As a practical illustration of this let me commend the habit of letting the dinner-dishes wait to be washed until the next morning when there is something on hand with which this work would clash. While it is undoubtedly agreeable to go to bed with the pleasant sensation that there are no “hangovers” in the way of undischarged duties, it is often wiser to postpone a task than to perform it at the cost of hurry and flurry. The dishes may be put in a pan with hot water and a little washing-powder, and left until after breakfast the next day, when they may be washed without haste or nervousness. VIII IN THE LAUNDRY Whether or not a housekeeper expects to do her own washing and ironing, she should know in every detail how it is to be done. The occasion may not arise for her to put her hands into the wash-tub or to wield a flat-iron, but she should understand the operations and know how to correct intelligently the errors of her laundress. There has been a good deal said of the burden of laundry-work, and yet I have known many women who preferred undertaking it themselves to trusting it to the charge of an ignorant or untrained washerwoman. This is sometimes the only variety that can be secured in the country or in small places, but the laundry, which is the resource so often of dwellers in the city, is frequently far more injurious to clothing than the treatment of the poorest laundress. In such circumstances or when economy seems necessary the housekeeper who has the ability to do up the clothing of her family and the bed and table linen possesses a power which means not only comfort, but saving of wear and tear as well as of money. In the effort to provide the A-B-C of laundry-work a beginning must be made with directions for sorting and preparing the clothes for washing. The first step is to separate towels and bed-linen from starched white garments and place them in different piles, with flannels and stockings in a third gathering. This should be done on the evening preceding wash-day, as the labor is much lessened by putting the clothes into soak overnight. The method--or lack of method--of the careless laundress is to throw those garments to be submitted to this preliminary treatment into a tub of warm water to which has been added some washing-powder or detersive and leave them thus all night. Instead of this the clothing should be looked over carefully, dipping the worst-soiled portions into warm water and rubbing the spots well with laundry soap. Each garment should then be rolled up with the soaped side inward, and all the rolls thus made packed down into a tub of lukewarm water to which has been added a small quantity of borax, household ammonia, or other equally good and harmless detersive.