The other thing about whitewashing is that it is done with a broom, not with a finicking brush and a small pot, but a good fat bucket and the housemaid's soft-broom. In this way you can really get some _bravura_ into your work. And, except perhaps for watering the garden with a hose, there is no quicker way of making a really good mess. Whitewashing by this method, I find that it takes much longer to remove the whitewash from the floors and other places where it is not intended to go than it does to put the whitewash on the places where it is intended to go; but the charwoman does the removing on Easter Tuesday, and I still think that that method is the best. Especially, perhaps, for outside walls, because in one's artistic frenzy it is usual to cover most of the rose-trees with whitewash; they look then like those whitewashed orchards, and visitors think you are a scientific gardener, combating Plant Pests. Personally I don't pay too much attention to the rather arbitrary rules on painting laid down by the Painters' Union. Life is too short. For instance, I don't put my brushes in turpentine when I have finished for the day; and if I do I put the green brush and the light-blue brush and the black brush and the white brush in the same pot, and terrible things happen. I don't like my art to be hampered by petty notions of economy, and if brushes persist in crystallising into tooth-brushes when left to themselves for an hour or two I simply use a new brush. Nor do I insist on "cleaning thoroughly the surface before the paint is applied." Anyone who sets out in practice to clean thoroughly the surface of the basement before applying the paint will find that the Easter holidays have slipped away long before any paint is applied at all. Besides, one of the main objects of paint is to hide the dirt, so why waste time in removing it? On the other hand, I am not content with mere painting; I go in thoroughly for all the refinements like driers and varnishes and gold-size. Driers and gold-size are extremely necessary when painting the basement, because if there is one thing the staff enjoy more than tea-cups coming away in the 'and, it is really rubbing themselves against wet paint and wandering round muttering complaints about it. Without a driers or some drier or whatever it is, the basement remains wet for ever, and all work ceases while the staff amble about, ecstatically rubbing themselves against the doorposts and saying "T'tt, t'tt," in a meaning way.