How To Clean Floor Cloths

Sweep them, and wash them now and then with milk; never scour them with a brush, or use soap or hot water to them, as it would take off the paint. A soft cloth and lukewarm water are all that is required to clean them.

Oil-cloths are washed when they require it with a soft flannel wetted with milk; or with a mixture of salad-oil and weak table beer. Never use soda or soap to them.

How To Clean Greasy Cocoa-Nut Matting

Thoroughly scrub it all over with hot water and soap, then loosely fold it and put it into a large washing-tub. Pour a quantity of cold water over it. then hang it out on a line in the sun to dry.

How To Clean Straw Matting

Wash as seldom as possible; but when it becomes imperatively necessary to do so, use salt and water. Salt will prevent the matting from turning yellow. Dry as fast as you wash, and wash only a small space at a time.

Stained boards are dusted and polished as stained furniture would be.

How To Clean Glass

Tumblers and wine-glasses should be washed in cold water in which a little soda is dissolved, then turned up to drain, dried with a soft, clean, and dry cloth, and finally polished with a leather or an old silk handkerchief. Chandelier or lustre glasses are washed in the same way. Decanters require careful cleaning. First have ready some strong suds of white soap and water and a little pearl-ash. Mash up an egg-shell well, drop it into the bottle, pour in some of the soap-suds, and shake it well about till the bottle is clean, then empty it; put in fresh suds and clean inside with a small sponge on the end of a glass-stick; rinse out twice with clean cold water. Next put them into the soap suds, and if they are cut, wash them with a regular glass-brush; next rinse the outside. Dry the inside with a small clean piece of linen on the end of your glass-stick. Wipe the outside with a dry glass-cloth, and polish off with a leather or silk handkerchief.

For cleaning and mending china, see "China Closet".

How To Remove Rust

To remove rust from steel, cover with sweet oil, well rubbed on it; in forty-eight hours use unslacked lime powdered very fine. Rub it till the rust disappears. To prevent the rust, mix with fat oil varnish four-fifths of well-rectified spirits of turpentine. The varnish is to be applied by means of a sponge; and articles varnished in this manner will retain their brilliancy, and never contract any spots of rust. It may be applied to copper, philosophical instruments, etc.

How To Distinguish Iron From Steel

Let a drop of diluted nitric acid fall on the metal, and after a few minutes wash it off with water. If the metal be steel, a black spot will be left on it; if it be iron, a whitish-grey spot will remain. The reason is, that the nitric acid dissolves the iron in both cases, but the charcoal that enters into the composition of the steel remains undissolved, and constitutes the blackness.