TO REMOVE FRECKLES.—Take of Venice soap an ounce, dissolve it in half an ounce of lemon-juice, to which add of oil of bitter almonds and deliquated oil of tartar, each a quarter of an ounce. Let the mixture be placed in the sun till it acquires the consistence of ointment. When in this state, add three drops of the oil of rhodium, and keep it for use. Apply it in the following manner: Wash the face at night with elder-flower water, then anoint it with the above unction. In the morning, cleanse the skin from its oily adhesion by washing it copiously in rose-water.
TO PREVENT HAIR FROM FALLING OUT.—Make a strong decoction of white-oak bark in water, and use it freely. Make but little at a time, and have it fresh at least once a fortnight.
Centre-Table Gossip.
MAY FIRST
is signalized, in the annals of New York housekeepers, as a time of change.
Boarders go to housekeeping; old housekeepers, tired of the wear and tear of servants and marketing, give up their comfortable homes for the confinement of a parlor and bed-room in some fashionable hotel or lodging house. Or it may be that only a removal is contemplated, and Mr. Leeds is called in to superintend the sale of furniture that has got behind the times, like the street or square in which it has been used, and carpets much too small for the enlarged views of the wife of the successful merchant. Months before, the young married people have been going from house to house, peering into closets and dumb waiters, measuring floors with an accurate eye, or halls by sober, long-reaching strides, and taking the altitude of windows for shade or curtain. They stop at Berrian's, on their way to business, and pause before Haughwout's huge windows of china and glass. Peterson & Humphrey's carpets are more attractive than the prints at Goupil's or the landscapes at Stevens's. They notice the price of flour in the morning paper, and consult about the wet linen goods "from the Humboldt"—a cargo that would seem as inexhaustible as the furniture of the Mayflower. By and by, the mornings are passed at auctions, and "bargains" begin to crowd their rooms, as heterogeneous in manufacture as in use. All at once, they find their purchase brought to a stand-still by lack of funds, and the house is not half furnished. Ah, they had forgotten to make a calculation beforehand, and purchase actual articles of necessity before matters of luxury!
Now they go on as they should have commenced, cautiously and economically; still, the kitchen and chamber departments show reprovingly for some time to come how they have been robbed for the sake of the parlor curtains and mantle ornaments.