Small washable ornaments may be allowed to remain, but not to a greater extent than suffices to give the room its customary appearance, for it must be remembered that all useless articles increase the number of dust-receptacles and make the process of tidying-up more lengthy. I have seen mantel-boards and brackets covered with cloth, and literally crowded with ornaments, which have not been properly dusted for weeks because it made the patient sneeze! Such instances point the moral in regard to cloth-coverings as well as superfluous ornaments. A folding-screen is an almost indispensable article of sick-room furniture; it not only serves to keep off draughts and the glare of the fire, but in convalescence is useful for putting round the invalid’s chair. By its help, too, ventilation is made so much easier, that, if nothing pretty and ornamental is to be had, it is worth while to extemporise a screen with an ordinary clothes-horse and sheet; but a chintz or holland cover, bound with braid and made to tie on, is much more cheerful than the dull expanse of a sheet. And now for the most important article of furniture, the bed, on which depends so much of the patient’s comfort or discomfort. If possible, have a light iron frame without a foot-rail, or with only a low one. For an adult, the bed should measure not less than six feet three inches in length and about three feet in width. Greater width increases the difficulty of reaching the patient, and it is astonishing the journeys such a thing as a handkerchief will make over a large surface of bed. The height of the bed is another serious consideration, for should it be too low, the nurse will find it add considerably to the back-aching tendency of nursing; and if too high, the constant straining up to the patient will be quite as bad. The rule then, is, that the bed when made shall be so proportioned to the nurse’s height as to enable her to lift and attend to the patient without any undue effort. In home-nursing, the bed question is often overlooked altogether, or made much more of a difficulty than it need be; and though that relic of unenlightened days, the four-poster, is almost extinct in some households, most of the beds are large, and to alter the furnishing of a room seems beyond the imagination of the ordinary housekeeper. But surely, in time of illness, the first consideration should be how best to mitigate the patient’s sufferings and lighten the nurse’s labours; and in all but quite slight cases, it is worth considerable effort to secure the right kind of bed and bedding. This brings us to another home-nursing difficulty; for in spite of recent progress in hygienic knowledge, there are still not a few individuals who are foolish enough to prefer the unwholesome softness of a feather-bed to the healthy firmness of a good hair mattress. Yet few victims to this enervating habit fail to complain of the lumps, only to be got rid of by a large expenditure of strength and time. And