If the mattress is too good to be thrown away, the following will be found a good method to destroy the vermin in it: dissolve two pounds of alum in one gallon of water; let it remain twenty-four hours until all the alum is dissolved. Then, with a whisk-broom, apply while boiling hot. This is also a good way to rid the walls and ceiling of bugs. Getting on the stepladder, the workman should apply the wash with the whisk-broom, never missing an inch of the entire ceiling and walls, keeping the liquid boiling hot while using. It should be poured in all the cracks of the floor, in the corners, over the doors and over the windows. The operation should be repeated every day for two weeks, after which the woodwork should be painted and the walls papered. A strict watch should be kept on all the help's rooms, and any signs of bugs should be promptly treated with the mixture of corrosive sublimate and alcohol. _Cleanliness a Necessity._ Cleanliness is a prime factor in ridding rooms of vermin. In many of the hotels there is one woman appointed to look after the bugs, and she has no other duty. A good night's sleep is necessary to health and happiness. It can not be found in a room with vermin. The housekeeper should keep up the continual warfare against the standing army of bugs, and never allow the enemy to take possession. Roaches, or water-bugs, are easily exterminated. Hellebore sprinkled on the floor will soon kill them off. It is poison. They eat it at night and are killed. Some people object to having poison around. In that case, powdered borax will prove an expedient eradicator. A good way to keep rats from a room is to saturate a rag with cayenne pepper and stuff it in the hole; no rat or mouse will touch the rag, not if it would open a communication with a depot of eatables. _A Nauseating Subject._ Of all the obnoxious being that get into a hotel, the one whose feet smell to the heavens is the worst. Every housekeeper in America--heaven bless them--if she has a normal and simple mind as fits her calling, finds smelling feet an intolerable nuisance. Health requires at least one bath a day for the feet, and when they perspire freely they should be bathed twice a day. What must be said of the maid who, on entering a room, compels you to leave it on account of the sickening odor from her feet. In a case like this, the housekeeper must "take the bull by the horns," tell the maid that "her feet smell" and that "she must keep herself cleaner." The maid's feelings are not to be spared in the performance of this important duty. After washing the feet carefully twice a day for a week a cure will be effected. Clean hosiery should be put on every day. A very good remedy for offensive feet is a few drops of muriatic acid in the water when bathing the feet before retiring to bed. THE SUPERIORITY OF VACUUM CLEANING.