some real misfortune has occurred, in one of my rooms in the green serge abode. A misfitting dress would be as dreadful a sorrow as a broken arm, a disappointment about an entertainment as serious as an illness or loss of money! Flowers again should never be forgotten, or allowed to become dead and shabby; and, above all, each room we occupy should be scrupulously clean, and without being aggressively neat should be absolutely tidy. Directly a thing becomes dirty or untidy it should be cleaned or replaced by something else. We should never overlook the soiling of the paint, a crushed antimacassar, a dirty ceiling, and, above all, we should remember that no amount of artistic knowledge and careful decoration can make up for grimy tablecloths and crooked vases, heaped-up papers and crushed chairbacks and damaged cretonnes. A room must not only be made nice, it must be kept so; and if we cannot afford good servants, who will respect our belongings, we must do the finer parts of the housework ourselves. It is no disgrace to wash fine china, and turn and fold our tablecloths and draperies; it is disgraceful to have dirty ornaments, and to be untidy and careless about our rooms. Indeed, if any of us really want our rooms to look nice we should, no matter how good are our servants, go carefully over them ourselves the moment the housemaid’s work is done, and see that all is as we like it. Servants do not place furniture, they _ram_ it into its place. The tablecloths are usually put on wrong side out, and, somehow or other, all seems to require the lady’s touch, which cannot be explained, but is certainly observable in any house where the mistress is untidy, and so naturally excuses untidiness in those around her.