is busy attending to her studies, some
cherished ornaments are not only laying up dust for the future, as a
more regenerate life will lay up treasures, but also breeding germs,
perhaps collecting the very germs which will take this girl away from
school or college. Besides, bric-a-brac not only gathers dust and breeds
germs but also wearies the nerves. It makes one tired to see so many
things about, and tired to be held responsible for them. Without
realizing it, we resist the amount of space they occupy and in their
place want the air and sunshine. Subconsciously, 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 pe