eases.--3. That the window,
and one window, is considered enough to air a room. Have you never
observed that any room without a fire-place is always close? And, if you
have a fire-place, would you cram it up not only with a chimney-board,
but perhaps with a great wisp of brown paper, in the throat of the
chimney--to prevent the soot from coming down, you say? If your chimney
is foul, sweep it; but don't expect that you can ever air a room with
only one aperture; don't suppose that to shut up a room is the way to
keep it clean. It is the best way to foul the room and all that is in
it. Don't imagine that if you, who are in charge, don't look to all
these things yourself, those under you will be more careful than you
are. It appears as if the part of a mistress now is to complain of her
servants, and to accept their excuses--not to show them how there need
be neither complaints made nor excuses.

[Sidenote: Head in charge must see to House Hygiene, not do it herself.]

But again, to look to all these things yourself does not mean to do them
yourself. "I always open the windows," the head in charge often says. If
you do it, it is by so much the better, certainly, than if it were not
done at all. But can you not insure that it is done when not done by
yourself? Can you insure that it is not undone when your back is turned?
This is what being "in charge" means. And a very important meaning it
is, too. The former only implies that just what you can do with your own
hands is done. The latter that what ought to be done is always done.

[Sidenote: Does God think of these things so seriously?]

And now, you think these things trifles, or at least exaggerated. But
what you "think" or what I "think" matters little. Let us see what God
thinks of them. God always justifies His ways. While we are thinking, He
has been teaching. I have known cases of hospital pyaemia quite as severe
in handsome private houses as in any of the worst hospitals, and from
the same cause, viz., foul air. Yet nobody learnt the lesson. Nobody
learnt _anything_ at all from it. They went on _thinking_--thinking that
the sufferer had scratched his thumb, or that it was singular that "all
the servants" had "whitlows," or that something was "much about this
year; there is always sickness in our house." This is a favourite mode
of thought--leading _not_ to inquire what is the uniform cause of these
general "whitlows," but to stifle all inquiry. In what sense is