A Girls Student Days and After | Page 8

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-��-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 an?mic 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 to make it attractive, it should never be forgotten that sunshine and fresh air are more beautiful and more priceless than anything else which it can hold.
The first object in furnishing a bare room is to make it habitable,--that is useful. Take the kitchen, for example, and usefulness is practically the sole object in fitting it up. And the curious thing about it all is that it cannot help being beautiful in a homely, motherly way, for it exemplifies