n the floor, can easily be built, for
preserves must have darkness as well as coolness; otherwise they are
apt to turn dark and to ferment. The shelves of the fruit closet must
be examined frequently for traces of that stickiness which tells that
some bottle of fruit is "working" and leaking. Pickles keep better in
crocks on the cellar bottom.

Laundry tubs and scrub pails are usually kept, bottom up, in the
cellar. All articles stored there should be well wrapped in strong
paper and securely tied, and it will be found a great convenience,
especially at cleaning time, to hang many things from the ceiling
beams. The cellar should be swept and put to rights every two weeks,
cobwebs brushed down, and all corners well looked after. Here, as
nowhere else, is the personal supervision of the housewife essential.

THE ATTIC

It is with a lump in our throats and an ache in our hearts that we turn
our thoughts wistfully backward to that place of hallowed memories,
which is itself becoming simply a memory--the attic! What happy hours
we spent there, rummaging among its treasures, soothed by its twilight
quiet, and a little awed by the ghosts of the past which seemed to
hover about each old chest and horsehair trunk and gayly flowered
carpet bag; each andiron and foot warmer and spinning wheel and warming
pan! Roof and floor of wide, rough boards, stained by age and leaks;
tiny, cobweb-curtained windows; everything dusty, dim, mysterious!
Where is it now? Gone--pushed aside by the march of civilization;
supplanted by the modern lathed and plastered attic, with its smoothly
laid floor, which harbors neither mice nor memories. And though we
sigh as we say so, the attic of to-day _is_ a better kept, more
compact, more hygienic affair than its ancestor; for we have grown to
realize that sentiment must sometimes be sacrificed to sense. Whatever
comes we must have hygiene, even at the expense of the little spirit
germ which seems sometimes to develop best in the "dim religious
light." For we cannot forget Victor Hugo and Balzac and Tom Moore in
their attics.

ORDER AND CARE OF ATTIC

Frequently so much of the attic space is finished off for bed and other
rooms that what remains is somewhat limited, and cannot be turned into
a catch-all for the may-be-usefuls. Indeed, only such things as have
true worth should go into it, whatever its size, these to be carefully
stowed away, like things together--boxes, furniture