New Yark — State Cullege of Agriculture At Cornell University Dthaca, N. DV. Library Nii VOCATIONS SETTING FORTH THE VARIOUS PHASES OF THE MECHANIC ARTS, HOME-MAKING, FARMING AND WOODCRAFT, BUSI- NESS, THE PROFESSIONS OF LAW, MINISTRY AND MEDICINE, PUBLIC SERVICE, LITERATURE AND JOURNALISM, TEACHING, MUSIC, PUBLIC ENTERTAINMENT AND THE FINE ARTS .*. WITH PRACTICAL INTRODUCTIONS BY A CORPS OF ASSOCI- ATE EDITORS WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE, D.D., LL.D. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF NATHAN HASKELL DOLE, CAROLINE TICKNOR AND ALBERT WALTER TOLMAN, A.M. ASSISTANT EDITORS TEN VOLUMES RICHLY ILLUSTRATED BOSTON HALL AND LOCKE COMPANY PUBLISHERS EDITORIAL BOARD WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE, D.D., LL.D., Editor-in-chief, Author, President Bowdoin Col- lege; Brunswick, Maine. RICHARD COCKBURN MACLAURIN, Sc.D., a Author, President Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Boston, Massachusetts. MARION HARLAND (Mrs. Mary Virginia Terhune), Author, Lecturer; New York City. LIBERTY HYDE BAILEY, A.M., Author, Editor, Director New York State College of Agriculture, Cornell University; Ithaca, New York. ANDREW CARNEGIE, LL.D., Author, Lord Rector St. An- drew’s University; New York City. * The HON. MELVILLE WESTON FULLER, LL.D., Chancellor Smithsonian Institute, Member Permanent Court of Ar- bitration at The Hague, Chief Jus- tice of the United States; Wash- ington, District of Columbia. The HON. JAMES RUDOLPH GARFIELD, LL.D., Former Secretary of the Interior; Mentor, Ohio. MARY EMMA WOOLLEY, Litt.D., L.H.D., President Mt. Holyoke College; South Hadley, Massachusetts. HENRY VAN DYKE, D.D., LL.D., Author, Professor of English Lit- erature, Princeton University; Princeton, New Jersey. HORATIO PARKER, Mus. Doc., Composer, Professor of the Theory of Music, Yale University; New Haven, Connecticut. KENYON COX, A.N.A., W.A., Author and Artist; New York City. NATHAN HASKELL DOLE, Author, Lecturer, Editor; Boston, Massachusetts. CAROLINE TICKNOR, Author, Editor; Boston, Massa- chusetts. ALBERT WALTER TOLMAN. A.M. Author; Portland, Maine. EDITORIAL BOARD WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE, D.D., LL.D., Editor-in-chief, Author, President Bowdoin Col- lege; Brunswick, Maine. RICHARD COCKBURN MACLAURIN, Sc.D., a Author, President Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Boston, Massachusetts. MARION HARLAND (Mrs. Mary Virginia Terhune), Author, Lecturer; New York City. LIBERTY HYDE BAILEY, A.M., Author, Editor, Director New York State College of Agriculture, Cornell University; Ithaca, New York. ANDREW CARNEGIE, LL.D., Author, Lord Rector St. An- drew’s University; New York City. a The an nee WESTON FULLER, -D., Chancellor Smithsonian Institute, Member Permanent Court of Ar- bitration at The Hague, Chief Jus- tice of the United States; Wash- ington, District of Columbia. The HON. JAMES RUDOLPH GARFIELD, LL.D., Former Secretary of the Interior; Mentor, Ohio. MARY EMMA WOOLLEY, Litt.D., L.H.D., President Mt. Holyoke College; South Hadley, Massachusetts. HENRY VAN DYKE, D.D., LL.D., Author, Professor of English Lit- erature, Princeton University; Princeton, New Jersey. HORATIO PARKER, Mus. Doc., Composer, Professor of the Theory of Music, Yale University; New Haven, Connecticut. KENYON COX, AN.A., N.A,, Author and Artist; New York City. NATHAN HASKELL DOLE, Author, Lecturer, Editor; Boston, Massachusetts. CAROLINE TICKNOR, Author, Editor; Boston, Massa- chusetts. ALBERT WALTER TOLMAN. A.M. Author; Portland, Maine. LIST OF VOLUMES Votume I. THE MECHANIC ARTS Edited by Ricaarp CocKBURN Mactaorin, Sc.D., LL.D. Vouume II. HOMEMAKING Edited by Marion Hartanp Voutume III. FARM AND FOREST Edited by Liserty Hype BaAILey, A.M. Voitume IV. BUSINESS Edited by ANDREW CaRNEGIE, LL.D. VotumeE V. THE PROFESSIONS Edited by Mertvitte Weston Futter, LL.D. Votume VI. PUBLIC SERVICE Edited by James GARFIELD, LL.D. RUDOLPH VotumeE VII. EDUCATION Edited by Mary Emma WooLLeEy, Litt.D., L.H.D. Votume VIII. LITERATURE Edited by Henry Van Dyke, D.D., LL.D. ” Votume IX. MUSIC AND PUBLIC ENTERTAINMENT Edited by Horatio Parker, Mus. Doc. VoLumE X. THE FINE ARTS eaied by Kenyon Cox, A.N.A., YSHLOW S.LSILYY SHL MATLSIHM Ag burjUurvd ay} 4axfP DOCATIONS, in Ten Volumes William DeWitt Hyde, Editor-in-Chief HOME MAKING EDITED BY MARION HARLAND VOLUME II BOSTON HALL AND LOCKE COMPANY PUBLISHERS Coryrieat, 1911 By HALL & LOCKE COMPANY Boston, U. 8. A. @17345 Stanhope JPress F. H. GILSON COMPANY BOSTON. U.S.A. CONTENTS List oF CoLorED ILLUSTRATIONS INTRODUCTION : By Marion Har.anp. OUR HOMES THe HOMEKEEPER....... By Lyman Assortt, D.D., LL.D., L.H.D. THe VIRTUE AND FANATICISM OF NEATNESS By Henry Warp Br&EcHER, THE Care OF A HovusEHOLD By Wiiu1am Dryrspa.z. HovusEKEEPING AND HOMEMAKING . Br Marion Harvanp. Toe Lapy WuHo Doss Her Own Work. By Harriet Beecuer Stowe. Woman’s Mission . By Assy Morron Diaz. My First Atrempr at HousEKEEPING By Mrs. Frank R. Srocxron, THE CHANGE IN THE FEMININE IDEAL By Marearet DELAND. QUEEN oF ONnrE’s Own KITCHEN By Margaret E. SancsTer. Homse Economy By Van Buren DENsLow. . Sources oF HovusEHoLD WASTE . By Ciara G. Brewer. We anp Our DAUGHTERS . By JosepHine Dasxkam Bacon. Wuat Can I Do? By Anniz H. Ryper. Tue ProspLeM oF Domestic SERVICE By Euizaseta McCracken. An Otp SERVANT By S. G. TaLLENTYRE. How To SOLVE THE HOUSEKEEPING PROBLEM By Frances M. Assort. Tae LirrteE WoMAN AND THE Busy Man By Exzanor Hoyt BRarnerbD. ScIENCE IN THE Mopet KiITtcHEN By Anna Leacs. PREPARING FOR A TEA Party IN 17— By Harriet BreecHer Stown. ix PAGE x11 13 21 29 44 51 57 64 71 85 94 113 123 136 151 167 176 187 x Contents THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD IN PROSPERITY AND ADVER- SITY s By OLIVER Gotpsmrra, Our HovusEKEEPING By Cuarises Dickens. THE HOME WHEN MADE Fire WorsHIP , By NatTHANIEL HawrHorns. Buitpine a House By Henry Warp BEECHER. THE SELECTION OF A HomE By Guarence AUGUSTINE Martin. ORGANISM OF THE HovusE By Hreiten CAMPBELL. Homes or Taste By J. E. Panton. Tue GuEsT CHAMBER By Auice L. JaMzs. HospPIraLiry WITtHouT GRUDGING By Marion Harvanp.. BumLpING A FIREPLACE IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS By Hamuin GaRLaNnD. Tue QuEENLY PowER or WoMEN . By Joan Ruskin. Some Faitures oF AMERICAN WOMEN . By Mrs. Newse.ut Dwiest Hits. Domestic LiFrr By RatpH WaLpo EMERson. Domestic ScrENcE aS A PROFESSION By Anna Barrows. Frencu HovusEKEEPING : ‘ By Maritpa BARBARA Brruam-EDwarps, Tur New HovusEKEEPING By Rusy Ross Goopnow. A Day OFF . By Carouinn TickNor. For Huspanp AS WELL AS FOR WIFE . By Sari Joy WHITE. Tue WomaAn’s ExcHANGE By Lucy Maynarp SaLmon. Tue PaAssInc oF THE UNTRAINED WOMAN By Mary Bronson Harrr, KitcHEN SKETCHES By Exvizaseta Hate Gitman. SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS PAGE 193 206 219 229 236 245 262 267 270 275 285 296 309 318 322 331 341 352 358 375 383 394 LIST OF COLORED ILLUSTRATIONS Tue Artist’s MoTrHEeR ee tht Frontispiece THANKSGIVING PREPARATIONS . . . Face page 34 Tae Kerrie oN THE Harta Bh cats Ge adnnns 66 Tue Mornine Mrau ; ome Boome oe 2, £06 Apple DumpLiNGs .. ob @ “wee ew a 2 w 154 BREAKFAST IS READY mwas St, ae . 178 Tue Two FamiLizes ’ ath oh is eb ow 210 Curistmas PupDING eG ee ee owe Sel ae ep 2282. Home . ‘ ge. tes. AS 3 . . 3814 Toe Lasr Ray ge tg, gee S81 ae ne Go ie. (eh he G 346 INTRODUCTION By MARION HARLAND A CONSERVATIVE philanthropist said recently in my hearing: “The craze for motor cars is a menace to American homes.” He went on to give statistics as to the number of homesteads that had been mortgaged that the owners might possess and run automobiles. According to his showing, thousands of men are pledging their life-insur- ance policies for the like purpose. Folly that approximates madness, we must allow, but whence the ‘‘menace”’ to the integrity of the home? As I interpret the assertion, it is because the thousands aforesaid cannot keep up a style of living that harmon- izes with the expensive luxury. The strength of a chain is judged by its weakest link, and the web that is not even-threaded will not wear well. I know of a woman whose husband traced his bank- ruptcy directly to her purchase of a pair of parlor curtains for which she paid ‘‘in installments.”” They were so much more handsome than the other plenishings of the cot- tage that she was forced to buy a new carpet — also upon the installment plan. Curtains and carpet put the well-worn furniture out of countenance. The parlor re- furnished throughout, and re-christened as the “‘drawing- room,” did not accord with the rest of the house. It is needless to go on with the story. It is one which has xiii xiv Introduction run through countless editions, and the copyright is, as one reads in French cemeteries of certain holdings — “in perpetuity.” This even-threadedness, this harmony throughout all its parts, is the primal consideration in home-building. In a great majority of households, particularly in those where the children have had a better education than was vouchsafed by fortune to the parents, the famous “best room” of New England stories of domestic life has been abolished. Once in a blue moon the tourist happens upon it in districts remote from railway and telegraph poles. At its best estate, as that is depicted by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mary Wilkins-Freeman, it was a genteel vault consecrated to the genii of Re- spectability and Pretension. Portraits, ‘‘executed”’ by itinerant painters; samplers, not one whit less artistic; en- gravings, obtained as premiums with popular periodicals, and, not infrequently, coffin plates, removed from the lids when the funeral services at the house or church were concluded, decorated the walls. These last I have beheld with mine own eyes, and decided within my shuddering spirit that they were the most appropriate of all the adornments of the room, for, within the darkened precincts the corpse of dead comfort lay in state from one year’s end to the other, unvisited except when wedding, funeral, or the annual tea-drinking (with elaborate trimmings), given to the minister and his wife, created an occasion that warranted the housemother in opening the solid blinds and admitting the light and air of heaven. We smile incredulously in reading and hearing of this travesty of home life. Our drawing-rooms are free to family and friends; our tables and bookshelves hold volumes that are for reading, and not for show; we no Introduction XV longer sit in the kitchen and receive calls in the dining- room, because, as one ‘‘educated”? woman told me of hers, ‘‘the other rooms are not het up.” These enormities in the sight of the modern house- mother are .back numbers. As she would tell you proudly, ‘‘we live all over our houses.” If our girls are college bred and our boys have had a run abroad, we make talk of ‘‘color schemes”’ in furnishing, and relegate ‘setts’? — with stress upon the doubled “‘t’’ —to the third and fourth class of the Newly-made Rich. Our critic condemns, as a blasphemy of the loom, the gaudy carpets with which her mother concealed every inch of the floor in the best room. Bare boards, to that worthy dame, hardly came short of indecent exposure. Her daughter has hardwood floors, and crisscrosses them with rugs, as expensive as she can afford to lay down. Thirty odd years ago a mania for draperies ran like wildfire through our country. We draped windows, re- cesses, doors, and;mantels, and every picture frame had its “throw” in some variety of silk, tissue,’ lace, or mus- lin. Our daughters exclaim wonderingly when they drag from chest or drawer these pitiful scraps and lengths of stuffs. That we ever regarded the fashion as esthetic is as odd to their apprehension as the samplers and coffin plates are to us. We have seen for ourselves the absurd- ity of the “throws.” A saucy woman insists upon spell- ing the word differently. They represent to her the “‘throes”’ with which “artistic” taste struggled into life in America. We reserve draperies for windows and for archways now, and make no secret of doors that swing upon honest hinges. We have wash-stuffs for the windows in bed- chambers and in bathrooms. The dust which our fore- mothers classified as ‘‘dirt ’’ we know to be a deadly foe Xvi Introduction to human health because it is laden with evil germs. Therefore we substitute rugs, which may be lifted and beaten in the open air every few days, for carpets nailed fast to the floor the first of November, 1856, and not taken up until November first, 1857, if then! One notable housemother whom I knew in that olden time informed me complacently that her parlor carpet had not been taken up for fifteen years! It was swept every week, and “brushed up” daily. That was to keep the moths out. The blessed woman was as ignorant of bacteri- ology as of estheticism. Without a full appreciation of the reasons underlying the radical changes in our manner of housekeeping and home-making, herein indicated but in part, we have, as a nation, made vast strides in the right direction in the last quarter century. Our houses are constructed and fur- nished with a wise regard for sanitation and general com- fort. Ventilation, drainage, and water supply are matters of grave interest to builder and to owner. In the inte- rior arrangements the tastes and wants of individuals are consulted when one builds a house for himself and family. If there be an invalid, she must not have a north room, or one too far from the heart of the house to allow her free intercourse with the rest. The nursery must have sunny windows, and “‘mother’s room” must be within easy distance of kitchen and dining-room. Some of the homesteads in which our forbears lived for generations in what we are accustomed to speak of as ease and com- fort, had, no closets, or but one or two in the whole building. We must have a roomy closet for each living- room. For, be it noted as one of the signs of the times, we have fallen into the habit of condemning as inferior the ‘former days,” in all that makes for right living; the house is now, in every sense of the word, a “‘residence.”’ Introduction Xvil Such are, in brief and imperfectly noted, the leading advantages the home of to-day has over the typical dwelling of fifty years ago. The chronic growler over our inferiority to the good old days that are dead — peace and abiding rest to their ashes! — would do well to compare the conditions that prevailed then with those under which he supports existence now. I heard the other day a definition of the distinction between pessimism and optimism which fits in patly here: The pessimist moans, ‘‘Oh, how tired I am!” The optimist sighs contentedly, ‘‘How good the bed feels !” There are notable evils in our modern life. There are, nevertheless, so many improvements upon the domestic life of the days whose ‘‘tender grace” we lament, that it is a wholesome and profitable exercise to take time to count them over, once in a while, in order to readjust our ideas. Like many another housewife who had her training at her mother’s side before entrées and ‘‘course dinners” were common talk and everyday fare, I have deplored the tendency of the system of higher education for women to breed in the minds of our girls contempt for domestic duties, including cookery. For forty years I have cried aloud, and spared not this crying blunder of mothers and daughters. And all the while I have been looking for reform to begin where it is undoubtedly most sorely needed — among the daughters of the small mechanic and the day-laborer, the women who throng factories and sewing-rooms, whereas their mothers, when girls, stayed at home and helped with house and farm work, fitting themselves for the station and duties to which nature and Providence called them. I have seen the so-called homes presided over by these women when XVlii Introduction marriage released them from office or factory; seen fragile children born of sickly mothers unfitted by their years of routine work for what they despise as menial tasks; seen, too, the husbands driven by disappointment, by slatternly viragos, and by miserable cookery, into rum- holes and gin-hells. I said, and truly, that if the ranks of the builders of homes in the next century are to be recruited from this ‘‘middle class,” the outlook is desper- ately disheartening to the lover of his kind and country. And while I looked on the right hand and on the left for deliverance from the gross and growing evil, hope came from an unexpected quarter. In our girls’ col- leges — the very institutions that seemed to foretell the total loss of the housewifely and home-making spirit among the higher classes—the science of domestic economy is established as an honored branch of the curriculum. Our girls are taught housekeeping as their brothers are instructed in the various professions by which they are to make a livelihood and to serve their kind. It was a golden day for me, last June, when I attended the commencement exercises of the Cooking School con- nected with the Teachers College in New York City. It was like the fulfillment of a Utopian dream, to wander through the kitchens, pantries, laundries, and dining-rooms of the magnificent building, and inspect the machinery and the finished products of the young women’s skill. In each bright face it pleased me to recognize a future home-builder. I said this to them when I was invited to address the throng of practical culinary artists, thank- ing them for the hope set before me of clearing skies for the American household. I told them that what I had seen was like the upspringing of wells of living waters in a desert. My heart was too full to say all that I felt of Introduction x1x the supreme importance to our country and to the world of the art they were acquiring. When I reflect that what I saw that day is repeated in a score of other girls’ colleges, and that this*is but the beginning of a great awakening, I thank God and take courage. In the strength of that courage and that hope, I am a thorough- paced optimist. I forget the labors and discouragements of the way and find the ‘‘bed good!” Returning to our keynote of the ‘‘even-threaded home,” I would warn my co-workers against what a wise writer has declared to be a prominent defect in the feminine make-up, — to wit, a lack of the right sense of proportion. Our foremothers understood this principle in home-build- ing less than we, as I have shown in the rapid compari- son of their methods with ours. Their closed best rooms, fireless chambers; the windows never opened all winter and protected from drafts by pasting papers or tack- ing list over the cracks between sashes and frames; their air-tight stoves and hermetically sealed chimney throats —were so many offenses against Nature, as we now know her, and her inexorable laws. They were, likewise, outrages upon our taste. Learn we from their mistakes how to order our homes aright. It is not a disgrace that you live in a house but half as large as that of Mrs. New-Smythe, whose husband made a cool million and a half in a government contract last year. It is not your taste that is at fault when you shield your polished floors from the boys’ boots with Japanese or American rugs, the latter ingeniously woven of old carpets sent to the factory in disreputable breadths, and returned in thick, comely squares or oblongs. You are no less respectable than she if you do employ but two maids, while she has three, beside butler and coachman. Her mansion is in keeping with her wealth. Your cottage xX Introduction corresponds with a moderate income. It would be an offense against right taste and honesty were you to fur- nish your library parlor as expensively as she has fitted up any one of her guest chambers, and, in pinching out the sum for this you had laid down a rag carpet in your own bedroom, and bought a painted combination wash- stand and bureau for the boys instead of the chiffonier upon which they had set their hearts, and the folding desk they really need in preparing their lessons. A good engraving goes better with the appointments of your cozy library than would the ‘“‘real Corot” which is Mrs. New-Smythe’s pride and boast. I question sometimes, in seeing the mad race for dis- play utterly inconsistent with the means and station of the victim of mistaken ambition, if there is anything in life which really deserves to be called ridiculous except pretension. It is the bane of home comfort. For forty years I have spent my summers upon the banks of a pretty lake set in an amphitheater of moun- tains. From my veranda I overlook, beyond the tran- quil sheet of water, two lines of railway connecting the largest city on the continent with the heart of the coun- try. I have never become callous to the sensations awakened by the sight of the outgoing trains as sunset: comes on. From the mighty arteries of human life they pour along a hundred other lines of travel —and all homeward! Through the country roads nearer to me The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea, The plowman homeward plods his weary way. I say the familiar lines over and again as the red in the west deepens, and the rush and roar of the trains, mel- lowed by distance, are repeated by the solemn hills. Groups of riders and carriages move along the highways; Introduction Xxi overhead the flight of birds toward grove and forest has the same meaning as the rest of the scene. One and all they are ‘‘homing,’’— to cot and to mansion; to byre and to nest! The living and breathing things the Father has made are seeking the dearest spot earth can offer — HOME. It is worth all the thought and time and strength we can put into it—this home-making. Nothing that blends with and helps on the glorious task is common or unclean. With this end in view drudgery is digni- fied; the commonplace becomes the Ministry of the Beautiful. Miron New Yor«k Crry, Oct. 15, 1910. HOMEMAKING THE HOME-KEEPER! By LYMAN ABBOTT SSN HE has a passion for cleanliness. She ab- ¥4 hors dirt and justifies her abhorrence by 4 the scriptural command, ‘‘Abhor that which is evil.” If dirt be not evil, she knows not what is. She is contributor to the Society for the Pre- vention of Cruelty to Animals; but she hates vermin as David hated the enemies of Jehovah, with a perfect hatred, and she pursues them with a persecution as conscientious and as relentless as those that- were waged by the medieval inquisitor against the heretics. She is not a scientist; but she needs no scientist to tell her that the germs of insidious disease lurk in dirt and are carried by vermin, and the definition of dirt as ‘‘matter misplaced’ does nothing to cool her vehement ardor. But no such passion for order possesses her. Clean- liness is itself a virtue. Next to godliness? If she were quite frank with herself, she would probably change the order and say godliness is next to cleanliness. Cer- tainly she would prefer as a visitor a clean sinner to a dirty saint, and she can find no severer condemnation for coarse language which the boys sometimes pick up in the streets than to tell them with a frown that it is dirty, no severer rebuke for their occasional petty mean- 1 From ‘The Home Builder.” By permission of the Author and Houghton Mifflin Company. nes 1908. 2 Homemaking nesses to one another than to say that they are acting in a nasty manner. But order is not in itself a virtue: it is only a means to an end. The end is general comfort and general convenience, and she never sacrifices the end to the means. She endeavors to have a place for everything; she endeavors to train the children — but not her husband —to put each thing in its appointed place. But she does not nag. If she sometimes follows a careless hus- band or son, picking up after him, she never does it with an ostentatious patience, or with a sigh which says, ‘See how much trouble your carelessness is making me.”’ Her rooms do not look so spick and span as her neigh- bors’, and she sometimes chides herself for not being so good a housekeeper. But she is a better home-keeper, which is far more impor- tant. For neither her husband nor her boys go to clubs or to other homes for liberty; her home is as free as the club. If order is heaven’s first law, liberty is its atmos- phere; and if she finds it difficult, as she sometimes does, to preserve both the law and the liberty, she prefers the liberty. : So there are in her household hours for meals and meal hours, and the two do not always coincide. The hour for breakfast is half-past seven; but if some morning the boys would make an early start for a fishing expedition, the breakfast hour is six; if another morning they can, without neglect of duty, sleep late and wish to do so, it changes to half-past eight or nine. This requires both tact and efficiency in dealing with the kitchen; but when a neighbor asks her if this is not very difficult to manage, she replies cheerfully, ‘‘This is what I am for.’”’ Neither husband nor children ever know and rarely guess what tact and toil are required. For she surmounts her ob- The Home-keeper 3 stacles without talking about them, except occasionally in a burst of confidence to her husband or her daughter, and then as a narrative of her triumphs, not as a history of her trials. This subordination of time and place to comfort and convenience is a part of her quite unconscious and there- fore unformulated theory that life is the end, and that all household arrangements are means to that end. She therefore believes that things are for folks, not folks for things, and always and instinctively acts on that belief. When children from the city make a visit to her country home and ask whether they may run on the grass, she says, ‘‘Of course”; and when an older visitor, fearing the effect on the young spring shoots, asks if that is good for the lawn, she replies smilingly, ‘‘No! but it is good for the children.” She has no use for books that can not be read, chairs that can not be sat in, a piano that can not be played, a room that can not be used. She has some fine editions, for she is fond of books, but she does not keep them under lock and-key. She would rather injure the book in teach- ing the child how to use it than injure the child by re- fusing him the book. If a careless boy or a still more careless visitor demolishes a parlor chair by trying to balance himself in it upon the two hind legs, she blames the chair, not the sitter, and does not get another of so delicate a construction. The piano tuner has to come to her house twice as often as to the house of her neigh- bor; but her children learn to play by playing. And though they may never become musicians, they learn to love music, and in after life a piano always brings to them thoughts of their home and their mother. She has no parlor with closed blinds and drawn cur- tains, from which the sun is carefully excluded lest it 4 Homemaking fade the precious carpet, and into which visitors are received in state with a sunless and frigid hospitality. Sometimes a critical visitor surprises an unusual dis- order, due to a misused liberty in the parlor, which Harry has for the nonce converted into a nursery, and the mother gently expresses the wish to herself that Harry were not so heedless. But to shut Harry out of the parlor she is quite certain would be no cure for his heedlessness, and that, not the disordered parlor, is what she wishes to cure. Her servants gradually, very gradually, imbibe the spirit of their mistress. For she is more than mistress to her servants. She believes with Queen Victoria that a good servant is a good friend. If a servant refuses to become a friend and insists on remaining a bit of animated machinery, they part as soon as the house- keeper has become convinced that no friendly bond is possible between them. On the other hand, if the ser- vant be loyal to the home, interested in her work, friend to her mistress and to the household, and willing to learn, the mistress has unfailing patience in teaching. She will endure neither disloyalty nor indifference, but she will endure everything else, even much unintentional impertinence to herself. She is not dependent upon her .