They should first be dipped in lime-water
or vinegar, and dried. Melt the tallow in a large kettle, filling it
to the top with hot water, when the tallow is melted. Put in wax and
powdered alum, to harden them. Keep the tallow hot over a portable
furnace, and fill the kettle with hot water as fast as the tallow is
used up. Lay two long strips of narrow board on which to hang the rods;
and set flat pans under, on the floor, to catch the grease. Take several
rods at once, and wet the wicks in the tallow; straighten and smooth
them when cool. Then dip them as fast as they cool, until they become
of the proper size. Plunge them obliquely and not perpendicularly; and
when the bottoms are too large, hold them in the hot grease till a
part melts off. Let them remain one night to cool; then cut off the
bottoms, and keep them in a dry, cool place. Cheap lights are made,
by dipping rushes in tallow; the rushes being first stripped of nearly
the whole of the hard outer covering and the pith alone being retained
with just enough of the tough bark to keep it stiff.
XXX.
THE CARE OF ROOMS.
It would be impossible in a work dealing, as this does, with general
principles of house-keeping, to elaborate in full the multitudinous
details which arise for attention and intelligent care.
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