Sunshine is the very first necessary of life; without it sickness comes, low spirits are one’s portion, and a thousand and one tiny ailments hang about us, until we sum up a tremendous doctor’s bill, utterly ignorant that we could have cured ourselves comfortably had we had any sense, and dispensed with our blinds, regardless of the fading of our carpets and curtains; or moved our morning-room into the sacred precincts of the drawing-room, which obtains all the early sunshine, and has none at all during the hours when we should be sitting there. But the possession of a large and hideous, white marble mantelpiece and a tiled hearth to the ugly, wasteful grate says ‘drawing-room’ too plainly for the ordinary mind to rise above the builder’s dictum; and so a cheerful breakfast table is sacrificed, for conventionalities that I, for one, never see without longing to disregard, simply because of their family likeness to every one else’s possessions, and gloom and low spirits seize their victim, and work their wicked will, sending off the husband to town with an aching head, and causing the wife a long, laborious morning of snapping at servants and children, simply because she had not begun her day with a proper amount of sunshine. I could fill a whole chapter with praises of the life-giver, the mighty, beautiful sun; and whenever I see blinds hardly raised, or carefully adjusted to save the furniture, I know that I shall find inside those guarded windows faded cheeks, even if the chairs are fresh, and weary, tired people, who are hardly aware what sort of a day it is outside, and who are shivering over a fire that would not be wanted were the fire nature has given us allowed to do its work. Therefore, do not be guided in your choice of rooms by the fact that the builder has made a sunless, dark-looking room the dining-room, and a cheerful, light, and pretty chamber the drawing-room. The white marble mantelpiece does not matter one bit. I can soon alter that, and a tiled hearth is not such a dear or precious luxury that one cannot afford to put in another in the drawing-room, and it is extremely nice to have a hearth where we can put down our plates and dishes to keep hot should any one be late; and the other details are generally so small in their differences that I am sure there is no reason why we should not have strength of mind to be different to our next-door neighbour, who most probably has taken things as she found them, and in consequence is rarely, if ever, without a headache.