We have all heard of the fortunate lady whose “very failings leaned to virtue’s side.” Is there a converse to her? Do none of our virtues lean to vice’s side? I think I could enumerate a few, but for the moment the vicious side of tidiness is so strongly borne in upon me that I need go no further afield. Tidiness is delightful, meritorious, indispensable, admirable, estimable, praiseworthy, politic, and most precious. Untidiness is execrable, reprehensible, unseemly, and quite detestable. It is first cousin to uncleanliness, and is the mother of much domestic warfare. Tidiness is a virtue, indeed, but when carried to an extreme it becomes actually a disagreeable quality. My first impression to that effect was imbibed at the early age of nine, when I was sent to a boarding school. Separated from home and all familiar faces, I had a miserable heart-ache, even in the reception-room, but the sight of the awful tidiness of the dormitory chilled me to the very soul. Tyrannical cleanliness.The white walls, white beds, boarded floor, with its strips of carpet in a sad monotone of tint, gave me my first definite sensation of the meaning of the word “bleak.” And ever after, when returned to school from the holidays, I dreaded the moment of entering that long dormitory, where tidiness and cleanliness reigned rampant, like tyrants, instead of inviting, like the friendly, comfortable things they really are.

I know a mother who will not allow her children to have toys, “because they are always lying about.” Well, toys are a very good means of teaching children tidiness; but the true mother-heart must be lacking when the young ones are robbed of their childish joys for so selfish a reason. Childhood lasts so short a time, and can be so happy. Why curtail its little blisses? Just a few toys are more productive of pleasure than the plethora which so many nurseries display nowadays. And why should tidiness forbid a few?

For my part I like to see a battered old doll knocking about in the drawing-room of my friends. Generally armless, sometimes legless, occasionally headless, that doll becomes an enchanted spring of poetry when its small proprietress comes in and takes it up, loving it deeply and warmly in spite of its painful ugliness, its damaged condition, and general want of charm. Is not that what love does for us all? Ignoring our faults, it throws its glamour over us, and gives us what enriches the donor as well as the recipient—the most precious thing on earth.

The mother who deprives her small daughter of a doll sacrifices more than she knows to the demon of tidiness, and she robs herself of much delight. The consultations about dolly’s health are often funny enough. The discussions about the wax and bran-stuffed thing’s temper and naughtiness give many a peep into those departments of the child’s own nature, afford many a clue to the best method of treating them, and are, besides, amusing beyond expression. And where is poor Tommy, among boys, without his gun, his sword, and pistol? He is despised of his peers, and almost despises himself in consequence. It is bad for Tommy, very bad. Yes; tidiness can be very selfish. One can scarcely pardon the mothers who allow it to interfere with home joys.

I know people who object to flowers in the house because “they are so messy.” They droop and die indeed. ’Tis a true indictment, but they are worth some trouble, are they not? Ultra-tidiness would banish them, and some of us would willingly be banished with them from the realms so ruled. Flowers do not last nearly so long when housed by persons of this sort as with those who love them, tend them daily, cherish them with warmest care, anticipate their needs, as only love can do, and attract from them some subtle, scarcely comprehensible, sympathy that prolongs the existence of these exquisite, innocent things, whose companionship means so much to man.

The Æsthetes in their day revelled in untidiness. They made a cult of it, and in their worship included a leaning towards dirt, which they canonised under the name of “Tone.” Many of them permitted even their faces to acquire tone by this means, which was carrying the thing too far. But they did much for succeeding generations in banishing a too pronounced neatness from dress and the home. The grateful shade of the Æsthete.Has not the influence of the Æsthete delivered us from the terrible propriety of chairs ranged along the wall, piano to match, and the centre-table, with its unalterable rigidity of central ornament and rim of book and vase in conic sectional immutability?

Oh, it was all most beautifully tidy, but do, for a moment, recall it and compare it with the drawing-room of to-day. I do not mean the dusty litter of dilapidated draperies and orgie of over-crowded ornament to be found in some houses, but to the sane, yet artistic arrangement of table and lamp, piano and pottery, palm and vase, clustering fern and glowing blossom or snowy flower, to be seen in thousands of English homes at the present hour. Here tidiness is not absent, but its rigours are avoided. Its essence is extracted, while its needless extremes—its suburbs, as it were—are totally ignored. We have learned how to be clean, yet decorative, in our homes and our costume, to distinguish between severity and simplicity, and, so far, good. But the point is that tidiness should not overcome us to the hurt of others, and consequently our own. A word to the wise.If husbands persist in leaving a trail of newspapers all over the house, something after the fashion of the “hare” in a paper-chase, let us calmly fold them and assuage our inner revolt as best we may. If the children scatter their toys about, we can make them put them tidily away, and that is more than we can manage with their fathers! But to be too acutely tidy leads to friction and the development of that “incompatibility of temper” which seems to be quite a modern disease, to judge from the very numerous instances of it that come before the public notice.