A Girls Student Days and After | Page 8

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.
School ought to be a training for the life afterwards. That is why we go
to school, isn't it? Why should a girl indulge herself in habits which
will make against her usefulness in the life of the home or in whatever
circumstance she may be? There is a certain disciplinary value in order.
Every great military school has recognized this. Laxness in the care of
one's room may mean the habit of laxness in other and more important
ways. Disorderliness indicates a certain tendency in character, and if a
girl allows that sort of thing to go on she is very likely to show it in
other ways. Untidiness in any of one's personal habits--and what could
be more personal than a room?--should be taken up and corrected even
as one attempts to correct any weak point in one's character.
Do you know what is always--that is, if it is in it at all--the most
beautiful thing in a room? It is something which the Creator meant all
mankind should have, rich and poor, old and young alike; it is
something beyond the buying price of any wealth. It is the sunshine,
more beautiful, more valuable than expensive hangings that shut it out.
Perhaps it is partly because it is inexpensive, God-given to all people,

that housewives frequently draw their curtains against it. If they had to
pay more for it than for carpets and hangings, you may be very sure
that a great many husbands and fathers would be overworking in order
that their families might buy a whole display of sunshine instead of
tapestries.
Do you know what is the most helpful thing you can have in your room,
the article without which you cannot live in it at all, no matter how fine
the rugs and bric-à-brac may be? Air! Air is the one thing which is
almost instantly and absolutely indispensable to human life, for we
breathe it in not only through our noses but also all over our skin.
Every hundredth fraction of an inch of our bodies is feeding upon air,
and the purer that air and the cooler the better and more invigorating
food it provides for the skin surface as well as for the lungs. The mind,
for it is housed in the body and its tenant, must depend for its vigour or
tone upon the fresh air in school or college study. Even a very good
head cannot work well set upon an anæmic body which is suffocating
for want of good clean air. If you wish to do your best work and keep
well, the first thing to do is not to open your books but to open your
windows. After that the books and a reasonable number of hours of
continuous study. American audience halls, pullmans, ordinary coaches
and public buildings of all sorts, especially libraries, are notoriously
overheated and unventilated. It is the intelligent American girl and
woman who, beginning with the home, will correct this evil. The
schools are, on the whole, in the forefront of the fresh air movement,
especially the public schools. As every one knows, the public schools
are establishing open air rooms for their children who need them.
Although there is much to be said about what a room should contain