A Guest at the Ludlow, and Other Stories

by Bill Nye

  HINTS FOR THE HOUSEHOLD

  IV

  There are a great many pleasures to which we may treat ourselves veryeconomically if we go at it right. In this way we can, at a slightexpense, have those comforts, and even luxuries, for which we shouldotherwise pay a great price.

  Costly rugs and carpets, though beautiful and rich in appearance,involve such an outlay of money that many hesitate about buying them;but a very tasty method of treating floors inexpensively consists instaining the edge for several feet in width, leaving the center of theroom to be covered by a large rug. Staining for the floor maybe easilymade, by boiling maple bark, twenty parts; pokeberry juice,twenty-five parts; hazel brush, thirty parts, and sour milk, twenty-fiveparts, until it becomes about the consistency of the theory of infantdamnation. Let it stand a few weeks, until the rich flavor has dieddown, so that you can look at it for quite a while without nausea; thenadd vinegar and copperas to suit the taste, and apply by means of awhisk broom. When dry, help yourself to some more of it. This gives thefloor a rich pauper's coffin shade, over which shellac or cod liver oilshould be applied.

  Rugs may be made of coffee sacking or Turkish gunny-rest sacks, inlaidwith rich designs in red yarn, and a handsome fringe can be added byraveling the edges.

  A beautiful receptacle for soiled collars and cuffs may be made byputting a cardboard bottom in a discarded and shattered coal scuttle,gilding the whole and tying a pale blue ribbon on the bail.

  A cheap and very handsome easy-chair can be constructed by sawing into aflour barrel and removing less than half the length of staves forone-third the distance around, then fasten inside a canvas or duck seat,below which the barrel is filled with bran.

  A neat little mackerel tub makes a most appropriate foot-stool for thischair, and looks so unconventional and rustic that it wins every one atonce. Such a chair should also have a limited number of tidies on itssurface. Otherwise it might give too much satisfaction. A good style ofinexpensive tidy is made by poking holes in some heavy, strong goods,and then darning up these holes with something else. The darned tidyholds its place better, I think, and is more frequently worn away on theback of the last guest than any other.

  This list might be prolonged almost indefinitely, and I should be gladto write my own experience in the line of experiment, if it were not forthe danger of appearing egotistical. For instance, I once economized inthe matter of paper-hanging, deciding that I would save thepaper-hanger's bill and put the money into preferred trotting stock.

  So I read a recipe in a household hint, which went on to state how oneshould make and apply paste to wall paper, how to begin, how to applythe paper, and all that. The paste was made by uniting flour, water andglue in such a way as to secure the paper to the wall and yet leave itsmooth, according to the recipe. First the walls had to be "sized,"however.

  I took a tape-measure and sized the walls.

  Next I began to prepare the paste and cook some in a large milk-pan. Itlooked very repulsive indeed, but it looked so much better than itsmelled, that I did not mind. Then I put about five cents' worth of iton one roll of paper, and got up on a chair to begin. My idea was toapply it to the wall mostly, but the chair tipped, and so I papered thepiano and my wife on the way down. My wife gasped for breath, but soontore a hole through the paper so she could breathe, and then she laughedat me. That is the reason I took another end of the paper and repaperedher face. I can not bear to have any one laugh at me when I am myselfunhappy.

  It was good paste, if you merely desired to disfigure a piano or a wife,but otherwise it would not stick at all. I did not like it. I was madabout it. But my wife seemed quite stuck on it. She hasn't got it allout of her hair yet.

  _My idea was to apply it to the wall mostly, but thechair tipped, and so I papered the piano and my wife on the way down_](Page 36)

  Then a man dropped in to see me about some money that I had hoped to payhim that morning, and he said the paste needed more glue and a quart ofmolasses. I put in some more glue and the last drop of molasses we hadin the house. It made a mass which looked like unbaked ginger snaps, andsmelled as I imagine the deluge did at low tide.

