Blowing Bubbles

1920

People who sing "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" and who lament the quickness with which "they fade and die" may be interested to know that a way has been discovered of making bubbles that will endure for months.

A Dr. Dewar made the discovery, according to the Boston Post. He succeeded in keeping one bubble intact for more than a year. It was blown from a mixture of 50 per cent glycerin, 5 per cent soap and the rest pure water.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 6.

Have Got Beyond Feeling

1902

The people of Martinique, or those who still cling to that unfortunate island, will probably not be alarmed by the scientific report that it is likely to sink out of sight, says the Chicago Inter Ocean. They are probably beyond the reach of alarm by this time.


Lucky Old Maids

Woman insure against being old maids in Denmark, says the New York Mail and Express. If they marry before they are 40 what they have paid goes to the less fortunate, and these last are pensioned for the remainder of their lives on a scale proportioned on what they paid in.


Starving in Galicia

In Galicia the wage of the farm laborer has been so reduced that he is starving to death on a pittance of from three to 16 cents a day.


Index of Cleanliness

The average French person uses six pounds of soap in a year; the average English person uses ten pounds.


Will Follow a Swiss Model

Swiss postal officials are to be employed to assist in the reorganization of the Japanese post office. The Swiss postal system is to be taken as a model.

Home Made Toilet Soap

1896

The subscriber who requested a recipe for toilet soap will find the following excellent:

Boil together slowly, for one hour, two pounds of pure beef tallow, two of washing soda, one pound of salt and one ounce each of gum camphor, oil of bergamot and borax; stir it often; let it stand until cold, then warm it over, so that it will run easily, and turn into moulds dipped in cold water. Like all soaps, it improves with age.

An oatmeal soap that softens the skin may be economically made from bits of castile and glycerine soap, if these are allowed to accumulate when they get too small for toilet purposes. Make a saturated solution of pulverized borax and cut into it all the bits of soap, boiling until they are dissolved and the mixture as thick as cream; stir into the mass oatmeal enough to make a thick, but soft, paste, mingling with the meal a little sulphur and pulverized camphor, stir until it cools somewhat, but is still soft enough to pour into a mould or moulds. — New York Herald.


Women In Austrian Prisons

In Austria, a woman, no matter what she may do, is never regarded or treated quite as a criminal.

She may rob, burn, kill — set every law at defiance, in fact, and break all the commandments in turn — without a fear of ever being called upon to face the gallows. She is not even sent to an ordinary prison to do penance for her sins; the hardest fate that can befall her, indeed, is to be compelled to take up her abode for a time in a convent. There the treatment meted out to her is not so much justice seasoned with mercy as mercy seasoned, and none too well, with justice.

Even in official reports she is an "erring sister" — one who has, it is true, strayed from the narrow path, but quits involuntarily. — Cornhill Magazine.

Artwork -- Wool Soap For Toilet and Bath -- Advertisement

1896

Wool Soap
For Toilet and Bath

Wool Soap is the most modern of all high grade White Floating Soaps for the Toilet and Bath and for Washing Silks, Laces, Woolens and all fine fabrics.

MADE ONLY BY
Swift and Company,
CHICAGO

Blowing Bubbles is Fun

1912

INTEREST IN SOAP BUBBLES

Those Made of Soap Water to Which Glycerine Has Been Added Are Quite Attractive.

Have you ever stopped to think what a really interesting thing a soap bubble is? Soap bubbles are not only interesting to boys and girls, but they have long been a source of and interest to men of science. In fact, scientists have employed soap bubbles in trying to perform certain experiments.

A soap bubble is nothing more than a film of water molecules (tiny particles that cannot be seen with the naked eye), held together by the sticking power of dissolved soap. As most all of us know, in making bubbles the bowl of a common clay pipe is dipped into soap water. The bubble maker blows air into the pipe and the bubble at once expands. While bubbles made of plain soap water are interesting, those made of soap water to which some glycerine has been added are even more attractive, because they have such pretty colors.

There are many ways of making bubbles. For instance, smoke may be blown through the pipe into the bubbles or one bubble may be blown inside of another. Very large bubbles can be made by using the hands instead of a pipe. Cover the hands well with suds and then hold them so as to form a cup, as if drinking with the hands from a spring, but leaving a small hole in the bottom. With the mouth about a foot from the hands, blow a current of air into them. Some of the bubbles will be more than a foot in diameter. Try this experiment the next time you wash your hands.

—The Daily Commonwealth, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, December 17, 1912, page 11.