Dripread - Book

spot. To preserve bouquets, put a little
saltpetre in the water you use for your bouquets, and the flowers will
live for a fortnight.

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 one ounce of oxalic acid, six ounces of rotten
stone, all in powder, one 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.

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 blood-sucker,
will be found there in the morning.

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.

To Destroy Ants.--Drop some quicklime on the mouth of their nest, and
wash it with boiling water, or dissolve some camphor in spirits of wine,
then mix with water, and pour into their haunts; or tobacco water, which
has been found effectual. They are averse to strong scents. Camphor, or
a sponge saturated with creosote, will prevent their infesting a
cupboard. To prevent their climbing up trees, place a ring of tar about
the trunk, or a circle of rag moistened occasionally with creosote.

To Prevent Moths.--In the month of April or May, beat your fur garments
well with a small cane or elastic stick, then wrap them up in linen,
without pressing them too hard, and put betwixt the folds some camphor
in small lumps; then put your furs in this state in boxes well closed.
When the furs are wanted for use, beat them well as before, and expose
them for twenty-four hours to the air, which will take away the smell of
the camphor. If the fur has long hair, as bear or fox, add to the
camphor an equal quantity of black pepper in powder.

To Get Rid of Moths--
1. Procure shavings of cedar wood, and inclose in muslin bags, which can
be distributed freely among the clothes.

2. Procure shavings of camphor wood, and inclose in bags.

3. Sprinkle pimento (allspice) berries among the clothes.

4. Sprinkle the clothes with the seeds of the musk plant.

5. To destroy the eggs, when deposited in woolen cloths, etc., use a
solution of acetate of potash in spirits of rosemary, fifteen grains to
the pint.

Bed Bugs.--Spirits of naphtha rubbed with a small painter's brush into
every part of the bedstead is a certain way of getting rid of bugs. The
mattress and binding of the bed should be examined, and the same process
attended to, as they generally harbor more in these parts than in the
bedstead. Ten cents' worth of naphtha is sufficient for one bed.

Bug Poison.--Proof spirit, one pint; camphor, two ounces; oil of
turpentine, four ounces; corrosive sublimate, one ounce. Mix. A
correspondent says: "I have been for a long time troubled with bugs, and
never could get rid of them by any clean and expeditious method, until a
friend told me to suspend a small bag of camphor to the bed, just in the
center, overhead. I did so, and the enemy was most effectually repulsed,
and has not made his appearance since--not even for a reconnoissance!"
This is a simple method of getting rid of these pests, and is worth a
trial to see if it be effectual in other cases.

Mixture for Destroying Flies--Infusion of quassia, one pint; brown
sugar, four ounces; ground pepper, two ounces. To be well mixed
together, and put in small, shallow dishes when required.

To Destroy Flies in a room, take half a teaspoonful of black pepper in
powder, one teaspoonful of brown sugar, and one tablespoonful of cream,
mix them well together, and place them in the room on a plate, where the
flies are troublesome, and they will soon disappear.

To Drive Flies from the House.--A good way to rid the house of flies is
to saturate small cloths with oil of sassafras and lay them in windows
and doors. The flies will soon leave.

Aging

The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing / A Manual of Ready Reference