Unknown - "The Fall of the Niebelungs"

Annie Roe Carr - "The Old Lumberman's Secret"

John Lothrop Motley - "History of the United Netherlands, 1607(a)"

Mrs. Inchbald - "Lover's Vows"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The American Woman\'s Home

C >> Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe >> The American Woman\'s Home




When air holds all the moisture it can, without depositing dew, its
moisture is called 100. When it holds three fourths of this, it is
said to be at seventy-five per cent. When it holds only one half, it
is at fifty per cent. When it holds only one fourth, it is at
twenty-five per cent, etc.

Sanitary observers teach that the proper amount of moisture in the air
ranges from forty to seventy per cent of saturation.

Now, furnaces, which are of course used only in winter, receive outside
air at a low temperature, holding little moisture; This it sucks up,
like a sponge, from the walls and furniture of a house. If it is taken
into the human lungs, it draws much of its required moisture from the
body, often causing dryness of lips and throat, and painfully affecting
the lungs. Prof. Brewer, of the Scientific School of New-Haven, who
has experimented extensively on this subject, states that, while forty
per cent of moisture is needed in air to make it healthful, most stoves
and furnaces do not, by any contrivances, supply one half of this, or
not twenty per cent. He says most furnace-heated air is dryer than is
ever breathed in the hottest deserts of Sahara.

Thus, for want of proper instruction, most American housekeepers not
only poison their families with carbonic acid and starve them for want
of oxygen, but also diminish health and comfort for want of a due
supply of moisture in the air. And often when a remedy is sought, by
evaporating water in the furnace, it is without knowing that the amount
evaporated depends, not on the quantity of water in the vessel, but
on the extent of evaporating surface exposed to the air. A quart of
water in a wide shallow pan will give more moisture than two gallons
with a small surface exposed to heat.

There is also no little wise economy in expense attained by keeping
a proper supply of moisture in the air. For it is found that the body
radiates its heat less in moist than in dry air, so that a person feels
as warm at a lower temperature when the air has a proper supply of
moisture, as in a much higher temperature of dry air. Of course, less
fuel is needed to warm a house when water is evaporated in stove and
furnace-heated rooms. It is said by those who have experimented, that
the saving in fuel is twenty per cent when the air is duly supplied
with moisture.

There is a very ingenious instrument, called the hygrodeik, which
indicates the exact amount of moisture in the air. It consists of two
thermometers side by side, one of which has its bulb surrounded by
floss-silk wrapping, which is kept constantly wet by communication
with a cup of water near it. The water around the bulb evaporates just
in proportion to the heat of the air around it. The changing of water
to vapor draws heat from the nearest object, and this being the bulb
of the thermometer, the mercury is cooled and sinks. Then the difference
between the two thermometers shows the amount of moisture in the air
by a pointer on a dial-plate constructed by simple mechanism for this
purpose.

There is one very important matter in regard to the use of furnaces,
which is thus stated by Professor Brewer:

"I think it is a well-established fact that carbonic oxide will
pass through iron. It is always formed in great abundance in any
_anthracite_ fire, but especially in anthracite stoves and furnaces.
Moreover, furnaces _always_ leak, more or less; how much they leak
depending on the care and skill with which they are managed. Carbonic
oxide is much more poisonous than carbonic acid. Doubtless some carbonic
oxide finds its way into all furnace-heated houses, especially where
anthracite is used; the amount varying with the kind of furnace and its
management. As to how much escapes into a room, and its specific effect
upon the health of its occupants, we have no accurate data, no analysis
to show the quantity, and no observations to show the relation between
the quantity inhaled and the health of those exposed; all is mere
conjecture upon this point; but the inference is very strong that it has
a very injurious effect, producing headaches, weariness, and other
similar symptoms.

"Recent pamphlets lay the blame of all the bad effects of anthracite
furnaces and stoves to the carbonic oxide mingled in the air. I think
these pamphlets have a bad influence. _Excessive dryness_ also has bad
effects. So also the excessive heat in the evenings and coolness in the
mornings has a share in these evils. But how much in addition is owing
to carbonic oxide, we can not know, until we know something of the
actual amount of this gas in rooms, and as yet we know absolutely
nothing definite. In fact, it will be a difficult thing to _prove_."

