CLEAN OUT YOUR CELLARS.I speakto those who have cellars. If not already done, thoroughly purge this subterranean story of your house. Every decayed onion, cabbage stump, potato vine or tuber, turnip, parsnip, carrot, and all the dirt they have made, all straw and rubbish, rake them up and out with them. The cellar is no place for them at any time of year. If you still retain a few potatoes for table use, let them be picked over and all decayed ones removed. One of the best housewives of our acquaintance, greeted us not long since, with an invitation to come and see her cellar: “I have swept down every cobweb, whitewashed the walls, swept up the floor, and sowed it with salt.” Decayed vegetable matter is a fertile cause of disease, and there is enough of it out of doors, in this country, without heaping it up in the cellar for the special purpose, it would almost seem, of breeding fevers. Whitewash the walls, for lime purifies as well as beautifies. Rake down the cobwebs, they are the infallible marks of aslattern. Every spider that is allowed to peer out of his corner in a house, up-stairs or down, undisturbed, points his long black leg in thanksgiving at the housewife, “Hurra for folks that are not too particular.” Oldlegends represent witches as addicted to riding brooms. I wish that many women would get bewitched enough to do this, something more than they do. Down cellar, then, with your broom. Look now; the window is perfectly covered; there is a great sprawling gaunt spider in the corner and half a dozen empty bugs hung up like scalps to commemorate his triumphs; next to him is a great over-swollen potbellied fellow—for all the world he looks like a huge glutton; then there is a sharp, nimble, enterprising spider, below him, who has just opened an office and is keen for business, preparing to inherit, like many other fellows, his neighbor’s custom, who, having got rich fraudulently, will soon burst; there, too, are several pale and shadowy spiders, who look as if the cobwebs had kept them from the light until they had become quite sallow and emaciated; then there are several little round, shining-black, pestilent fellows, whose legs are so long in proportion to their bodies, that they make one think of a little potato with yard-long sprouts all over it. I say nothing of crab-spiders on the window-sill, who, like metaphysicians, run backward just as easy as forwards. Just look, too, my dear madam, at the various patterns of their webs. Here is one from point to point resembling a sheet-like shelf of dusty cotton, and running like a tunnel, into a knot hole, where stands the venomous old fellow waiting for flies, like a usurer waiting for customers. Another corner is filled up with a web like a skein of tangled silk; then there is a beautiful wheel, worked more beautifully than any lace-work, while there are a multitude of base and lazy little spiders who, like many of their betters, live on other folk’s webs. Well, we have talked long enough; dash your brush into that spider-village, give it a dextrous twirl, and with the whole population on the end of it, run to the door and crush them! So much for spiders.As to salt; the only advantage of salt in a cellar, that occurs to us, is its effect in destroying snails, bugs, and thatfungus vegetation called mold. It will do this. But it attracts moisture from the atmosphere and renders a cellar damp. If your cellar is very dry and sandy, you may use salt without detriment. But if too damp it will make the matter worse.
I speakto those who have cellars. If not already done, thoroughly purge this subterranean story of your house. Every decayed onion, cabbage stump, potato vine or tuber, turnip, parsnip, carrot, and all the dirt they have made, all straw and rubbish, rake them up and out with them. The cellar is no place for them at any time of year. If you still retain a few potatoes for table use, let them be picked over and all decayed ones removed. One of the best housewives of our acquaintance, greeted us not long since, with an invitation to come and see her cellar: “I have swept down every cobweb, whitewashed the walls, swept up the floor, and sowed it with salt.” Decayed vegetable matter is a fertile cause of disease, and there is enough of it out of doors, in this country, without heaping it up in the cellar for the special purpose, it would almost seem, of breeding fevers. Whitewash the walls, for lime purifies as well as beautifies. Rake down the cobwebs, they are the infallible marks of aslattern. Every spider that is allowed to peer out of his corner in a house, up-stairs or down, undisturbed, points his long black leg in thanksgiving at the housewife, “Hurra for folks that are not too particular.” Oldlegends represent witches as addicted to riding brooms. I wish that many women would get bewitched enough to do this, something more than they do. Down cellar, then, with your broom. Look now; the window is perfectly covered; there is a great sprawling gaunt spider in the corner and half a dozen empty bugs hung up like scalps to commemorate his triumphs; next to him is a great over-swollen potbellied fellow—for all the world he looks like a huge glutton; then there is a sharp, nimble, enterprising spider, below him, who has just opened an office and is keen for business, preparing to inherit, like many other fellows, his neighbor’s custom, who, having got rich fraudulently, will soon burst; there, too, are several pale and shadowy spiders, who look as if the cobwebs had kept them from the light until they had become quite sallow and emaciated; then there are several little round, shining-black, pestilent fellows, whose legs are so long in proportion to their bodies, that they make one think of a little potato with yard-long sprouts all over it. I say nothing of crab-spiders on the window-sill, who, like metaphysicians, run backward just as easy as forwards. Just look, too, my dear madam, at the various patterns of their webs. Here is one from point to point resembling a sheet-like shelf of dusty cotton, and running like a tunnel, into a knot hole, where stands the venomous old fellow waiting for flies, like a usurer waiting for customers. Another corner is filled up with a web like a skein of tangled silk; then there is a beautiful wheel, worked more beautifully than any lace-work, while there are a multitude of base and lazy little spiders who, like many of their betters, live on other folk’s webs. Well, we have talked long enough; dash your brush into that spider-village, give it a dextrous twirl, and with the whole population on the end of it, run to the door and crush them! So much for spiders.
As to salt; the only advantage of salt in a cellar, that occurs to us, is its effect in destroying snails, bugs, and thatfungus vegetation called mold. It will do this. But it attracts moisture from the atmosphere and renders a cellar damp. If your cellar is very dry and sandy, you may use salt without detriment. But if too damp it will make the matter worse.