ABSTRACT
Catherine Esther Beecher was an American educator known for her encouragement of female education and home-making. This chapter ‘On the Care of Parlours’ was one of a number of detailed chapters devoted to the caring and cleaning of the various rooms of a house. In selecting the furniture of parlors, some reference should be had to correspondence of shades and colors. Cheap footstools, made of a square plank, covered with tow-cloth, stuffed, and then covered with carpeting, with worsted handles, look very well. Stone hearths should be rubbed with a paste of powdered stone, and then brushed with a stiff brush. Kitchen-hearths, of stone, are improved by rubbing in lamp-oil. Stains can be removed from marble, by oxalic acid and water, or oil of vitriol and water, left on fifteen minutes, and then rubbed dry.