There are other difficulties connected with furnaces which should be
considered. It is necessary to perfect health that an equal circulation
of the blood be preserved. The greatest impediment to this is keeping
the head warmer than the feet. This is especially to be avoided in a
nation where the brain is by constant activity drawing the blood from
the extremities. And nowhere is this more important than in schools,
churches, colleges, lecture and recitation-rooms, where the brain is
called into active exercise. And yet, furnace-heated rooms always keep
the feet in the coldest air, on cool floors, while the head is in the
warmest air.

Another difficulty is the fact that all bodies tend to radiate their
heat to each other, till an equal temperature exists. Thus, the human
body is constantly radiating its heat to the walls, floors, and cooler
bodies around. At the same time, a thermometer is affected in the same
way, radiating its heat to cooler bodies around, so that it always
marks a lower degree of heat than actually exists in the warm air
around it. Owing to these facts, the injected air of a furnace is
always warmer than is good for the lungs, and much warmer than is ever
needed in rooms warmed by radiation from fires or heated surfaces. The
cooler the air we inspire, the more oxygen is received, the faster the
blood circulates, and the greater is the vigor imparted to brain,
nerves, and muscles.

Scientific men have been contriving various modes of meeting these
difficulties, and at the close of this volume some results will be
given to aid a woman in selecting and managing the most healthful and
economical furnace, or in providing some better method of warming a
house. Some account will also be given of the danger involved in
gas-stoves, and some other recent inventions for cooking and heating.




VI.

HOME DECORATION.


Having duly arranged for the physical necessities of a healthful and
comfortable home, we next approach the important subject of _beauty_ in
reference to the decoration of houses. For while the aesthetic element
must be subordinate to the requirements of physical existence, and, as a
matter of expense, should be held of inferior consequence to means of
higher moral growth; it yet holds a place of great significance among
the influences which make home happy and attractive, which give it a
constant and wholesome power over the young, and contributes much to the
education of the entire household in refinement, intellectual
development, and moral sensibility.

Here we are met by those who tell us that of course they want their
houses handsome, and that, when they get money enough, they intend to
have them so, but at present they are too poor, and because they are
poor they dismiss the subject altogether, and live without any regard
to it.

We have often seen people who said that they could not afford to make
their houses beautiful, who had spent upon them, outside or in, an
amount of money which did not produce either beauty or comfort, and
which, if judiciously applied, might have made the house quite charming.

For example, a man, in building his house, takes a plan of an architect.
This plan includes, on the outside, a number of what Andrew Fairservice
called "curlywurlies" and "whigmaliries," which make the house neither
prettier nor more comfortable, and which take up a good deal of money.
We would venture to say that we could buy the chromo of Bierstadt's
"Sunset in the Yosemite Valley," and four others like it, for half the
sum that we have sometimes seen laid out on a very ugly, narrow, awkward
porch on the outside of a house. The only use of this porch was to
cost money, and to cause every body who looked at it to exclaim as
they went by, "What ever induced that man to put a thing like that on
the outside of his house?"

Then, again, in the inside of houses, we have seen a dwelling looking
very bald and bare, when a sufficient sum of money had been expended
on one article to have made the whole very pretty: and it has come
about in this way.

We will suppose the couple who own the house to be in the condition
in which people generally are after they have built a house--having
spent more than they could afford on the building itself, and yet
feeling themselves under the necessity of getting some furniture.
"Now," says the housewife, "I must at least have a parlor-carpet. We
must get that to begin with, and other things as we go on." She goes
to a store to look at carpets. The clerks are smiling and obliging,
and sweetly complacent. The storekeeper, perhaps, is a neighbor or a
friend, and after exhibiting various patterns, he tells her of a
Brussels carpet he is selling wonderfully cheap--actually a dollar
and a quarter less a yard than the usual price of Brussels, and the
reason is that it is an unfashionable pattern, and he has a good deal
of it, and wishes to close it off.

She looks at it and thinks it is not at all the kind of carpet she
meant to buy, but then it is Brussels, and so cheap! And as she
hesitates, her friend tells her that she will find it "cheapest in the
end--that one Brussels carpet will outlast three or four ingrains,"
etc., etc.

