om the recesses of which he produced it crumpled, greasy, and
almost illegible. On Sundays he always had a hunt for his gloves; and
at the end of the term, when he undertook his own packing, he generally
first of all contrived to pack up his keys in the very bottom of the
trunk, and so had to take everything out before he could get them, and
then when (with the aid of some dozen of us sitting on the top of the
unfortunate receptacle, to cram down the jumble of things inside to a
shutting point) he had succeeded in triumphantly turning the lock, it
was a wonder if he had not to open and unpack it all again to find his
straps.

As to his dress, I can safely say that, though Jack always had good
clothes, he always looked much less respectable than other boys whose
parents could not afford them anything but common material. Not only
did he lose buttons, and drop grease over his coat and trousers, but he
never folded or brushed them, or had them mended in time, as a tidy boy
would have done. We were quite ashamed to be seen walking with him
sometimes, he looked so disreputable, but no reproofs or persuasions
could induce him to take more pains about his appearance.

"A place for everything, and everything in its place," was a lesson Jack
could not learn; the result was constant and incalculable trouble. If
people could only realise the amount of time lost by untidiness, I think
they would regard the fault with positive horror. Why, Jack Sloven, at
the very mildest computation, must have lost half an hour a day. Half
an hour a day, at the end of the year, makes a clear working fortnight
to the bad, so that in twenty-five years, if he goes on as he has begun,
he will have one year of which it will take him all his time to give an
account.

But not only does untidiness waste time, and render the person who falls
into it a disreputable member of society, but it seriously endangers his
success in life. Jack Sloven was naturally a clever fellow. When he
could find his books, he made good use of them; none of us could come up
to him in translations, and he had the knack of always understanding
what he read. If it had not been for this wretched habit, he might have
got prizes at school, and still higher honours in after life; but as it
was, he always came to grief. The notes he had made on his work were
never to be found; he spent more time in collecting his materials than
he had to spare for using them; most of his work