But to return to the housekeeper's room. In one part you can have a cupboard to open with folding-doors like a wardrobe, for keeping tea and sugar and similar articles. There should be shelves in this, on which should stand numerous tin canisters marked with the names of the different articles they contain. In the upper part should be a shelf suspended by cords passing through holes bored in the corners, for loaves of sugar, or any similar articles likely to be attacked by mice. The common tea should be kept in a chest lined with lead, which may stand in the lower part of the closet, and the finer kinds should be kept in canisters. A bag of raw coffee may also stand on the lower shelf of the closet; but, after the coffee is ground, it should be kept in a canister, and as far apart from the tea as possible, as, if it is near it, it will give the tea an unpleasant taste. Moist sugar should be kept in a large tin canister, the lid of which opens with a hinge. The coffee-mill, if in this apartment, must be fixed to some part of the room where it will be quite firm, and yet be so placed that the person grinding may have room to use the arm freely; but many persons have the coffee-mill in the kitchen, and also a mill for pepper. When any thing is to be ground in a mill, of a different nature from what it is generally used for, the mill should be first cleaned by grinding in it a hard crust of bread. A second cupboard should be set aside for the soap and candles. In this there should be some strong hooked nails driven into the wall, for the kitchen candles; and a kind of bench or wooden stand for the boxes containing mould candles, if you use any, though most persons now prefer the composition or stearine candles with plaited wicks, as they do not require snuffing. These candles, and those of wax or spermaceti, may be kept a long time without injury, if they are covered with paper within the box, to prevent them from becoming discoloured, which they will soon be, if much exposed to the air; but tallow candles of all kinds should never be kept more than six months, as, when old, they are very apt to gutter. Soap, also, should never be kept too long, or be suffered to become too dry. It is true that, when used too new, it wastes away very rapidly; yet, if it is kept more than six months, and particularly if it becomes too dry, it cracks and shrinks so much, as to render it very troublesome to use, and nearly double the quantity is required.