Page:Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management.djvu/1999

Rh and dust are quite fresh, brush the machine thoroughly. Clean the chain with paraffin, and oil very slightly with cycle oil, taking care to wipe carefully afterwards, or dust will accumulate on the oil and clog the machine. Wash the enamelled and plated parts, dry carefully and polish the latter with plate powder. Avoid wetting the tyres. In storing a bicycle away for the winter, cover the metal parts with vaseline. If the room in which the bicycle is to be kept is very dry, keep a basin of water there. A moist atmosphere will prevent the tyres from spoiling.

The furniture of a stable, with coach-house, consists of coach-mops, jacks for raising the wheels, horse-brushes, spoke-brushes, water-brushes, crest and bit-brushes, dandy-brushes, curry-combs, birch and heath brooms, trimming-combs, scissors and pickers, oil-cans and brushes, harness-brushes of three sorts, leathers, sponges for horse and carriage, stable-forks, dung-baskets or wheel barrow, corn-sieves and measures, linen-cloths and stable-pails, horn or glass lanterns. It is desirable that there should be accommodation for the coachman or groom to sleep over the stables.

A harness-room is indispensable to every stable. It should be dry and airy, and furnished with a fireplace and boiler, both for the protection of the harness and to prepare mashes for the horses when required. The partition-wall should be boarded, and around the walls hooks and pegs should be placed, for the several pieces of harness, at such a height as to prevent their touching the ground; and every part of the harness should have its peg or hook—one for the halters, another for the reins, and others for snaffles and other bits, and metal-work; and either a wooden horse or saddletrees for the saddles and pads. All these parts should be dry, clean and shining. This is only to be done by careful cleaning and polishing, and the use of several requisite pastes. The metallic parts, when white, should be cleaned with a soft brush and plate-powder; the copper and brass parts burnished with rottenstone-powder and oil; steel with emery-powder—both made into a paste with a little oil.