The age-herald., 1897-11-14
A COSBY SEAT AT SMALL EXPENSE.
Simple Directions For Beautibng the House.
 hold by Ones Own labors.

From the New York Sun.
 The patient husband waited until his
 wife told him all about it, and then sat
 down and wrote these impressions:
 "A most delightful, unique, and dnex-
 pensive divan can be readily made by
 following the directions and pattern giv-
 en in almost any household magazins.
 First get your pa Jtern, and then ask your
 grocer to hand over an empty barrel. For
 this there should be no>eha1ge but that
 depends somewhat upon your financial
 standing with him. Next engage a carpenter who never had a rational idea
 and desires to make few dollars. He
 is to saw and otherwise maltreat that
 barrel in just the manner shown by the
 nice dotted lines on your pattern. It is ilnmaterial what his thoughts are upon the subject.
 When the barrel corrS spends in shape
 with the pattern the next thing is to
 hide it from the cruel gaze of the world
 until it is decorated. Now buy 25 cents
 worth of excelsior, to be used as a filling. Every chair that pretendS to be
 comfortable must have some sort of
 filling or it is a barefaced swindle. Now
 tuck your excelsior in anywhere be- 'tws en the covering and the barrel or
 what is left of 1t, Never mind about
 placing it in smoothly; it will always
 be lumpy anyway, no matter how you
 fix it. Besides you need never sit on 1t
 yourself It is considered good fsam in the very best circles to resign the seat
 of honor to your guests, no matter who they are. For the covering obtain few
 yards of cretonl,e at 15 c:nts yard and
 some neat binding stuff to match.
 Now is the time to jam the excelsior
 in wherever 1t will go and tack your
 binding neatly all round with any tacks
 you may have in the house. Do not buy
 the tacks Some people err just at thlS
 juncture. If you purpose to buy every
 thing, you might as well drop the whole thing where it is, because you are losing sight of the fact that the object is to keep down the cost as much as possi- ble. Every economical household has a fine collection of pointless and other wise crippled Jacks. Thsy will be found in an old half-cracked saucer carefully | laid away on a top shelf somewhere, l and they will do every bit as well as new ones. Should you be fastidfous, however, and wish to lend some tone or | character to your handdwork, you may l indulge in the extravaganza of few cents worth of brass-heiadsd tacks; but | I again warn you about increasing the | expense, and that you cannot then carry | out your original intention of driving the | tacks home with fiat iron.
 An ordinary tack will st nd any abuse, | but the brass resents any unne cessary | aggressivenless. In order to allow brass-headed tack to retain it's pristine beauty and decorative effect it must be | driven with a hammer only and some | Judgment Cynfcs may observe that | this means a man, but that is silly di- vergence from the present subject and l leads ito trouble. As we said, if you attempt to force it in with f1at-lron you can only hit the head once in while and the rest of the hour will De spent in making entirely unnecessary dents in the head. These really serve no good purpose, but merely give the head somewhat of an irregular re- pousse effect, which while very. desira, ble on a brass coal hod, does not appeal to our artistic eye when executed on such a limited area When all through, YOU will have a nice, cosey ana mex Iensiye seat that has well repaid you ana the carpenter. Bearing in mind that laie barrel was given you, the beauufui ai- van will have cost you only a mere trine more than you could buy comfosta pIe one for; but you must net forget tha,I YOU had the pleasure of making 1t all | voursslf. and nothing will remain ol | that weil-spent day but pleasant remn- | iscences as soon as ycur new thumo [ l nail grows. When showing the seat l flo admiring friends, please iemem be1 | that details are boring and forget the l oarrenter"