soap, and oiled with a good furniture-polish. It should then be set in the hall. The dresser drawers should be washed and the marble cleaned with sapolio; the mirrors should be polished, the windows washed, and the shutters dusted. The crockery should be cleaned and put in the hall. The bed should be covered with a dust-cover. The cobwebs should be swept down with a long-handled broom. The lace curtains should be shaken, and either taken down or pinned up. The closet should be swept out. The toilet-bowl should be scrubbed inside and out with the toilet-brush, and a disinfectant powder put in. The stationary wash-bowl should be scrubbed with sapolio, and the faucets polished, not forgetting the chain. The bathtub should also be scrubbed with sapolio, and the floor washed.

The door should now be closed and the sweeping begun. A very good plan is to scatter wet paper over the floor to keep the dust down. The corners should be dug out and the dirt swept to the center of the room and taken up in the dust-pan. If the carpet is old, it should be sponged with warm water and soap, to which a little ammonia has been added. The carpet will look like new after this process. After the dust is well settled, all the wood work in the room should be washed; the bed and dresser should be washed and oiled, and all the furniture should be symmetrically arranged, and the windows closed on account of storms.

One chambermaid can successfully look after eighteen or twenty rooms a day. Not all of the rooms are occupied every night. The maid should take advantage of the dull days to clean her rooms thoroughly; she should clean one room every day.

The Importance of Good Beds.

Competition is great, and success will come to the best and cleanest hotel. The traveler loves to slip into a bed with perfectly laundered sheets that do not look as if the maids had sprinkled, folded, and pressed them between the mattress, as chambermaids ordinarily do in hotels where there is a scant supply of linen.

Sometimes the chambermaid will ask the laundryman for a pair of sheets to make up a sample-room, as the guest wants to receive a customer. The laundryman replies: "Well, just as soon as the machinery starts again, you may have them." There has been a breakdown; the belt is off; or something has gone wrong, and they have sent for the engineer to fix it. Then the housekeeper must go to some unoccupied room and strip the bed and use the linen for making up the bed in the sample-room, while the guest walks the floor and frets over the delay. Much time is saved if the hotel is supplied with plenty of linen.

Sheets that cover only two-thirds of the mattress do not add to the cheerfulness and comfort of the guests. Many well grounded complaints are entered about this. Special laws have been enacted in some states, within the last year, regarding the length of sheets.

Occasionally a guest finds it expedient to make his bed over, if he would have any comfort. The maid has put the double fold of the blanket to the top; it is a warm night, yet he fears to throw the blanket off—he might take cold. So he concludes to make his own bed, putting the single fold to the top, that he may throw some of it back.

How a Bed is Made.

Good bed-making is the one trait par excellence in all good chambermaid work. To make a bed artistically is one important feature, and to make it so that the guest may rest comfortably is another, and, finally, just how is the best way to make a bed is a question worthy of consideration.

In our big country of America, the traveler from Maine to California sees many styles of bed-making. In New Orleans is seen the picturesque canopy of pure white mosquito-netting tucked in neatly all around. In Kansas City is seen the snowy spreads plaited half way to the foot with numerous little folds. In New York is seen the pure linen hemstitched sheets, turned back with a single fold.

To begin to make a bed, first, the mattress should be turned. The bottom sheet should then be tucked in carefully by raising the mattress with one hand and smoothing the sheet down with the other. The large hems should always be at the head, in order that no one may be compelled to lay his face where some one's feet have been. After the bottom sheet has been tucked in at the head, it should be tightly drawn and tucked in at the foot in the same way. Sheets should be long enough to tuck in one foot at the head and one at the bottom. If it is a brass bed, the sheets should be left to hang down.

After the bottom sheet is on perfectly, it is easy to make a pretty bed, and one in which the guest may rest well. The top sheet should be put on, and tucked in at the foot only. The blanket should be put on with the single fold at the head. If the guest should get too warm, he can throw half of the blanket to the foot and yet have sufficient covering. After the spread is put on, a single fold as large as your hand should be made, then another fold one foot in width should complete the folding, and the spread should be neatly tucked in. The pillows should now be smoothed evenly and placed up aright, and the bed is made.

How to Clean Walls.

To clean a painted canvas wall does not require so much skill as patience.

A painted canvas wall is very easily cleaned. Many housekeepers have them washed with ivory soap and water, and obtain good results. Others add a little ammonia to the water, and still others use the powdered pumice.

The cost of painted walls are great, and it is a great saving to any proprietor, if the housekeeper can successfully clean a painted wall without calling the decorators.

Perhaps the most practical and most economical way to do the work and obtain the best results is to wash the wall with water, in which has been dissolved a cake of sapolio.

To proceed to clean the parlor walls: first, take out all the bric-a-brac and tapestry and furniture; then take up the carpet. Have the carpenter erect a scaffolding for the houseman to stand on. Have two pails of hot water, and in one let a cake of sapolio dissolve. Keep the other pail of water for rinsing. Have two large sponges, one for cleaning and the other for rinsing. Souse the cleaning-sponge in the pail in which the sapolio has been dissolved, then squeeze the water out of the sponge. Then begin on the ceiling or in one corner, cleaning only a small square at a time. After cleaning, rinse with the sponge from the clean pail, not making the sponge too dry. Do not wipe the wall with a cloth, but leave moist, after which have ready a pail of starch, and with an ordinary paint or white-wash-brush, starch the square that you have cleaned, before it is thoroughly dry. The starching-process is very necessary. It will leave a gloss on the paint, and also preserves it the next time it is washed; for, in this case, it will be the starch that will be washed off instead of the paint. To make the starch take ordinary laundry starch and dissolve one cupful in one pint of cold water. Into this pour boiling water until it is as thick as cream and let boil, stirring constantly.

The following is an excellent preparation for cleaning wall-paper, and perhaps it might serve as well to clean walls hung with burlap: