We will now suppose the house taken, cleaned _thoroughly_, and well aired, and will proceed to furnish it. But first we must pause to observe that young people will do well carefully to consider matters before they take upon themselves the troubles and responsibilities of housekeepers. Where their joint savings, or some sum especially bestowed for the purpose by friends or parents, enable them to make the necessary outlay for furniture, linen, &c., and yet have something left to put by for “a wet day,” and the rent and taxes can be afforded by the income of the husband, it is all well and good. But if money must be borrowed, or debts incurred, or the income mortgaged,—begin life in the quietest way rather than with this responsibility, or with these incumbrances. Take furnished apartments for awhile, until you see your way. Thirty pounds a year will pay for two rooms on the ground-floor, and fifty for two on the drawing-room floor, in a respectable locality, and this covers rent, wear and tear of furniture, and attendance. We know that it is customary to say that people are victimized, cheated, ill-used and abused in furnished lodgings; poisoned with dirt, and devoured by vermin. It may be so in some places, but all we have to say is, that the first four years of our married life were passed in them, and now every autumn, for a month or six weeks, we dwell in furnished lodgings at some watering-place, and that we have found the trials of housekeeping pretty much the same; whether in lodgings or in a house, with one’s own servants; the expenses in the former were fewer, so were the comforts, and the waste and cheating are about the same in both cases, when strict surveillance is not exercised. Of course, if people will permit themselves to be cheated, and do not know how much or how little of each article of food or grocery ought to be consumed per day or per week, or what its cost is, they will be cheated by lodging-house keepers, and also their own servants. Neither is it wise to go into an actual lodging-house, where the proprietors avowedly live by, or, in other words, on their lodgers. There are always respectable families to be found who only let one set of apartments, and with whom it is very possible to get along comfortably. As to the much-decried attendance in lodgings, we found generally, that by keeping our boxes and drawers locked, and throwing as little temptation in the servants’ way as possible, we were seldom robbed; and that, by consideration for and patience with the household drudge, aided by the occasional spur of some little gift or gratuity, we got a fair share of her services. But to our furnishing business. Here, again, those unsentimental letters £ s. d. present themselves, and say, “Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther,”—and that limit is dependent upon the funds in hand, and which may, without incurring debts or emptying the purse, be expended.