A skirt-board should also be kept in every house to iron skirts and dresses. This must be six feet long, eighteen inches wide at the bottom, one third narrower at the top, and one and a half inches thick. The top should be rounded. Cover one side with two or three thicknesses of an old blanket, as directed for the soft side of the bosom-board; tack on smoothly; cover the other side with coarse cotton, and nail over on to the edge of the board, so as to cover the raw edges of the blanket. Have cotton cases also made for the skirt-boards, to be changed and washed with each week’s use. Covers for the holders will also pay for the trouble of making them, as they insure, as far as possible, against smut on the clothes when ironing. But to make this _pay_, the housekeeper must be put to the slight inconvenience of seeing herself that these covers are changed, and follow up this care by promptly demanding them, when each fresh washing comes up, to be put away with the other clean things. The ironing-table should be covered with a thick blanket, doubled, and that with a cotton sheet. A coarse, thick, gray or white blanket, like an “army blanket,” may be bought quite cheap; they come on purpose for “ironing-blankets,” and answer just as well as a better quality. _Flat-irons_ should be carefully kept from dampness, which soon rusts them. Leave them standing on the end; they soon spoil if set on the face. If they become rusty, scour with emery till quite smooth, or, if past your skill, send to an emery factory and have them ground smooth. Keep a piece of yellow bees-wax, wrapped in a cloth in the drawer of your ironing-table, to rub the irons on in case they get coated with starch. Have a clean cloth at hand to wipe them on before using, each time you take a fresh one from the stove. Having our ironing-table, bosom-board, and other implements now all ready, we will attend to the ironing. A perfectly clean sheet must be spread over the other ironing-sheet before commencing to iron the starched clothes. In ironing a shirt, begin with the binding at the neck; then fold the back in the middle and iron; then iron the sleeves, and wristbands, if there are wristbands on the shirt; fold the sleeve in neat plaits and press them hard after ironing; then iron the plain part of the shirt and the collar, if on the shirt, ironing the bosom last. Iron the bosom and collar on the bosom-board; rub the bosom over lightly with a damp cloth, and iron hard and quickly with a polishing-iron. If you have none, you should get one if possible. They are found at all hardware stores. They are rounded instead of being flat, like other irons, without an edge, and very smooth, so that no mark of the iron is left on the article ironed. This iron is very convenient to use for caps, vests, and many small things.