had to be scrambled
through at the last moment, and was accordingly imperfect. If Jack goes
to business, he has a very poor chance of getting on, for untidiness and
business will no more go together than oil and water. Few things are
more against a man in business than untidiness; people fight shy of him.
If his dress is untidy, his letters slovenly, his habits unpunctual,
and his accounts confused, he will be regarded as a man not reliable,
and not to be trusted, and people will refuse to transact with him. If
he has a house of his own, he will never succeed in keeping his servants
long, for they--so they say--have quite enough to do without unnecessary
work. In fact, I don't see how Jack is to get on at all unless he mends
his ways.

Is it possible for an untidy boy to become tidy? Try. And if at first
you don't succeed--try again. You are sure to succeed if you stick to
it. Don't aim at apple-pie order--everything in lavender--never to be
touched, and all that sort of thing. That's as bad as the boy who once
possessed a desk, which he would never use, for fear of marking the
blotting-paper, and breaking the paper bands round the envelopes.

No; if you can get into the way of always putting the book you read back
into its place on the shelf, and the paper you want where you will be
certain to find it again--if you encourage a jealousy of rubbish, and a
horror of dirt--if you take to heart the proverb I quoted just now, "A
place for everything, and everything in its place"--you will be as tidy
as you ever need be; and Jack Sloven's troubles and misfortunes will
never be yours.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

THE SCAPEGRACE.

The fellow's always in a row! No matter what it's about; no matter
whose fault it is; no matter how he tried to keep out of it; it's always
the same--he's in a row.

To fancy him not in a row would involve a flight of imagination of which
we, at any rate, are utterly incapable. He has lived in an atmosphere
of rows--rows in the nursery, rows at the dinner table, rows in the
schoolroom, rows in the playground. His hands are like leather, so
often have they been caned; his ears are past all feeling, so often have
they been boxed; and solitary confinement, impositions, the corner, and
the head master's study, have all lost their horrors for him, so often
has he had to endure them.

Sam Scamp of our school was, without exception, the unluckiest fellow I
ever came across. It was the pract