consideration for householders and
decorators is, that none but the best size should
be used for attaching the paper to the walls.
Many a fever has been caused by the horrible
nuisance of corrupt size used in paper-hanging
in bed-rooms. The nausea which the
sleeper is aware of on waking in the morning,
in such a case should be a warning needing
no repetition. Down should come the whole
paper at any cost or inconvenience; for it is
an evil which allows of no tampering. The
careless decorator will say that time will set
all right—that the smell will go off—that
airing the room well in the day, and burning
some pungent thing or other at night, in the
meantime, will do very well. It will not do
very well; for health, and even life may be
lost in the interval. It is not worth while to
have one's stomach impaired for life, or one's
nerves shattered, for the sake of the cost and
trouble of papering a room, or a whole house,
if necessary. The smell is not the grievance,
but the token of the grievance. The grievance
is animal putridity, with which we are shut
up, when this smell is perceptible in our
chambers. Down should come the paper;
and the wall behind should be scraped clear
of every particle of its last covering. It is
astonishing that so lazy a practice as that of
putting a new paper over an old one should
exist to the extent it does. Now and then an
incident occurs which shows the effect of such
absurd carelessness.

Not long ago, a handsome house in London
became intolerable to a succession of
residents, who could not endure a
mysterious bad smell which pervaded it when
shut up from the outer air. Consultations
were held about drains, and all the particulars
that could be thought of, and all in vain.
At last, a clever young man, who examined
the house from top to bottom, fixed his suspicions
on a certain room, where he inserted a
small slip of glass in the wall. It was
presently covered, and that repeatedly, with a
sort of putrid dew. The paper was torn down;
and behind it was found a mass of old papers,
an inch thick—stuck together with their
layers of size, and exhibiting a spectacle
which we will not sicken our readers by
describing. A lesser evil, but still a vexatious
one, may be mentioned here: that when there
is not alum enough in the size, it will not
hold. A family, sitting around a table, at
dinner or at work, does not relish the incident
of the entire papering of the room coming
down at once, with a tearing, crashing sound,
and a cloud of dust. Worse still is the
trouble, when it is the pattern of the paper
that is affected. A room was very prettily
hung, not long ago, with a paper where a
bright green trail of foliage was the most
conspicuous part of the pattern. Day after
day everything in the room was found covered
with a green dust; and the pattern on the
wall faded in proportion. The size had, in fact,
been insufficient to fix the green powder, one
ingredient of which, by the way, was arsenic.
The decorator, being sent for, saw at once
what was the matter, and, with expressions of
shame and concern, pulled down the pretty
paper, and put up another without charge—
While on the subject of the mistakes that
may be made in paper-hanging, we may
mention one for which the householder is
answerable, and not the manufacturer or
decorator. While we are well, we ought to
remember that we, and those belonging to us,
shall some time or other be ill: and it is just
as well to arrange the sleeping-rooms of our
houses so as to give every advantage to
invalids, when the day of sickness comes. It
is of no consequence to the healthful, perhaps,
how their beds stand; but it may make the
difference to a sick person, of fever or
tranquillity, of sleep or no sleep, whether his bed
stands, as it should do, north and south, or
east and west; and whether the window is
opposite the foot of the bed, or in some less
annoying direction. In the same way we may
never think of the pattern on the wall of our
room, while we go to bed only to sleep and
rise the moment we awake; but it is certain
that delirium in fever cases has been precipitated,
and that frightful visions, or teasing
images, have been excited by fantastic patterns
on chintz bed-curtains, or on the hangings of
the walls. The paper for bed-rooms should
be of a rather light colour, and of a pattern
as indefinite as can be had. For our part, we
like nothing so well as a blank paper of some
pleasant hue, with a dark border for a relief:
but there are many papers now which do not
present any of the everlasting forms and
varieties of the square, the circle, and the
diamond. A watered paper, or any trailing
pattern is objectionable, because the eye of
the invalid will trace human profiles in them.
There are patterns in abundance which are
pretty enough in a humble way—consisting
of an aggregate of various small figures
—so small and so various as to create
nothing to the eye but a pleasantly-broken
colour.

Having delivered our conscience of this
admonition, out of the doctoring and sick-nursing
part of our experience, we may return to our
paper-staining.

The laying on the Paris white is done by a
machine. The wet whiting is thrown into a
trough, where it is licked up by a cylinder,
which daubs it on a cylindrical brush, which
transfers it to another cylinder, under which
the paper is drawn, receiving the plaster as
it goes. A wide brush, like a fringe of soft
bristles, is fixed before the last cylinder, and
sweeps the paper as the long sheet passes on,
distributing the coating evenly, and smoothing
the surface. The paper, in lengths of
twelve yards, is drawn out by little boys, who
carry it over little heaps of sticks, lifting up
a stick, and of course the wet paper with it,
and hoisting both on a pole, so that the paper
can be carried to the drying place without