Necessity of Order and Regularity
No family can be properly managed, where the strictest order and regularity is not observed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand;' and if the direction of its affairs be left to accident or chance, it will be equally fatal to its comfort and prosperity. It is the part of a prudent manager to see all that is doing, and to foresee and direct all that should be done. The weakest capacity can perceive what is wrong after it has occurred; but discernment and discretion are necessary to anticipate and prevent confusion and disorder, by a well-regulated system of prompt and vigorous management. If time be wisely economized, and the useful affairs transacted before amusements are allowed, and a regular plan of employment be daily laid down, a great deal may be done without hurry or fatigue. The retrospect would also be most pleasant at the end of the year, to be able to enumerate all the valuable acquirements made, and the just and benevolent actions performed, under the active and energetic management of the mistress of a family. As highly conducive to this end, early and regular hours should be kept in the evening, and an early hour especially for breakfast in the morning. There will then be more time to execute the orders that may be given, which in general should comprise the business of the day; and servants, by doing their work with ease, will be more equal to it, and fewer of them will be necessary. It is worthy of notice, that the general expense will be reduced, and much time saved, if every thing be kept in its proper place, applied to its proper use, and mended, when the nature of the accident will allow, as soon as broken or out of repair. A proper quantity of household articles should always be ready, and more bought in before the others are consumed, to prevent inconvenience, especially in the country. Much trouble and irregularity would be prevented when there is company to dinner, if the servants were required to prepare the table and sideboard in similar order daily. As some preparation is necessary for accidental visitors, care should be taken to have constantly in readiness a few articles suited to such occasions, which if properly managed will be attended with little expense, and much convenience.
Bad habit of keeping Spare Rooms
Though persons of large fortune may support an expensive establishment without inconvenience, it ill becomes those in the middle rank to imitate such an example. Nothing can be more ludicrous than the contrast exhibited between two families of this description; the one living in the dignified splendor, and with the liberal hospitality, that wealth can command; the other in a stile of tinsel show, without the real appropriate distinctions belonging to rank and fortune. They are lavish, but not liberal, often sacrificing independence to support dissipation, and betraying the dearest interests of society for the sake of personal vanity, and gratifying what is significantly termed 'the pride of life.'
The great point for comfort and respectability is, that all the household economy should be uniform, not displaying a parade of show in one thing, and a total want of comfort in another. Besides the contemptible appearance that this must have to every person of good sense, it is often productive of fatal consequences. How common it is, in large towns especially, that for the vanity of having a showy drawing-room to receive company, the family are confined to a close back room, where they have scarcely air or light, the want of which is essentially injurious to health. To keep rooms for show belongs to the higher classes, where the house is sufficiently commodious for the family, and to admit of this also: but in private dwellings, to shut up perhaps the only room that is fit to live in, is to be guilty of a kind of self-destruction; and yet how frequently this consideration escapes persons who are disposed to render their family every comfort, but they have a grate, a carpet, and chairs too fine for every day's use. What a reflection, when nursing a sick child, to think that it may be the victim of a bright grate, and a fine carpet! Or, what is equally afflicting, to see all the children perhaps rickety and diseased from the same cause! Keeping a spare bed for ornament, rather than for use, is often attended with similar consequences. A stranger or a friend is allowed to occupy it once in so many months, and he does it at the peril of his health, and even of his life.
Another bad effect of keeping spare rooms is the seeing more company, and in a more expensive manner, than is compatible with the general convenience of the family, introducing with it an expense in dress, and a dissipation of time, from which it suffers in various ways. Not the least of these is the neglect of parental instruction, which it is attempted to supply by sending the children at an improper age to school; the girls where they had better never go, and the boys where they get but little good, and perhaps are all the worse for mending. Social intercourse is not improved by parade, but quite the contrary; real friends, and the pleasantest kind of acquaintance, those who like to be social, are repulsed by it. The failure therefore is general, involving the loss of nearly all that is valuable in society, by an abortive attempt to become fashionable.