The result of all this is, that she buys the Brussels carpet, which,
with all its reduction in price, is one third dearer than the ingrain
would have been, and not half so pretty. When she comes home, she will
find that she has spent, we will say eighty dollars, for a very homely
carpet whose greatest merit it is an affliction to remember--namely,
that it will outlast three ordinary carpets. And because she has bought
this carpet she can not afford to paper the walls or put up any
window-curtains, and can not even begin to think of buying any pictures.

Now let us see what eighty dollars could have done for that room. We
will suppose, in the first place, she invests in thirteen rolls of
wall-paper of a lovely shade of buff, which will make the room look
sunshiny in the day-time, and light up brilliantly in the evening.
Thirteen rolls of good satin paper, at thirty-seven cents a roll,
expends four dollars and eighty-one cents. A maroon bordering, made
in imitation of the choicest French style, which can not at a distance
be told from it, can be bought for six cents a yard. This will bring
the paper to about five dollars and a half; and our friends will give
a day of their time to putting it on. The room already begins to look
furnished.

Then, let us cover the floor with, say, thirty yards of good matting,
at fifty cents a yard. This gives us a carpet for fifteen dollars. We
are here stopped by the prejudice that matting is not good economy,
because it wears out so soon. We humbly submit that it is precisely
the thing for a parlor, which is reserved for the reception-room of
friends, and for our own dressed leisure hours. Matting is not good
economy in a dining-room or a hard-worn sitting-room; but such a parlor
as we are describing is precisely the place where it answers to the
very best advantage.

We have in mind one very attractive parlor which has been, both for
summer and winter, the daily sitting-room for the leisure hours of a
husband and wife, and family of children, where a plain straw matting
has done service for seven years. That parlor is in a city, and these
friends are in the habit of receiving visits from people who live upon
velvet and Brussels; but they prefer to spend the money which such
carpets would cost on other modes of embellishment; and this parlor
has often been cited to us as a very attractive room.

And now our friends, having got thus far, are requested to select some
one tint or color which shall be the prevailing one in the furniture
of the room. Shall it be green? Shall it be blue? Shall it be crimson?
To carry on our illustration, we will choose green, and we proceed
with it to create furniture for our room. Let us imagine that on one
side of the fireplace there be, as there is often, a recess about six
feet long and three feet deep. Fill this recess with a rough frame
with four stout legs, one foot high, and upon the top of the frame
have an elastic rack of slats. Make a mattress for this, or, if you
wish to avoid that trouble, you can get a nice mattress for the sum
of two dollars, made of cane-shavings or husks. Cover this with a
green English furniture print. The glazed English comes at about
twenty-five cents a yard, the glazed French at seventy-five cents a
yard, and a nice article of yard-wide French twill (very strong) is
from seventy-five to eighty cents a yard.

With any of these cover your lounge. Make two large, square pillows
of the same substance as the mattress, and set up at the back. If you
happen to have one or two feather pillows that you can spare for the
purpose, shake them down into a square shape and cover them with the
same print, and you will then have for pillows for your lounge--one
at each end, and two at the back, and you will find it answers for all
the purposes of a sofa.

[Illustration: Fig. 38.]

It will be a very pretty thing, now, to cut out of the same material
as your lounge, sets of lambrequins (or, as they are called,
_lamberkins_,) a land of pendent curtain-top, as shown in the
illustration, to put over the windows, which are to be embellished
with white muslin curtains. The cornices to your windows can be simply
strips of wood covered with paper to match the bordering of your room,
and the lambrequins, made of chintz like the lounge, can be trimmed
with fringe or gimp of the same color. The patterns of these can be
varied according to fancy, but simple designs are usually the prettiest.
A tassel at the lowest point improves the appearance.

The curtains can be made of plain white muslin, or some of the many
styles that come for this purpose. If plain muslin is used, you can
ornament them with hems an inch in width, in which insert a strip of
gingham or chambray of the same color as your chintz. This will wash
with the curtains without losing its color, or should it fade, it can
easily be drawn out and replaced.

The influence of white-muslin curtains in giving an air of grace and
elegance to a room is astonishing. White curtains really create a room
out of nothing. No matter how coarse the muslin, so it be white and
hang in graceful folds, there is a charm in it that supplies the want
of multitudes of other things.

Very pretty curtain-muslin can be bought at thirty-seven cents a yard.
It requires six yards for a window.

