Our book, now rapidly coming to a conclusion, would not be complete without one word about the ‘garret’—otherwise the box-room—which, all too often, is a storehouse for all sorts and conditions of rubbish, put up there in a desperate hope that, sooner or later, the odds and ends will come in usefully. There cannot be a greater mistake than hoarding, and I strongly advise my readers never to allow this to be done. If one’s clothes when worn out are not fit for one’s poorer friends, I suggest some respectable dealer should be applied to, and that they should be sold. I am aware this sounds an awful proposition to most people, but how rarely are our dresses suitable for those who would wear cast-off raiment? while, if we sell them, we can give the money in charity, or buy pictures or flowers for our rooms. Still, if this should be repugnant to the feelings of my readers, they can always send all their rubbish to the Kilburn Orphanage of Mercy, the good sisters there being able to use to the veriest fragment all they receive, and which does then immediate good.
Let the box-room or garret be thoroughly turned out and investigated once every three months; keep there all pieces of paper similar to the papers on your walls for mending purposes, and any travelling trunks or boxes that may be wanted; but do not accumulate rubbish of any kind. Even sentimental rubbish should be destroyed at once; when we die it will be done by hands which are not as tender as ours are, and no good is done by hoarding all sorts and kinds of letters and flowers, or even babies’ first shoes. They may mean life itself to us; they will be nothing but the veriest rubbish to our successors.
Standing as it were in the garret, our long work of revising and writing this book at last drawing to a conclusion, and feeling sad, as one always feels when parting with an occupation that has been on one’s mind for many a month, I should like to say a few words on that saddest of all subjects, a death in the house—only a few words; but a house that has never known a death is indeed an almost impossible thing to contemplate, and so our record would not be complete without this. Thank Heaven, we look out with brighter eyes on the other country than did our ancestors, but we have still many customs to leave off, many others we could adopt with benefit from the relics of past days.
I would advocate great cheerfulness about our dead. They should never be left alone, and candles and bright flowers should fill the room; where, had I my way, the blessed sunshine should stream in always, gloom should be discouraged, and the service with its music and the coloured pall should suggest not our grief but the gain of those who, even to the agnostic of the period, appear at rest, and can most certainly never weary or hunger any more; while to us who hope to look beyond these shadows their happiness should overshadow our grief entirely. Still, whichever way we look on the silence that surrounds our little life, there are certain things that I would urge on the survivors. Let all the personal linen and garments of the dead friend be at once sent to Kilburn, or to Miss Hinton’s, A. F. D. Society, 4 York Place, Clifton. These garments are distributed at once among the families of poor clergymen, and so immediately benefit a most deserving class. Do not permit any hoarding (I once knew a whole valuable wardrobeful of clothes consumed by the moth, because the widow’s feelings did not allow of the garments being disturbed, though they were not too acute to prevent her becoming engaged to be married before the year was out); and, above all, burn all letters that may be left unread; this will save endless mischief, and should be done at once. No one knows who may be the next to depart and be no more seen, and so this should not be delayed any longer than is possible.
It is far better to do these things at once. If we close the room in which our beloved have passed away, and think time will enable us to face the task with more boldness, we shall find we are grievously mistaken; the longer we put it off the worse it will be, and we shall not forget them any quicker because their own possessions have been given to those who can benefit by them. Each thing in life should always be in use; hoarding of any kind in a garret is useless, and wicked too.
And now I have come to the last hint, I think, I have to give my young householders. Of course, the subject is practically inexhaustible, and enlarges itself for one every day we live; but I have given you all my own experience up to the present date, and if it should save one young couple the mistakes I made in my first start in life, or give them the help I should have been so glad of myself twenty years ago, I shall feel I have not spent my time in vain; while let no one despise the homely subject, for it is our first duty in life to try and make our homes so bright and beautiful and pleasant that they may shed radiance on all in their immediate neighbourhood, setting the example that is worth so very much precept, and be like good deeds, ‘shining like a candle in this naughty world.’ Let love, beauty, carefulness, and economy rule your lives, O young householders! and then you will find that life is the most interesting thing possible, and is always, to the very last day of it, well worth the trouble of living.