=A Lead Swab=: For use on marble, brick, or stone—especially good for removing smoke and rust stains. Sew a pound of buckshot rather tightly inside stout canvas, tie the canvas in chamois skin, and change the leather as it grows soiled. =Sawdust=: Get a peck of clean non-resinous sawdust, sift, and sun or oven-dry. Keep dry. Use on floors, also for drying and polishing intricate surfaces. Heat for use, but do not scorch. =Pine Needles=: Clean pine needles, if available, should be kept for polishing floors, either hardwood or stained. Heat very slightly and strew them in front of the weighted brush or broom. =Brick Dust=: Beat a soft brick to powder, sift it and keep dry. Use with a chamois dipped in oil, else upon the cut surface of a raw potato. Especially useful for spots on steel or for polishing pewter and copper. =A Wall Mop=: Cut washed cheesecloth into even strips, tack as many as can be firmly fastened to the end of a light rod, and shake free of lint. Clean by dipping up and down in soapsuds or gasolene after use. =Care of Brushes=: All manner of brushes, especially floor and vegetable ones, should be washed clean, scalded by dipping to the back, no deeper, in boiling water, then dried, brush down, in open air, and kept dry. Whisk brooms should hang the same as full-grown ones, likewise hearth brooms. Stand clothes and hair brushes bristles down—this so they may not collect dust. The safest wash for them is gasolene, letting it come only to the back, not over it. Hot borax soapsuds, likewise used, clean without loosening the bristles. =Renovators—Filler for New Wood=: Sift twice together half a pint of powdered corn starch and as much whiting. Stir gradually into a half gallon of raw linseed oil mixed with the same quantity of turpentine. Take care there are no lumps and keep well stirred while putting on. =Oil Stains=: Use the same mixture of oil and turpentine. For cherry put into the gallon an ounce of Indian red, stir well through, test, if too pale add more color. If too deep, add oil and turpentine. Work with the wood grain in putting on any sort of stain. =Mahogany Stain=: Four parts Indian red, three parts burnt sienna. Mix dry and stir evenly through the oil and turpentine. Use half sienna for a dull tone. To make stains dry quickly add a pint more turpentine and half a pint less oil. =Walnut Stain=: Use burnt umber, an ounce to the gallon. A little dry ocher mixed with the umber gives a livelier tone. Red or yellow, or both, can be put in, but must be very well mixed. =Oak Stain=: Raw umber is the basis of oak stain; proportion and mix like the others. Antique oak requires burnt sienna mixed well with a very little lampblack, also to have two parts of turpentine to one of oil. Apply it with a sponge or swab of cotton waste and rub into the grain lines, leaving the spaces between bare.