_Opening a House._--Just before a house is to be opened, light and water should be turned on, all the contrivances connected with them examined and needed repairs made. It is better that this part of the opening should be done a day or two before any one returns to the house to live. Dust is the first thing to look after when the house is opened. Remove as much of it as possible before anything is uncovered. Then remove covers and put things in their places, beginning with those most necessary for living. After that rearrange and renew those which require it as soon as the time and needed assistance for doing so can be obtained. Housecleaning of any sort can hardly fail to be a time of turmoil and weariness for the housekeeper. Her help is to remember that if the family have good food and comfortable beds and are not scolded or quarrelled with, they are well enough off to wait several days or even weeks for curtains, clean windows and slippery floors. XV EMERGENCIES THIS does not pretend to be a chapter, though it is called so for convenience. It is merely a list of miscellaneous suggestions drawn from experience, which may be useful to others. It is in the very nature of emergencies that they cannot be forseen or prepared for. They are things like those encountered by the knight-errant as he rode through the unknown forest--things which are never twice the same and which must be met and dealt with, without forethought or consideration. And they are most successfully dealt with in an adventurous spirit, as things to call out one's courage and address, and put them to the proof. I know that is a difficult spirit to attain. Mistakes and failures and the remarks which families feel themselves at liberty to make about such things are disheartening and painful. "The funny side" is the best defense always against one's own distress and the thoughtlessness of other people. I have found that a person who sees the funny side of a calamity or of a difficulty gives more help in housekeeping than any one else. Happy the home which contains such a person, thrice happy one in which that person is its mistress. A woman who is inclined to take household failures and accidents too seriously may comfort herself with the thought that what she fails to do to-day, she will probably succeed in to-morrow; and also with the reflection that an occasional uncomfortable accident is good for her family. A few spoonfuls of scorched soup eaten for courtesy's sake is valuable food. Likewise, household accidents can be used to plant in the family mind that calamities are to be shared by all. It is not merely a reproach to the housekeeper that the _family_ maid does not set the table correctly, or that the _family_ potatoes are burned. Probably if a husband remarks, "Your gravy is cold," it is just as well for his wife to reply delightedly, "No colder than _your_ beans." Not awfully clever perhaps, but better than hurt feelings. 1. COOKING EMERGENCIES