Brevities

A great lady of English society, whose memoirs have shown her to be witty as well as beautiful, once took her two small children—a little boy of five and a girl of seven—to visit an old crony living in the manorial village. The ancient beldame, far over ninety, enjoyed a reputation for great piousness and strict principles, and her manifold virtues were impressed upon the children who were bringing her some presents. However, when these two tots entered the cottage with its low hung ceiling, its tightly closed windows, its stale and rather musty air, they felt very uncomfortable and abashed. “Why does it smell here so?” whispered the little boy. And the little girl, out of the wisdom of her seven years conjectured: “It must be the odor of sanctity.”

Though I am certain that my readers possess all possible virtues, I am equally positive that their homes are never pervaded by this unpleasant “odor of sanctity.” The modern woman airs her home thoroughly, be it a whole house or just a one-room apartment with kitchenette. But if housekeeping is done in an apartment of the latter type, it is sometime unavoidable that cooking odors vitiate the air. In summer, an open window will quickly dispel them, but in the winter months and especially when the weather is stormy and sheets of rain or drifts of snow are apt to come in through an open window, other means of purifying and refreshing the air must be found. The prettiest of them is a little silver ball or a majolica vase, hanging on the wall, filled with either pine-needle extract or a refreshing flower scent. The scent slowly evaporates and imbues the air in the home with its fresh and invigorating odor. In a sickroom the pine scent, with its suggestion of the outdoor, adds much to the comfort of patient as well as attendant, while the flower-scent—simple, gay, and fresh—is ideal for an afternoon of bridge and tea. Bothdevices are to be had in any good department store.