opposite windows, was myself, and
yet, owing to the above-mentioned dirty circumstances, no opening of
windows could ever keep those rooms free from closeness; but the carpet
and curtains having been turned out of the rooms altogether, they became
instantly as fresh as could be wished. It is pure nonsense to say that
in London a room cannot be kept clean. Many of our hospitals show the
exact reverse.

[Sidenote: Dust never removed now.]

But no particle of dust is ever or can ever be removed or really got rid
of by the present system of dusting. Dusting in these days means nothing
but flapping the dust from one part of a room on to another with doors
and windows closed. What you do it for I cannot think. You had much
better leave the dust alone, if you are not going to take it away
altogether. For from the time a room begins to be a room up to the time
when it ceases to be one, no one atom of dust ever actually leaves its
precincts. Tidying a room means nothing now but removing a thing from
one place, which it has kept clean for itself, on to another and a
dirtier one.[1] Flapping by way of cleaning is only admissible in the
case of pictures, or anything made of paper. The only way I know to
_remove_ dust, the plague of all lovers of fresh air, is to wipe
everything with a damp cloth. And all furniture ought to be so made as
that it may be wiped with a damp cloth without injury to itself, and so
polished as that it may be damped without injury to others. To dust, as
it is now practised, truly means to distribute dust more equally over a
room.

[Sidenote: Floors.]

As to floors, the only really clean floor I know is the Berlin
_lackered_ floor, which is wet rubbed and dry rubbed every morning to
remove the dust. The French _parquet_ is always more or less dusty,
although infinitely superior in point of cleanliness and healthiness to
our absorbent floor.

For a sick room, a carpet is perhaps the worst expedient which could by
any possibility have been invented. If you must have a carpet, the only
safety is to take it up two or three times a year, instead of once. A
dirty carpet literally infects the room. And if you consider the
enormous quantity of organic matter from the feet of people coming in,
which must saturate it, this is by no means surprising.

[Sidenote: Papered, plastered, oil-painted walls.]

As for walls, the worst is the papered wall; the next worst is plaster.
But the plaster can be redeeme