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Page 19
If matting is used, wipe it with borax-water, using a cloth wet enough to
dampen but _not_ wet.
Window-glass thoroughly washed can be dried and polished with old
newspapers; or whiting can be used, and rubbed off with a woolen cloth.
Hard-wood furniture, black walnut, or other varieties, requires oiling
lightly with boiled linseed oil, and rubbing dry with a woolen cloth; and
varnished furniture, mahogany or rosewood, if kept carefully dusted,
requires only an occasional rubbing with chamois-skin or thick flannel to
retain its polish perfectly. Soap should never be used on varnish of any
sort.
Ingrain and other carpets, after shaking, are brightened in color by
sprinkling a pound or two of salt over the surface, and sweeping
carefully; and it is also useful to occasionally wipe off a carpet with
borax-water, using a thick flannel, and taking care not to wet, but only
dampen the carpet. Mirrors can be cleaned with whiting. Never scrub
oil-pictures: simply wipe with a damp cloth, and, if picture-cord is used,
wipe it off to secure against moths.
It is impossible to cover the whole ground of cleaning in this chapter.
Experience is the best teacher. Only remember that a household earthquake
is not necessary, and that the whole work can be done so gradually,
quietly, and systematically, that only the workers need know much about
it. The sense of purity transfused through the air and breathing from
every nook and corner should be the only indication that upheaval has
existed. The best work is always in silence.
CHAPTER VII.
THE BODY AND ITS COMPOSITION.
"The lamp of life" is a very old metaphor for the mysterious principle
vitalizing nerve and muscle; but no comparison could be so apt. The
full-grown adult takes in each day, through lungs and mouth, about eight
and a half pounds of dry food, water, and the air necessary for breathing
purposes. Through the pores of the skin, the lungs, kidneys, and lower
intestines, there is a corresponding waste; and both supply and waste
amount in a year to one and a half tons, or three thousand pounds.
The steadiness and clear shining of the flame of a lamp depend upon
quality, as well as amount of the oil supplied, and, too, the texture of
the wick; and so all human life and work are equally made or marred by the
food which sustains life, as well as the nature of the constitution
receiving that food.
Before the nature and quality of food can be considered, we must know the
constituents of the body to be fed, and something of the process through
which digestion and nutrition are accomplished.
I shall take for granted that you have a fairly plain idea of the stomach
and its dependences. Physiologies can always be had, and for minute
details they must be referred to. Bear in mind one or two main points:
that all food passes from the mouth to the stomach, an irregularly-shaped
pouch or bag with an opening into the duodenum, and from thence into the
larger intestine. From the mouth to the end of this intestine, the whole
may be called the alimentary canal; a tube of varying size and some
thirty-six feet in length. The mouth must be considered part of it, as it
is in the mouth that digestion actually begins; all starchy foods
depending upon the action of the saliva for genuine digestion, saliva
having some strange power by which starch is converted into sugar.
Swallowed whole, or placed directly in the stomach, such food passes
through the body unchanged. Each division of the alimentary canal has its
own distinct digestive juice, and I give them in the order in which they
occur.
First, The saliva; secreted from the glands of the mouth:--alkaline,
glairy, adhesive.
Second, The gastric juice; secreted in the inner or third lining of the
stomach,--an acid, and powerful enough to dissolve all the fiber and
albumen of flesh food.
Third, The pancreatic juice; secreted by the pancreas, which you know in
animals as sweetbreads. This juice has a peculiar influence upon fats,
which remain unchanged by saliva and gastric juice; and not until
dissolved by pancreatic juice, and made into what chemists call an
_emulsion_, can they be absorbed into the system.
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