- servants; she can keep house without them, and they are quite conscious of that fact. And because she will readily put herself out to accommodate them, they are ready to put themselves out to accommodate her. She keeps house, however, for her husband and her children, not for the servants, and she adjusts the affairs of her kingdom to meet the needs of her family, not of those who are employed to minister to it. To this rule there is one exception: the Sunday meals are so adjusted as to give her servants an opportunity for church, and The Home-keeper 5 they are encouraged to fulfill with fidelity all that their consciences, not hers, call on them to fulfill church-wise. The doors of her home are always open to the friends of her husband and of her children. She is glad to see them, and welcomes them right cordially to what she has to give. But she never strains endeavor to give them something better than she gives her own. She has not two standards, — one for her family, another for the stranger. She makes no effort to conform her living to the accustomed standard of her visitors; she is glad to see them if they will adapt their life for a few days to her standards. Perhaps for this reason she is always more ready to welcome men than their wives. Critical herself, and sensitively conscious of what she calls the defects of her housekeeping, she dreads to exhibit them to the critical eyes of other housekeepers. Yet her guests feel a charm in the free air of her home, which they do not feel in that of homes that are kept with more military precision. If she has not a reputation among women of being a model housekeeper, she has the reputation among men of having a model home. She knows what the women think and laments her deficiencies; she does not know what the men think, and would not much care if she did know. She knows that her husband and her children are home-lovers, and she is content. For love, not ambition, is the inspiration of her life and the reward of her endeavors. She built her monument herself; and yet she did not know that she had a monument. She lived in it; but she did not know that it existed. She never dreamed that she was great, or that she was specially useful, or that she had achieved anything worth living for. Sometimes, when she read the stories 6 Homemaking of historic heroines, she, too, had her “dream of fair women,” and looked with a sigh upon her life made up of little deeds, so little that even she who did them was not conscious of the doing, she whose loom moved so noiselessly that she neither thought how long she was at it, nor what a beautiful pattern she was weaving. Indeed, it would have seemed to her, if she had ever thought about herself or her work, to weave itself. But she did not think about herself. Self-consciousness would have destroyed her monument. Her monument was her home. It grew up quietly, as quietly as a flower grows; and no one knew — she did not know herself — how much she had done to tend and water and train it. Her husband had absolute trust in her. He earned the money, she expended it. And as she put as much thought into her expenditures as he put into his earning, each dollar was doubled in the expending. She had inherited that mysterious faculty which we call taste; and she cultivated it with fidelity. Every home she visited she studied, though always unconsciously, as if it were a museum or an art gallery; and from every visit she brought away some thought which came out of the alembic of her loving imagination, fitted to its appropriate place in her own home. She was too genuine - to be an imitator; for imitation is always of kin to false- hood, and she abhorred falsehood. She was patient with everything but a lie. So she never copied in her own home or on her own person what she had seen elsewhere; yet everything she saw elsewhere entered into and helped complete the perfect picture of life which she was always painting with deft fingers in everything, from the honey- suckle which she trained over the door to the bureau in the guest’s room, which her designing made a new work of art for every new friend, if it were only by a new The Home-keeper 7 nosegay and a change of vases. Putting her own per- sonality into her home, thus making every room and almost every article of furniture speak of her, she had the gift to draw out from every guest his personality and make him at home, and so make him his truest and best self. Neither man nor woman of the world could long resist the subtle influence of that home; the warmth of its truth and love thawed out the frozen proprieties from imper- sonated etiquette; and whatever circle of friends sat on the broad piazza in summer, or gathered around the open fire in winter, knew for a time the rare joy of liberty — the liberty of perfect truth and perfect love. Her home was hospitable because her heart was large; and any one was her friend to whom she could minister. But her heart was like the old Jewish Temple — strangers only came into the court of the Gentiles, friends into an inner court; her husband and her children found a court still nearer her heart of hearts, yet even they knew that there was a Holy of Holies which she kept for her God, and they loved and revered her the more for it. So strangely were commingled in her the inclusiveness and the exclusiveness of love, its hospitality and its reserve. She began to build the monument in her teens. She did not finish it until she lay down to her last rest. THE VIRTUE AND FANATICISM OF NEATNESS By HENRY WARD BEECHER i A~gT has been said that poetry must be a birth- | i right. It can not spring from education merely. We are sure that the same is yet ae more eminently true of neatness! A man must have an original genius for it, or he will not excel. We have good reasons for saying so. We admire pictures without being able to paint them, and we admire neatness in the same way. We have a sort of reverence for a com- prehensively neat and orderly person, as of a being of supe- rior endowments. We could never gain an insight into that rare and wonderful mental mechanism by which everything is made to arrange itself without commotion, and things come to pass neatly. Itis a matter of genius, undoubtedly. Education may develop it, direct it, but never creates it. All the education in the world could not enable us to fold a shirt so that it would come forth with - the creases in the right place. We can roll up a bundle, we can tumble up a garment, we can crowd into very nar- row compass any amount of linen; but when it comes forth again, who can describe its condition? Another hand is put forth. Every thread knows its master. Each plait and every fold submit themselves. Creases vanish in despair. And a heterogeneous heap comes quietly into order and contact, so that a trunk is packed with as much harmony as are the muscles and tissues of the human body. 8 The Virtue and Fanaticism of Neatness 9 Then there is the mystery of bureau drawers. We never put anything into them that it does not seem to shove everything else. We never take anything out without discomposing all that remains. - There is a fatality of disorder in our touch. But another soothes the drawer; brings peace to linen, and composure to ruffled handker- chiefs and heterogeneous stockings. If we hang up any- thing in the closet, it is sure to fall down again. If we want a coat, it is sure to be under two or three other gar- ments, which always get out of the way in any but the right way. Our boots and shoes take every liberty with us, and despise regularity in arrangement. Indeed, our visit to any place is a sure indication that the place needs some attention. But if these easy things are difficult, what shall be said of books, of papers, of letters, of engravings, of pictures, and of all the multitude of nameless things that make up a collector’s cabinet? Who can describe a man’s house when his family is away? Books accumulate on the floor; papers load down the table; pitchers, tumblers, plates, blink from among statuettes and vases on the mantelpiece; framed engrav- ings and pictures are stacked against the wall six or seven deep; portfolios spread abroad their huge sides flat upon the floor; shawls and dressing-gowns are tucked upon the sofa; hats, caps, gloves, and shoes are promiscu- ous and diffusive; heaps of everything abound everywhere. There is a place for everything, and everything is in its place, and that place is — the floor. The ashes are forgot- ten and protrude far beyond decency and the fender; canes and fishing rods confer together in the corner, and cups and balls roll and jingle in every drawer. All the tumblers in the house have been used for flowers, and all the pitchers have been brought up with water. And yet the man loves order, and no one has a keener sense of grat- 10 Homemaking itude when the restoring hand at last arrives, and all things, as if conscious of a new influence, begin their march to their own domain. But order and neatness are different things. A man may be forgiven for disorder, but not for dirtiness, and especially if it be personal. There are many persons scru- pulously neat who are not orderly, and sometimes we find aman who is orderly but not neat; but generally neatness and order are twin sisters. And how beautiful! We can pity and forgive the want of these qualities in man, but not in woman. All virtues and graces go for nothing in a slattern. A woman must be superhuman, indeed angelic, who could please without neatness. Proba- bly the conviction of this truth accounts for the universal grace of neatness among women. There are occasional rumors of a contrary state of things. But we always tread them under foot indignantly as wanton slanders. Women are neat. If not, they are not women. Nay! Women are in danger of excess in carefulness. They run into radical notions of order, and even flame forth into fanaticism of neatness. Then neatness becomes most afflictive. It has long been a question with me which was most dreadful, a disorderly house, or a dwelling given up to the insanity of neatness. In the sacred pre- cinct of that dwelling where the despotic woman wields the scepter of fierce neatness, man treads as if he carried his life in his hands. Order is the center, and neatness the supreme law, of the house. Nothing is pardonable, nothing is tolerated, which does not nimbly and abjectly bow down to them. Sin and dirt are synonymous. Vain are lesson and catechism without precision and absolute neatness. All the instruments of this final quality become reverend. A child that would speak slightingly of broom, brush, or towel, is on the road to profanity! All moral . The Virtue and Fanaticism of Neatness 11 qualities are inflections or subordinates of the supreme virtue of cleanly order. Men are divided into two classes,— the neat and the filthy. The grades of respectability and the order of en- dowment are all measured by the relative capacity for neatness! Everything comes under this Moral Law. The horse must be neat, the cow must be neat, the dog must be neat, the pigs must be neat! From cellar to attic there is the most fierce and vigilant hunt for the germ of dirt. There must not only be no spot, or soil, or litter, but not even the suspicion of any! What avail all virtues, all graces of speech, all helpful kindness, if, when the matron lays her head on the pillow, there is a probable shaving on the nursery floor, an undusted chair, or a bit of lint right out on the parlor carpet? Common, ignorant folk have but a slight idea of neat- ness as a science. It is with many people of a neglected education a mere superficial quality. Have they ever classified the different kinds of dirt, traced them to their sources, and studied their habits? Do they even know that there is a Natural History of Dirt? There are mold, rust, mildew, dust, smoke grime; dirt of wood, of woolen, of cotten, of fruit and vegetable, of paper, of leaves, of insects, of birds and beasts, of men and children; solid, liquid, gaseous, aerial, terraqueous, visible and invisible. There is the dirt of the crack, of the crack vertical and the crack horizontal, of the molding and cornice, of the wall and ceiling, of the curtain and carpet, of cupboard and closet, of table and bed, of seasons. Each in kind, winter dirt, spring, summer, and autumn dirts, and each to be searched, seized, condemned, and annihilated. The housewife becomes a knight-errant. Ghosts and giants are nothing to her. Castles and encounters of free- booters she turns over to nursery credulity. She has her 12 Homemaking broom and brush in hand, her armature of cloth and wash, for that deceitful, stealthy, ubiquitous foe of all domestic peace, universal dirt! Allnatureisherenemy. All winds are adverse which bring dust. All phenomena are re- garded as good or bad, from their dirt-producing tend- encies. The economy of life is arranged with supreme reference to virtues of order and neatness. Comfort is nothing, ease is nothing, happiness is nothing, good dis- positions are nothing. Neatness is the one grace. That determines when you must get up, what you must wear, where you may sit down, what you may touch, what rooms are usable, what days of the week are home days, or endurable days. Life has not one moment’s respite from unwinking vigilance! Not one moment is there in which the great arch-enemy of connubial felicity does not threaten a speck or a spot upon something. You live under a perpetual and sounding, ‘Take care!” It is “Take care! don’t touch that silver; you will tarnish it.” ‘‘Take care of that sofa! it is newly covered.” ‘‘Take care! don’t sit on that clean chintz; you ought to know better than to sit down on such achair!”’ ‘Take care! let that hat alone! you will soil it!” ‘Take care! pray don’t go near that side- board; you ’ll scratch it.” ‘Take care! don’t eat apples in the sitting-room,— you always drop some seeds.” “Take care, child! come away from that door. You are not going into that room; it is just put in order!” And thus, family discipline, domestic life, and the whole end of living seems to be to avoid dirt and secure neatness. Is there anything so tormenting as ecstatic neatness? Oh, for a morsel of dirt, as a luxury! How good dust looks! A plowed field with endless dirt, — all hail! The great sentence itself, which consigns man finally to dust again, becomes a consolation! THE CARE OF A HOUSEHOLD! By WILLIAM DRYSDALE O you know of any part of a girl’s educa- ¥ tion that is of more importance to her than a thorough knowledge of household duties? Any girl, I mean, —rich or poor, in city-or country. Think of it for yourself, and make up your own mind about it. Do you honestly believe that any girl can be called well educated who does not know how to bake bread, or roast a joint, or make beds? It is an important question, and you can not begin too early in life to consider it. If you have, like many other girls, reached the point where you would answer, ‘‘But my studies take up all my time; I have no time left for doing housework,” that is all the more reason for you to stop and think. That is a danger point. The greatest happiness that you can hope to attain in this world is a happy home. No career that you can ’ plan and carve out for yourself, no fame, no fortune, can take its place. You may have the career and the fame and the fortune, but if you have not had the happy home you will find before you reach the end that some- thing has been lacking. I know how impossible it is for many young girls to understand and believe this, be- cause all their present inclinations are in other directions. But your inclinations and ambitions will change as you grow older. You need not take a man’s word for this, but look at your own acquaintances — at the girls who 1 From “Helps for Ambitious Girls.” Copyright, 1900, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Company. 13 14 Homemaking are a little older than yourself. Are there any among them who at sixteen were ‘“‘wedded to their art,”” who cared nothing for male society, but were perfectly happy _ when in front of the piano, whose whole energies were bent upon a few years’ study of music in Germany, or art in Italy, to be followed by a successful musical or artistic or literary career? You have known such girls, I am sure. And what became of them? Did any of those girls, before they reached twenty-five, wed some- thing more substantial than their art, and shove the piano stool or the easel into a corner? ‘You know that that thing is happening every day; and as it happens to other girls, does it not stand to reason that it may happen to you? If you are to have a happy home it lies with you to make it happy; and you can not make it happy unless you know how to do it. The best husband in the world can not make a home happy without the wife’s assistance, and the best intentions on the wife’s part go for naught unless she knows what she is about. If fortune favors you to such an extent that you can establish the home without the addition of a husband, it will be only half a home at the best, and only a minute fraction of one unless you know how to superintend it. Now, in youn youth, is the time for you to learn how to take care of a household. And if there are not enough hours in the day for you to learn household work and Latin at the same time, throw your Latin grammar into the waste- basket. If you have reached the mature age of sixteen, you should know a great deal already about the care of a household. How much you know depends largely upon your circumstances in life. You may be so poor that your mother determined long ago that you, at any rate, The Care of a Household 15 should be ‘“‘brought up like a lady,” and not be allowed to soil your hands with housework. There are a great many loving mothers in this country who do their daughters that injustice. If your parents are rich or well-to-do, you have almost certainly been taught some- thing about the care of a household. It is the custom among the rich, especially the very rich, to prepare their daughters to preside over households. If I could tell you some things I know about the children of the very rich, they would surprise you. In most cases they are brought up to work. I have in mind a demure little girl of about fourteen whom I met on a steam yacht — her father’s yacht — some years ago. You were never in your whole life dressed so plainly as she, I dare say, nor ever had your hair braided into a tighter pigtail down your back. With his five or six scores of millions her father could have bought her better clothes if he had chosen, but not more suitable ones. As she ate with the other children at the children’s table, her father had a chance to boast of her a little behind her back; and was it of her music, do you think, or her classical learning, that he told with pride? Oh, no; he boasted of her ability to take entire charge of his great house in the city, which she often did for weeks at a time, managing more servants than you or I will ever be bothered with. She was in training; and now that she is the mistress of her own great house I do not believe that she regrets it. There are girls, though I hope there are none in your neighborhood, who need no maternal commands to keep them from assisting with the work of the house, who take the whole burden of maintaining the ‘‘respectability” of the family upon their own shoulders, and are ready at any hour of the day, from breakfast till bedtime, 16 Homemaking to entertain guests in the parlor. It is not hard study that keeps these girls out of the kitchen, it is some- thing else. I should not have to go far any Monday morning to hear a mother and a daughter keeping tune, more or less, on two useful instruments; the daughter on the piano in the parlor, the mother, an estimable old lady, on the washboard in the kitchen, doing the family’ s washing. And somehow their acquaintances seem to think no less of the mother for keeping the clothes clean, and not one particle the more of the daughter on account of her entire immunity from manual labor. If you know any girl of this kind do you think we can fairly include her among the “‘ Ambitious Girls’’? This seems to be wandering away from the subject of learning to take care of a household, and leaning toward the important subject of helping mother; but the two are so closely allied that they can hardly be separated. Ambition is a good thing for girl or boy, but ambition begins at home and now. You must not regard your ambition as something distant and sacred, beckoning you from afar to something great in the dim future, so holy that you must speak of it with bated breath. Keep it in training. Call it up beside you as you sit at your desk; it will stand there meekly enough if you are firm with it. Examine it, question it, and if you find it an ambi- tion that keeps you so busy thinking of the great things in store for you that you have no time to help wash the dishes, mold it into better shape. You will be surprised to find how easily you can change its form when you want it changed. Great things come by doing the little things well, and if you neglect the little things of the present the great ones will always remain in the distant future. Not that the care of a household is a little thing: for a woman it The Care of a Household 17 is one of the most important things in life. And I am not urging you to consign yourself to a life of washing dishes and peeling potatoes; far from it. But I do urge you, for your own comfort and happiness, to know how those things and the thousand other matters of a household should be done, so that when you have a household of your own you can make your home happy and comfortable. Your art or your business or your profession will not suffer by it. Indeed, high art and the art of household care are near relations. I could show you, any morning in New York, a dozen artists washing the dishes of the breakfasts they had cooked themselves, because it is easier to prepare their own coffee and cook their own eggs than to go out for breakfast, or be bothered with a servant in the studio. On the same morning we could go farther and see a hundred more artists who would cheerfully cook their own eggs if they had the eggs to cook. What the care of a household means is so well under- stood by every girl that it needs little explanation. The everlasting washing of dishes is only the beginning. Nobody asks you to look forward to a life of dish-wash- ing, though a great many girls in all the large cities make comfortable livings by doing nothing else. But know how to do it, and to do it well, so that when you have your own Eliza Jane in your own kitchen you can show her. You can tell a great deal about your own disposition by the way you wash dishes. Do you have a kettle of hot water to scald them after they are well washed? And do you do the glass and silver first, while the water is clean and the towels dry? And do you wash out the dish towels and hang them up? And are your pans scoured as clean outside asin? You see, I know something about this art myself, and about cooking too, much to my own 18 Homemaking comfort, for I have many times been in camps and boats where I must cook or go hungry. And then the baking. It is a fine thing, a real accom- plishment, for a girl to be a good baker. She may not always have to bake, but she should know how. And do you know how to make a pie crust that people can bite? Not all pie crust can be bitten, you know. Your mother will tell you the secret of making those crusts that melt in the mouth, or I am much mistaken; and a first-rate pie of your manufacture will give her more satisfaction than hearing your best sonata. Meats? There you must have long experience — experience that you can best get at home. You know how easily the green-goods men pick out a victim from the country in the streets of a large city? Just so easily will the butcher discover your ignorance and sell you bad cuts if you are inexperienced. Mending the holes in little George’s stockings is part of the care of a household. And knowing intuitively where his overshoes are when he has shoved them under the bookcase; and taking care of the bedrooms, and knowing how to make a bed so that there shall not be a single wrinkle; and determining what is to be for dinner to-night and breakfast to-morrow morning, and‘ ordering just the right quantity of everything, so that there shall be plenty, but nothing wasted ; and making a mustard plaster, and keeping the sideboard drawers clean, and keeping the bone handles of knives out of hot water, and making your husband carry an umbrella when it rains—for they seldom do unless somebody makes them; — these are a few samples of the ten thou- sand things that constitute the care of a household. They must all be done, and if you do not know how, who is to do them? The servant? The model servant is as likely The Care of a Household 19 to be found as the prince is to come along for a husband. They are both myths. The best servant you will ever get must be shown how to do things, and you will be the one to show her, and you can not show her if you do not know yourself. Here is an arithmetical question for you: If a girl lives sixteen years at home without learning to bake bread, how long must she be in a studio before she learns to mix colors? Or how many years will it take her to master Blackstone’s Commentaries, or Parsons on Con- tracts? It is all very well to look forward to a glorious career, but what have you done so far? Have you learned, are you learning, those things that are sure to be useful and necessary for you? Do you think your “career” is a certainty because you dream about it? Are you so full of a great purpose that everything else seems paltry, un- worthy? No girl or boy either can be sure of making a great success in any business or profession. With industry and health you can almost certainly support yourself, but beyond that there is no certainty. Many a girl who has been a prodigy at ten or twelve has grown into mature mediocrity. Perhaps you have known some little girl who was the sweetest singer you ever heard, who was urged to sing on all occasions, and who was told so often by her sisters and cousins and aunts and their friends that she was destined to be a prima donna that she really believed it, and became ‘‘wedded to her art,”” and who had more money spent upon her musical education than her father could afford, — and who now, after a youth of disappointments, has taken her place in the fourth row of the chorus at ten dollars a week. In every large city are hundreds of such prodigies who _have proved to be failures. The great singer of a village 20 Homemaking cuts a poor figure in a capital. You will know directly how many greatest singers and greatest artists and greatest writers there are in the world, and how calm the world is about it, and how slow to find them out. Be sure that a girl’s voice does not change more between ten and twenty than her ambitions and inclinations change between eighteen and twenty-five. But a home you must have, and you will be at a disadvantage if you do not know how to take care of it. HOUSEKEEPING AND HOMEMAKING! By MARION HARLAND IN once in every lustrum the press of Ka i the country breaks out into active warfare b a 5 on the vexed question of woman’s work and woman’s wages. The paper cannonade is carried on for some time between those who represent the employers and the larger party who uphold the rights of the employed; a multitude of foolish and some good things are said on both sides, — then it mutters itself into silence like any other harmless sort of thunder. Nobody is convinced and nobody hurt, except the novices among workwomen who have not yet learned that deto- nation is not reform, nor, of necessity, germane. to it. Among things worthy of record that grew out of such a sham fight about fourteen years since, was a brief, strong reply penned by Madame Demorest, the cele- brated modiste and fashionist of New York, to the in- quiry why so few women attain to complete mastery of any craft. “ Because,” wrote Madame (I quote from memory), “not one in ten thousand expects to make this or that trade the business of her life. It is something by which she hopes to earn bread and clothes until she gets mar- ried. Being perpetually on the outlook for the fortu- nate chance that is to relieve her from the necessity of paid labor, she is content to learn just as little as will suffice to keep her in her situation. The man, who knows that he is fitting himself for a calling he will re- 1 From “ Eve’s Daughters.” By permission of the Author and Charles Scribner’s Sons. Copyright, 1882. 21 22 Homemaking linquish only with existence, makes it a part of himself, and himself a part of it.” Everybody professed to be satisfied with this solution, which was indubitably true and altogether pertinent, viewing the problem from Madame’s standpoint. We understood, or thought we did, why those of our young women who are forced to maintain themselves are con- tent with mediocrity in vocations that are but make- shifts at the best, and why those of us for whom they condescend to work while they are on their promotion consent to accept the results of “‘ journey” labor. Madame Demorest has, perhaps, accounted for the fact that there are so few artistes in the United States. Who will explain the fact, yet more patent, of the grow- ing neglect of practical housewifery on the part of young women whose hope and expectation are to possess and take care of houses of their own at some — perchance very early —day? That they are thus indifferent is no haphazard assertion. I do not forget that cookery is taking its place as a fine art in our land, and is, therefore, patronized by our “best circles.” I have seen the artistically business- like blankbooks open upon silken laps and rich fur muffs, diamonded fingers flying over them in the eager effort to preserve the directions of Signor Blot and Miss Parloa, and Mrs. Rorer during their ‘‘fascinating”’ illus- trated lectures. I enjoy — nobody more — the fun of salad clubs and cooking circles, especially the “high teas’? to which the intimate friends of the fair cuisi- niéres are bidden to partake of dishes prepared ‘‘exclu- sively’’ by themselves. I recall one which was conducted upon strictly con- scientious principles, that began with raw oysters and wound up with confectioner’s ices. Housekeeping and Homemaking 23 ‘“‘But indeed we got up everything else!”’ cried a candid member, when rallied upon the inconsistency. ‘‘That is, of course, mamma’s cook made the coffee and broiled the chops, and the Vienna rolls had to be bought, you know!” We recollect that Marie Antoinette made rolls of butter on marble ‘shelves from cream skimmed with golden ladles, and smile indulgence of girlish freaks. Playing at cooking is less hurtful than the ‘‘ German,” and less exciting than bridge whist. The graceful game does not blind the watchful student of their “tricks and manners” to “our girls’” general ignorance of domestic economy, their utter inability to enter, with credit to us or to themselves, upon the practical business of house- wifery next week or next month. I believe, fully and sorrowfully, that in this incom- petency lies part of the secret of the early fading and invalidism of so many of our young wives. Our grand- mothers did their own housework, often including wash- ing, ironing, spinning, and weaving; bore many children, and lived and died in general ignorance of the rules of hygiene and orthography. Then ran like wildfire over the country the craze of “ women’s higher education,” -and pianoforte makers and physicians grew rich. The women who were girls fifty years ago knew little enough of household management when they were married. They have, as a whole, seen to it that their daughters shall know less. Few men are great, even in one direction, — and fewer women. This small number of both sexes may plan the work of the world. It is carried into successful operation from age to age by people of evenly-balanced minds and healthful energies. Your one-ideaed man is as truly diseased in perception and in judgment as is the woman who rides her hobby of art, literature, social, 24 Homemaking religious, or political reform roughshod over the wreck of domestic comfort and happiness. She who neglects to comb her hair and darn her children’s socks while she is painting for posterity, or accepts an invitation to ad- dress a Woman’s Suffrage Convention that calls her a hundred miles away from home when her baby lies ill with croup, would be as selfish in devotion to her spe- cialty had her choice lighted on Kensington embroidery or on preserves. I was once so unfortunate as to talk with a distressed mother who could not see her way clear to go to her eldest son, dying from injuries received in a rail- way accident, because she was in the middle of spring house cleaning. “And you know, the servants wouldn’t half do it if I were not here to look after them!’’ she moaned. The boy died, asking with his last coherent word, ‘“When is mother coming?’’ She never blamed herself. She was the victim of circumstances over which she had no control. Had she been a literary woman of note, the story would have found its way into the newspapers. Being of a strictly domestic turn, she missed the dis- tinction she merited by singleness of devotion to the object of her life. : Let us be fair in judgment and in verdict. While we do not shield morbidly absorbed artists and housekeepers from censure by the excuse that, as women, evenness of development is not to be expected of them, we do not forget the measure of obloquy due to him who forgets wife, children, and his own physical needs in warehouse, office, or atelier. His neglect of assumed and sacred duties tells less upon the surface of home and society than would the like dereliction on the part of her who must order dinners and look after the family wardrobe, but it is one and the same sin with hers. Housekeeping and H omemaking 25 The perfect intellect in either sex ismany-sided, rounded, firm in poise, wide in comprehension of the infinite, delicate in perception of the finite. I remark in passing, that a charming example of the truth just stated is exhibited in a volume lately read in our home circle with such delighted interest as usually waits upon the perusal of an engaging romance. It is entitled ‘The Formation of Vegetable Mold through the Action of Worms, with Observations on the Habits.” The author is Charles Darwin, LL.D., F.R.S. It is not then a token of inherent mental and spiritual dignity when the educated daughter refuses initiation into the homely ceremonies of cookery — objects to the troublesome details which are soon comprehended and put into practice by the half-witted Celt or the Scan- dinavian who can not speak a word of the language of her adopted land. The intellect that recoils from the. -acquisition of the simple principles of mixing, baking, and boiling, because they disturb the calm balance of thought, must rest upon a very slender pivot. The apprenticeship to unfamiliar and not agreeable work that makes college Jane’s nerves “‘crawl,” does not rub into her sensibilities more roughly than the alphabet galls the dull-minded scullion thumbing her ‘First Reader’ every night at the kitchen table. She has been twitted with her ignorance — “‘a gurrl grown, and not able to read an’ spell!” Literature and all pertain- ing to letters are quite out of her line. She will prob- ably not read one book a year after preparing herself for the work; but spurred by a single incentive, she drudges on stubbornly. A servant of my own once begged me to “tache her to write.” Her betrothed had told her, with the refined gallantry of his class, that he was ‘fair ashamed of her 26 Homemaking because she could n’t so much as read a love letter, but must take it to the mistress to know what was in it.” She had never been to school since her tenth year, and could hardly make out the sense of a printed page, but in three months’ time she penned, without any assistance, a note to her absent lover: “Dear Mixes, — This is to tel you I am wel and hoppin you are enjyin the same blesin thank god. I have lerned how to wright an also how to reade wrighting. now send on yure leters. “no moore at present from yure lovin “Mary O’REILLY.” She taught me many and more valuable lessons than she had from me as she sat each night under the shaded. nursery lamp, her coarse stiff fingers cramped upon the pen barrel, and made straight lines, pothooks, and hangers, until the perspiration broke through the pores of her red forehead. “D’ ye think I’ Il ever be an author, ma’am?” she would ask anxiously sometimes, in submitting the exercise to my inspection. ‘““Yes, Mary,” I always answered, with no disposition: to amusement at her blunder. In Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s wonderful ‘Story of Avis”’ we read: “The usual little feminine bustle of sewing he [Os- trander] missed without regret. Women fretted him with their eternal nervous stitch, stitching, and fathom- less researches into the nature of tatting and crochet. He rather admired his wife for sharing so fully his objec- tion to them. Avis was that rare woman who had never embroidered a tidy.” Housekeeping and Homemaking 27 Again, “It was not much perhaps to set herself now to conquer this little occasion; not much to descend from the sphinx to the drainpipe at one fell swoop; not much to watch the potatoes while Julia went to market; to answer the doorbell while the jelly was straining; to dress for dinner after her guests were in the parlor; to resolve to engage a table girl to-morrow because Julia tripped with the gravy; to sit wondering how the iron- ing was to get done, while her husband talked of Greek sculpture — to bring creation out of chaos, law out of disorder, and a clear head out of wasted nerves. Life is composed of such little strains; and the artistic tempera- ment is not only more sensitive to them, but can never hope to escape them. It was not much; but let us not forget that it is under the friction of such atoms that women far simpler, and so for that yoke far stronger, than Avis, have yielded their lives as a burden too heavy to be borne.” The summary is painfully realistic. Each of us who has kept house for a single year subscribes groaningly to the accuracy of the sketch. The question raised by my reason and supported by experience is, whether even to the artistic temperament brier scratches are ever fatal injuries. Annoyances they are, these atomic particles and points that bury themselves in tender skins. While the smart is new, the sufferer is prone to cry out that her senses are deserting her; but when the prickles are with- drawn, brave spirits arise superior to temporary irrita- tion. A woman who had professed her willingness to spend two hundred days “in copying a carrot that hangs twenty feet away from you against the wall” ought to have been not merely brave but patient. Domestic life has its peculiar trials, but so has every other condition of this our mortal probation. They 28 Homemaking who wear thin shoes and step gingerly will feel the peb- bles in the path. It is the firm tread of the stout boot that presses them into the earth. You may pass a long, useful, and contented life with- out learning how to embroider a tidy. As American homes now are-—— and there is faint prospect of recon- struction of our domestic system — no American woman, however exalted or assured her social rank, or whatever may be her accomplishments, can afford to remain ignorant of practical housewifery. This is a rule without exception. Disregard of it is unwise and selfish. Ab- sorption in your chosen art or profession, however worthy it may be in itself, becomes a fault when it ignores the claims of others upon time and consideration. It is not enough that your aims are high, your ends noble. To absorb, to retain, to be nourished, to grow — all this is to recetve. This is happiness. To give of what you have and are—of yourself— that others may be better and happier — this is blessedness. By a beautiful provision of Nature, self-denial and work offered in this spirit and for this purpose ennoble instead of dwarfing heart and intellect. The antithesis of this proposition is no less true; to wit, that the pur- suit of any object to the exclusion from thought and care of all besides, especially when the thing is coveted because the possession of it will contribute to our own enjoyment or advantage, will eventually harden and narrow the character. To be an excellent housekeeper is in itself one of the lesser aims of life to a woman of culture and refinement. The ministry to her kind by means of an intelligent com- prehension of it, and just personal attention to “domestic details,” should be a study and a purpose. THE LADY WHO DOES HER OWN WORK}: By HARRIET BEECHER STOWE YMERICA is the only country where such a title is possible, — the only country where there is H a class of women who may be described as ' ladies who do their own work. By a lady we mean a woman of education, cultivation, and refinement, of liberal tastes and ideas, who, without any very material additions or changes, would be recognized as a lady in any circle of the Old World or the New. What I have said is, that the existence of such a class is a fact peculiar to American society; a clear, plain result of the new principles involved in the doctrine of universal equality. When the colonists first came to this country, of however mixed ingredients their ranks might have been composed, and however imbued with the spirit of feudal and aristo- cratic ideas, the discipline of the wilderness soon brought them to a democratic level; the gentleman felled the wood for his log cabin side by side with the plowman, and thews and sinews rose in the market. ‘‘A man was deemed honorable in proportion as he lifted his hand upon the high trees of the forest.’’ So in the interior domestic circle. Mistress and maid, living in a log cabin together, became companions, and sometimes the maid, as the more accom- plished and stronger, took precedence of the mistress. It 1¥rom “House and Home Papers.” By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. 29 30 Homemaking became natural and unavoidable that children should begin to work as early as they were capable of it. The result was a generation of intelligent people brought up to labor from necessity, but turning on the problem of labor the acuteness of a disciplined brain. The mistress, out- done in sinews and muscles by her maid, kept her superi- ority by skill and contrivance. If she could not lift a pail of water, she could invent methods which made lifting the pail unnecessary; if she could not take a hundred steps without weariness, she could make twenty answer the pur- pose of a hundred. Slavery, it is true, was to some extent introduced into New England, but it never suited the genius of the people, never struck deep root, or spread so as to choke the good seed of self-helpfulness. Many were opposed to it from conscientious principle, — many from farsighted thrift, and from a love of thoroughness and well-doing which despised the rude, unskilled work of barbarians. People, having once felt the thorough neatness and beauty of execution which came of free, educated, and thoughtful labor, could not tolerate the clumsiness of slavery. Thus it came to pass that for many years the rural population of New England, as a general rule, did their own work, both out doors and in. If there were a black man or a black woman or a bound girl, they were emphatically only the helps, following humbly the steps of master and mistress, and used by them as instruments of lightening certain portions of their toil. The master and mistress, with their children, were the head workers. Great merriment has been excited in the Old Country because years ago the first English travelers found that the class of persons by them denominated servants were in America denominated help or helpers. But the term was the very best exponent of the state of society. There were The Lady Who Does Her Own Work 31 few servants, in the European sense of the word; there was a society of educated workers, where all were practically equal, and where, if there was a deficiency in one family and an excess in another, a helper, not a servant, was hired. Mrs. Browne, who has six sons and no daughters, enters into agreement with Mrs. Jones, who has six daughters and no sons. She borrows a daughter, and pays her good wages to help in her domestic toil, and sends a son to help the labors of Mr. Jones. These two young people go into the families in which they are to be employed in all respects as equals and companions, and so the work of the commu- nity is equalized. Hence arose, and for many years con- tinued, a state of society more nearly solving than any other ever did the problem of combining the highest cul- ture of the mind with the highest culture of the muscles and the physical faculties. Then were to be seen families of daughters, handsome, strong females, rising each day to their indoor work with cheerful alertness, — one to sweep the room, another to make the fire, while a third prepared the breakfast for the father and brothers who were going out to manly labor; and they chatted meanwhile of books, studies, embroidery, - discussed the last new poem, or some historical topic started by graver reading, or perhaps a rural ball that was to come off the next week. They spun with the book tied to the distaff ; they wove; they did all manner of fine needle- work; they made lace, painted flowers, and, in short, in boundless consciousness of activity, invention, and perfect health, set themselves to any work they had ever read or thought of. A bride in those days was married with sheets and tablecloths of her own weaving, with counterpanes and toilet covers wrought in divers embroidery by her own and her sisters’ hands. The amount of fancywork done in our days by girls who have nothing else to do will 32 Homemaking not equal what was done by these, who performed besides, among them, the whole work of the family. For many years these habits of life characterized the majority of our rural towns. They still exist among a class respectable in numbers and position, though perhaps not so happy in perfect self-satisfaction and in a conviction of the dignity and desirableness of its lot as in former days. Human nature is above all things—lazy. Every one confesses in the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us all; but practically most people do all they can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than circum- stances drive him to do. However dignified, however invigorating, however really desirable are habits of life involving daily physical toil, there is a constant evil demon at every one’s elbow, seducing him to evade it, or to bear its weight with sullen, discontented murmurs. I will venture to say that there are at least, to speak very moderately, a hundred houses where these humble lines will be read and discussed, where there are no servants except the ladies of the household. I will venture to say, also, that these households, many of them, are not inferior in the air of cultivation and refined elegance to many which are conducted by the ministration of domestics. I will * venture to assert, furthermore, that these same ladies who live thus, find quite as much time for reading, letter writ- ing, drawing, embroidery, and fancywork as the women of families otherwise arranged. IT am quite certain that they would be found on an aver- age to be in the enjoyment of better health, and more of that sense of capability and vitality which gives one con- fidence in one’s ability to look into life and meet it with cheerful courage, than three-quarters of the women who keep servants, — and that on the whole their domestic The Lady Who Does Her Own Work 33 establishment is regulated more exactly to their mind, their food prepared and served more to their taste. And yet, with all this, I will not venture to assert that they are satisfied with this way of living, and that they would not change it forthwith if they could. They have a secret feeling all the while that they are being abused, that they are working harder than they ought to, and that women who live in their houses like boarders, who have only to speak and it is done, are the truly enviable ones. One after another of their associates, as opportunity offers and means increase, deserts the ranks, and commits her domestic affairs to the hands of hired servants. Self- respect takes the alarm. ‘“‘Is it altogether genteel to live as wedo? To be sure, we are accustomed to it; we have it all systematized and arranged; the work of our own hands suits us better than any we can hire; in fact, when we do hire, we are discontented and uncomfortable, — for who will do for us what we will do for ourselves? But when we have company! There’s the rub, — to get out all our best things and put them back; to cook the meals and wash the dishes ingloriously; and to make all appear as if we did n’t do it, and had servants like other people.” There, after all, istherub. A want of hardy self-respect, —an unwillingness to face with dignity the actual facts and necessities of our situation in life, — this, after all, is the worst and most dangerous feature of the case. It is the same sort of pride which makes Smilax think he must hire a waiter in white gloves, and get up a circuitous dinner party on English principles, to entertain a friend from England. Because the friend in England lives in such and such a style, he must make believe for a day that he lives so too, when in fact it is a whirlwind in his domestic establishment equal to a removal or a fire, and threatens the total extinction of Mrs. Smilax. Now there are two 34 Homemaking principles of hospitality that people are very apt to over- look. One is, that their guests like to be made at home, and treated with confidence; and another is, that people are always interested in the details of a way of life that is new to them. The Englishman comes to America as weary of his old, easy, family-coach life as you can be of yours; he wants to see something new under the sun, — something American; and forthwith we all bestir ourselves to give him some- thing as near as we can fancy exactly like what he is al- ready tired of. So city people come to the country, not to sit in the best parlor, and to see the nearest imitation of city life, but to lie on the haymow, to swing in the barn, to form intimacy with the pigs, chickens, and ducks, and to eat baked potatoes exactly on the critical moment when they are done, from the oven of the cooking stove, — and we remark, en passant, that nobody has ever truly eaten a baked potato unless he has seized it at that precise and fortunate moment. I fancy you now, my friends, whom I have in my eye. You are three happy women together. You are all so well that you know not how it feels to be sick. You are used to early rising, and would not lie in bed if you could. Long years of practice have made you familiar with the* ° shortest, neatest, most expeditious method of doing every household office, so that really for the greater part of the time in your house there seems to a looker-on to be nothing to do. You rise in the morning and dispatch your hus- band, father, and brothers to the farm or wood lot; you go sociably about chatting with each other, while you skim the milk, make the butter, turn the cheeses. The fore- noon is long; it ’s ten to one that all the so-called morning work is over, and you have leisure for an hour’s sewing or reading before it is time to start the dinner preparations. SNOILWYWdayed ONIAIOSHNVHL The Lady Who Does Her Own Work 35 By two o’clock your housework is done, and you have the long afternoon for books, needlework, or drawing, — for perhaps there is among you one with a gift at her pencil. Perhaps one of you reads aloud while the others sew, and you manage in that way to keep up with a great deal of reading. I see on your bookshelves Prescott, Macaulay, Irving, besides the lighter fry of poems and novels. When you have company, you invite Mrs. Smith or Brown or Jones to tea; you have no trouble; they come early, with their knitting or sewing; your particular crony sits with you by your polished stove while you watch the baking of those light biscuits and tea rusks for which you are so fa- mous, and Mrs. Somebody-else chats with your sister, who is spreading the table with your best china in the best room. When tea is over, there is plenty of volunteering to help you wash your pretty India teacups, and get them back into the cupboard. There is no special fatigue or exertion in all this, though you have taken down the best things and put them back, because you have done all without anxiety or effort, among those who would do precisely the same, if you were their visitors. But now come down Mrs. Simmons and her pretty daughter to spend a week with you, and forthwith you are troubled. Your youngest, Fanny, visited them in New York last fall, and tells you of their cook and chambermaid and the servant in white gloves that waits on table. You say in your soul, ‘‘What shall we do? they never can be contented to live as we do; how shall we manage?” And now you long for servants. This is the very time that you should know that Mrs. Simmons is tired to death of her fine establishment, and weighed down with the task of keeping the peace among her servants. She is a quiet soul, dearly loving her ease, and hating strife; and yet last week she had five quarrels 36 Homemaking to settle between her invaluable cook and the other mem- bers of her staff, because the invaluable cook, on the strength of knowing how to get up state dinners and to manage all sorts of mysteries which her mistress knows nothing about, asserts the usual right of spoiled favorites to insult all her neighbors with impunity, and rule with a rod of iron over the whole house. Anything that is not in the least like her own home and ways of living will be a blessed relief and change to Mrs. Simmons. Your clean, quiet house, your delicate cookery, your cheerful morning tasks, if you will let her follow you about and sit and talk with you while you are at your work, will all seem a pleasant contrast to her own life. Of course, if it came to the case of offering to change lots in life, she would not do it; but very likely she thinks she would, and sighs over and pities herself, and thinks sentimentally how fortunate you are, how snugly and securely you live, and wishes she were as untrammelled and independent as you. And she is more than half right; for, with her helpless hab- its, her utter ignorance of the simplest facts concerning ‘the reciprocal relations of milk, eggs, butter, saleratus, soda, and yeast, she is completely the victim and slave of the person she pretends to rule. Only imagine some of the frequent scenes and rehearsals” in her family. After many trials, she at last engages a seamstress who promises to prove a perfect treasure, — neat, dapper, nimble, skillful, and spirited. The very soul of Mrs. Simmons rejoices in heaven. Illusive bliss? The newcomer proves to be no favorite with Madam Cook, and the domestic fates evolve the catastrophe as follows: First, low murmur of distant thunder in the kitchen; then a day or two of sulky silence, in which the atmosphere seems heavy with an approaching storm. At last comes the climax. The parlor door flies open during breakfast. The Lady Who Does Her Own Work 37 Enter seamstress, in tears, followed by Mrs. Cook with a face swollen and red with wrath, who tersely introduces the subject-matter of the drama in a voice trembling with rage. ‘““Would you be plased, Ma’am, to suit yerself with another cook? Me week will be up next Tuesday, and I want to be going.” “Why, Bridget, what ’s the matter? ” “Matter enough, Ma’am! I niver could live with them Cork girls in a house, nor I won’t; them as likes the Cork girls is welcome for all me; but it ’s not for the likes of me to live with them, and she been in the kitchen a-upsettin’ of me gravies with her flatirons and things.” Here bursts in the seamstress with a whirlwind of denial, and the altercation wages fast and furious, and poor little delicate Mrs. Simmons stands like a kitten in a thunder- storm, in the midst of a regular Irish row. Cook, of course, is sure of her victory. She knows that a great dinner is to come off Wednesday, and that her mis- tress has not the smallest idea how to manage it, and that therefore, whatever happens, she must be conciliated. Swelling with secret indignation at the tyrant, poor Mrs. Simmons dismisses her seamstress with longing looks. She suited her mistress exactly, but she did n’t suit the cook! Now, if Mrs. Simmons had been brought up in early life with the experience that you have, she would be mis- tress in her own house. She would quietly say to Madam Cook, “If my family arrangements do not suit you, you can leave; I can see to the dinner myself.” And she could do it. Her well-trained muscles would not break down under a little extra work; her skill, adroitness, and perfect familiarity with everything that is to be done would enable her at once to make cooks of any bright girls of good capac- ity who might still be in her establishment; and, above all, 38 Homemaking she would feel herself mistress in her own house. This is what would come of an experience in doing her own work as you do. She who can at once put her own trained hand to the machine in any spot where a hand is needed never comes to be the slave of a coarse, vulgar Trishwoman. So, also, in forming a judgment of what is to be expected of servants in a given time, and what ought to be expected of a given amount of provisions, poor Mrs. Simmons is absolutely at sea. If even for one six months in her life she had been a practical cook, and had really had the charge of the larder, she would not now be haunted, as she constantly is, by an indefinite apprehension of an immense wastefulness, perhaps of the disappearance of provisions through secret channels of relationship and favoritism. She certainly could not be made to believe in the absolute necessity of so many pounds of sugar, quarts of milk, and dozens of eggs, not to mention spices and wine, as are daily required for the accomplishment of Madam Cook’s pur- poses. But though now she does suspect and apprehend, she can not speak with certainty. She can not say, “I have made these things. I know exactly what they require. I have done this and that myself, and know it can be done, and done well, in a certain time.” It is said that women who have been accustomed to doing their own work become hard mistresses. They are certainly more sure of the ground they stand on; they are less open to imposition; they can speak and act in their own houses more as those ‘‘having authority,” and therefore are less afraid to exact what is justly their due, and less willing to endure impertinence and unfaithfulness. Their general error lies in expecting that any servant ever will do as well for them as they will do for themselves, and that an untrained, undisciplined human being ever can do The Lady Who Does Her Own Work 39 housework, or any other work, with the neatness and per- fection that a person of trained intelligence can. It has been remarked in our armies that the men of cul- tivation, though bred in delicate and refined spheres, can bear up under the hardships of camp life better and longer than rough laborers. The reason is, that an educated mind knows how to use and save its body, to work it and spare it, as an uneducated mind can not; and so the college- bred youth brings himself safely through fatigues which kill the unreflective laborer. Cultivated, intelligent women, who are brought up to do the work of their own families, are labor-saving institutions. They make the head save the wear of the muscles. By forethought, con- trivance, system, and arrangement, they lessen the amount to be done, and do it with less expense of time and strength than others. The old New England motto, Get your work done up in the forenoon, applied to an amount of work which would keep a common Irish servant toiling from daylight to sunset. A lady living in one of our obscure New England towns, where there were no servants to be hired, at last, by send- ing to a distant city, succeeded in procuring a raw Irish maid-of-all-work, a creature of immense bone and muscle, but of heavy, unawakened brain. In one fortnight she established such a reign of Chaos and old Night in the kitchen and through the house, that her mistress, a delicate woman, encumbered with the care of young children, began seriously to think that she made more work each day than she performed, and dismissed her. What was now to be done? Fortunately, the daughter of a neighboring farmer was going to be married in six months, and wanted a little ready money for her frousseau. The lady was informed that Miss So-and-so would come to her, not as a servant, but as hired ‘‘help.” She was fain 40 Homemaking to accept any help with gladness. Forthwith came into the family circle a tall, well-dressed young person, grave, unobtrusive, self-respecting, yet not in the least presuming, who sat at the family table and observed all its decorums with the modest self-possession of a lady. The newcomer took a survey of the labors of a family of ten members, including four or five young children, and, looking, seemed at once to throw them into system, ma- tured her plans, arranged her hours of washing, ironing, baking, cleaning, rose early, moved deftly, and in a single day the slatternly and littered kitchen assumed that neat, orderly appearance that so often strikes one in New England farmhouses. The work seemed to be all gone. Everything was nicely washed, brightened, put in place, and stayed in place; the floors, when cleaned, remained clean; the work was always done, and not doing; and every afternoon the young lady sat neatly dressed in her own apartment, either quietly writing letters to her be- trothed or sewing on her bridal outfit. Such is the result of employing those who have been brought up to do their own work. That tall, fine-looking girl, for aught we know, may yet be mistress of a fine house on Fifth Avenue; and if she is, she will, we fear, prove rather an exacting mistress to Trish Biddy and Bridget; but she will never be threatened , by her cook and chambermaid, after the first one or two have tried the experiment. “Human nature is always the same. Nobody ever is or does more than circumstances force him to be and do. Those remarkable women of old were made by circum- stances. There were, comparatively speaking, no servants to be had, and so children were trained to habits of indus- try and mechanical adroitness from the cradle, and every household process was reduced to the very minimum of labor. Every step required in a process was counted, The Lady Who Does Her Own Work 41 every movement calculated ; and she who took ten steps when one would do, lost her reputation for ‘faculty.’ Certainly such an early drill was of use in developing the health and the bodily powers, as well as in giving precision to the practical mental faculties. All household economies were arranged with equal niceness in those thoughtful minds, A trained housekeeper knew just how many sticks of hickory of a certain size were required to heat her oven, and how many of each different kind of wood. She knew by a sort of intuition just what kinds of food would yield the most palatable nutriment with the least outlay of accessories in cooking. She knew to a minute the time when each article must go into and be withdrawn from her oven; and if she could only lie in her chamber and direct, she could guide an intelligent child through the processes with mathematical certainty. It is impossible, however, that anything but early training and long experience can produce these results, and it is earnestly to be wished that the grandmothers of New England had only written down their experiences for our children: they would have been a mine of maxims and traditions, better than any other traditions of the elders which we know of.” In this country, our democratic institutions have re- moved the superincumbent pressure which in the Old World confines the servants to a regular orbit. They come here feeling that this is somehow a land of liberty, and with very dim and confused notions of what liberty is. They are for the most part the raw, untrained Irish peas- antry, and the wonder is, that, with all the unreasoning heats and prejudices of the Celtic blood, all the necessary ignorance and rawness, there should be the measure of comfort and success there is in our domestic arrangements. But as long as things are so there will be constant changes and interruptions in every domestic establishment, and 42 Homemaking constantly recurring interregnums, when the mistress must put her own hand to the work, whether the hand be a trained or an untrained one. As matters now are, the young housekeeper takes life at the hardest. She has very little strength, — no ex- perience to teach her how to save her strength. She knows nothing experimentally of the simplest processes necessary to keep her family comfortably fed and clothed; and she has a way of looking at all these things which makes them particularly hard and distasteful to her. She does not escape being obliged to do housework at intervals, but she does it in a weak, blundering, confused way, that makes it twice as hard and disagreeable as it need be. Now what I have to say is, that, if every young woman learned to do housework and cultivated her practical faculties in early life, she would, in the first place, be much more likely to keep her servants, and, in the second place, if she lost them temporarily, would avoid all that wear and tear of the nervous system which comes from constant ill success in those departments on which family health and temper mainly depend. This is one of the peculiar- ities of our American life which requires a peculiar training. Why not face it sensibly? The second thing I have to say is, that our land is now full of motorpathic institutions to which women are sent at great expense to have hired operators stretch and exer- cise their inactive muscles. They lie for hours to have their feet twigged, their arms flexed, and all the different mus- cles of the body worked for them, because they are so flaccid and torpid that the powers of life do not go on. Would it not be quite as cheerful and less expensive a process if young girls from early life developed the muscles in sweeping, dusting, ironing, rubbing furniture, and all The Lady Who Does Her Own Work 43 the multiplied domestic processes which our grandmothers knew of? A woman who did all these, and diversified the intervals with spinning on the great and little wheel, never came to need the gymnastics of Dio Lewis or of the Swedish motorpathist, which really are a necessity now. Does it not seem poor economy to pay servants for letting our muscles grow feeble, and then to pay operators to exercise them for us? I will venture to say that our grandmothers in a week went over every movement that any gymnast has invented, and went over them to some productive pur- pose, too. Lastly, my paper will not have been in vain if those ladies who have learned and practice the invaluable ac- complishment of doing their own work will know their own happiness and dignity, and properly value their great acquisition, even though it may have been forced upon - them by circumstances. WOMAN’S MISSION? By A. M. DIAZ ERHAPS some day the community may come to perceive that woman requires for her vocation what the teacher, the preacher, the lawyer, and the physician require for theirs; namely, special preparation and general culture. The first, because every vocation demands special preparation; and the second, because, to satisfy the requirements of young minds, she will need to draw from almost every kind of knowledge. And we must remember here, that the advantages derived from culture are not wholly an intellectual gain. We get from books and other sources of culture not merely what informs the mind, but that which warms the heart, quickens the sympathies, strength- ens the understanding; we get clearness and breadth of vision, get refining and ennobling influences, get wisdom in its truest and most comprehensive sense; and all of these, the last more than all, a mother needs for her high calling. That it is a high calling, we have high authority to show. Dr. Channing says, ‘No office can compare in importance with that of training a child.” Yet the office is assumed without preparation. Herbert Spencer asks, in view of this omission: “What is to be expected when one of the most intricate of problems is undertaken by those who have given scarcely a thought as to the principles on which its solution depends? Is the unfolding of a human being so simple a process that any one may superintend and regulate it with no preparation From ‘Domestic Problems.” By permission of Houghton Miffin Company. Ny 44 Woman’s Mission 45 whatever? . . . Is it not madness to make no provision for such a task? ”’ Horace Mann speaks out plainly, and straight to the point: ‘If she is to prepare a refection of cakes, she fails not to examine some cookery book or some manu- script receipt, lest she should convert her rich ingredients into unpalatable compounds; but without ever having read one book upon the subject of education, without ever having sought one conversation with an intelligent person upon it, she understands how to mingle the earthly and celestial elements of instruction for that child’s soul so that he shall be fitted to discharge all duties below, and to enjoy all blessings above.” And again, — ‘‘Influ- ences, imperceptible to childhood, work out more and more broadly into beauty or deformity in after life. No unskillful hand should ever play upon a harp where the tones are left forever in the strings.” Home education is, after all, the great fact; and by domestic influences the characters of children are formed. Where men are exhausted by business, and women are exhausted by society (or other means), we may be pretty sure that but little can be done to shape and conduct the home with reference to the higher mental needs of the children who live in it.” Now who, more than any one, “shapes and conducts the home’? Who creates these ‘domestic influences,”’ this “‘medium in which the child is habitually immersed’’? Woman. Inthe name of common sense, then, throw open to woman every avenue of knowledge. Surround her with all that will elevate and refine. Give her the highest, broadest, truest culture. Give her chances to draw in- spiration from the beautiful in nature and in art. And, above all, insure her some respite from labor, and some tranquillity. Unless these conditions are observed, ‘‘but 46 Homemaking little can be done to shape and conduct the home with ref- erence to the higher mental needs of the children who live in it.” Let us leave the matter of child training, and consider the other part of woman’s mission, — namely, “making home happy.”’ It would seem that, even for this, the wife should be at least the equal of her husband in culture, in order that the two may be in sympathy. When a loving couple marry, they unite their interests, and in this union of interests they find happiness. We often hear from a wife or a husband remarks like these: ‘‘I only half enjoyed it, because he (or she) wasn’t there;”: “It will be no pleasure to me unless he (or she) is there too;” ‘The company was charming, but still I felt lonesome there without him (or her).”’ The phrase “‘half enjoy” gives the idea; for a sympathetic couple are to such a degree one that a pleasure which comes to either singly can only be half enjoyed, and even this half joy is lessened by the con- sciousness of what the other islosing. Inarather sarcastic article, taken from an English magazine, occur a few sen- tences which illustrate this point very well. The writer is describing a honeymoon: “The real difficulty is to be entertaining. The one thirst of the young bride is for amusement, and she has no idea of amusing herself. It is diverting to see the spouse of this ideal creature wend his way to a lending library, after a week of idealism, and the relief with which he car- ries home a novel. How often, in expectation, has he framed to himself imaginary talks, — talk brighter and wittier than that of the friends he forsakes! But conver- sation is difficult in the case of a refined creature who is as ignorant as a Hottentot. He begins with the new Mil- tonic poem, and finds she has never looked into ‘Paradise Lost.’ He plunges into the Reform Bill; but she knows Woman’s Mission 47 nothing of politics, and has never read a leading article in her life. Then she tries him, in her turn, and floods him with the dead chat of the town and an ocean of family tattle. He finds himself shut up for weeks with a creature who takes an interest in nothing but Uncle Crosspatch’s temper and the scandal about Lady X. Little by little the absolute pettiness, the dense dullness, of woman’s life breaks upon the disenchanted devotee. His deity is with- out occupation, without thought, without resources. He has a faint faith in her finer sensibility, in her poetic na- ture: he fetches his Tennyson from his carpetbag, and wastes ‘In Memoriam’ on a critic who pronounces it ‘pretty ’!” - In eases of this kind, the half-joy is strikingly apparent. We see that a husband possessing culture is likely to be lonely among his poets and his poetry, his works of reform, and his lofty ideas, unless — she is there too. If it be said that learned women are prone to think lightly of home comforts and home duties, to despise physical labor, to look down on the ignorant, let us hasten to reply that learning is not culture, and that we want not learned mothers, but enlightened mothers, wisely educated mothers. And let us steadfastly and perseveringly assert that enlightenment and a wise education are essential to the accomplishment of the mother’s mission. When the housefather feels the truth of this, then shall we see him bringing home every publication he can lay his hands upon which treats intelligently of mental, moral, or physi- cal training. Then shall we hear him saying to the housemother: ‘‘Cease, I pray you, this everlasting toil. Read, study, rest. With your solemn responsibilities, it is madness thus to spend yourself, thus to waste yourself.” In his home shall the true essentials assume that position which is theirs by right, and certain occupations connected 48 Homemaking with that clamorous square inch of surface in the upper part of the mouth shall receive only their due share of attention. For in one way or another, either by lessening the work or by hiring workers, the mother shall have her leisure. And what will women, what will the housemothers do, when they feel this truth? Certainly not as they now do. Now it is their custom to fill in every chink and crevice of leisure time with sewing. ‘‘Look!”’ said a young mother to me, ‘‘I made all these myself, when holding the baby, or by sitting up nights.”’ They were children’s clothes, beautifully made, and literally covered with ruf- fles and embroidery. Oh, the thousands of stitches! The ruffles ran up and down, and over and across, and three times round. Being white, the garments were of course changed daily. In the intervals of baby-tending, the mother snatched a few minutes here and a few minutes there, to starch, iron, flute, or crimp a ruffle, or to finish off a dress of her own. This “‘finishing off’’ was carried on for weeks. When her baby was asleep or was good or had its little ruffles all fluted, then would she seize the op- portunity to stitch, to plait, to flounce, to pucker, and to braid. Wherever a hand’s breadth of the original mate- rial was left visible, some bow or band or queer device was fashioned and sewed on. This zealous individual, by im- proving every moment, by sitting up nights, by working with the baby across her lap, accomplished her task. The dress was finished and worn with unutterable complacency. It is this last part which is the worst part. They have no misgivings, these mothers. They expect your warm ap- proval. ‘I can’t get a minute’s time to read,” said this industrious person; and, on another occasion,—‘‘I ll own up, I don’t know anything about taking care of children.”’ Swift, speaking of women, said that they ‘‘employ more Woman’s Mission 49 thought, memory, and application to become fools than would serve to make them wise and useful;” and perhaps he spoke truly. For suppose this young mother had been as eager to gain ideas as she was to accomplish a bias band, a French fold, or a flounce. Suppose that, in the intervals of baby-tending, instead of fluting her little girls’ ruffles and embroidering their garments, she had tried to snatch some information which would help her in the bringing up of those little girls. The truth is, mothers take their leisure time for what seems to them to be first in impor- tance. Itis easy to see what they consider essentials, and what, from them, children are learning to consider essen- tials. The ‘“‘knowingness” of some of our children on sub- jects connected with dress is simply appalling. A girl of eight or ten summers will take you in at a glance, from top- most plume to boot tap, by items and collectively, analyti- cally and sympathetically. She discourses, in technical terms, of the fall of your drapery, the propriety of your trimmings, and the effect of this, that, or the other. She has a proper appreciation of what is French in your attire, and a proper scorn of what is not. She recognizes ‘‘real lace” in a twinkling of her eye, and ‘‘all wool” with a touch of her finger tips. Plainly-clad school children are often made to suffer keenly by the cutting remarks of other school children sumptuously arrayed. A little girl aged six, returning from a child’s party, exclaimed, “‘O mamma! What do you think? Bessie had her dress trimmed with lace, and it was n’t real!” The law,‘‘ No child shall walk the street in a plain dress,” is just as practically a law as if it had been enacted by legal authorities. Mothers obey its high behests, and dare not rebel against it. Look at our girls going to school, each with her tucks and ruffles. Who ‘‘getstime” to do all that sewing? where do they get it? and at what sacrifices? 50 Homemaking A goodly number of stitches and moments go to the mak- ing and putting on of even one ruffle on one skirt. Think of all the stitches and moments necessary for the making and putting of all the ruffles on all the skirts of the several little girls often belonging to one family! And there is no escape, not even in common sense. A woman considered sensible in the very highest degree will dress her little girl like other little girls, or perish in the attempt. How many do thus perish, or are helped to perish, we shall never know. A frail, delicate woman said to me one day, “Oh, I do hope the fashions will change before Sissy grows up, for I don’t see how it will be possible for me to make her clothes.” You observe her submissive, law-abiding spirit. The possibility of evading the law never suggests itself. There is many a feeble mother of grown and growing “Sissys’”’ to whom the spring or fall dressmaking ap- pears like an avalanche coming to overwhelm her, or a Juggernaut coming to roll over her. She asks not, “‘How shall I escape?”’ but ‘‘ How shall I endure?” Let her con- sole herself. These semi-annual experiences are all ‘‘mis- sion.” All sewing is ‘‘mission,” all cooking is “mission.” It matters not what she cooks or what she sews. ‘‘Do- mestic,”’ and worthy all praise, does the community con-, sider that woman who keeps her hands employed, and is bodily present with her children inside the house. But her bodily presence, even with mother-love and longing to do her best, is not enough. There should be added two things, — knowledge and wisdom. These, however, she does not have, because to obtain them are needed what she does not get, — leisure, tranquillity, and the various resources and appliances of culture; also because their importance is not felt even by herself. k MY FIRST ATTEMPT AT HOUSEKEEPING! By MRS. FRANK R. STOCKTON keeping were varied, because I did not begin and continue in the one home, learning and DS unlearning in the same path. As with many American young women, my housekeeping was much broken into by removals, travel, changes in business and family arrangements, so that there was a rather frequent “beginning over again’’ in those early years. It is easy to see the disadvantages of this system of training for a young housekeeper; but it had one great advantage — it gave opportunities for rectifying mistakes. Each time — after the first — I began my career confident that now I had learned the secret of victory. I think the quality most lacking in beginners at house- keeping is courage. They have had no experience, and many of them, alas! no knowledge, and they are so afraid of making themselves ridiculous that they dread their servants and tradesmen. Many a really clever system of keeping a house devised in the brain of a bright young woman has stayed there simply because it has not met the approbation of servants, and the deviser had not the ‘courage of her convictions.” I still think that my theories, upon which I hoped to build a perfect system in that first home, were better than > a early experiences I went through in house- 1 By permission of “The Youth’s Companion” and Ginn and Com- pany. Copyright, 1906. 51 52 Homemaking those of the masterful Irishwoman established in my kitchen. Just as I was beginning to wonder if I should ever sum- mon courage to get rid of her, I discovered to my relief that she was equally desirous to get rid of me! This was humbling to my pride, but it made matters easy for me to start a new régime — this time with an elderly woman and a young girl. They hated each other from the beginning, and the quar- rels between them were always provoking, although often very amusing. The girl was the original of Pomona in‘‘Rudder Grange,” and despite many faults, was really an interesting creature, having a most decided and energetic character, and very positive and original opinions. She was not only exces- sively romantic, but possessed with the belief that she could embody in her own life the romances she delighted to read. She read these thrilling tales aloud to herself exactly in the manner described in the book, and led us a life of excitement and surprises, although never herself surprised at anything. The woman, Sarah, was exactly the opposite of all this, being practical to the last degree, without the slightest sympathy for the romantic or the sentimental, and ex- pressing her opinions in the plainest language. We had the war between romanticism and realism fought out in our kitchen with the usual result,— each held her own, — but with a different effect on each. The woman generally worked herself into a passion, while nothing disturbed the calm dignity of that inscrutable girl. I was a good deal in the dining-room, where I could see and hear what was said and done in the kitchen. The girl’s name was not Pomona, but one equally romantic — which we always believed she invented. One day I saw . My First Attempt at Housekeeping 53 her sitting by the kitchen table in a sentimental attitude, with a far-away look on her face and her head resting upon one hand. Sarah turned upon her suddenly. “What are you sitting there for?” she asked angrily. “‘T am musing,’’ Pomona replied, in soft, sentimental tones. ‘What ’s that?” inquired Sarah, as she scrubbed a grid- iron. “Thinking out things. I am a-weary of all this, a- weary even of my name. I wish you would call me May.” “May, indeed!” cried Sarah. ‘I ’ll May you over the head with this gridiron if you don’t get up and wash your dishes!” This threat had not the smallest effect on Pomona. She sat there, pensive and serene, until my entrance broke the sad thread of her musings, when she slowly rose, and moved about the kitchen with what she imagined to be careless grace. This first home was not a canal boat, as has been else- where reported. I wish it had been, for life in such an establishment would have been so free and easy I should have glided into the perils of housekeeping as gently as the old boat left her moorings. In my next experiment in a country house I dreaded the introduction of new servants, but I had, to some degree, lost my fear of them, and I actually had the courage to dismiss at a moment’s notice an insolent, vulgar woman, ordering her to go at once upstairs and pack her trunk, as the wagon would be at the door in an hour to take her to the station. But there was a tremor under this boldness. Suppose she refused! What then? Luckily, she went; but as she did so she hurled down upon my head this fearful malediction: ‘‘ Mine will not be the last trunk that goes out of this house!”’ 54 Homemaking This threat was prophetic; but when the trunks went out, followed by their owners, I was never sorry, for each time I thought the next servant must be better; and the interregnum gave me a grand opportunity for the exercise of my own talents. In my early childhood I had been taught a good deal about cooking, but years of school life and study had driven most of this teaching out of my head. Now it was a pleasure to recall it. I managed pretty well with bread-making, which caused my ambition to leap to pie crust, and I volunteered to make apple turnovers for a party of boys to take on a picnic. I was proud of the turnovers when they came out of the oven so firm and brown. Firm they certainly were, for even the jaws of those boys, supposed to be able to masti- cate anything except tenpenny nails, could not manage them. The use they made of them was to “shy” them at one another, and they averred that even then they did not break. I was mortified, but also puzzled. What could be the matter? Had I not wet that crust with warmish water, and rolled it ever so many times on a pastry-board in a hot kitchen, dabbing it constantly with specks of butter just ready to melt? And was it not so rich it was ready to break when I turned it over the apples? How could it be so tough? It was some time before I learned that I should have worked in the coldest place in the house, wet the crust with ice water, scarcely rolled it at all on a marble slab, and frozen it on a block of ice. When I did know all this I must say I thought the process very absurd. It was in my next house, where wagons came with provisions and the grocer sent for orders, that I, having acquired a fresh stock of courage, determined to keep a My First Attempt at Housekeeping 55 sharp eye on expenses. I purchased three pretty little books in which to enter the accounts of butcher, grocer and fishman — who also sold vegetables. Thus I should know daily how expenses were running, and better control the monthly bills. But my three pretty books became three torments to my unmathematical mind. In vain I tried to translate the Egyptian hieroglyphics of the butcher into English; they always baffled me, and I wondered if I really had bought such queer articles, for we certainly had never eaten them. His pounds were generally more than my pounds; and I never could make bone and gristle bear the proper proportions to the eatable meat. This butcher was learned, and carefully explained to me that the loss in the waste of bone and gristle was equally divided between seller and purchaser, — half fell to him and half to me, — which sounded fair enough. But as he did the weighing and fixed the prices, which were high, I could not but feel that, somehow, it was a one-sided busi- ness, and that the heavy side was mine. He was also a philosopher, and instilled into my mind a reverence for the arrangements of Providence in an entirely new direction. He said it was a wise provision of the Creator of men and animals that the prime cuts the rich people liked contained so much bone, whereas the cheap cuts for the poor were solid meat, and more nourishing, be- sides. After this double appeal to my vanity and benevo- lence I could not complain too much of bone and gristle. The groceries were easy enough to enter as far as the weekly order was concerned, but I was likely to forget something absolutely necessary, which had to be obtained from the store, and I would forget to enter this in the book, which, consequently, lagged behind the grocer’s bills in a most exasperating way. 56 Homemaking It was a pleasure to enter fish and vegetables, — they were so cheap, — and when my eye caught the amount of a daily bill it seemed so very small I was tempted to in- dulge the next day in something more costly, a small item even then. But as this went on from day to day, my sur- prise would be great at the respectable size of the monthly bills. So we housekeepers go on, struggling and learning, as I suppose people do in every business, only I think we are not apt to consider it a business. But it is, nevertheless, and one well worth learning. When we encounter the frequent disagreeable incidents, we can console ourselves with the thought that they will vanish, one by one, but our home will remain to us. . CHANGE IN THE FEMININE IDEAL! By MARGARET DELAND —_ SZAUE feminine ideal has changed, and is still M4 1 changing; changing, indeed, with a rapidity yp extremely jarring to those of us who have DS reached complacent, and too often narrow- minded, middle age. We need only compare the women of to-day with our mothers (for it is not necessary to go very far back) to realize how great the change is. Of course there were women a generation ago, as in all the generations, who asserted themselves; but they were prac- tically ‘“‘sports.”” Now, the simple, honest woman; the shy, respectable, commonplace, dear woman; the woman of ringlets (as it used to be) and many babies, or of pompa- dours and fewer babies; the good housekeeper, the good wife, the good mother — is evolving ideals that are chang- ing her life, and the lives of those people about her. As for the difference between us and our mothers, of course we all begin by protesting that if we can ever hope to do our duty as well as they did, our consciences will acquit us. Who of us women, in our comfortable living, dare compare ourselves to our mothers? They did not talk about their “‘rights’’; they fulfilled them — in taking care of their families. They did not talk about “reforms”; they would have thought interference in municipal ques- tions, and agitation for legislation, most unbecoming and unfeminine. They had, bless their dear hearts! a gentle and ladylike irresponsibility in regard to the world lying 1 By permission of the Author and “ The Atlantic Monthly.” Copy- right, 1910. 57 58 Homemaking in darkness in city halls or legislative chambers — though they gave their pennies toward the saving of souls in dark Africa, with a true, even tender emotion, to which most of us are strangers. No; the mothers of forty or fifty years ago had no.theories about improving the world (except the heathen) outside their own respectable doors; but they had strength, and patience, and tenderness, and courage, and selflessness. (That, I think, would be the name of their ideal — selflessness.) Can we remember that selflessness, and see no difference between it and the present feminine individualism? We, or at any rate our daughters, have begun to say that the old selflessness — dear and admirable beyond a doubt to those who were made comfortable by it — was often demoralizing to an appalling degree. Their own individual welfare and happiness was the last thing our mothers thought of. Instead, they gave all their power, moral, intellectual, physical, to their households; and in so doing practiced, sometimes, a curiously immoral unselfishness, which, because it absorbed the chances of sacrifice, turned well-meaning husbands into brutes, and children into dis- agreeable tyrants. Our mothers had a monopoly of unsel- fishness: they gave, instead of received; they grew in grace, but it. was at the expense of their families. Such virtue ‘ wrote upon their tombstones, ‘‘ Here lies a saint, who never thought of self’’; and it helped to make us the selfish men and women that some of us are to-day. There is another point of conspicuous difference, and of tremendous social significance, between the woman of yesterday and the woman of to-day. We have come to appreciate the fact that our mothers were unconscientious concerning the right of children not to be born. We are beginning — alas, only just beginning — to say that when parents, unable to support a child in physical and moral Change in the Feminine Ideal 59 and intellectual well-being, bring such a child into the world, for the state, or for their unfortunate relations, to support, they are socially criminal. Contrast our mothers’ ideas of large families with that! Quantity, not quality, marked the good mother of fifty or sixty years ago. And there are folk to-day — some of them in high places — who still cling to that tradition; but one would like to ask such persons whether the state would have been benefited if, for instance, in a recent notorious murder trial in New York, the principal had been twins? No; maternal in- stinct, that exquisite blossom of pure animalism, is now striking its roots into spiritual responsibilities, and is be- coming divine enough to forbid an undesirable existence. Such contrasts as these between the past and the present show what a change there is in the ideals of women; but the contrasts — generally so favorable to the present — are so many and so obvious, that it is not necessary to point them out. The really important thing is to recognize what is creating the change. There are, it seems to me, two forces at work; one is the sense of in- dividualism, and the other is the sense of social responsi- bility. Both seem to have been evolved in women in our generation; and at first sight, both seem only hopeful. Each in itself is good. We do not have the sobering mis- giving which comes with a recognition of the prevailing discontent among women. But here again the hope im- plies a menace; for these two forces, — a woman’s sense of her right to her own life, which we call individualism, and her sense of her ability to help others, which we call social responsibility, — both so noble and so full of promise, sometimes threaten the very springs of life. Let us consider first the impulse of individualism as we see it in the home life. The sudden and very general ex- pansion of the girl’s horizon is manifest to everybody. 