clean cold water is spilt upon the carpet, though no stain is left at first, that part will very soon have a soiled appearance.[3] The room being now ready to receive the furniture, the chairs having been previously dusted, washed over, and rubbed bright, as directed, and the cushions taken off, switched, and wiped with a clean cloth, they should be restored to their proper places in the room; the window-curtains having been properly switched and brushed below, should be put up, the fire-irons and coal-scuttle brought back, having been scoured, and all the china ornaments, after being carefully washed in cold water, should be arranged as before, together with books, writing-desks, and work-boxes, and behold the room complete. The housemaid may now look round with modest triumph, and exclaim, _Sublime_. A drawing-room in perfect order, _how lovely is it!_ The dining-room, breakfast-parlour, and study, should each be cleaned in the same perfect manner, but as the mode of proceeding is in no way different, it is unnecessary here to enter into any further detail; a few words, however, may be necessary with regard to arranging a gentleman’s study; those days of thorough cleaning are days of horror to the literary man; he would rather have a lion let loose upon him than a cleanly housemaid; and certainly, with regard to dusting either books or papers, too much attention cannot be shown, as much mischief may be done by even shifting their places; books upon a table should be taken up only one at a time, dusted, and replaced in exactly the same spot, or, if the table requires to be rubbed up, the books should be placed on the floor in the same position in which they stood on the table, then taken up one by one, dusted and replaced on the table as at first. A housemaid should never exercise her own taste in arranging books in a gentleman’s study; however her contempt of 1st, 2nd, or 3rd volume may be overlooked in a drawing-room, it is a serious annoyance to the literary man to be obliged to hunt for the 2nd or 3rd volume of a work of which he has finished the first, through, perhaps, fifty others; but it is a still greater grievance to have a written paper misplaced, torn, or destroyed; the smallest scrap of writing, though found on the floor, or in any odd corner, should be considered sacred, and placed on the table in such a position as to be easily discovered; a weight should be put on any parcel of papers so as to prevent the draught blowing them away when the windows are opened, and the housemaid had better be content with carefully dusting round them rather than run the risk of misplacing them in any way; let it be remembered, however, that this is perhaps the only case in which it is better to dust round a moveable article than to dust under it, for this dusting round is a slovenly practice too often indulged in. A lazy servant will dust round a writing-desk or work-box, for a week