One cannot help recognising these evil habits even in one’s own self, and knowing that nothing makes a person more selfish, and therefore more unendurable, than to have no one to interfere with one’s puerile little fancies and equally puerile little rules and regulations! In a small household rules and regulations that touch the servants, of course, must be simply ‘Median and Persian,’ or the house would never get along at all; but it puts no one out except ourselves, should we have to take the left side of the fireplace instead of the right, and it does us more good than I can say to have to control our small irritations at having our routine of life broken into, and to be shown that the world will not stop if we do go out in the morning instead of the afternoon, and that nothing appalling will happen should we be obliged to talk at breakfast, instead of, as usual, burying ourselves in our letters and our papers generally. A constant supply of guests for the night, or on the Saturday-to-Monday principle, insures a constant change in our ideas and thoughts, and does away with that ‘Englishman’s house is his castle’ notion that is so very pernicious, and that puts a stop to so much inexpensive and common-sense hospitality; while a new, cheerful face at the dinner-table relieves the strain of domesticity between husband and wife, and often insures a game of chess, or music, instead of the books and silence which would otherwise, perhaps, have been the order of the day. Another thing also to recollect about the spare room, too, is, not to get into the habit of using the shelves and drawers in the wardrobe as a species of store-place. I know nothing more enraging than to be shown into a charming-looking room, with a beautiful great cupboard, and a gallant chest of drawers, that seem to promise us ample breathing-room for one’s things, and to discover half the space we were so very gleefully looking forward to appropriating is already taken up by all sorts and conditions of household plenishing, or of last year’s garments, or even the garments of the year before. I remember quite well once having such a receptacle turned out for me; and I saw carried away, the hostess’s wedding dress and veil of some ten years back, all the long clothes and short clothes of the babies, small and great, several venerable opera-cloaks and fans, and, finally, a store of old linen put by against emergencies. You can all of you imagine what I endured. Not that I should have asked for this to be done, by the way, but the maid came in to take my boxes, and I was obliged to say I could not part with them, because if I did I should have nowhere to put my belongings. Of course this insured the shelves being cleared, with the uncomfortable result to me described above. I never dared ask what had become of all I had turned out, but I cut my visit short and went on somewhere else, I felt so unhappy at thinking of all the unfortunate garments bereft of