dirtying our clothes, and going into rooms without cleaning our dirty shoes, it is just as unhealthy to allow dirt to gather about rooms as to allow it to close up the pores of our skin. The particles of dust that we see floating about in a room are drawn in, through our mouth and nose, into our stomach and windpipe, and produce mischief there. Boys and girls, when set to clean a house or a garden, often throw out all sorts of rubbish into some corner, and leave it to gather there and gradually to rot away. Now, this may not do much harm in a country-place, where there is plenty of open air; but if such a thing be done in a town, it is certain to lead to bad results. It is this collection of rubbish and filth that occasions so many fevers and other pestilential diseases in places where it is allowed to gather; and as these diseases, such as cholera and typhus fever, often kill great numbers of people, those who are dirty in their habits are doing as much

harm to their neighbours as if they were to put poison in the water which they drink. It is quite shocking to know that in large towns more than half of the people who die may be said to be killed, for they die of diseases which might be prevented by proper attention to the ordinary rules for preserving health, of which cleanliness is admitted by all to be the easiest and most important.*

SMITH AND BROWN, OR

THE ADVANTAGE OF CLEANLINESS.

JOHN SMITH'S house was undoubtedly the dirtiest in the village. Go into it when you liked, you would never find a chair to sit down on, or see any appearance of order and cleanliness. Everything looked dingy and

* In London, of 27 deaths, 16 are from preventable causes; in Manchester, of 34 deaths, 22, and in Liverpool, of 37 deaths, 25 are from preventable causes.

miserable; the furniture was plashed over with dirt; long strings of cobwebs hung on the walls; you could scarcely see for the smoke; and the windows, which were seldom cleaned, hardly admitted any light. The place, to tell the truth, had not a very pleasant smell, and if you rushed out in a hurry to get a breath of the fresh air, you ran a risk of stumbling against the dungheap, which ornamented one side of the door, or of splashing into the pool of dirty stagnant water which occupied the place where a broad flagstone should have been. It was difficult to see why everything should be so dirty. John had only two children, a boy of twelve, and a girl a few years older; and his wife, with their aid, might have kept everything clean. But so it was, nothing was clean. John himself was aware that things were not as they ought to be; and he could not help confessing that there was a sad difference between his house and that of his neighbour

Brown, who lived just over the way, and whose house, though he had a large family, was so clean that, as everybody said, you might eat your dinner off the floor. Brown's house was quite a picture of comfort inside and out; and many a stranger stopped to admire it, and to praise its tidy mistress.

"What an unlucky fellow I am," said Smith one day to Brown; "here is my wife taken ill again with the fever, and it is only a month since I was able to be up myself; and what with medicines, and doctors' bills, and want of my wages, it will be a year before I get out of debt. I never heard of any one so unlucky as I am."

"Now, do n't be angry, neighbour," said Brown, "but are you sure that your bad luck is not partly your own fault?"

"You don't mean to say that I could help my wife falling ill, do you?" returned Smith.

"Well, perhaps you might. You know

that dungheap under your window has a nasty smell; and the dirty puddle before your door is horrid in such warm weather as this; and besides, your piggery is right behind the house, and you can smell it in your bedroom; and all that must be very bad for the health."

"So the doctor said; but you know I think all this newfangled outcry about cleanliness is for rich people, and not for a working-man like me. My father and mother lived just in such a cottage as mine, and they had a large family."

"That is true enough," answered Brown; and, except yourself, they all died of fever when they were young. But, my good neighbour, if cleanliness makes us healthy, the poor have more need to be cleanly than the rich; for we poor people can only work when we are in good health, and no work, no wages, you know. You laughed at me for spending my money in putting in larger windows in my