A CENTLE OF ORDER.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 4, 22 April 1893, Page 4

A CENTLE OF ORDER.

(By the Author of “ How to be happy though Married.” If woman is “ a balm of distress,” she should also be the centre of order. It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of orderly habits, not merely to herself but to her, relations and friends. When early acquired, they become a kind of instinct, discomfort and disorder disappearing before them as if by magic. For the orderly arrangement of a household by no means depends upon the- amount of money that is' spent in it, but rather on the orderly habits of its mistress. Of course, clever servants can do a great deal; but even they become demoralised in time when the mistress and the young ladies of the house are'not orderly. It is the details of comfort supplied by the women who take care of it that make a home. The family sense of well-being does not consist in the romantic surroundings, or architectural beauty, or artistic furnishing of a house, so much as in the cleanliness, the neatness, the punctuality—in a word, the order of its interior economy, These are the outward and visible .signs of the character of a good housekeeper. How can I tell her? By her cellar, Cleanly shelves and whitened wolls. I can guess her ■ By her dresser, By the back staircase, and hall. And with pleasure Take her measure By the way she keeps her brooms ; Or the peeping At the “ keeping ” Of her back and nnsoot rooms ; By her kitchen’s air of neatness. And its general completeness, Wherein in cleanliness and svveetness The rose of Order blooms. Speaking of girls’ work, the Rev. H. R. Haweis says, “Order, neatness, cleanliness, must first be learnt. God’s world is in order. Sotnc habits must be learnt young. If-you arc not orderly at eighteen, the chances are you never will be. A slovenly girl wall make a slatternly wife. Go home and look at your cupboards! How many things can you find without a hunt ? Beep into those corners drawers —nondescript places, where every thing for which there is no plat e gets stowed away. Do yon notice grease spots quickly ? Do you take them out; or merely fold them over ? A lady said to me, what can be worse than a glove that is mended? 4 A glove that wants monding,’ I replied.”