  I next proceeded to paper the room. Sometimes the paper would adhere,and then again it would refrain from adhering. When I got around theroom I had gained ground so fast at the top and lost so much time at thebottom of the walls, that I had to put in a wedge of paper two feet wideat the bottom, and tapering to a point at the top, in order to cover thespace. This gave the room the appearance of having been toyed with by animpatient cyclone, or an air of inebriety not in keeping with my poorbut honest character.

  I went to bed very weary, and abraded in places. I had paste in mypockets, and bronze up my nose. In the night I could hear the papercrack. Just as I would get almost to sleep, it would pop. That wasbecause the paper was contracting and trying to bring the dimensions ofthe room I own to fit it.

  In the morning the room had shrunken so that the carpet did not fit, andthe paper hung in large molasses-covered welts on the walls. It lookedreal grotesque. I got a paper-hanger to come and look at it. He did so.

  "And what would you advise me to do with it, sir?" I asked, with adegree of deference which I had never before shown to a paper-hanger.

  "Well, I can hardly say at first. It is a very bad case. You see, theglue and stuff have made the paper and wrinkles so hard now, that itwould cost a great deal to blast it off. Do you own the house?"

  "Yes, sir. That is, I have paid one-half the purchase-price, and thereis a mortgage for the balance."

  "Oh. Well, then you are all right," said the paper-hanger, with a gleamof hope in his eye. "Let it go on the mortgage."

  Then I had to economize again, so I next resorted to the home method ofadministering the Turkish bath. You can get a Turkish bath in that wayat a cost of four and one-half to five cents, which is fully as good asone that will cost you a dollar or more in some places.

  I read the directions in a paper. There are two methods of administeringthe low-price Turkish bath at home. One consists in placing the personto be treated in a cane-seat chair, and then putting a pan of hot waterbeneath this chair. Ever and anon a hot stone or hot flat-iron isdropped into the water by means of tongs, and thus the water is keptboiling, the steam rising in thick masses about the person in the chair,who is carefully concealed in a large blanket. Every time a hotflat-iron or stone is dropped into the pan it spatters the boiling wateron the bare limbs of the person who is being operated upon, and if youare living in the same country with him, you will hear him loudlywrecking his chances beyond the grave by stating things that are reallywrong.

  The other method, and the one I adopted, is better than this. You applythe heat by means of a spirit lamp, and no one, to look at a littlefifteen cent spirit lamp, would believe that it had so much heat in ittill he has had one under him as he sits in a wicker chair.

  A wicker chair does not interfere with the lamp at all, or cut off theheat, and one is so swathed in blankets and rubber overcoats that hecan't help himself.

  I seated myself in that way, and then the torch was applied. Did thereader ever get out of a bath and sit down on a wire brush in order toput on his shoes, and feel a sort of startled thrill pervade his wholebeing? Well, that is good enough as far as it goes, but it does notreally count as a sensation, when you have been through the HomeTreatment Turkish Bath.

  My wife was in another room reading a new book in which she was greatlyinterested. While she was thus storing her mind with information, shethought she smelled something burning. She went all around over thehouse trying to find out what it was. Finally she found out.

  It was her husband. I called to her, of course, but she wanted me towait until she had discovered what was on fire. I tried to tell her tocome and search my neighborhood, but I presume I did not make myselfunderstood, because I was excited, and my personal epidermis was beingsinged off in a way that may seem funny to others, but was not so to onewho had to pass through it.

 
It bored me quite a deal. Once the wicker seat of the chair caught fire.

  "Oh, heavens," I cried, with a sudden pang of horror, "am I to be thusdevoured by the fire fiend? And is there no one to help? Help! Help!Help!"

  I also made use of other expressions but they did not add to the senseof the above.

  I perspired very much, indeed, and so the bath was, in a measure, asuccess, but oh, what doth it profit a man to gain a bath if he lose hisown soul?