Dripread - Book

of boiling water over it; when cold bottle it. This, used with care, will stain the new or light parts as dark as you please, if done as follows:--wipe off the oil clean, and apply the solution with a piece of rag, held firmly in the hand, and just moistened with the stain. Great care is required to prevent the stain running over the old part, for any place touched with it will show the mark through the polish when finished. You can vary the color by giving two or more coats if required. Then repolish your job altogether in the usual way. Should you wish to brighten up the old mahogany, use polish dyed with Bismarck brown as follows:--Get three pennyworth of Bismarck brown, and put it into a bottle with enough naphtha or methylated spirits to dissolve it. Pour a few drops of this into your polish, and you will find that it gives a nice rich red color to the work, but don't dye the polish too much, just tint it.

Value of Eggs for Food and Other Purposes.--Every element that is necessary to the support of man is contained within the limits of an egg shell, in the best proportions and in the most palatable form. Plain boiled, they are wholesome. It is easy to dress them in more than 500 different ways, each method not only economical, but salutary in the highest degree. No honest appetite ever yet rejected an egg in some guise. It is nutriment in the most portable form, and in the most concentrated shape. Whole nations of mankind rarely touch any other animal food. Kings eat them plain as readily as do the humble tradesmen. After the victory of Muhldorf, when the Kaiser Ludwig sat at a meal with his burggrafs and great captains, he determined on a piece of luxury--"one egg to every man, and two to the excellently valiant Schwepperman." Far more than fish--for it is watery diet--eggs are the scholar's fare. They contain phosphorus, which is brain food, and sulphur, which performs a variety of functions in the economy. And they are the best of nutriment for children, for, in a compact form, they contain everything that is necessary for the growth of the youthful frame. Eggs are, however, not only food--they are medicine also. The white is the most efficacious of remedies for burns, and the oil extractable from the yolk is regarded by the Russians as an almost miraculous salve for cuts, bruises and scratches. A raw egg, if swallowed in time, will effectually detach a fish bone fastened in the throat, and the white of two eggs will render the deadly corrosive sublimate as harmless as a dose of calomel. They strengthen the consumptive, invigorate the feeble, and render the most susceptible all but proof against jaundice in its more malignant phase. They can also be drunk in the shape of that "egg flip" which sustains the oratorical efforts of modern statesmen. The merits of eggs do not even end here. In France alone the wine clarifiers use more than 80,000,000 a year, and the Alsatians consume fully 38,000,000 in calico printing and for dressing the leather used in making the finest of French kid gloves. Finally, not to mention various other employments for eggs in the arts, they may, of course, almost without trouble on the farmer's part, be converted in fowls, which, in any shape, are profitable to the seller and welcome to the buyer. Even egg shells are valuable, for aliopath and homeopath alike agree in regarding them as the purest of carbonate of lime.

History of Big Ships.--In the history of mankind several vessels of extraordinary magnitude have been constructed, all distinctively styled great, and all unfortunately disastrous, with the honorable exception of Noah's Ark. Setting aside this antediluvian craft, concerning the authenticity of whose dimensions authorities differ, and which, if Biblical measures are correct, was inferior in size to the vessel of most importance to modern shipowners, the great galley, constructed by the great engineer Archimedes for the great King Hiero II., of Syracuse, is the first illustration. This ship without a name (for history does not record one) transcended all wonders of ancient maritime construction. It abounded statues and painting, marble and mosaic work. It contained a gymnasium, baths, a garden, and arbored walks. Its artillery discharged stones of 3 cwt., and arrows 18 ft. in length. An Athenian advertising poet, who wrote a six-line puff of its glories, received the royal reward of six thousand bushels of corn. Literary merit was at a higher premium in the year 240 B.C., than it is to-day. The great ship of antiquity was found to be too large for the accommodation of the Syracusan port, and famine reigning in Egypt, Hiero, the charitably disposed, embarked a cargo of ten thousand huge jars of salted fish, two million pounds of salted meat, twenty thousand bundles of different clothes, filled the hold with corn, and consigned her to the seven mouths of the Nile,

Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889