most of us long to get rid of our bric-a-brac and then pull down the draperies that keep out the sunlight.  The simpler the window draperies in a room, the more easily washed, the better and more attractive.  For wholesome attractiveness there is no fabric that can excel a flood of warm sunshine.  Any girl or woman who has curtains which she must protect from strong light by drawing down the shades is guilty of a household sin whose greatness she cannot know.  That same sunshine, freely admitted, will do more to cleanse a house than all the soap, all the brooms, and even all the vacuum cleaners ever invented.

The so-called beauty of a room should always give way before the hygiene of a room.  Not only should the room be sensibly furnished so that it may have plenty of air and light, but closets should not contain articles of furniture which belong where the air can reach them.  There is a difference between a room that is not orderly and one that is not clean.  A room that contains unclean articles in drawers or closets, unclean floors, unclean rugs and hangings and unclean walls, should not be tolerated for an instant.  If a girl turns a combination bedroom and study in school or college into a kitchen, if an ice-cream freezer occupies all the foreground of this place she calls home, and chafing-dishes with cream bottles, sardine tins, cracker boxes, paper bags full of stale biscuits, fruit skins, dish-cloths and grease-spotted walls, all the background, it is impossible to have a clean room to live in.

The Golden Rule applies to rooms as well as to human beings and should read, “Do unto a room as you would it should do unto you.”  And not only for the sake of health should this Golden Rule for Rooms be observed but also for the sake of the college or school.  The room that belongs to us only for a time should be as thoughtfully cared for as if it were our own personal property.  There is something inconsistent, isn’t there, in educating a girl in high thinking and fine ideals, if she is willing to live in a room that for uncleanliness many a woman in some crowded quarter of a city would consider a disgrace?  Such contradiction in mind and surrounding is out of harmony with all one’s ideal for a gentlewoman.

Not only beauty is restful, peace-giving and peace-bringing, but so, also, are neatness and order.  Orderliness helps to fit one for work.  There is undoubtedly some connection between surroundings and one’s mental state.  In themselves disorder and confusion are irritating.  The sight of a dirty child crying in the doorway of an untidy house suggests some connection between the wretchedness of the child and the squalor of the home.  I often think of William Morris, the great craftsman and charming poet, who had much at heart the happiness of all people, especially the poor, and his exclamation, “My eye, how I do love tidiness!” To him, to the artist, it was, as it is, beautiful.  George Eliot had to put even the pins in her cushion into some neat arrangement before she could sit down to write.  Disorder wastes not only one’s feelings and health, it also wastes one’s time, for a lot of this commodity may be lost in looking for books, wraps, gloves and other things which are not put away properly.