In the school-houses in the city, and in many of the larger towns and country districts, janitors do all the work of cleaning. This may be necessary in city schools, where it is not possible for the children to do all the work of beautifying and cleaning the school building, but when all this work is done by outsiders the children are robbed of part of their instruction and they thus lose a very important lesson in cleanliness and order which it is the duty of the teacher to give. Think of the time lost in the average family looking for the broom when the time comes to sweep the floor. At this time all business suspends. Mother cries out first, “Where is the broom?” The older sister cries to John and Susie and Jane, “Where is the broom?” and that kind of thing goes on every day in the week and year. It takes the average family from ten to twelve minutes every day to find the broom. Now, we should teach a different lesson in our schools. We can teach in the first place that there are two ways for the broom to be put up, a proper and an improper way. We can teach the children that there is a place for the dust-pan and the dust-cloth and the match-box. The match-box is another thing that suspends business. Every night when the matches are wanted, everything goes helter-skelter. This is a larger problem than the broom, there being absolutely no light on the subject. The children should be taught that there must be a definite place for the broom and for the match-box, and it is surprising how quickly these lessons will be taken from the school-room into the home. Even the listless parents will be roused to interest by such practical teaching. The child who goes to school in a room that is clean and attractive will not long be content to live in a home that is dirty and disorderly. I was recently in a school-room in South Carolina. The teacher had a reputation for being a well-fitted instructor, and I expected much of him. He was teaching the children by the latest methods. The children sang well, they recited their lessons well, but the fact that one third of the plastering was missing made the greatest impression on me. I could not detect the slightest attempt on the part of the teacher or students to see that the plastering was restored. I should have suspended school a day or two until the plastering could be replaced, rather than teach day after day by silent approval a lesson of disorder. If the teacher is careless, the pupils will accept his standards and go through life in an indifferent, slipshod manner. If from the first day they enter school they are surrounded with object lessons of order and cleanliness, more will have been done to educate them in a large and helpful way than if they had centred their interest in books alone.