60 Homemaking She apes the independence of the boys, and often empha- sizes it with an affected and ludicrous swagger (which the boys, at any rate, see through, and do not really like) ; but with that independence she has grasped at the splendid possibility of physical perfection, which implies a resulting mental strength heretofore classed as masculine. This is fine, and apart from its occasionally esthetic objection- .ableness, we all rejoice in it. The day of the interesting feminine invalid is gone, thank Heaven! There was a rhyme of our childhood which ran: The bride, of course, fainted, For, being acquainted With manners, she knew what was right. But nowadays brides hardly blush, much less faint. In- stead, our girls are approaching Walt Whitman’s ideal woman. He begins with the vigorous egotism of the healthy animal: I see that they are worthy of me —I will be the robust husband of these women. They are not one jot less than I am, They are tanned in the face by shining suns and blowing winds; Their flesh has the old divine suppleness and strength; They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle, shoot, run, strike, retreat, advance, resist, defend themselves; They are ultimate in their own right, they are calm, clear, well-possessed of themselves. The young woman of to-day is supplementing a certain old-fashioned word, duty, by two other words, ‘‘to myself.” Sometimes just being happy, just enjoying herself, seems to be a duty, — but for the most part, our girls are not so trivial as that. They feel that education and the grasping of opportunity are duties; the cultivation of the mind, or, for that matter, cultivation of the soul; the finding a vocation, the joining a sisterhood, the going off to take care Change in the Feminine Ideal 61 of lepers. Noble impulses, all of them; but contrast them with the old ideal, and you will notice one thing, — in all such expressions of individualism, the family is secondary. The new ideal attacks the old. This is especially striking in what we call the higher education, which has become so general since the days when I went to a school kept by English ladies, where we celebrated the Queen’s birthday and were instructed in deportment and religion. I do not mean education merely in regard to schoolbooks; as far as that goes, I doubt whether we are much more deeply educated than those of our mothers who: happened to be studiously inclined, though we may be more widely educated. I mean the spirit of the higher education. Now there is a certain regal word, the only word that can finally compel the soul, the word ought. Our girls know how to say, “I want,” and “TI will,” or sometimes, ‘I must’’; but they are not learning to say, ‘‘I ought.” In- stead, the education of to-day too often cries out to them in their colleges: “‘Look! The heavens and the earth and the waters that are under the earth are yours! The song that the morning stars sing is for your ears. The eternal tides of life await your adventurous prows. The very winds of God are blowing for your sails!” ‘You — you — rou —’” the higher education cries; “‘never mind other people; make the most of your own life. Never mind marriage: it is an incident; men have proved it so for themselves; it is just the same for women. Never mind social laws; do what your temperament dictates — art, affairs, enjoy- ment even. But do your duty to yourself!” “And,” remarks the observer of an older generation, grimly, “‘the Devil take the hindmost!’? Then he adds, — the observer is generally he, — he adds, with the candor peculiar to his engaging sex, that, according to his poor 62 Homemaking way of thinking, he would call the state of mind of the girl who acts on this advice just plain garden selfishness. Of course, he is only a man; but certainly some thought- ful women wonder whether these gracious opportunities of learning which are flooding in upon women are not translated in terms of self in the minds of many girls? Hannah Kimball sums up this passion for growth that is so characteristic of the New Woman, in four subtle lines: Shall I seek Heaven that I may find a place Where with my soul ’t is well? If I seek thus, though I may strive for Heaven, My face is turned towards Hell. And there is another scripture which saith, “He that saveth his life shall lose it.’ A very striking instance of individualism occurs in the life of Sister Dora. We all remember how she left her home and went into hospital service. She did an immense amount of good; she relieved suffering, she comforted, and strengthened, and ennobled. And she was deaf to the pitiful, unsensational, homely need of her in the little English rectory she had left. She wasasaint, and the poor and sick and outcast named her sister; but in the station of life where it had pleased God to call her, she was not a sister. Was she wrong? Was she right? Far be it from us to say! But there is a question here that the new woman has raised, which vitally affects the family, — what is the relative value to society of individual development, which comes at the cost of family life? But, somebody says, ‘‘Is n’t one to seek for goodness, or culture, for oneself?” Surely yes! But is there any culture, of mind or soul, to equal that which comes from the simple doing of one’s duty? Of course, the puzzle is, what is duty? It may be to go away and live one’s own life and exploit one’s own soul; that is certainly possible. Change in the Feminine Ideal 63 But I wonder if it is frequent? For my part, I should say that it was only safe when it was done for love, not of self, but of humanity. Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, past in music out of sight! There is one touchstone, it seems to me, that may be applied to culture, either material or spiritual, to see if it may be taken honestly; it is this: ‘Is this culture for my- self or for others? Do I live to myself, or even save my soul to myself?” Do you remember certain deep words spoken by One who, being the supreme Aristocrat of the world, yet said, “I am among you as one who serveth’’? “For their sakes,” He said, ‘for their sakes, I sanctify myself.” For their sakes! Surely no individual prosper- ity, no realized ambition of soul or body, can hurt one who can say for “their sakes” I am rich, I am learned, I am comfortable; yes, even for “their sakes” I am religious! But how many individualists can say that? QUEEN OF ONE’S OWN KITCHEN? By MARGARET E, SANGSTER OTWITHSTANDING the incessant discussion 4 of the servant problem, a problem rapidly os taking rank with others that rear their threat- ma ening heads against the peace of the nation, menacing its security from within, there are fortunate beings whom it never troubles. In complete immunity from the friction, the fuss, and the agitation that accom- pany vexed and disturbed relations with domestics, the gentlewoman, who is in her own kitchen queen and mis- tress, pursues the even tenor of her way. There is not a corner of the land in which she may not be found, this competent, quiet, and accomplished person who habitually does her work with her own hands, asking little outside assistance, her family, as a matter of course, rendering help according to their ability. She reigns in her blissful independence in the compact city flat, where a maid would be not only superfluous, but would be uncom- fortably close to the living-rooms where the household desire privacy. She is undisputed sovereign in thousands of charming village homes, and as on the farm north or south she is exceptional who can secure and retain good hired help, the farmer’s wife is, as a rule, the efficient manager and worker who finds her kitchen a pleasant realm. finds it advantageous to do so. The peas are not so tender as they should be, so she buys beans. She ex- pected to get berries, but finds it advisable to purchase a pineapple instead. She not only gets the chops for dinner, but finds, for a small price, just the piece of meat for an Irish stew to-morrow. Waste arises from a lack of thorough knowledge on the part of the housewife of the whole round of house- keeping. If the mistress herself does not know how to buy, how to cook, how to use, how to save, the case is hopeless. But knowledge alone will not suffice — there must be vigilance and intelligent oversight. Poor Richard says, “The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.” Even competent servants will have no interest in true economy. No one but the mistress will see ‘the leak in the dike.” 92 Homemaking Lastly, a large part of household waste arises from moral cowardice — a fear of seeming stingy keeps people from being saving. Many a housewife is really afraid to say anything about economy lest her servant char- acterize her as “‘ stingy ” when the neighborhood servants gather for their nightly confabs. The disrelish of the average maid for economy or anything that looks in that direction is one of the serious phases of the problem. In possible explanation of this is the fact that many of the servants have come from the poverty of the Old World and so are inclined to call a family ‘‘rich” if they live in a comfortable house on a salary of two thousand dollars; hence they say, ‘‘ Why all this talk about economy?”’ Moral cowardice brings on waste through a fear of being considered old-fashioned and queer in the appoint- ments of the house. Furniture excellent in quality and correct in design must be sent to the attic or “‘traded in” at a low figure for the latest fashion as regards finish of wood and form. We should be ashamed to have the Murray-Hills visit us and find an old-fashioned sideboard in our dining-room when every one else has a buffet. And then think for a moment of the ignominy of being the only folks in our set without hardwood floors! When the friezes are too wide, or the drop ceilings do not drop enough, or the wall paper is light when every one else has tapestry papers, no course seems open to a self- respecting family but to cut down the subscription to the church and repaper. Moral cowardice impels to waste in providing too elaborate repasts when friends are entertained. There must be luncheons of eight courses when most of us are lucky to have two when we lunch alone. There must be show dinners with expensive place cards, costly floral centerpieces, and such a succession of unusual and Sources of Household Waste 93 mysterious things to eat that we have to give up when we try to tell mother about it the next morning. As soon as a woman thinks of having a few friends to dine, she begins to cudgel her brain for novel ideas — there must be novelties in table decorations, novelties in food, novelties in the way of serving the food. We all know that the sweet grace of hospitality is stifled in this ex- cess and flummery, ‘but it is a rare woman who dares invite her friends to a simple meal suited to her purse and station. “Just think,” she sighs, ‘‘of that per- fectly elegant dinner the Schuylers gave! Why, I didn’t know what I was eating half the time! How could I ask them to a simple dinner after that? I just could n’t do it.” I knew of a luncheon club of twelve young married women, one of whom each month entertained the others at luncheon. As the months passed, the affairs became more and more elaborate, each striving to outdo the others. Soon the town resources were exhausted, and flowers, out-of-season delicacies, and fancy ices were ordered from the city. Some of the members could not afford this, and the others knew it. All felt that the affairs had gone too far and had become a burden to plan and most wearing to carry out, yet not one was willing to be the woman to assert her good sense and return to moderation. All honor to the woman who in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation dares to be simple and sane! If you are so blest as to know such a one, hasten to tell her how much you admire her, lest she too falter, lose her foothold, and be swept off by the waves of waste. WE AND OUR DAUGHTERS! By JOSEPHINE DASKAM BACON SaeaAAKING the women’s clubs at their own valua- V Zi tion as representing the best and most ad- vanced thought of the American women of US to-day, we may see from their attitude, so different from that of twenty or even ten years ago, a most interesting exhibition of the tendency of public opinion, in regard to the great question of proper train- ing for the principal occupation of the vast majority of women. It is not necessary to discuss the nature of the occupa- tion in question. Though the clergyman and the plumber are no longer necessarily male, the wide range of possi- bilities offered to the sex that has attained the mastery of both these professions, together with all the inter- mediate ones, has not altered the destiny of that over- whelming majority of women whose duty and privilege it is to create and sustain the birthplace and the nursery garden of the ever new generation. / And this majority, as well as the small but, important proportion of the exclusively professional, is more and more surely becoming convinced of the need for some settled ideal, some definite standard of preparation for this great occupation, in all its branches, under all its different circumstances. Yesterday — or was it the day before yesterday? for one can hardly catch the echo of her insistent voice now — the advanced woman threw 1 By permission of the Author and ‘The American.”’ Copyright, 1907, by the Ridgway Company. 94 We and Our Daughters 95 down her needle, dusted the flour from her fingers, and demanded Greek and Hebrew, sciences, and the calcu- lus. To-day this same “‘advanced woman” smiles a little at the Hebrew and calculus, doubtfully computes the amount of time necessary for any proper enjoyment of Greek, and seriously asks herself to what extent her education is educating her. The reactionary who tells a modern woman that she must learn how to make bread, cut and fit her clothing, and nurse a half dozen babies, being thankful meanwhile that the minute intervals of leisure left her while thus employed will find her too fatigued to allow any folly on her part, either practical or intellectual, will get — and deservedly — scant attention from her. The student of social economics who tells her respectfully that she must learn how to feed her family healthfully, clothe them economically, and bring up as many children as she has means to support, considering the best interests and happiness of themselves, herself, and her: husband, will get — and deservedly — this woman’s immediate and profound attention. Bearing in mind, then, that the overwhelming ma- jority of women must concern themselves with the great business of domestic economy, which is no more to say that they must be seamstresses and cooks than it is to insist that the Secretary of War should load the guns for action, let us consider briefly how the overwhelming ma- jority of women are prepared for their business. Of the daughters of the excessively wealthy it is almost unnecessary to speak. Not only are they actually and relatively few, but their influence on the community is quite negligible. Such means as in all human proba- bility will always be at their command will enable them to commute successfully the normal responsibilities of 96 Homemaking their sex — always, let it be observed, with the result of substituting some other voluntarily selected source of strain and fatigue; for no woman can be in actuality idle. The ‘ idle rich” are notoriously overworked, and their women share with the poor drudges of the farmhouse the honor of most creditably filling the sanitariums. The women of the excessively poor are ill fitted for . their certain duties. Of all classes the actually poverty- stricken are, relatively to their circumstances, most ex- pensively and improperly lodged, fed, and clothed. They are forced to éxtract with the greatest difficulty the least nutriment from the worst-selected foodstuffs prepared in the most unhygienic manner possible and eaten under the most unsanitary conditions. All these circumstances might be very greatly modified without the slightest lessening of their poverty, if they were less ignorant of the science of living. Even the daughters of the great middle class, themselves ignorant beyond belief, are in a position to relieve them a little, and helpful women visit the slums in increasing numbers for this purpose. It would be unkind to ask these women to compute how much better (proportionate to their mental and social advantages) their daughters, sisters, and nieces are qualified for the business of living, but some of us are beginning to ask them, and among the questioners the long-suffering American husband and father is raising a timid but persistent voice. In considering the great body of women who represent families in moderate circumstances— and it must be emphasized that this term applies to-day to families which would yesterday have been called wealthy — I shall divide them for the purposes of this discussion into the wage-earning and the nonwage-earning. In the matter of supplies, it is quite evident that any We and Our Daughters 97 business conducted in the loose, unregulated manner of the average isolated family not only would not pay, but would bankrupt itself in a year. Any partnership in which the disbursing partner brought to his duties the inexperience, gullibility, and ignorance of proper adjust- ment of outgo to income of the average young American housekeeper would dissolve, in order to escape ruin. When a young man marries a girl brought up in what her father calls comfort and what his father would have called luxury, and puts her in possession of an income which takes sufficient household service for granted and should assure her leisure, himself a reasonably quiet mind, and their children health and happiness, the number of years during which he can easily secure for himself domestic friction, utterly unaccountable expense, nervous exhaustion, and general pin-pricking dissatisfaction lead- ing to a series of pessimistic compromises, is pathetically great. Such a woman is not forced to “do her own work,”’ but she is utterly ignorant of how to tell others to do it for her, and utterly unwilling — with some justification, in this country — to let these others do it as seems good to them. She may be as ignorant as the daughter of the multimillionaire of the processes that produce the re- sults to which she is accustomed, but she does not bring even the dot of the French girl, who is not thus ignorant, the practical detailed housewifery of the German, or the self-sacrificing effacement of the Englishwoman to her part of the. bargain, which appears to consist, to her mind, of her husband’s promise to love, honor, obey, and support her in the style to which she prefers to become accustomed. I presume that most thoughtful people will realize the justice of the main lines of this description, though some 98 Homemaking of them may consider it too highly colored. But to the extent that it is true, at any rate, the woman who has no other means of support than the man she hopes to marry, is surely utterly unjustified in the lack of prepa- ration for her confessed and only business. For her sister who is trained, at least, for something else, there may be a little more excuse, and it is to this’ large and constant'y increasing class that I particularly wish to demonstrate that their excuse will not hold water, whether they are married or unmarried, professional or business women, of large or of small income, young or old. Let us consider now the position of wage-earning women, and divide these still further into the married and the unmarried. Of the latter division one example will illustrate my point. I do not know of any class of women who stand in greater need of the well-appointed domestic life than the thousands of teachers in our public schools all over the country. Their salaries are not very large, and even when these are quite fairly adjusted to their ability, the fact that many such women have incurred indebtedness in order to provide the edu- cation necessary for their positions, and the far more important and characteristic fact that most of them have some one wholly or partly dependent upon their efforts, continues to influence them to pay as little as possible for their living. The class of women on whom their food and lodging devolves is not by any means a class trained in domestic economy — for if there is any business which we may suppose to have been selected by its practitioners be- cause they were fit for nothing else, it is the business of keeping an average boarding house — and so we have a large and important body of women: nervous, because they are Americans; more nervous, because they com- We and Our Daughters 99 bine the instruction of an inordinately large number of children with a proportionate amount of discipline, ag- gravated by the perhaps necessary red tape of any gov- ernmental system; most nervous because they are not fed and lodged and recreated socially with the hygienic com- fort that the peculiar strain of their profession demands. And yet it would be so easy for the vast majority of them to better their situation immensely — if they had only received the necessary training for doing so, along with their professional training! When one considers that it is quite possible for a family of five to subsist re- spectively and healthfully, if not luxuriously, on an income of one thousand dollars where there is but one wage-earner and one manager, who has only too prob- ably learned how to accomplish this satisfactorily by bitter experience alone, burdened with the bearing and rearing of children, it becomes ludicrously obvious that four adults of common tastes and occupations, in pos- session of an average salary of six hundred dollars, should be able, granted proper previous training, so to divide among themselves the domestic details of a simple ménage that, with the exception of laundry work and heavy cleaning, they could make themselves a real home, a social center, such a combination of rest, nutrition, dec- oration, and economy as it should be the business of every woman to be able to create. And what is true of this class, which I have carefully selected, because intellectually speaking they rank pro- fessionally, and financially speaking they may be con- sidered with the higher class of business women, is true of all these same business women, most of whom equal and many of whom surpass the teachers in income. The typewriter, the head clerk, any representative of the dozen new and paying trades open to women, could 100 Homemaking revolutionize her entire surroundings had she the requi- site domestic training, and had that training, broadly disseminated, produced, as I am sure it would, reform in domestic service and the system of domestic codperation. For these three matters go together and each tends to perfect the others. I am not prepared to say that it would be true of underclerks, cash girls, manual workers on wages so low that they will probably be best served by some form of model boarding house, where great numbers must be considered in order to bring the individual tax to requisite smallness, will probably be necessary for them; though I am not at all sure that in time, and with fine enough adjustment of the system, it would not be possible. We come now to one of the most important, albeit one of the smallest of all these classes, — the professional married woman of a high order of ability and a corre- sponding income. This woman is enormously impor- tant, because, though numerically inconsiderable, her prominence is relatively great, her brain power presum- ably high, her success in her dual réle brilliantly demon- strative of the justice of all her modern claims, her failure the corresponding evidence of their hollowness. And what happens when this failure becomes too trying, too irritating, too nerve-racking to be endured? Obvi- ously, one of the two professions must go to the wall, or at least suffer seriously. And it must be remembered that while no profession is without its triumphant ex- amples of a great success balanced by a brilliantly ade- quate domesticity, the women whose vitality and genius have enabled them to achieve this result are necessarily, by that very fact, proved highly exceptional and very richly endowed by nature. We and Our Daughters 101 Now, which profession goes to the wall? I do not mean by this, do or do not amateur pianists “ give up their music because the baby leaves them no time for practicing,” for most of us are happy to admit that they do. I do not imply that the china painter, the occa- sional poetess, and the support of the volunteer choir fail, on settling into domestic life, to relinquish, and this, moreover, from a real and commendable sense of duty, their one-time avocations, — though I do not believe they would be obliged to if they knew their business. But in the case of the possessor of real constructive ability,* proved by the test of a popular appreciation that purchases with coin of the realm what it appre- ciates, which of her two responsibilities is the modern woman likely to slight? And if there are many (or any) examples of the contrasting sacrifice — and surely it would be a great theme for the artist — why does Mrs. Jellyby stand lonely in her glory, an admitted and pal- pable hit? There is a comfortable theory, propounded with a great, appearance of logic by more than one of the women who take to-day the place of what used to be called “the Women’s Rights Contingent.” This title must surely be obsolete by now, when women have so largely a majority of the rights and so entirely a monopoly of the privileges, but I suppose the present representatives of this militant class would prefer to be called social econo- mists. The theory referred to admits the necessity and presence of domestic problems, but blandly assures the professional woman that though she has undertaken a partnership, she can easily, with what her profession will enable her to earn, commute her share of duties and easily find some one able and willing to perform them for much less than she can afford to pay. 102 Homemaking Now this theory, like many other vicious theories of the social economists, is much easier to explain than to practice, nor does it affect the large and growing body of women of average talent who must solve the large and growing problem of the dual profession. And here is the reason. While it is perfectly obvious that a woman unable to afford a servant to help her with the household work of her husband’s home can easily, if she can be put in the way of earning a few dollars a week, afford such a servant, who will relieve her of the greater part of her responsibility; and equally obvious that an opera singer capable of earning seventy-five thousand dollars each season can surround herself with sufficient managers, secretaries, ladies’ maids, physicians, and butlers to relieve her of all but the exercise of her talent, it does not follow at all that the woman who can earn the equivalent of her husband’s modest but sufficient professional in- come can purchase the same immunity. And here, again, is the reason. Let us take the case of the wife of a man with an income of three thousand dollars who can herself earn an equal sum. If it be objected that the women capable of earning such a sum and at the same time able to attempt to manage family life are so few as to be unrepresentative, I assert my firm conviction that it is from the woman of sufficient leisure, sufficient freedom from actual back- breaking toil, that reform and systematization are to come. It is the women of sufficient brain power to be worth more than the average wage-earner to the community, who are waking up to the fact that their progress is growing a little one-sided. It is not the little seamstress, straining every nerve to send her daughter to a business college so that she need never work as her mother does — the pathetic fallacy of the class and the sex that re- We and Our Daughters 103 fuses to learn by experience, and has never sufficiently realized, that if the bottom principle be wrong, no favor- ing circumstances can change the results very much or very long. These women, though exceptionally able, are immensely important: what they think to-day the rest will think to-morrow. This successful professional woman, then, very prop- erly realizes that it would be to her advantage to drop some of the responsibilities that the household manager in possession of this income must assume, but she looks in vain for a place to drop them or shoulders qualified to receive them. The housekeeper is but slightly employed in this country: she advertises herself as willing to assume these duties only in the houses of the very rich, where she can control a staff of servants so large as obviously to re- quire such a general, or in the houses of widowers and bachelors. The reason for this is very clear: a person capable of filling such a place perfectly would have a social position quite anomalous in the household under our consideration. With whom and where, in the ménage of two servants, for instance, would she eat? Three social planes, in the ordinary American household of such an income, are singularly impractical. Would there be really enough for her to do, unless one gave her a responsibility in the training of children, for example, only to be intrusted to a social equal, and in that case could one pay her as much as she would undoubtedly be worth? Although I firmly believe that it is along the lines of the housekeeper that the modern woman of many interests and without large means must look for domestic salva- tion, it must be a housekeeper adapted to our new civili- zation: a very different article from the functionary 104 Homemaking who merely heads the list of highly differentiated servants in the establishments of the very wealthy, or the cook who, possessed of sufficient judgment to order as well as to prepare a meal, calls herself a ‘‘working housekeeper.”’ “Then let the woman get efficient servants,” cries my reader impatiently, ‘‘paying well for it, more than her husband’s income alone would warrant, and do the housekeeping — that is to say, the mere directing — her- self. Surely that should give her sufficient leisure?” There are two sad answers to this eminently reasonable suggestion. First, under the present unsystematized con- dition of domestic science, no one not wealthy enough to compete for the cream of this service — which is un- doubtedly highly trained — has the slightest guarantee that paying from one-fifth to one-quarter more (to put it mildly) than any given wage will result in a propor- tionate efficiency. Second, even good service of the class one has a right to expect on the income mentioned ought not to be expected to be good enough to dispense with able judgment to oversee the entire domestic econ-' omy of which it forms a part — and such judgment the average professional woman of this income is utterly unprepared to supply. And this woman, who might with most reason be sup- posed to be able to dispense with this training, is only a small fraction of the army of: the untrained who are without her plausible excuse. The business woman, the talented amateur, the ornament of the home, the example of the higher education — in the great majority of cases, is she not unprepared for it? Why is she unprepared for it? Did she not, in the equally great majority of cases, know that she was ultimately destined for it? Even supposing she does not care to admit this, will she assert that were the mere We and Our Daughters 105 chance of her undertaking any other business half as great, she would be so mad as to dream of omitting to provide for that chance? Any man who publicly made known that he was about to begin business in a field that immediately required the exercise of great responsi- bility, disbursement of all sorts, and to a great extent the direction, control, and almost certainly the training of his employees, — and admitted at the same time that he not only knew nothing whatever of any of these things, but had sedulously avoided learning them, would, to put the matter delicately, have great difficulty in making a will that his relatives would not feel themselves justified in breaking. The fact that he would almost certainly die a bankrupt does not alter my point, in this connection. Why then is the average girl unprepared for her busi- ness? Is it because young women do not care for this sort of training? But the average schoolgirl is not violently enamored of piano practice, algebra, or United States history, and yet her stern parents risk her dis- pleasure to the extent of at least putting her in the way of learning these things. Is it because she is expected to be able to learn household management when she con- fronts it, on the principle that “it will come to her when she has to?” It will. Almost anything will. But the perfectly calculable number of ruined digestions, busi- ness failures, nervous prostrations, and infants’ deaths directly attributable to her ignorance while it is coming to her, is probably only to be surpassed by the neces- sarily quite incalculable number of all these things in modified form, which do not go so far as utterly to ruin the happiness of the people they only irritate and fatigue. Is it because the majority of American mothers hope for their daughters a social, if possible, but at any rate a financial advancement, on their marriage, and deliber- 106 Homemaking ately omit a training which they pray may be unnec- essary? .This I believe to be a strong though often unconscious factor in the general culpable neglect, but it is incredible that such mothers should not see the folly of this attitude, since short of the really considerable wealth necessary to purchase immunity from domestic respon- sibility, a girl might advance by many stages in the social and financial scale, and still find it necessary to cope very definitely with practical details to which she would be entirely inadequate. The difficulty in this connection is that each ignorant woman, herself pitifully lacking in the scientific prin- ciples of the domestic life, is convinced that had she an extra thousand dollars of income all these embarrass- ments would vanish; whereas the basic problems are precisely the same, for the increasing demands of each in- crease of income create increasing complications requiring an increasing order of ability. A woman whose husband is uncertain of his power to provide her with enough to eat is reasonably justified in feeling that if she were only sure of her dinner she would be a happy woman; one whose husband can easily give her plenty to eat is fairly certain to feel that she would be perfectly satisfied if she had some one to cook it; one whose husband employs servants for her as a matter of course is to-day only too thoroughly convinced that she can never be a free woman till he can guarantee that she will be able to manage the cook! Do I mean, then, by all this, that unless a girl can darn stockings and make bread I regard her as criminally ignorant and unfit to marry? Not at all. I myself ex- pect to lead a long and useful life without ever having even attempted either of these performances. I do not think classes in knife-cleaning any more essential than THE MORNING MEAL We and Our Daughters 107 lectures on lawn-mowing, though there are doubtless intricacies in both arts.. I can never be sufficiently grate- ful to that advance of machinery that has made mate- rials and garments of every grade and description so cheap that women in the most moderate circumstances who have no liking for the needle can entirely dispense with its use. But I resent bitterly the fact that during the eight principal years of my education, when I had, if anything, too much leisure, no responsibility, a receptive mind, an unimpaired nervous system, and a great adaptability, I was not, at least in the last four years, in connection with other technical information, — none of which I have ever happened to use, except in the sense that every- thing one has read has probably affected one’s charac- ter,— constantly receiving some training that would have saved me hours and weeks and what will probably amount to years of painful and in every sense expensive experiment. Must a girl be a government accountant in order to know the proper amount of money to spend on a family’s dress in proportion to its food? Must she be able to spin and weave in order to know the different grades of cot- ton and linen, their relative serviceability and cost, how much linen she will need, and with proper care how long it should last? Must she be a laundress to know how best such linen should be cleansed in order to make it last, and to be able to tell from its appearance and fail- ure to last what has been at fault? Must she be a chemist in order to learn that if one is able to afford two vegetables with one’s joint, they had better not be rice and potatoes, as each of these represents practically the same food value, and they are too starchy in con- junction? Must she be a plumber in order to under- 108 Homemaking stand the mechanism of a range or stove and the rationale of its extraordinary temperament? Must she be a clerk in every sort of shop in order to escape depending wholly on these persons in her household purchasing? It is ad- mitted that a girl can learn to sew from a proper course in sewing, to cook from a proper course in cooking; why can she not learn to keep house from a proper course in housekeeping? The woman’s college that denies the suitability and necessity of a department of Domestic Science, con- ducted by a highly trained, highly paid faculty, is as un- reasonable and unpractical as the woman’s college that sets its students to bed making and dishwashing and then wonders at the lack of tone such an institution must invariably display. It is incredible that these two matters should be in this decade confused in anybody’s mind. Not that I am so unpractical as to suppose that any girl can master all these details after reading a few books and hearing a few lectures. Obviously one must actually keep house in order to be a successful house- keeper. But it is unusual, to say the least, for a young doctor or lawyer to omit his preliminary training on the ground that he can not hope for any important patients, or clients until he has had some successful practice! And although this is quite true as regards the clients and patients, he must practice on somebody, somewhere. The principles of domestic hygiene and sanitation, the relative value and prices of food, together with its proper combination, wise purchase, and the broad, general theory of its main lines of preparation; the division of the labor of a house and how to effect it among two, three, four, or five persons logically, fairly, and system- atically, including the amount of work well done that can be expected of any one person; the best implements, We and Our Daughters 109 utensils, labor-saving devices, and furnishings with the necessary cost, durability, and amount or number of them all; intelligent and economical buying of all the necessities and comforts of domestic life as distinct from “‘shopping”’; a practical system of household accounts; a logical adjustment of the various departments of family expense; a sufficient knowledge of simple nursing to enable one to relieve the most obvious forms of suffer- ing, to understand the symptoms of what experience has shown to be the most constantly occurring ills of the flesh, and to distinguish between dire crisis and tempo- rary accident, with a special study of the care and gen- eral training of infants and very young children — all these should be included in the education of any woman who dares to call herself highly educated. It may be objected that all this would take too much time. It would not take nearly so much time, prop- erly distributed through a sufficient number of terms, as any of the main subjects of study now offered. It would take the same position as gymnastics in all insti- tutions: a thing to be done without question for the majority of one’s course — one-half of it certainly. But the minimum requirement would never be great at any one time. It may be objected that the students might not all care for it. Probably they would not. Some would detest it, some would shirk it, some would do brilliantly at it, some would specialize profoundly at some one department of it; precisely as they treat gymnastics, for instance, which no college eliminates because of these various attitudes taken by a class and an age famous for its attitudinizing tendencies. It may be objected that a properly equipped depart- ment would be very expensive. It would. To be able 110 Homemaking successfully to demonstrate various methods of heating, lighting, and plumbing, alone, would undoubtedly be expensive. But expense has not prevented the erection of the great buildings dedicated to scientific work, theo- retic and experimental, in our women’s colleges to-day, nor the efforts of every high school and preparatory school worthy the name at its little laboratory. Ex- pense did not deter my own college from employing the services of scientists well known in their profession. A first-class gymnasium with all the apparatus of every changing fad is a reasonably expensive affair, but no college, on good business grounds alone, would dream of grudging the money for one. And what the scientific athletic revival has been to the last fifteen years the scientific domestic culture will be to the next. As far as expense goes, I myself, had I the leisure, would cheer- fully guarantee to collect from fathers and prospective husbands alone enough to make the erection of such a Hall of Domestic Science an easy matter. When women’s colleges are ready to’ approach the question of the proper education of women in a proper spirit they need not fear any financial difficulties. And as soon as they realize that they will lose no prestige, but rather gain immensely; that they need sacrifice nothing, - —not an hour or a page of their hard-won Hebrew and calculus, —but strengthen their whole structure from corner stone to coping, and win the final victory over any critics they may yet have to admit, they will break ground between the halls of chemistry and biology and justify at last their claim to the higher education. What the college does, the high school and prepara- tory school, both affecting far more than the actual preparatory element, will promptly do. The lower grades of the public school, notably in the West, are We and Our Daughters 111 already in their enlargement of the idea of manual train- ing more than ready to extend a helping hand to the grades above them. Only the age most able to com- bine practice with theory, to understand the deep neces- sity of the training and at the same time take it lightly, is allowed to go without it. The children of the slums are taught in large numbers how to live well under pain- ful conditions, but the great body of the most important class in the nation has no system of training such as was held necessary for the Queen of England! When the American mother realizes that it is not necessary to turn her daughter into a household drudge in order to equip her for the domestic life that to some extent or other she is bound to lead before she dies — when she realizes that even though a girl may be fully competent to earn her living, she does not therefore relinquish all chance or necessity of this life (for mar- riage is insidious, and lurks about the path of the ablest typewriter or sculptress); when she realizes that even though her daughter’s husband may have half again as large an income as that with which her daughter’s father tried to escape bankruptcy, the young woman will still have houses to rent, buy, or build, — and keep, — supplies to purchase, servants to engage and manage, children to bear and rear, — perhaps when enough of these things strike enough American mothers with sufficient force, they will begin to encourage institutions to accomplish what they, by this time, can not. For I believe that this matter has now got beyond them, and out of their hands. Like much that was once delegated to the maternal knee, domestic science must go to the schools, and a nation notoriously embarrassed before its children’s criticism must soon submit to its children’s instruction in this subject also. 112 Homemaking And when the American father realizes that possibly he is not “ the best husband in the world’ when he per- mits what he has long privately felt to be a false and inadequate training of his daughters; when he falls back on the practical fact that after all he, in the great majority of cases, wields the check book that supports the schools and colleges, and insists on their conforming a little to what his sex has always recognized as the proper ideal (though it may be true that his sex has, in its desire to preserve this ideal, pressed a little too narrowly on one aspect of it), perhaps then he will be willing to sacrifice a little of this merited reputation of his, and correct what he is constantly and justifiably criticizing — and yet constantly and weakly permitting! I — no more than he — wish the young women of this country to be household drudges; I wish them to learn to avoid drudgery. I am not pleading for more respon- sibility and nervous strain for them: I beg them to divide the reponsibility and lessen the strain with a legitimate leisure — the result of system, training, and fundamental knowledge. I urge them to respect this knowledge and acquire it in the best and easiest way, by a certain amount of experiment and practice under the instruction and assisted by the superior wisdom of quali- fied teachers (which is probably the only source from which the present generation could respect and acquire it). And I am convinced that until they believe and do these things, whatever else they may be, the future will not admit that they were advanced! WHAT CAN I DO?! By ANNIE H. RYDER UT what can I do?” you ask. Oh, I hear 4} that so many, many times, and I feel the deepest sympathy for the girl who asks it. " Usually, when the question is put, there is no marked ability in the asker, —I mean, no special power to do a particular work. I have hardly the right to say this, however, since we are all endowed in some way, and each girl must have a work in which she can do better than any other. Perhaps, girls, you belong to the great middle class, — the people who have no large fortunes, no particular influence; and, maybe, you think if you only had a rich relative, or some acquaint- ance, who stood in authority, you might do a good work, or, at least, earn a livelihood. Do you remember that this very class of people have been the greatest re- formers, thinkers, workers, rulers, everywhere? The United States owes its existence to people who had to depend upon themselves. But let us see about this question, what to do. In the first place, if a girl has a decided inclination towards this or that honorable calling, she should foster every opportunity for pursuing it. If she can do a nurse’s work better than a teacher’s, and if no home ties of an imperative nature restrain her, she ought to become a nurse. A large field for the special work of nursing has been opened during late years. In all our prominent 1 From “Hold up Your Heads, Girls.” Copyright, Lothrop & Com- pany, 1886. 113 114 Homemaking hospitals we find training schools for nurses. The girl who feels she is fairly strong, and who has a good amount of physical courage, does a brave deed when she goes into the hospital to become a nurse. When she graduates, fitted to render service to the sick, and willing to de- vote her life to them, she is a noble acquisition to the world’s helpers. If a girl can do most and best as a physician or sur- geon, she ought to be always the doctor. We no longer question the right or ability of women to practice medi- cine. The time will come when women will be as numer- ous in the medical profession as men. A girl ought to be very sure of a few things, however, before she studies medicine with a view to practicing. There are peculiar hardships in a doctor’s life, requiring physical strength, continuous toil, strong nerves, decision, reticence, and indifference to unjust criticism. With natures more susceptible than young men possess, be sure, girls, that you are equal to the burdens that weigh so heavily on the shoulders of the boys. If a girl can cook better than she can do other ,work, the kitchen ought to claim her. Schools of cookery have made of cooking an art to be industriously followed where success is desired. Superintendents of cooking are usually reliable persons, and command good salaries. In a smaller way, many a girl in town or country can turn her knowledge of cooking to advantage by selling her cake, or jelly, or pickles, for a snug little sum. There is a call for such prepared food not only in the industrial rooms of cities, but in country shops as well. We buy Miss M.’s orange cake, and Miss F.’s spiced pickles; for the one makes her cake, and the other her pickles, better, much better, than others do. The world always wants the best in small as well as in great things, and will pay for it. * What Can I Do? 115 Should a girl enjoy the cultivation of plants, she would be able to give much pleasure to her friends by caring for a private conservatory or window garden. In this way she could learn much about plants, and become a successful florist. Then, if there were reasons why she should earn a living, with a small capital she could. gradually work into the cultivation of flowers to such an extent as to make them very serviceable money- makers. Sometimes girls have a fondness for fowls, and like to accumulate pin-money from the eggs hens lay. Why should they not give much time to the care of poultry? try for fine breeds, and for eggs that bring the highest prices? A good deal has been written recently in relation to the cultivation of the silk-worm as a means of creating an occupation for girls and women, and as a method of forwarding American industries. The results already attained in this work are valuable and highly promising. Very earnest women are encouraging its progress, and will gladly supply any needed information in regard to it. Girls, you will come to see that women of large hearts and generous souls are deeply interested in your welfare. I hope every city has such noble examples of this kind of women as Boston presents. I have cited sufficient examples to urge that, if desire turns a girl to this or that occupation, she ought to seek it and follow it, provided always her judgment is as clear as her wish is ardent. Remembering that a lady is such of herself, whether in a drawing-room or an attic, behind the counter or in the schoolroom, a girl will be of noble worth, and will become one place as well as another. I do believe in choice of work; but I believe even more strongly in a girl’s preserving the ‘eternally womanly,” whatever she does, and wherever she is. 116 Homemaking In most cases, a woman’s work and place are in her own home. ‘‘Wherever a true wife comes, home is always round her. The stars only may be over her head, the glow-worm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at her foot; but home is yet wherever she is: and for a noble woman it stretches far round her, better than ceiled with cedar, or painted with vermilion, shed- ding its quiet light far, for those who else were home- less.” As a girl is bound to do what she honestly feels she can do best, she should never question how her work may seem to another, if it does not absolutely injure another. I should not ask is this man’s work or woman’s work; but, rather, is it my work? But, in whatever I attempted I should repeatedly say to myself, am I keeping my womanhood strong and real, as God in- tended it? am I working womanly? In many cases, much more good might be accomplished by girls and women, if, instead of so much talk about lacking privileges, they took the places they could fill. Sister Dora never ques- tioned whether she ought to bind up the wounds of her crushed workmen; she laid them on the beds of her hospital, and calmly healed them. Caroline Herschel did not stop to ask whether her telescope were privileged to find new stars, but swept it across the heavens, and was the first discoverer of at least five comets. You feel the necessity of earning money, and so must take whatever work you can get? Alas! I know you do, many of you, dear girls. But do not think this is so very unfortunate. Unless your very life is being worn out; unless your wages are ground down to a pittance, and your work is wholly disagreeable, be thankful. You are as well off as the girls who are languishing with dissipation and ennui. The average girl has the average amount of ~ What Can I Do? 117 hardship and blessing in her life. I know there are many girls who cannot be found among the average. If there is no wish on a girl’s part to follow a special work, if she has no marked ability, let her ask the advice of friends; but, more than that, let her seek, through her own personal efforts, some honest work. Pluck, not luck; the Yankee, not the aristocrat, earn a living. For a girl of average ability I think a mingling of man- ual and mental labor preferable to purely manual or strictly mental work. There are many authors, jour- nalists, accountants, etc., who have achieved striking success; but ordinarily this success has sprung from cer- tain brilliant or profound mental attributes. Hand labor that requires no thought does not exercise our best faculties. I can not specify just here what occupations an average girl may undertake. I gladly refer to certain books which contain statistics of work and its profits, or which suggest occupations: ‘‘The Working Girls of Bes- ton,” by Carroll D. Wright; “Think and Act, Men and Women, Work and Wages,” by Virginia Penney; ‘‘ What Girls Can Do,” by Phillis Brown. Now, I want to talk a little to the girls who have leisure, —so much of it, sometimes, that it all turns crazy on their hands, and expends itself in the last most fashionable excitement. Girls too often do things just because other girls are doing them, never for a moment considering fitness or ability; consequently, they look back upon half-accomplished bits of work — this or that insanity in worsted, cardboard, wood carving, modeling, or darning — very much as they would upon the broken fragments of an upset dinner table. Away up in that convenient attic lie the desecrated splendors of the past, scattered in confusion by charitable mice, — blue and crimson wax flowers melt underneath the eaves, all y 118 Homemaking destitute of petals that would not fit on; patchwork quilts and cushions, in silk and satin distractions, just fall short of harmony in the arrangement of their squares and colors; vivid buttercups and daisies mingle with bulky cat-o’-nine-tails, — all on canvas covered with paint; blacking jugs adorned with pictures, embossed and otherwise; moth-eaten Kensington, partly outlined in conventional lilies and conventional stitches; forlorn- looking cats and dogs on half-made rugs and slippers, — all, all are there to point out certain very unpleasant morals, referring chiefly to inability and lack of persever- ance. Understand, to excel in worsted, in painting, in any of the arts which afford so much pleasure, even in amateur work, is highly commendable. Perhaps to dip into these occupations to pass time might be considered better than laziness. But to do them simply because others are following them is wholly unwarrantable. I do not believe in crazes,—do you? What is worth doing is worth pursuing. Intense interest may be necessary to success; but extremes make us very abrupt, inconsistent, and fickle in our occupations. Test the quality of your last attempt to make a tree on canvas before you buy a full set of colors, and before you put out your sign as an artist. Much study, hard work, aptitude, are required by art; and the phenomenal début of a fully fledged artist ‘‘after ten lessons” (‘‘the whole art taught in six weeks’’) will never be witnessed. I should say, before passing further, that even a slight acquaintance with the decorative arts as practiced at present appears to be quite improving to one’s taste, and cultivating to the perceptions. Music — singing, playing — is a great accomplishment. Would that every girl might know its precious helps, — What Can I Do? 119 its sources of amusement and culture, and the divine mysteries of its art. But unless you can express the musician’s thought, and interpret harmonies by harmony, never be afraid to say, ‘‘I can not play.” If the crazes which now threaten to capture society, and to seriously affect the speech, work, dress, and accomplishments of young ladies, continue at their pres- ent rate, I think there will be a grand chance for escape from them. It will suddenly become the fashion to be tranquil, plain of speech, real and thorough in every work. Now we strive our utmost to prevent monotony, and promote variety. The dressmaker’s trade we learn in 1885 will not be of much use in 1886. Last winter we learned how to cook; and this, we are studying how to cure by mental processes. Next year we shall go to the gymnasium and tighten up our muscles. After that, we may open sewing-schools; and, perhaps, later, turn our attention to literature classes. There are so many things a girl can do, even when society claims her,— more than ever, I should say! Make work, if you cannot get it, girls. Encourage poor girls by joining the industrial unions instituted in their behalf. Go into the hospitals, old ladies’ homes, charity bureaus, flower missions. Join a Chautauqua club, or one of the societies for the encouragement of studies at home. That one founded in Boston for home studies, and which now numbers many hundreds, affords excellent instruction, particularly in literature and history. This educational society has done a wonderful amount of good through correspondence, books loaned, criticisms, examinations. Attend the numerous lectures, exhibits, etc., which are provided free of expense in all large cities. Do not be afraid of useful fancy work. One can rest delightfully while making a row on an afghan, or knitting 120 Homemaking on a bed slipper. I always pity a boy who never seems to have any way of occupying himself while he rests. He whistles, puffs a cigarette, perhaps, or whittles away the window seat. Girls have no need of being lazy while they rest. They certainly will not sit in lawless indifference if they know the blueness of discontent. Cheerful people are workers; and, when they find any tendency to go “mooning” over their tasks, they shake themselves into broad daylight. I have suggested but a few of the things girls can do with greatest profit to themselves and to others. Form reading associations, hygiene societies, relief clubs, emer- gency clubs, horticultural unions, charity bureaus, science clubs, painting clubs. Why are they not just as enter- taining as progressive euchre clubs? You know a girl never does as well when no incentive is placed before ‘her; so I have hinted at the value of organization for general improvement, for work, and for larger usefulness in every sense. The modern sewing-circle, the mis- sionary associations, even the temperance organizations in churches, have frequently been most efficient means of holding churches together. Clubs for boys are not so strongly recommended as for girls, because these asso- ciations for young men come to be their dependence for entertainment, and consume the hours which ought to be spent at home, or in the society of both girls and boys. Club life in England, particularly London, has taken the place of home life. Now, the girls need have no fear from their associations because they are formed prin- cipally to forward the interests of home. Work, then, girls! Work for pleasure, work for profit! Work for the health of your bodies, and the health of your souls! ‘‘You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, What Can I Do? 121 will, in the quickest and most delicate ways, improve yourselves.” “When men are rightly occupied their amusement grows out of their work, as the color petals out of a fruitful flower; when they are faithfully helpful and compassionate, all their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse to the body.” But whatever your work is, girls, do not be in too much of a hurry for great results. If there is anything in old countries that strongly impresses the American mind, it is, probably, the great amount of labor, the infinite patience, and the centuries of time that were necessary to construct their public edifices. We cannot understand such waits, such slow progress. On the contrary, the fact that most impresses the mind of a foreigner in our own streets is the hurry, impatience, rush, and scramble of American life. The people walk along the narrow streets of Boston with such hurried steps, such deeply seamed faces, such infinite anxieties, as if they were about to adjust the foundations of the earth, and had about two minutes to spare before applying the lever. Go slowly, girls, and your work will last the longer. Do not expect to complete your line of reading or study in one winter. Do not await a large salary for the first year’s work. Do not hope to more than initiate a charitable society in one autumn. Then try to remem- ber the necessity of concentrating forces, and of bringing your heaviest action to bear on one point: too many undertakings dissipate strength and prostrate work. There is a great deal of poor work done now; and it is said to have been somewhat mediocre throughout the nineteenth century, because time enough was not taken to do thorough work. The strong desire is to get 122 Homemaking to the end of toil. We have hardly time to think what to get for dinner or what to wear; but we get something to eat when we are hungry, and go out into the cold wear- ing a spring jacket. Now, one good strong word more for work. We are born to enjoy and use it; civilization depends upon it, our womanhood is strengthened by it, our talents increased, our chances of happiness multiplied, and our service in every department of life is made worthier by the doing with our might just what lies before us. THE PROBLEM OF DOMESTIC SERVICE! By ELIZABETH McCRACKEN the ladies of Cranford, to be pretty well suited with servants. ‘“‘ Don’t spend any time con- sidering us,” they said, when I would have begun an investigation of the problem of domestic service from the standpoint of the employer by doing this very thing; ‘‘talk with the people who can’t get good servants, or, if they do, can’t keep them. They are the typical employers.” Certainly, such persons are in the majority. Typical no doubt they are; but should they be regarded as rep- resentative? At the exhibitions given by art clubs we expect to see only the best pictures of the most gifted mem- bers; players, we all are agreed, should be remembered for their fine and brilliant successes. We insist that a poet must be judged by his greatest poem. Even in matters nearer home the same principle holds; a small girl of my acquaintance tells me with pride that her ‘“‘room at school”’ was represented at the Longfellow centenary. “How was it represented?” I query. “ Every person in it wrote an essay,” is the reply; “ and the best one was sent to the Committee.” : May we not profitably proceed somewhat after this manner in dealing with the employers of household helpers? The best ones, moreover, are the only ones who see in the problem of domestic service the possibility ‘ By kind permission of the Author and “The Outlook.’’ Copyright, 1908. f a OST of my immediate associates chance, like , 123 124 Homemaking of a solution. Those persons who can not get good ser- vants, or, if they do, can not keep them, almost invariably declare it to be their belief that good servants are not to be had, or, if actually obtained, retained. There is perhaps no one of us whose opportunity to listen to the discourse of a typical employer has been in any wise meager. In Cranford, we recall, it was because most of the ladies were pretty well suited with servants that conversations sometimes flagged during the fifteen- minute calls which were made upon formal occasions. But why is it that, even among housekeepers who have many other ‘subjects of conversation, the delinquencies of the outgoing cook, or the failings of the incoming maid who does what is designated as ‘‘second work,” would seem to be a favorite topic? How does it happen that upon its introduction the most brisk conversation becomes still more sprightly? Furthermore, under its influence entire strangers will become familiar acquaintances, and cool silence resolves itself into warm discussion. ‘‘Discussion!”’ exclaimed the manager of an employment bureau, when I made this remark to her; “‘very few of the women who talk about their trials in connection with ser- vants discuss the question. They merely exchange expe- riences!” “Ts n’t that much the same thing?” I suggested. “Not at all,” she returned; ‘‘for they do not interpret their experiences; they tell what happens, but they do not try to explain why.” She has been for more than ten years the manager of an employment bureau of considerable size. I had been spending the morning near her desk observing the course of events. Of the scores of householders — both men and women — who came seeking servants, at least’ one-half confided to her some tale touching the employee whose The Problem of Domestic Service 125 vacant place the office was requested to aid in filling. Very nearly all stories were derogatory in their nature. In no case was any attempt made to offer what the mana- ger would have called an interpretation. “Perhaps these people have no explanations to give for their trouble in relation to this matter,” I ventured. “Oh, probably not,’”’ was the answer. “Do successful employers know why they succeed?” I questioned. “‘T have no idea,” replied the manager, with a smile; “they do not come to me until they have ceased to succeed, so I seldom hear them talk. I’d like to. What do they say, wonder! I know — I suppose every one does, more or less — what the unsuccessful employers think; and most of us have some knowledge of what the theorists who have never had anything to do with servants believe; but the successful employers — what do they say?” She looked at me with sudden hope. ‘‘Do you know?” she asked. It chanced that, to a limited extent, I did know; for, unmindful of the counsel proffered me, I had spent a cer- tain amount of time considering those of my near acquaint- ances who are successful employers. I repeated to the manager of the employment bureau a portion of what they had said. She listened with an appearance of interest which I had not observed her to accord to the anecdotes of the succession of unsuccessful employers who had visited her office during that particular morning. ‘Does this recital commend itself to you because it is different from what you have been hearing?” I inquired. ‘“‘No,” she replied; ‘‘T like it because it is positive. What I have been hearing has been negative.” I had mentioned to her my intention of writing some account of the results of my various investigations of the problem of domestic service. ‘‘Show the positive end of 126 Homemaking the pole,” she now urged; “the negative end is already in plain sight.” Not so much her insistence as the quality of my own experience induces me to make an endeavor to follow her advice. Of the almost countless number of employers whom I interviewed on the subject under consideration, only the successful ones, as the manager of the employ- ment bureau had predicted, suggested any possibility of a solution of the difficult problem; and the hint, at least, of such a possibility was what I sought. The most successful employer that I have ever known is a friend of mine who lives in one of those small cities of which there are-so many in America. She is what one of her -college classmates describes as a ‘‘usual woman”; that is to say, she is a wife, a mother, and a housekeeper. Her finances being only the moderate earnings of her hus- band, she can afford to employ but one servant. During the first few years of her married life this servant was a woman who had been my friend’s own nurse. She served her former charge’s household faithfully, if some- what dictatorially, until old age obliged her to retire from active work. “Now,” predicted the neighbors, ‘‘your troubles will begin! You will have nervous prostration, and you won’t * find a good servant.” But this prophecy was not fulfilled. My friend did not have nervous prostration. One day I went to call upon her for the purpose of making inquiries as to whether she had found a good servant. She invited me into the kitchen, where she was occupied in preparing dinner. I put my questions. ‘What do you mean by a good servant?” she demanded. ““Well — a competent one,”’ I hazarded. “Competent to do what?” she pursued. The Problem of Domestic Service 127 ““Why — whatever you engaged her to do,” I replied. “T engaged her to do general housework,” said my friend; “a single servant is always engaged to do that. ‘General housework’ is a large and varied thing.” “But,” I persisted, ‘‘have you found some one who can do it satisfactorily?” “No,” my friend unexpectedly made reply, “but I’ve found a good servant.” “Where is she?” asked. ‘‘Is this her ‘afternoon out’?”’ “‘No,” my friend again unexpectedly answered. ‘She is putting the children to bed.” ““While you cook the dinner!’’ I exclaimed. “Exactly,” returned my friend. ‘She is very capable about caring for children, but her cooking isn’t especially skillful. In fact, it’s hopeless.” “It’s fortunate that yours isn’t,” I finally recovered from my surprise sufficiently to say. ““Yes,”’ my friend acquiesced soberly, ‘‘it is fortunate. Otherwise I could n’t have taken this particular servant, and she was quite the best one I could find for general housework.” ‘General housework,” I echoed; ‘‘you have just said she is practically the children’s nurse!”’ “She is more than that,’’ my friend elucidated, ‘‘and she is less. She helps me with the children; a regular nurse would have the whole charge of them, and would do nothing else. This girl does may other things. Even in so small a house as mine there is much to do. We share the labor. I do what I can do best, and she does what she can do best. I help her, and she helps me.” “Tt is a unique arrangement,’”’ I commented. “Ts it?” observed my friend. ‘‘I’m not so sure. At any rate, it is an inevitable arrangement, conditions being as they are.” 128 Homemaking Managers of employment bureaus in various cities and towns in the United States have told me that in the great majority of homes only one servant is employed; and that usually the stories we all .hear concerning the trials of housekeepers with their helpers come from the employers of servants for ‘“‘general housework.” If these house- keepers should make that arrangement which appeared to me unique, and which my friend regarded as inevitable, conditions being as they are, might there not, perhaps, be fewer of these tales to tell? An acquaintance of mine to whom I recounted the inci- dent of the servant who was capable in caring for children but unable to cook, expressed it as her opinion that it was not so much what my friend did in the matter as the spirit in which she did it that made it possible for her to codper- ate so happily with her one servant. ‘‘She realized that the girl was a human being, and she treated her as such,” declared my acquaintance. Upon reflection, it seemed to me that my friend’s reali- zation, and also her treatment, as regards her servant, went further. The girl was to her a human being whom she must take into her small house; who must become, perforce, a member of her household circle. It behooved her to deal with her as she dealt with the other mem- bers of that household; to rejoice in, and profit by, her virtues, and to accept cheerfully and to supplement her deficiencies. Another friend of mine is a most successful employer. Her present servant, to use the current phrase, has “‘ been with her” for six years. “You have no trouble getting and keeping a good ser- vant, do you?” I said to her, tentatively, not long ago. “Certainly I do,” she retorted. ‘ “But,” I interposed in surprise, ‘‘you always have The Problem of Domestic Service 129 one; and not one that you ’ve had has left your employ because either you or she was disaffected.” ““No,” was the answer; ‘“‘but that has been just for the reason that I have gone to much trouble in order both to get and to keep a good servant. There is no other way, any more than there is any other way to get and to keep a good friend.” “How do you go about doing it — securing a satisfac- tory servant, I mean,” I questioned. “In the usual way,” was the reply. ‘‘I take the best I can find, and make the best of her. I try, so to speak, to pull together with her, and to teach her to pull together with me. It isn’t always easy; but it is almost always possible. The reason more women have n’t good serv- ants is precisely because they don’t have trouble in getting and keeping them; they don’t because they won't.” During several visits in the home of this friend I had not failed to observe the consideration shown the servant by the various members of the family. That she might not unnecessarily walk the length of the house to answer the front doorbell more often than was absolutely essential, the children habitually went in and out the back door. Because she attended church on Friday evening, dinner was at an earlier hour on that day, that she might have to be neither hurried nor late. At all times attendance at meals was, on her account, most prompt. Everything was done or avoided that might lead to needless “ extra work” or ‘‘inconvenience.”” I wondered if this defer- ence were reciprocal. During my last visit my hostess fell ill. A trained nurse came, and I remained. In spite of all our mutual efforts, there was much ‘‘extra work”’ to be done and much ‘‘inconvenience” to be suffered on the . . part of the maid. 130 Homemaking “This is hard for you. I’m sorry,” my friend said to her one day. “Don’t worry yerself,’” replied her helper. ‘I don’t mind things bein’ hard as must be hard. ’Tain’t yerself as lets ’em be that way ’less they must.” Most of us number among our acquaintances at least one person who has in her home what is termed an ‘‘old family servant’? — a devoted retainer who has spent the larger part of her life in the service of the household. I had known several such persons. In the process of my in- vestigation I was pleasantly surprised to meet many more of them. ‘Where did you find your servant?”’ I asked in each case. ‘‘ By what means have you kept her?” Thereply was almost invariably identical in meaning with that of the first possessor of an old family servant to whom I put the question. ‘She tried to-suit us, and we tried to suit her.” Only the other day a friend of mine told me that she had seen on a street car the woman, now somewhat ad- vanced in years, touching whom this statement was made. ‘‘I felt sorry for her,” my friend added. The son of the family, whom she had known all his life, had recently died, leaving a young wife and a child. The grief of the old servant was great. “Does n’t she begin to be reconciled?” I asked. “For herself, yes,” replied my friend; “but not for the wife and the baby. It wasn’t only because she was sad that I felt sorry for her; it was partly because she looked so tired. She had just come from California; she had gone all the way from New York out there to take care of the baby and its mother. She was dressed in mourning; and her face was so worn, it was pitiful to see her.”’ ‘She is an exceptional servant,” I reflected. ‘‘She has been in that one family for more than thirty years. They are an exceptional family.” The Problem of Domestic Service 131 “‘T don’t think so,” my friend disagreed. ‘The excep- tional thing is the relationship between them. There has been much need for patience on all sides. What is unusual about the situation is the fact that every one concerned has tried to exercise that patience. They have borne and forborne.”’ A friend of mine who has had the same servant for gen- eral housework for twenty years said, when I interrogated her as to how she had achieved this: ‘‘I began the day she came to try to understand her and to help her to under- stand me. I determined to discover not only what she could do, but what sort of person she was; and I afforded her many opportunities to make the same discoveries in me. I let her know what I expected of her; and she let me know what she expected:of me. My expectations were not always realized. I doubt if hers always were, either.” She smiled. ‘‘There have been mutual concessions,” she concluded. On a later day she reopened the subject. ‘‘In other countries it may be different,’ she began, ‘“‘but in America, for persons and by persons whose manner of life is simple, servants must be trained to be not only helpers but sympathetic and companionable helpers. In no other way is a strained relationship, and finally a severing of any relationship, to be avoided. Our democracy must enter into the solution of this problem as much as into that of any other of our common problems. Only when it does enter in, and enter in ardently in a particular instance, is there any effecting of a solution. Servants should be trained along republican lines.”’ “The difficulty,’ put in another listener, “is that ordi- narily they have not been trained at all.” ““Which fact,’”’ rejoined the first speaker, “makes the whole case the more fundamentally democratic; for the 132 Homemaking correlative difficulty is that neither are most housekeepers trained at all! The mistress and the servant begin with a mutual disadvantage. Usually this hinders them, whereas always it should, and more often than not it might be made to, assist them. It at least gives them a common basis. Both are ignorant; necessarily, both must learn. They can learn together. That is what my helper and I did; we were ignorant, and we learned together. The secret of our success has been that. We have been associated now for twenty years; I hope, and I have every reason to think, that we shall be associated for twenty years longer. More- over, I believe that in the years to come we shall learn as much as we have learned in the years that are past.” She had touched, in her discourse, upon one of the chief intricacies of the problem of domestic service; namely, the lack of training for her duties in both the mistress and the maid. This want renders it impossible to put the matter on a professional basis. There are no fixed requirements for admission to the ranks of either field of endeavor. Some women make housekeeping a fine art; and some women permit it to lapse into a kind of protracted pic- nicking. In the one case it becomes something more, and in the other something less, than a profession. What wonder that good servants are difficult to get, or, once obtained, impossible to keep! The servant who suits perfectly the precise and careful housewife will be deemed unsatisfactory indeed by a housekeeper whose conduct of her domestic affairs is marked by a certain nonchalance; and vice versa. Even when young women about to enter upon domestic service are desirous and able to give time and money for preliminary training, they may not be as- sured that the instruction they receive will invariably secure their employers against disappointment; for they can not be taught just what any one of these employers is The Problem of Domestic Service 133 likely to expect. It may be too much; it may turn out to be too little. ; Among my acquaintances I count more than one house- keeper who is what is colloquially described as “easy- going.” One of these, not long ago, was defending her position to me. “‘Punctilious housekeeping is a luxury,” she declared, “that I can’t afford. My husband likes to have his home open to his friends; he likes to feel free to bring them here for meals with an hour’s warning, and often no warning at all. Our three children resemble him. They continually are asking permission to invite their playmates to spend the day, or to come for the afternoon to make candy. We have a sufficient income to do this, if I have only one ser- vant, so I have but one. To keep open house with ele- gance, aided only by her, would consume all my time and strength. I need some of my time and strength for other things.” ‘How do you ever manage to induce a servant to stay with you?” I exclaimed, almost involuntarily. “I find one who is the same kind of person as I am,” was the surprising answer. ““Would you mind explaining?” I asked. “Not at all,” my acquaintance replied. ‘‘I can best do it, perhaps, by telling you about the two servants I had before I got the treasure I have now. The first one was what most persons would want. She was exact. But we are so very inexact! She was faithful and industrious; we were distinctly attracted toward her; and she liked us. But she decided to go, and we were relieved when she had gone. Our ‘ways’ did n’t suit her, she said; we were too sudden. Well, neither did her ‘ways’ suit us; she was too premeditative. I do not say she was not a good ser- vant. She was, but not for us. So she went.” 134 Homemaking “Then what happened?” I queried. “We got some one else,” my narrator answered, “from the intelligence office, through which we had en- gaged the other. Evidently she had said I was a ‘slack’ housekeeeper; for her successor was unpunctual and dis- orderly to an amazing degree. When I protested, she said, ‘I thought you didn’t care, ma’am.’ Of course I dis- charged her. Then I did without a servant until I found the one I have now. She seemed to understand when I explained my household arrangements to her, and wanted to come tomeandtry. AsI told you, she is the same kind of person that I am. She would prefer to have all the meals on time; she.’d rather not have unexpected guests coming to them; she doesn’t care to have the children about the kitchen. She really would like the house to be exquisitely kept; she sees that this can not be done without undue mental and physical fatigue; she does all she can sensibly do; and she does n’t worry about the rest. Most persons would n’t like her, but she suits me.” I spoke of this servant to a mutual acquaintance, who is one of those women by whom housekeeping is made a fine art. ‘TI should n’t want her,” she rejoined. ‘I must have a good servant; I don’t ask that she be like me, or that she understand my ideas of housekeeping. I only want her to do my work well.” “Have you a good servant?” I could not forbear questioning. “Yes,” was the sober answer, ‘I have; she knows exactly what I require of her, and she does it, and does it as if she enjoyed it. No one ever had a better servant.” When I repeated this to my “easy-going” friend, she burst into hearty laughter. ‘‘Do you know who her ser- vant is?” she demanded; ‘‘that maid I had, the one I told you about, who did n’t like my ‘ways’ because they were The Problem of Domestic Service 135 ‘too sudden.’ The mistress she has now isn’t ‘sudden;’ she and that servant are of the same type.” “She said she did n’t ask that her servant should be like herself, or should understand,” I began. “Oh, I know,” my friend returned; “‘but she 7s, and she does. That’s what constitutes a good servant — the like- ness to her mistress!” Another friend of mine, whose manner of living is of a somewhat elaborate nature, agreed completely with this definition. ‘It is absolutely correct,” she affirmed. ‘But how can you know it is?”’ I ventured to object. “You employ a housekeeper; you have nothing whatever to do with your servants.” “But,” maintained my friend, ‘‘I have a great deal to do with my housekeeper! She manages my house just as I wish it to be managed, and she sometimes tells me that she would ‘run’ her own house, if she had one and could, exactly as she does mine. So, you see, she and I are per- sons of the same kind.” Of the considerable number of successful employers with whom I discussed the subject, there was not one whose experience did not point to a similar conclusion. Should this be surprising? What one housewife had termed our democracy enters increasingly into all our other human relationships. No longer in the best schools, and — may one be permitted to add — in the best homes, are children required to be the obedient subjects of their teachers and parents; on the contrary, they are encouraged to become persons of the same reasonable kind as their elders. How, then, can we view, and, furthermore, try and hope to solve, the problem of domestic service otherwise than by the use of this same democracy? AN OLD SERVANT By S.G. TALLENTYRE . OME ninety years ago — before trains and wy steamboats, before telegrams and telephones, % before omnibuses, lucifer matches, and the penny post, before everything, in fact, that makes life convenient and complicated — there was born at Shrewsbury, in one of those black and white striped houses of which some still stand to contribute to the picturesqueness of that charming old town, a perfectly obscure little girl. Her father had been press-ganged in the days when “Bony-Party” was the pet scare, not only of all the nurs- eries, but of most of the households of England. He occupied the humble, useful post of tailor on board the “Victory” at the time of the battle of Trafalgar, and it was characteristic, but unfortunate, that his daughter’s recol- lections and interests were entirely concerned with his tailoring, as an art, and not in the slightest degree with his having practiced it on Lord Nelson and the “Victory.” Charlotte Child — the name of Child will be found on many a tombstone in Church Stretton churchyard, and it may be deduced therefrom that her ancestry was numerous and not ignoble — was early sent, an anxiously conscien- tious little girl, as she became hereafter an anxiously conscientious woman, to a dame school in the town. Whether the dame schools of Shrewsbury were generally superior to the other dame schools of that exceedingly dark educational epoch, or whether little Charlotte lighted on a Biddy or a Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt of quite peculiar 136 An Old Servant 137 talents, it is certainly a fact that she learnt how to write a letter which, both in handwriting and expression, would put many a County Council scholar to the blush, and that she had at least enough education to read the “Times” for recreation in the evenings of her old age. Yet it was not that little Charlotte was clever — unless, indeed, she was clever according to that worst and falsest of all definitions of genius as an infinite capacity for taking pains. She certainly was, from first to last, eagerly and thoroughly diligent. She walked sedately to school in the plainest straw bonnet with a ribbon, through every kind of weather; and neither climate nor clergyman made church —the immensely cold, dismal, drawling, formal church of the epoch — impossible to her. She was a very plain little girl, but her unlovely face served her well. When the capricious local Lady Bountiful gave all the attractive dame scholars an outfit for service, Charlotte, now fourteen years old, had to save and sew at home to produce one of the harshest material and remarkable for its stern absence of bow or trimming — learning thereby invaluable lessons of thrift, self-denial, and industry. In her first, small, decent place, she was nursemaid, and set up, be sure, for her infant charges a standard of conduct and neatness wholesomely and impossibly high. Then, walking one day beneath two ladders, on which stood a couple of house painters painting a house, one dropped on the Child family Dunstable straw bonnet— Dunstable straw bonnets were costly, and Charlotte had inherited her mother’s by right of primogeniture — a large spot of white paint, which the second house painter suggested could be removed by turpentine. It would not, perhaps, have been impossible that Char- lotte should have fallen in love with the careless idiot who dropped the paint, but, given her character, it would have 138 Homemaking been of all things the most unlikely, while the suggestion of turpentine in itself paved a way to her heart. She walked out, soberly, discreetly, and in the fear of God, with Painter No. 2 for a respectable period; and then, aged eighteen, became formally engaged, receiving from him as a token an immense oval brooch, about the size of a duck’s egg, having on the front the faces of two (unspecified) Roman emperors, and on the back a picture of Vesuvius in full eruption and a good deal of the rest of Italy as well. Then, since means were too small to think of marriage, Charlotte, having given up her first place, answered an advertisement in the ‘‘Times’”— one of those stately, condescending advertisements in which a Young Married Lady at Brixton expressed herself Willing (but not in the least anxious, understood) to take a thoroughly Respect- able and well-recommended Young Woman into her ser- vice as Housemaid: proposing to give her in exchange for her dutiful service Eight Pounds a year, the young woman to find her own Tea and Sugar. The worried employers, who may now be seen kneeling in rows, as it were, in the columns of the daily papers, imploring the service of female servants on theirown terms, have absolutely nothing in common with that perfectly independent and entirely serene little lady who became Charlotte’s mistress. She had been a certain Betty Dale, of Fowkes Buildings, Great Tower Street, in the City of London, daughter to a wine merchant, and now the very new wife of a Mr. James Barlow, a thoroughly worthy, re- spectable, affluent young man (young men were affluent in those days much sooner than they are now) given to blue swallow-tail coats and already to a little stoutness, and having a large, sober, comfortable house, filled with the richest mahogany furniture, in the (then) not wholly unde- sirable neighborhood of Brixton. An Old Servant 139 Perhaps Charlotte, curtsying in that pompous dining- room (with a very small hair-cord box, which contained absolutely the whole sum of her worldly possessions, wait- ing for her in the passage outside), loved that very pretty, brisk, practical, and severely plain-spoken little mistress from the first. It is quite certain, at least, that her own devotedly diligent and dutiful nature soon learnt to re- spect and appreciate an employer who never accepted less than one’s best work, to whom rust on the intricate steel fenders was as a sin and a sorrow, and the fine polish on the piano — a young Broadwood — was a glory and a joy. Little Charlotte was just twenty — a couple of years younger than her mistress — and both had still some of the housewifely arts to learn, and learnt them together. The homely head of the maid and the pretty head of the mistress, put together, evolved one day the loveliest patent furniture polish, the recipe whereof is still to be seen in Madam Betty’s book and fine handwriting, next to direc- tions for making the Nightcap — a very powerful night- cap composed of a terrifying mixture of wines and spirits, of milk and lemon — of which Charlotte nightly adminis- tered a large glassful to her master after Family Prayers; and to her mistress a minute quantity, for company’s sake. In these early days, too, Madam Betty began a war, which she was still waging indefatigably seventy years later at her death, on Charlotte’s misuse of the aspirate. Poor Charlotte’s intense conscientiousness and heroic efforts of memory never enabled her to overcome a habit of alluding to one of the guest chambers as the Harch- room or to a minor prophet as Abbakuk. Soon, as she did much fine needlework for her mistress, she had a little sitting-room reserved for her especial use; and there sometimes, but not very often, she wrote a long, neat letter to the painter-lover, in which she faithfully 140 Homemaking described the ingredients of the patent furniture polish rather than the feelings of her heart; and dreamt a little over her sewing, all the same, of that small home she would keep for him, which, severely plain indeed, should yet have about it the fragrant peace that lay upon Madam Betty’s. Then, one dark day there came the news that the lover was injured —it might be mortally injured —by a fall from a ladder. Little Charlotte went, trembling and stricken, to her mistress: and Betty, whose sympathy was always perfectly practical, herself packed the maid’s few possessions in the hair-cord trunk, wrapped her in a stout, warm shawl of plaid, and sent her off at once, in charge of a mentally and physically robust cook, to be placed in the next stagecoach starting for the West. All her life Char- lotte remembered that cold, bewildered journey; and her strange sensation of unreality — of being, in some sort, a numb spectator of her own sorrows. She arrived too late. Fate and the cruel surgery of that day had done their worst. She stayed in her home six weeks, and then, bidden by her good little mistress, came back to Brixton, in a decent black shawl pinned with the Roman-emperor brooch He had given her and in the family bonnet sadly dyed black, and took up her duties once more. On the very rare occasions on which she mentioned the subject she owned simply that, though it seemed a little hard to her at the time, Madam Betty’s strict insistence that all her work should be done as usual, and all done well, was the truest kindness. Tears made rust marks on those immaculate fenders, and decidedly hampered her needle as she worked in the afternoons. So she gulped them down with many a choking sigh, until, at last, time had drawn its protecting film over the wound. The lover had been, indeed, the choice of her heart, but not the habit of An Old Servant 141 her