If no savings fund of strength is possible, more workers are needed, or better workers; or, if this is impossible, the style of living should be modified until it is appropriate to the force of workers. The schedule is not the important thing, but the work; and there are things more important even than the work. For instance, a reasonable degree of liberty for the whole household. The family, unless they take part in the work, should not be conscious of the work schedule. It is a framework to be carefully draped; a new kind of family skeleton to be kept in the closet as carefully as the old kind. It is necessary because it makes easy, natural regularity possible, and without it, as we have said, there is neither character, nor peace, nor mutual service in a home. The housework must be done--well and regularly done--and to accomplish this, days must be alike, and weeks must be alike, and months and years alike. But they must be as the leaves on a tree are--alike to the casual glance, yet really somewhat different because capable of infinite adaptability. V POSSESSIONS THE time and strength necessary for housework, and the comfort and happiness resulting from the work depend much upon something which housekeepers have to a great extent the power to control. I mean the quantity and kind of things they have in their houses. Much time and money and weary labour would be saved, much comfort and loveliness would be gained if we could persuade ourselves to follow William Morris's rule: "Have nothing in your rooms which you do not think to be beautiful and know to be useful." Were this rule suddenly put in practice, what a bundling out of rubbish would ensue. A Bonfire of Vanities would rise in no time, built of little tables and pedestals, cushions and bows, curtains, vases, pictures that no future generations would call us vandals for destroying, fringes and ruffles, souvenirs of travel, broken and mended objects from the top shelves of closets, bronze and china statuettes, and that whole miserable race of blotters which do not blot, book-racks which faint under the weight of books, pen-wipers which would be insulted if they were inked, collapsible waste-baskets always in a state of collapse, holders that hold nothing, cases that fit nothing, impervious pin cushions! May the smoke of them ascend! One would think that this rule of use and beauty were austere enough, yet many people, before they acquire even a useful or a beautiful object, must consider whether there is room for it in their home, whether the members of the household have time and strength to take care of it, and whether it is appropriate to their possessions and to their way of living.