water extracts the flavor of tea and coffee far better than hard, and is
also better for all cooking and washing purposes. Hard water results from
a superabundance of lime; and this lime "cakes" on the bottom of
tea-kettles, curdles soap, and clings to every thing boiled in it, from
clothes to meat and vegetables (which last are always more tender if
cooked in soft water; though, if it be too soft, they are apt to boil to a
porridge).

Washing-soda or borax will soften hard water, and make it better for all
household purposes; but rain-water, even if not desired for drinking, will
be found better than any softened by artificial means.

If, as in many towns, the supply of drinking-water for many families comes
from the town pump or pumps, the same principles must be attended to. A
well in Golden Square, London, was noted for its especially bright and
sparkling water, so much so that people sent from long distances to secure
it. The cholera broke out; and all who drank from the well became its
victims, though the square seemed a healthy location. Analysis showed it
to be not only alive with a species of fungus growing in it, but also
weighted with dead organic matter from a neighboring churchyard. Every
tissue in the living bodies which had absorbed this water was inflamed,
and ready to yield to the first epidemic; and cholera was the natural
outcome of such conditions. Knowledge should guard against any such
chances. See to it that no open cesspool poisons either air or water about
your home. Sunk at a proper distance from the house, and connected with it
by a drain so tightly put together that none of the contents can escape,
the cesspool, which may be an elaborate, brick-lined cistern, or merely an
old hogshead thoroughly tarred within and without, and sunk in the ground,
becomes one of the most important adjuncts of a good garden. If, in
addition to this, a pile of all the decaying vegetable matter--leaves,