To soften water with borax, use one tablespoonful to each gallon of water. A tablespoonful of ammonia and one tablespoonful of turpentine to each washing will keep clothes white. Hard water may be softened with potash or sal soda, which is much cheaper than borax and ammonia, but potash and sal soda are both corrosive and very injurious to the linen. Great care must be used in softening water with these alkalines. If they are not thoroughly dissolved before using in the washer, little particles are apt to escape the solvent action of the water and stick to the linen and form brown spots which soon become holes. _Good Soap a Necessity._ Soap is the next cleaning agent to be considered. You can not have pretty, white linen without good soap. A good soft soap for use in hotel laundries can be made from the refuse fat from the kitchen. This soap will effect the cleaning of the hotel bed and table-linen, but for bundle-washing, flannels, and prints, a milder soap is generally used. A very good soap for washing flannels and prints may be made from the pieces of soap that are collected from the rooms. How linen is laundered and to be able to give a scientific reason for each step are the very first things a housekeeper should learn. No housekeeper is worthy of the title if she is unskilled in laundry tactics. Yet how few housekeepers there are that could give even a recipe for making bleach, to say nothing of the most effective way to use it so as to cause the least injury to the fabric? Few housekeepers know little or anything of the benefits of the scientific researches that have been made to render laundering easy. The linen must be carefully sorted and counted in the linen-room by the linen-woman. In hotels where the houseman gathers the linen from the different floors and carries it direct to the laundry, the laundryman has been known to dump it in the washer without sorting it. This is the source of many a lost pillow, blanket, nightshirt, and even pocketbooks and jewelry. Guests often put their valuables under the pillow or in the pillowslip and forget them. These valuables sometimes escape the chambermaid's eyes in her haste to strip the beds. Sometimes a new waiter in the dining-room will use a napkin to wipe his tray; these greatly soiled napkins should be rinsed out before they are put in the washer. _Why the Hotel Laundry Work is Discolored._ Is it any wonder that the sheets and table-linen soon get that brown color? All the soft water in the kingdom will not bring about the desired results if the linen is not carefully sorted. The napkins should be put in one pile, those that are badly soiled with mustard or gravy in another pile, and the table-cloths in another. Napkins and table-cloths that are stained with tea, coffee, chocolate, or fruit, should be laid aside and boiling water should be poured through the stains before they come in contact with soap, as the soap will help to set the stains permanently.