The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1896-06-07
FOB WOMEN'S READING
A Writer Laments the Vanishing Of
the Expressive Word "Beaux"-
Importance of Good Food.

The conscientious woman, who stays at
home all summer in town with her husband,
was telling how she managed to fight the
heat. keep her temper and good health and
resist the seductlons of sea breezes and
mountain air, says a writer in the Phila-
delphia Inquirer.
1T all depends upon taking the proper
precauticns.' she began, dropping straws
back into her empty soda water glass.
When all other women are packing UP their
houses, preparatory to the long vacation,
1 begin 10 strip mine, too. All the carpets,
rugs and curtains are cleaned and salted
Town in camDhor. Every useless bit OF
bric-a-brac is slowed away in the garnet,
the super1uous rooms, pariorg and guest
chamber are shut up for six months and all
the tufted furniture is put into castings and
out of sight. From the first OF June to the
first Of October no broom is ever put to a
floor, but as often as three times a week,
with a mop wrulg out in water, the maid
goes over the hard wood floors In the living
rooms, the tessellated pavements in the
halls, rubs down the woodwork and furniture
with a moist piece. of cheese cloth, and thus
one of the horrors of heat, the dust, is avoid
ed.
Moreover, this process Is carried out in
the morning early, when fresh air is allowed
to sweep through open doors and windows.
After the cleaning the house is Immediately
closed and from this early bath the rooms
remain cool and sweet-smelling the rest Of
the day. Now, if I can manage it, 1 4 keep a
vase full of fresh flowers. or a pot of them,
In every apartment throughout the summer.
Flowers or plants are wonderful absorbants
OF any ugly, stuffy smells that are so un-
pleasantly prevalent In town during the hot
weather, they overcome all doors of cooking
and are infinitely cheerful objects in a room
barren Of all It's ordinary ornamentation.
The simplest field blossoms or cheap plants
but another source of great comfort in the
dog days is cool air from the cellar.
early In the spring l give my cellar q
thorough cleaning, have a man dust out the
hues and then. when the first hot days come,
l order the cellar door opened and the reg
isters In each room. Keep the venti,ators at
is surprising the strong current of clean.
cold air that passes daily through the house.
A nice: clean, dry, dark cellar answers as a
sort of cod storage for refrigerating every
room and helps greatly in making life en-
durable.
In the very first of my summers in the
city. Went on the woman, who now had d
little coterie Of feminine listeners about her
restaurant table, Il learned that the kitchen
and laundry fires were the chief causes Of
heating the house inside, so / persuaded
the washerwoman to do our clothes at home
and / bought the cook a gas stove. Since
those first years we have had electricity in
Produced in the house, and that, you know,
Is the coolest light one can use. Along with
the electric light we have turned electricity
into the kitchen, and our meals are cooked
at less waste Of heat THAI ever, but the
triumph Of all my schemes TO keep cool
was an arrangement l prepared for the din
ner table. Right in the midst Of the board
l had paced every evening a big glass bowl.
holding a scent block of ice. and then with
IN two inches of Ii / suspended from my
chandelier an ordinary fly fan, one of these
which, when wound up whirls back and
forth. Wen. twice during the meal the
maid would wind up the fan that, as the
cold air rose off the block of ice, whisked
1t round the table.
Since the hot weather for 1896 set in I've
seen excellent devices by which upon the
touch OF a button a little electric fan at the
mead Of the bed could be set whiriing. This
does enectually conquer the heat and stag
ger the mosquitoes, IL one can grow accus-
toned TO the rush OF air, but the cold water
one woman, stricken down with fever,
whose family saved her by some schemes
that are worth initiating by those who can
afford IL In hot weather. When she fel, III
at her town house the thermometer was
doing sttnts OF n~inety-nlne and a hundred
degrees in the shade, so the family lifted
her off the hair mattress and covered the
AT intervals of an hour or two the rubber
mattress was freshly filled by pumping in
water at one end while it ran out of the
other. AT the back Of her bed they sat an
electric fan, working over a big block of
ice, and no matter how the mercury acted
outside, within that sick room the tempera-
ture- was kept perfectly COOL"