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Friendly counsels for freedmen

Chapter 3: CLEANLINESS.
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About This Book

A minister offers practical and moral guidance to recently emancipated people, welcoming their freedom while warning that liberty brings new responsibilities. He encourages gratitude and industry, urging recipients to seek honest labor even at low pay, accept temporary government aid but aim for self-reliance, and use savings to guard against future need. The pamphlet stresses personal habits—cleanliness, economy, sobriety—and insistence on honesty, truthfulness, and avoidance of stealing, lying, and profane swearing. Moral instruction is grounded in Scripture and framed to help families secure stable, respectable livelihoods.

CLEANLINESS.

Industry is one good thing. But there are other habits also we would recommend. Cleanliness is very important. Black or white, a dirty person is a disgusting object. Even a poor person can possess the virtue of cleanliness. Soap and water are not very dear things; but if one don’t use them, they might as well cost guineas instead of coppers. What do you think of a mother who keeps neither herself nor her children clean? Who likes to enter a cabin or cottage where the dirt has to be wiped off a seat before a decent man or woman can sit down upon it? A clean person will see that even the patched garments he is obliged to wear are at least free from dirt. No matter how poor the house is you live in, it should be kept clean. The Bible says, “Wash you, make you clean.” Though this means soul washing, yet it shows God loves cleanliness.