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.