While being lived in and used, a drawing-room is and must be essentially a best room, and is invaluable as a teacher to the untidy or unmethodical mistress or servant. Fine manners are a necessity, and a certain amount of fine manners is maintained by use of a room that holds our dearest treasures, and sees little of the seamy side of life. It is on little things that our lives depend for comfort, and small habits, such as a changed dress for evening wear with a long skirt, to give the proper drawing-room air, the enforcement of the rule that slippers and cigars must never enter there, and a certain politeness maintained to each other in the best room, almost insensibly enforced by the very atmosphere of the chamber, will go a long way towards keeping up the mutual respect that husband and wife should have for each other, and which is a surer means of happiness than anything I know--than any amount of foolish terms of endearment, that are apt to be forgotten when the gloss of the honeymoon is rubbed off, and life becomes too full of anxieties and hurry for the old pet names. Remember, please, I am not writing for votaries of fashion or for rich people, who could tell me doubtless a great many things I do not know, but for the ordinary educated middle-class girl who may never leave her country home until she is married, or may have had few opportunities of seeing the world, even in London; and she does require, I know full well, to be reminded that home should not excuse faded finery, down-at-heel shoes, or slovenliness of mind or body in either husband or wife, for nothing grows so easily as untidy habits or slovenly manners, and it is worth a little struggle to prevent oneself or one’s friends deteriorating ever such a little bit.