EIGHTEEN MAXIMS

OF

NEATNESS AND ORDER.

I.

LET it be remembered that litter is a hydra which it requires constant care to overcome. In a thousand shapes it haunts every room, drawer, shelf, table, sofa, and even chair; and, being left to itself, will sometimes swallow up articles

of the greatest value. If the judg

ment of the housemaid be trusted to, all is lost: she has not patience to separate the chaff from the wheat, and often piles up the former with care, while

she throws away the latter. Many a philosopher has lost the result of some hours' calculation; many an artist has bewailed the faded and dying marks of his happiest efforts; many a giddy nymph has deplored the absence of a receipt to detect the twice offered and already paid bill; and many a pleasant invitation has been thrown into the fire, while its empty cover was left, to the disturbance of human intercourse, and the beginning of jealous coldness.

II.

Never keep a professed receptacle for litter, which often degenerates into absolute rubbish, and never trust to a day of setting to rights: what is kept in its proper place never needs that trouble.

Take, as an instance, the embarrassment too often occasioned by the want of care in the lodgment of those keys which are not in constant use. They are, perhaps, not forthcoming when wanted, or, being laid by without a label, come in the way uncalled to puzzle our recollection. Nay, we are sometimes almost tempted to throw away, as useless, these rusty implements which, in a moment of distress,_may prove invaluable.

III.

Do not inagine that neatness and care demand any unnecessary sacrifice of time, for no time is so completely lost as in hunting for lost things; but that is so much saved, which has been employed in

providing a place for every article, and by that means enabled you to find it readily even in the dark. The necessity of a neat arrangement of letters, papers, and accounts, to ensure our safety, as well as to spare trouble, need not be insisted upon.*

* When adverting to the arrangement of letters, a hint ought not to be omitted concerning the comfort and advantage of punctuality in observing promises to absent friends. Upon arriving at the place of our destination, one of the first questions is, At what time does the post go out? If this happen to give us more latitude than we expected, how common is it to defer to the last moment the task of writing, and either disappoint our friend by silence, or dispatch a hurried and unsatisfactory letter! It may also be remarked, that a striking emblem of celerity, as well as punctuality, is afforded by that conveyance of letters in this favoured country, which pursues its ceaseless progress by night and by day for the comfort and happiness of the community.

IV.

Remember, that a young lady's chest of drawers is sometimes taken as a prophetic criterion of her future ménage, and may be considered as no unapt representation of the arrangement in her memory of the acquirements she has made in learning. What can be more pitiable than a heterogeneous mass of litter in the attic story, either of the human frame, or the dwelling in which it resides? and what more appalling to the faculties, than to open a drawer filled with things new and old, gloves dirty and clean, paired and unpaired, skeins of silk and cotton tangled in a mass, scattered beads, bits of silk and muslin, soiled or faded ribbons, tattered notes of