Let your men-folk knock up for you, out of rough, unplaned boards,
some ottoman frames, as described in Chapter II; stuff the tops with
just the same material as the lounge, and cover them with the self-same
chintz.

[Illustration: Fig. 39.]

Now you have, suppose your selected color to be green, a green lounge
in the corner and two green ottomans; you have white muslin curtains,
with green lambrequins and borders, and your room already looks
furnished. If you have in the house any broken-down arm-chair, reposing
in the oblivion of the garret, draw it out--drive a nail here and
there to hold it firm--stuff and pad, and stitch the padding through
with a long upholsterer's needle, and cover it with the chintz like
your other furniture. Presto--you create an easy-chair.

Thus can broken and disgraced furniture reappear, and, being put into
uniform with the general suit of your room, take a new lease of life.

If you want a centre-table, consider this--that any kind of table,
well concealed beneath the folds of _handsome drapery of a color
corresponding to the general hue of the room,_ will look well.
Instead of going to the cabinet-maker and paying from thirty to forty
dollars upon a little, narrow, cold, marble-topped stand, that gives
just room enough to hold a lamp and a book or two, reflect within
yourself what a centre-table is made for. If you have in your house
a good, broad, generous-topped table, take it, cover it with an ample
cloth of green broadcloth. Such a cover, two and a half yards square,
of fine green broadcloth, figured with black and with a pattern-border
of grape-leaves, has been bought for ten dollars. In a room we wot of,
it covers a cheap pine table, such as you may buy for four or five
dollars any day; but you will be astonished to see how handsome an
object this table makes under its green drapery. Probably you could
make the cover more cheaply by getting the cloth and trimming its edge
with a handsome border, selected for the purpose; but either way, it
will be an economical and useful ornament. We set down our centre-table,
therefore, as consisting mainly of a nice broadcloth cover, matching
our curtains and lounge.

We are sure that any one with "a heart that is humble" may command
such a centre-table and cloth for fifteen dollars or less, and a family
of five or six may all sit and work, or read, or write around it, and
it is capable of entertaining a generous allowance of books and
knick-knacks.

You have now for your parlor the following figures:

Wall-paper and border,.................................... $5.50
Thirty yards matting,..................................... 15.00
Centre-table and cloth,................................... 15.00
Muslin for three windows,.................................. 6.75
Thirty yards green English chintz, at 25 cents,............ 7.50
Six chairs, at $2 each,................................... 12.00

Total,....................................................$61.75
Subtracted from eighty dollars, which we set down as the price of the
cheap, ugly Brussels carpet, we have our whole room papered, carpeted,
curtained, and furnished, and we have nearly twenty dollars remaining
for pictures.

As a little suggestion in regard to the selection, you can got Miss
Oakley's charming little cabinet picture of

"The Little Scrap-Book Maker" for........................ $7 50
Eastman Johnson's "Barefoot Boy,"................. (Prang) 5 00
Newman's "Blue-fringed Gentians,"..................(Prang) 6 00
Bierstadt's "Sunset in the Yo Semite Valley,"......(Prang)12 00

Here are thirty dollars' worth of really admirable pictures of some
of our best American artists, from which you can choose at your leisure.
By sending to any leading picture-dealer, lists of pictures and prices
will be forwarded to you. These chromos, being all varnished, can wait
for frames until you can afford them. Or, what is better, because it
is at once cheaper and a means of educating the ingenuity and the
taste, you can make for yourselves pretty rustic frames in various
modes. Take a very thin board, of the right size and shape, for the
foundation or "mat;" saw out the inner oval or rectangular form to
suit the picture. Nail on the edge a rustic frame made of branches of
hard, seasoned wood, and garnish the corners with some pretty device;
such, for instance, as a cluster of acorns; or, in place of the branches
of trees, fasten on with glue small pine cones, with larger ones for
corner ornaments. Or use the mosses of the wood or ocean shells for
this purpose. It may be more convenient to get the mat or inner moulding
from a framer, or have it made by your carpenter, with a groove behind
to hold a glass. Here are also picture-frames of pretty effect, and
very simply made. The one in Fig. 42 is made of either light or dark
wood, neat, thin, and not very wide, with the ends simply broken, off,
or cut so as to resoluble a rough break. The other is white pine, sawn
into simple form, well smoothed, and marked with a delicate black
tracery, as suggested in Fig. 43. This should also be varnished, then
it will take a rich, yellow tinge, which harmonizes admirably with
chromos, and lightens up engravings to singular advantage. Besides the
American and the higher range of German and English chromos, there are
very many pretty little French chromos, which can be had at prices
from $1 to $5, including black walnut frames.

