Pencil marks on linen should be rubbed off with an eraser, as hot water sets them.

Soap and water is the best agent for removing stains from colored goods, provided the color is fast.  Moisten the article, soap the stain, and after a few minutes wash alternately with oil of turpentine and water.  If not satisfactorily removed make a mixture of yolk of egg and oil of turpentine, spread on the stain, allow to dry, scrape off, and wash thoroughly in hot water.  Tampering with stains on garments which are not warranted “fast color” is very risky, and often leaves the second state of the garments worse than the first.

SOAKING AND WASHING

The prologue of sorting the clothes and removing the stains being at an end, we are ready for the real “business” of the wash day—­the washing itself—­unless the laundress prefers to soak the clothes overnight.  If so, dampen, soap well, particularly the most soiled spots, roll up and pack in the bottom of the tub, pour over tepid water, and leave till morning.  Only the bed and body linen need be subjected to this treatment, as the table linen is rarely sufficiently soiled to require it, and the colored clothes and the stockings must never, under any circumstances, be allowed to stay in water beyond the time necessary to wash and rinse them.  The water, if only hard water be obtainable, may be softened by the addition of a little ammonia or borax.  Water which has been discolored by soil after heavy rains or by the repairing of water pipes, should be strained through Canton flannel before use.  After soaking, the linen should be put through the wringer, which will take away much of the soil with the water, and then washed.  As to the way in which this should be done there are various opinions, most methods in use by experienced laundresses being reliable.  Each, however, usually has her favorite method of procedure which it is perhaps as well to allow her to follow.  Pity ’tis, ’tis true, that many housekeepers are so ignorant of how the wash-day programme should really be conducted that they are incapable of directing the incompetent laundress.  The mistress of the house needs also to be mistress of the laundry, guiding operations there as elsewhere, seeing to it that body and table linens are not washed together, flannels boiled, clothing rotted by overindulgence in sal soda, nor any other crimes committed against law and order in the laundry.

WASHING POWDERS AND SOAP

If bleaches of any kind are to be used—­washing powders, sal soda, borax, and the like—­it must be in either the soaking water or the boiler, and very sparingly.  Indeed, the use of bleaches at any time is a custom more honored in the breach than the observance.  Though there is no hard-and-fast rule as to the order of precedence, it is well to wash the woolens first, after shaking