Roaches, or water-bugs, are easily exterminated. Hellebore sprinkled on the floor will soon kill them off. It is poison. They eat it at night and are killed. Some people object to having poison around. In that case, powdered borax will prove an expedient eradicator.
A good way to keep rats from a room is to saturate a rag with cayenne pepper and stuff it in the hole; no rat or mouse will touch the rag, not if it would open a communication with a depot of eatables.
Of all the obnoxious being that get into a hotel, the one whose feet smell to the heavens is the worst. Every housekeeper in America—heaven bless them—if she has a normal and simple mind as fits her calling, finds smelling feet an intolerable nuisance.
Health requires at least one bath a day for the feet, and when they perspire freely they should be bathed twice a day. What must be said of the maid who, on entering a room, compels you to leave it on account of the sickening odor from her feet. In a case like this, the housekeeper must "take the bull by the horns," tell the maid that "her feet smell" and that "she must keep herself cleaner." The maid's feelings are not to be spared in the performance of this important duty. After washing the feet carefully twice a day for a week a cure will be effected. Clean hosiery should be put on every day. A very good remedy for offensive feet is a few drops of muriatic acid in the water when bathing the feet before retiring to bed.
The Superiority of Vacuum Cleaning.
This is an age of surprises and scientific researches. The up-to-date vacuum-cleaning machine is a huge debt to an ancient past. It is a big improvement over the methods employed in days gone by. As a preventive for moths, it has no equal. In hotels where this labor-saving device has not been installed, carpets must be carried to the roof to be cleaned, or sent to the regular carpet-cleaners, and soon converted into ravelings. Carpets are very expensive, and, if you want your money's worth from them, you must preserve them from moths. In order to do this, they must be either vacuum-cleaned or taken to the roof every six months and given a beating. After the moths get a start in a carpet it is surprising to learn what vast inroads toward destruction they can make in a few weeks. Moving the furniture and thoroughly sweeping and brushing the edges with turpentine are good preventives. But nothing will so effectually destroy them as does the vacuum-cleaning process.
In order to secure detailed information regarding the workings of the vacuum-cleaning system for hotels, I wrote to a gentleman in Milwaukee, who is probably the best informed man on that subject in the country. Besides being in the vacuum-cleaning business, he is a hotel man himself and therefore knows how to meet the needs of the hotel housekeeper. I quote a part of his reply: