, her attendant train of passions, fancies, chimeras, fears, sorrows and desires.-Johnson. It is a great satisfaction to me, that my daughters will be educated well, and taught to depend upon themselves, and not upon others, for their happiness in this world; for, if their hearts be good, they have both of them heads wise enough to distinguish between right and wrong. While they have resolution to follow what their hearts dictate, they may be uneasy under the adventitious misfortunes which may happen to them, but never unhappy; for they will still have the consolation of a virtuous mind to resort to. I am most afraid of outward adornment being made a principal study, and the furniture within being rubbish. What are called fashionable accomplishments are but too often teaching poor misses to look bold and forward, in spite of a natural disposition to gentleness.-Collingwood. FEMALE BENEVOLENCE.-I have always remarked that women, in all countries, are civil, obliging, tender, and humane; that they are ever inclined to be gay and cheerful, timorous and modest. They do not hesitate, like man, to perform a hospitable or generous action; not haughty, nor arrogant, nor supercilious, but full of courtesy, and fond of society; industrious, economical, ingenuous; more liable, in general, to err, than man, but, in general, also, more virtuous, and performing more good actions than he. To a woman, whether civilized or savage, I never addressed myself in the language of decency and friendship, without receiving a decent and friendly answer. With man it has often been otherwise. In wandering over the barren plains of inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, frozen Lapland, rude and churlish Finland, unprincipled Russia, and the widely spread regions of the wandering Tartar, if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, woman has ever been friendly to me; and, to add to this virtue, so worthy of the appellation of benevolence, these actions have been performed in so free and so kind a manner, that, if I was thirsty, I drank the simple draught, and, if hungry, ate the coarse morṣel, with a double relish.-Ledyard's Travels. A MOTHER'S EXPERIMENT.-The late Countess of Orkney, who died at an advanced age, was deaf and dumb, and was married in 1753 by signs. Her husband and she resided at his seat, Rostellan near Cork. Shortly after the birth of her first child, the nurse saw the mother cautiously approach the cradle in which the infant lay asleep, evidently full of some deep design. The Countess, having first assured herself that her babe was fast asleep, took from under her shawl a large stone, which had purposely been concealed there, and to the utter horror of the nurse, who largely shared the popular notion that all dumb persons are possessed of peculiar cunning and malignity, raised it up, as if to enable her to dash it down with greater force. Before the nurse could interpose, to prevent what she believed would bring certain death to the sleeping and unconscious child, the dreadful stone was flung, not at the cradle, however, but upon the ground, and fell with great violence. The noise awakened the child. The Countess was overjoyed, and, in the fulness of a mother's heart, fell upon her knees, to express her thankfulness that her beloved infant possessed a blessing denied to herself-the sense of hearing. This lady often gave similar indications of superior intelligence, though we can believe that few of them equalled the present in interest. TO MY CHILD AT PLAY. PLAY on, my little one! fair is thine hour; Play on for thy gambols so blithsome and free, Oh! could'st thou thro' life be as happy as now, But I would not with dread of the future oppress thee; |