[Illustration: Fig. 40]
[Illustration: Fig. 41]
[Illustration: Fig. 42]
[Illustration: Fig. 43]

We have been through this calculation merely to show our readers how
much beautiful effect may be produced by a wise disposition of color
and skill in arrangement. If any of our friends should ever carry it
out, they will find that the buff paper, with its dark, narrow border;
the green chintz repeated in the lounge, the ottomans, and lambrequins;
the flowing, white curtains; the broad, generous centre-table, draped
with its ample green cloth, will, when arranged together, produce an
effect of grace and beauty far beyond what any one piece or even half
a dozen pieces of expensive cabinet furniture could. The great, simple
principle of beauty illustrated in this room is _harmony of color_.

You can, in the same way, make a red room by using Turkey red for your
draperies; or a blue room by using blue chintz. Let your chintz be of
a small pattern, and one that is decided in color.

We have given the plan of a room with matting on the floor because
that is absolutely the cheapest cover. The price of thirty yards plain,
good ingrain carpet, at $1.50 per yard, would be forty-five dollars;
the difference between forty-five and fifteen dollars would _furnish_ a
room with pictures such as we have instanced. However, the same
programme can be even better carried out with a green ingrain carpet as
the foundation of the color of the room.

Our friends, who lived seven years upon matting, contrived to give
their parlor in winter an effect of warmth and color by laying down,
in front of the fire, a large square of carpeting, say three breadths,
four yards long. This covered the gathering-place around the fire where
the winter circle generally sits, and gave an appearance of warmth to
the room.

If we add this piece of carpeting to the estimates for our room, we
still leave a margin for a picture, and make the programme equally
adapted to summer and winter.

Besides the chromos, which, when well selected and of the best class,
give the charm of color which belongs to expensive paintings, there
are engravings which finely reproduce much of the real spirit and
beauty of the celebrated pictures of the world. And even this does not
exhaust the resources of economical art; for there are few of the
renowned statues, whether of antiquity or of modern times, that have
not been accurately copied in plaster casts; and a few statuettes,
costing perhaps five or six dollars each, will give a really elegant
finish to your rooms-providing always that they are selected with
discrimination and taste.

The educating influence of these works of art can hardly be over-
estimated. Surrounded by such suggestions of the beautiful, and such
reminders of history and art, children are constantly trained to
correctness of tote and refinement of thought, and stimulated--sometimes
to efforts at artistic imitation, always to the eager and intelligent
inquiry about the scenes, the places, the incidents represented. Just
here, perhaps, we are met by some who grant all that we say on the
subject of decoration by works of art, and who yet impatiently exclaim,
"But I have _no_ money to spare for any thing of this sort. I am
condemned to an absolute bareness, and beauty in my case is not to be
thought of."

Are you sure, my friend? If you live in the country, or can get into
the country, and have your eyes opened and your wits about you, your
house need not be condemned to an absolute bareness. Not so long as
the woods are full of beautiful ferns and mosses, while every swamp
shakes and nods with tremulous grasses, need you feel yourself an
utterly disinherited child of nature, and deprived of its artistic use.

For example: Take an old tin pan condemned to the retired list by
reason of holes in the bottom, get twenty-five cents' worth of green
paint for this and other purposes, and paint it. The holes in the
bottom are a recommendation for its new service. If there are no holes,
you must drill two or three, as drainage is essential. Now put a layer
one inch deep of broken charcoal and potsherds over the bottom, and
then soil, in the following proportions:

Two fourths wood-soil, such as you find in forests, under trees.

One fourth clean sand.

One fourth meadow-soil, taken from under fresh turf. Mix with this
some charcoal dust.

In this soil plant all sorts of ferns, together with some few
swamp-grasses; and around the edge put a border of money-plant or
periwinkle to hang over. This will need to be watered once or twice
a week, and it will grow and thrive all summer long in a corner of
your room. Should you prefer, you can suspend it by wires and make a
hanging-basket.--Ferns and wood-grasses need not have sunshine--they
grow well in shadowy places.