We want not only a better class of dwellings, but we require the people
to be so educated as to appreciate them. An Irish landlord took his
tenantry out of their mud huts, and removed them into comfortable
dwellings which he had built for their accommodation. When he returned
to his estate, he was greatly disappointed. The houses were as untidy
and uncomfortable as before. The pig was still under the bed, and the
hens over it. The concrete floor was as dirty as the mud one had been.
The panes of the windows were broken, and the garden was full of weeds.
The landlord wrote to a friend in despair. The friend replied, "You have
begun at the wrong end. You ought to have taught them the value of
cleanliness, thriftiness, and comfort." To begin at the beginning,
therefore, we must teach the people the necessity of cleanliness, its
virtues and its wholesomeness; for which purpose it is requisite that
they should be intelligent, capable of understanding ideas conveyed in
words, able to discern, able to read, able to think. In short, the
people, as children, must first have been to school, and properly taught
there; whereas we have allowed the majority of the working people to
grow up untaught, nearly half of them unable to read and write; and then
we expect them to display the virtues, prudence, judgment, and
forethought of well-educated beings!
It is of the first importance to teach people cleanly habits.
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