life. That life, her care, her interest, her labor, her devotion, were henceforth wholly her mistress’s. It is difficult to remember in these days, when inequality of social conditions is resented by the people who profit by it, that in those it was as calmly accepted by the losers as the gainers. The night Charlotte returned to Madam Betty’s service the two women first kissed each other when they said Good-night, and never omitted that tender little ceremony till Madam’s death. But, not at all the less, Charlotte was always absolutely and respectfully con- vinced that Madam was not only the superior creature and a different order of being from herself, but, to come at once to a practical application, that Providence itself de- sired and expected that for master and mistress should be the fine linen and lace of life, the great rooms rich in solid furniture and noiseless carpets, and for herself the bare boards of a small, severe bedroom, scrubbed to a very exquisite whiteness, a nightcap without the very ghost of a frill, and those wages of eight pounds a year, increasing by degrees — they took seventy years to do it — to five- and-twenty. At an impossibly early hour in the morning Charlotte began her day by descending to the drawing-room — whose beauties of wool-worked sofa, curtains, cushions, and bell pulls of Dresden shepherd and shepherdess bow- ing to each other over a gilt clock on a white marble mantelpiece Madam Betty had deeply impressed upon her — to dust and clean. No other hand but Charlotte’s careful and reverent one was esteemed worthy to polish the large round table where Books of Beauty, very richly bound, ‘‘Manfred,” which nobody in the house had ever read, and albums wherein Betty and her sisters had pressed flowers and seaweed and written little poems, were arranged in symmetrical pat- 142 Homemaking terns. Charlotte alone was intrusted — and deeply and palpitatingly proud to be intrusted — with the keys of the cabinets containing wax roses, china, and Indian ivory fans. Every night she rolled up the curtains — worked in wools by her little mistress in that indefatigable spin- sterhood — and, as it were, put them to bed; and every morning she got them up, or, more correctly, let them down. After breakfast Charlotte headed the line of servants as they came in to prayers, and, with her thin, useful hands clasped on her lap, listened devoutly to master’s reading of the Scriptures — at the same time managing to have a very keen eye for the short-frocked kitchen maid, who had a tendency to giggle. Then Charlotte pressed and folded her master’s ‘‘ Times” — the quaint little ‘“‘Times”’ of seventy years ago — and laid out in the hall the coat and the neck cloth in which, two or three times a week, he went on ’Change to see to the hop trade. Once, only once, she omitted that important duty, and wept over the omission as she tied herself into that unfrilled nightcap when she went to bed, and lay, worried and awake, thinking of it, half the night. Charlotte was cer- tainly not of that happy-go-lucky temperament which, for the possessor’s own comfort, is better worth having than thousands of gold and silver. But, le monde aux inquiets! the happy-go-lucky temperament is not good for domestic service, and the servant possessing it would have stayed but a very short time in Madam Betty’s household. . A large part of the mornings little Charlotte spent on a flight of steps, preventing the appearance of dust on the top of the huge baldachinos above the great four-post beds, or on the top of a sternly-scrubbed chair, kept for An Old Servant 143 the purpose, dusting the pictures. Both she and her mis- tress were more than commonly small— it was the especial age, surely, of the tiny, quiet, determined, domesticated woman, downwards from that great little Lady who at that very moment was gathering the reins of the govern- ment of a mighty nation into her capable hands. At one o’clock it was Charlotte’s duty to bring in the dining-room lunch of cake, wine, and sandwiches; as it was her duty also to bring in the nine o’clock evening tea, with the fat tortoise-shell tea caddy, the little key whereof was in Madam’s keeping, and which was always locked before Charlotte received it back again. It was not certainly that she, personally, was not trusted; her mistress was simply following the universal custom of a day when tea was very little less expensive than wine. Before Charlotte’s six neat side curls — three on each side of the face — were tinged with gray, she had become in all household matters a Chief of the Staff, with Madam Betty as Commander of the Forces, and more zealous for her mistress’s cause than the mistress herself. It was among her many proud privileges in that position to act as lady’s maid on the rare occasions when self-helpful Madam Betty required such an adjunct. The large, ugly, comfortable bedroom, with Madam before the great glass — with its mahogany cap stands on either side — arrayed in her purple dinner silk and her delicate old lace to dine with the Joneses of Clapham, and the homely maid, with her neat, brief skirts, white stockings, and flat shoes, and her plain face eager with interest and pleasure, trying first the effect of this cap or ornament and then of that on Madam’s charming little person, form a pleasant picture. Presently James, in a rich, fancy waistcoat, would come in from his dressing-room and make jokes, which always 144 Homemaking amused him because Betty never saw them and Charlotte plainly, though respectfully, considered them as a sadly frivolous interruption to really serious and important bus- iness. It was Charlotte who put her mistress into her fine embroidered shawl and the carriage, and waited up till eleven to hear how Mrs. Jones and the calf’s head, which formed one of the removes, had each been dressed. The mistress’s pleasure and outings were, by proxy, the maid’s, and she desired hardly any others. What would have been the good of going shopping when one’s clothes and bonnet were of the excellent, sober materials which last years and years; and when, out of eight pounds per annum, one was laying by a provision for old age, besides charitably helping an uncle with a leg chronically stiff, until Madam Betty wrote and said that, stiff or flexible, Charlotte’s wages would assist it no more? As for evenings out — it was not respectable for a de- cent young woman to be out in the evenings. Charlotte’s nightly recreations were to read the ‘‘Times’”’ — rather slowly, and shaking her head and curls a good deal over the strangeness of the world —and to knit and sew for some of the many charities befriended by her mistress. For rest, God, had appointed but one day in seven, and should His creatures say it was not enough? Every Sun- day morning and afternoon Charlotte firmly ushered the other domestics into a pew in church just behind their master and mistress, and not only saw that they behaved decorously, but insisted — by the simple plan of poking them — that they should audibly join in the responses and the hymns. For herself, she listened devoutly, and got good even from a lugubrious old parson who wept tears over his own platitudes onto hands encased in black kid gloves. An Old Servant 145 But on Sunday evenings, after the nine o’clock tea in the drawing-room, when her master, with a very large silk pocket handkerchief over his face, was soundly asleep, after a course of the devout and only literature permitted to the day, came the real delight of the week, and Charlotte, coming in softly with a stout book under her arm, was privileged to read aloud a sermon — such a tedious, worthy sermon! — to her dear mistress, and have her all to herself for a whole long hour. The reading was, indeed, interrupted considerably by Madam’s undaunted charges on Charlotte’s aspirates and Charlotte’s contrite apologies and corrections; and then by Madam falling suddenly from heaven to earth to inquire Charlotte’s opinion on the origin of the strange flavor of the apple pie which had formed part of the five o’clock Sunday dinner. On the two solemn, set, annual occasions when her mas- ter and mistress left Brixton to pay visits, Charlotte was supposed to enjoy some relaxation, and if the position of the sentry on duty — or, shall one say, of Fafner guarding the treasure? — can be said to be relaxing, perhaps she did. To keep a lynx eye on the younger domestics, and to continue her mistress’s work of turning silly, flighty little minxes with flowers under their bonnets into tall, staid, valuable, respectable servants, was Charlotte’s ambitious and successful endeavor. At first, once in three or four years, and then once in about ten years, Charlotte did have a real holiday on her own account, and returned to her relatives at Shrewsbury. But in time they died, or wandered. Before she was an old woman her only home was her mistress’s — “thy people shall be my people and thy God shall be my God.” Time passed very quickly in that calm house and in the sober round of regular duties. 146 Homemaking One day, it seemed, Madam and Charlotte were busily engaged in letting reefs into the backs of master’s already stout waistcoats, and the next day, almost, the two women clung together in a long passion of tears by his deathbed. After that, though they were not the less mistress and servant, they were the closer friends. Every Sunday evening, at dessert, Charlotte had been called into the dining-room to receive a glass of port, which she sipped solemnly, desiring her respects and duty to her employers; now she drank it with ‘‘My love to you, ma’am,” and a little tremble in her voice. Presently good Madam Betty felt it her duty to enter- tain largely the relatives whom, in her husband’s lifetime, che had preferred to take in small and infrequent doses. Charlotte — now herself between fifty and sixty and very little less slight and active than she had been at sixteen — had to endure parties of noisy, flaxen-headed children having tea (with jam) in her own little sanctum, or making slides down the oilcloth of the passage outside her room. A large undergraduate nephew of Madam’s horribly outraged Charlotte’s feelings one day by loudly demanding a hot bath in his bedroom —in a house where every one and everything were kept exquisitely and spotlessly clean without the assistance of baths at all; and poor Charlotte returned from receiving the impossible order muttering and greatly perturbed. Still, not the less, her little room was principally orna- mented with silhouettes — and later on with photographs —of generations of Madam’s relations. The fair-haired little creatures she had kissed and punished sent her, in time, portraits of their own children; and, at last, there were their children’s children upon her walls. He of the Order of the Bath — a ribald as well as a tactless young man — declared that in his aunt’s house it was de rigueur An Old Servant 147 to kiss the person who opened the door; and, indeed, this was at certain hours among Charlotte’s multifarious duties. Respectful and very humble as she was, it became at last really impossible for her to help joining in a conversa- tion when she brought in the evening tea and heard a guest ask some domestic question of which she (Charlotte), and she only, really knew the answer; and it was from long habit and acquaintance that she besought a middle-aged girl visitor — whom she had tied, in her day, into bib and pinafore — to help herself carefully to mustard at dinner, lest she should spoil the handsome appearance of the mus- tard pot. It is thought that old Charlotte — she was getting really old by now — had a softer place in her heart — or was it that she had a softer heart? — for the failures and ne’er-do-weels among Madam’s relatives than Madam herself. Certainly, on hearing of the latest misdemeanor, the mistress went off briskly to her desk to write a most severe letter to the delinquent — Betty was never the coward that ‘dares not speak plainly and home’”’ — and when she con- sulted old Charlotte as to whether it would be immoral to combine and soften the sermon with a check, old Charlotte, shaking the curls and the violet cap ribbons meditatively, invariably came to the conclusion that it certainly would not. Once, when twins were born to the impecunious niece who could not afford them, and one quickly died, Madam wrote gravely and practically to her sister that she was “relieved to hear one of the twins was dead. It must be a great comfort to the Mama to know her poor child is so happily provided for, without expense;’’ and spinster Char- lotte, sitting with gnarled hands clasped on her black silk apron and looking thoughtfully in her neat fire, shed a 148 Homemaking few quiet tears for that “flower, no sooner blown than blasted.” ; The great old age which made Madam Betty cheerfully stout and left her her rosy cheeks, pretty gay eyes, and happy nature, dealt less kindly with the friend and maid. Before her allotted fourscore years and ten Charlotte had come, indeed, to “‘withered weak and gray;” was deaf, and worried at being deaf: dreadfully anxious to do all her duties just as usual, and sadly conscious they were getting beyond her; still loving better than anything in the world to serve that dearest mistress — to dress her for dinner in the fine laces and evening cap — although often and often now Madam had to pat the lady’s maid on the shoulder and call her a ‘‘silly girl” for bringing the wrong ones. The silly girl of ninety hobbled away, greatly distressed, to correct the error. Not that Madam desired or expected too much of her, but she always desired and expected far too much of herself. At prayers now, Charlotte, instead of heading the line of servants, sat by the table, very close to her mistress, trying to hear — and exasperatingly often failing to hear — the chapter and verse when Madam Betty gave them out. Then she dropped her spectacles, and by the time she came up from under the table, where she had been looking for them, had forgotten the chapter and verse again. ‘‘Did you say Hobadiah, ma’am?” and Madam, returning, still hopeful, to the old charge, replied quite severely, ‘‘Charlotte, I never say Hobadiah.” Sometimes, on Sunday evening, Charlotte still stumbled through a sermon—which prophesied most positively, the end of the world for 1850, the date of the reading being the beginning of the following century, —and Madam Betty listened more attentively than of yore, and yet sometimes let aspirates pass uncorrected. An Old Servant 149 But if her mistress knew, so, very well, did old Char- lotte herself, that her day was done before it ended. She had to relinquish first one duty and then another; to stand by and see another generation do passing badly what she had done perfectly well, and to find at last that to die soon enough is a more difficult art than to live long. One night she kissed her mistress good-night, looking at her lovingly, as ever, with her old, tired eyes. But on the morrow the old tired eyes opened as usual on the workaday world, and Madam Betty’s blue ones saw the morning dawn — Beyond. At first Charlotte did not realize the immensity of her loss. From immemorial habit she sat sewing in her little room and mercifully forgot that her mistress was not at her writing desk in her room as usual — getting inebriates into homes, and drafting girls out of workhouses. On the stab that pierced her poor old heart when she hobbled in to consult Madam about some important trifle in the needlework, and found her place empty, one need not dwell. Mercifully, Charlotte was too old to be consulted about the funeral arrangements, and too deaf even to hear them. That dark day left her with only a very confused memory of several elderly nephews of the house, whom she mistook for their own fathers, coming in to talk to her in respect- fully lowered voices which prevented her hearing a word they said. ; The realization of desolation came when, one wintry morning — in charge of a great-niece who had come from Shrewsbury and was to take her back there — she left at ninety-one the home to which she had come at twenty. The coachman — he had served his mistress a mere trifle of five and thirty years — was in tears on his box as he drove her to the station. Old Charlotte shed no tears. 150 Homemaking She had passed beyond them. At Shrewsbury the black and white house in the narrow, steep street, where she was born, had long been pulled down. The only relative she had left in the world was the great-niece— very kindly, but sixty years her junior, and whom she had never seen before. Madam had left Charlotte an annuity — an annuity, tenderly and well thought out, sufficient but not exorbi- tant — as Madam Betty would. But much better than that she had left her a little silver Georgian teapot — one of her own wedding presents — which Charlotte had rever- entially admired and polished for seventy years. To have her tea out of that lovely teapot was her last pleasure. The clergyman who came to shout the Psalms in her ear did her more good by admiring its exquisite shape. ; Presently she took to her bed entirely. Old, old, old! What dreams and thoughts come into those worn minds no man shall know till — old, old, old — he dreams them himself. From dozing and dreaming, she slept into death at last. The lavish encomiums justly pronounced on the greatly good, the wide benefactors of the race, would be wholly absurd as applied to this very narrow life. Yet which among them shall have a better title to the last, divine eulogy: ‘‘Well done, good and faithful servant”? HOW TO SOLVE THE HOUSEKEEPING PROBLEM! By FRANCES M. ABBOTT Y unrest in American housekeeping. One is the rapid change of fortune, so common in this country, and the other is the difficulty of adjusting the relations of employer and employed in a republic whose people are not free from aristocratic traditions and aspirations. If the essence of democracy is that all things should be on a dead level, the practical working of democracy makes everybody tumble over his neighbor in order to reach that level. Where all the atoms are free to struggle for precedence, social condi- tions are necessarily as unstable as the sea. If the reader is not a recent immigrant, but has had some opportunity to observe the course of events in our country, he must have remarked how few families there are who retain the relative social importance they had a hundred years ago. Along the Atlantic seaboard, here and there in the fringe of the thirteen colonies, you may find people living on the same land as their ancestors owned before the Revolution and in relatively the same style. These people are usually outside the largest cities, which are the gathering places of the new, and they are more frequently found in the North, for south of Washington the Civil War submerged everything. For the rest of our fellow citizens change has been the law of life. The course of our successful people may be 1From “The Forum.” Copyright, 1893, by Mitchell Kennerley. 151 = a are two reasons for the turmoil and 152 Homemaking ‘traced in this way: born in an unpainted cottage on a husk bed, the youth goes barefoot to school, fights his way through college on an empty purse, marries, starts in his profession, and begins to rise. If the infant is born in the city, the chief difference is that he does not stop for an education, but hustles himself into business ‘as soon as he can count. The lower the circumstances of childhood the greater the “‘bounce”’ they give the suc- cessful man, and the more he delights to boast of them in after life. The partner of this progressive and, when he has used honorable means, truly respectable citizen is, if he marries young, a woman duly circumstanced like himself, possibly more gently conditioned, and usually of vastly greater social ambition. How must their style of living vary at different periods of lifefl What adroit- ness and alertness they must exercise to make their domestic habits keep pace with their expanding fortune! What anxiety lest in an unwary moment they revert to the manner of a previous social condition! I remember hearing a judge of the Supreme Court say that in his youth he frequently woke on a winter morning and found the bed covered with snow which had sifted in through the rafters, and yet in his age this excellent man found a house with twenty-two rooms, heated by steam throughout, none too great for his comfort. I know other people, and so must you, who were brought up where the whole family bathed in the kitchen sink. These people in middle age have separate bathrooms for every member of the household. Others of our friends began housekeeping without napkins; they now use different finger bowls for each meal and have their dinner served in courses. It is mar- velous how quickly the enterprising American accustoms himself to change of circumstances, even in those most How to Solve the Housekeeping Problem 153 deeply impressed on his childhood. We see people who once thought a meal of salt pork and fried eggs a luxury, now eating cucumbers in January without a shiver. We may know others that started in married life without a silver teaspoon, who now are not content unless they can have strawberry forks and ice-cream knives. This change from a struggle for something to eat and drink to a strife for the most elaborate and luxurious way of accom- plishing the eating and drinking, is so common that it may be described as almost typical of our American life. I am not lamenting the good old times. I know that, despite our enormous growth in wealth, social distinctions are far less marked than they were in pre-Revolutionary days. Nothing now commands any particular respect. Official life has lost nearly all its dignity. You may look out of your window and see the governor of the state hustled off the sidewalk by a small boy. Once the whole schoolhouse would have been drawn up in line and would have curtsied as the great man passed. The professions can not maintain their precedence. The minister is no longer surrounded by a halo, and the college president bows before the pork packer. The editor has become the employee of a corporation. The army and navy, following European traditions, once piqued themselves on social distinction; but the officers are not obliged to marry heiresses to maintain their posi- tions, and competitive examinations have thrown open to every one the doors of West Point and Annapolis. If you wish further proof that our ancestors were not more humble and lowly in spirit than ourselves, look in Lydia Maria Child’s ‘Frugal Housewife” (your grand- mother doubtless had a copy), and there, amid direc- tions for dressing tripe and covering up the pump at night to keep it from freezing, you will find most excellent 154 Homemaking wise counsel about living within your means, and lamen- tations over the extravagance of the period, and sage parables showing what becomes of the young people who buy alabaster vases for their parlors when they have not copper kettles for their kitchens. Our grandparents were no better than we, but they had not the opportunities for making money so rapidly, and consequently of creating social confusion on so large a scale. The conditions of life were more simple, and though Thomas Brooks, of Charlestown, might own silver plate whose weight was one thousand dollars (that was their honest way of estimating the value of their flagons and porringers in honest coin), his neigh- bors never expected to do more than eat their porridge from pewter. Now if everybody does not have silver plate, all have silver plated, and a steel table fork is almost as much a curiosity as the warming pan. The gradual evolution of American housekeeping ‘may best be traced to New England. The log-cabin and garrison-house period may be passed over with a word, because that time is sufficiently remote to have become picturesque, and consequently as familiar as the theme of the poet, the romancer, and the antiquarian. Necessity made labor dignified in those days. The men worked in the fields, the women in the kitchen; but both men and women had a great many other occupations beside farming and housework. Both men and women knew the elements of several trades, and they made the things now bought at stores. It is as familiar as a Fourth of July oration to be told that the men used to shoe their plows with iron they had hand wrought, and that the women spun and wove the cloth and household linen. The next stage of social habits is illustrated by the frame house, examples of which still survive in many SONIIGWNG Alddy SI1S31 ‘d °9 fig burgurpd ay? 4ayfy How to Solve the Housekeeping Problem 155 parts of New England. The house was built about the great chimney. The kitchen was the main living-room and the scene of all domestic processes. At either end were two small bedrooms, where the family slept because they were nearest the one winter fire. In front were the two ‘fore’ rooms, — parlor and “settin’- room,” parlor and bedroom; parlor and storeroom, as the case might be, — and between was crowded a narrow entry with a staircase huddled up against the chimney. The path to the front door was rarely shoveled in winter, and the two “fore” rooms and the entry were cold storage vaults, except on rare occasions. Upstairs there was one chamber or more, but the greater part was probably an unfinished loft. Housekeeping was easy in those days. The family lived in so small a space that house-cleaning was re- duced to a minimum. Seldom more than one room had a carpet. There was no bric-a-brac to dust, no silver to rub, a half-dozen thin teaspoons: being often the only precious metal in the household besides a string of gold beads. There was no upholstered furniture for moths and buffalo bugs to corrupt, because painted wooden or flag-bottomed: chairs often constituted the acme of ele- gance for the parlor. The family cooked, ate, washed, sat, sewed, and almost slept in the kitchen. No wonder that the housewife could do all the indoor work, make all the clothes, nurse her children, ‘‘ watch’ with the neigh- boring sick, knit pillowcases of stockings, piece scores of patchwork quilts, and braid dozens of rugs, besides finding time to go to meeting, attend funerals, and to lay out the dead. The transition from the rural frame house to the house with modern improvements, which is the style governing us now, began with the evolution of the 156 Homemaking dining-room. I thought at first that it was the stove that was responsible; but the stove and the various form of cellar heat which have supplanted it were merely incidental and accessory. With the dining-room began - “the putting on of style,” the ignoring of the process of cooking, the separation of the household into the serv- ing and the served. The kitchen became degraded; it was no longer the center of family life, Mrs. Katy Scud- der’s ‘‘throne-room,”’ as Mrs. Stowe calls it in ‘“‘The Minister’s Wooing.” It was a distinctly inferior part of the house, and as such was put in the care of inferiors. From this all sorts of specialization were easy. People must have washbowls in their rooms; the family ablu- tions were no longer performed in a tin basin or at the pump in the back yard. They must have a nursery for the children: in old days children were such a recognized adjunct of the family that mothers used to take their nursing infants to sewing circles, to meeting, and even to balls. With the specialized house began the rise of the servant-girl problem. In the log-cabin period each family did all its own work, and neighbors sometimes “exchanged.” In the next stage families took a child to bring up, or hired ‘‘help” from neighboring households; the “help” ate and worked with the family. They were of the same nationality and attended the same church. It was as nearly a democratic state of society as the world has ever seen. Traces of it still survive in our New England villages. Within a few years a lady of my acquaintance applied to the local washerwoman for her services and was refused. “But you do washing for other people?” “Yes,” replied the matron of the tubs, “but you have never called on me.” How to Solve the Housekeeping Problem 157 Instances like this make us feel that the republic is not wholly gone to decay. The present state of American household service in the house with modern improvements, outside of the largest cities, may be described as the woman with one “girl.” “Servant” the employers sometimes call her, but ‘‘servant”’ is a ludicrous term in the singular number. In the European sense, signifying a wholly distinct class of inferiors, servants are as impossible in a con- tinuing republic as slaves. The change from the ‘‘help” of former years to the modern hirelings was accom- plished in several ways. The development of the dining- room I believe to be the first cause. As soon as social distinctions began to be made, it was impossible to get American girls. The degradation of household service was completed by the introduction of foriegn labor. The change was similar to that which took place in the factories, although the latter was more sudden. I have been told by a friend who lived in Lowell at the time exactly how it took place. We all know that in the early days of Lucy Larcom, American girls of excellent family and superior intelli- gence were employed in the mills. When summer came, these girls, who had been brought up in good country homes, could not endure the heat and confinement of the city. They longed for the green grass and the blueberry pastures of their childhood. They had to have vaca- tions or they fell ill. The managers tried the experi- ment of substituting the robust Irish peasants who were coming in great numbers into the country. When the first Irish girl was introduced into one of the depart- ments of one of the Lowell factories, every American girl in the room left. The places were filled by Irish. In this manner room after room was vacated by one 158 Homemaking nationality and replaced by the other, until in a short time not an American mill girl was left in Lowell. The Trish race has become so assimilated with our own that we may forget how its first ignorant representatives appeared to our rigid New England parents. Alien in thought, habits, and religion, almost in speech, the early Irish immigrants occupied a position at the North almost as distinct as that of the colored people at the South, and ‘‘Paddy” had somewhat the same meaning as “nigger.” The quality of any work is ranked largely according to the quality of the person that performs it. When Trish girls were introduced into household service they carried the service down with them. Doubtless other causes besides immigration would have brought about this change. As soon as people began to get money they wished to live luxuriously. They bought fine clothes and found that to wear them to advantage they must refrain from labor. They filled their houses with modern improvements and discovered that the new con- veniences required incessant care. Whereas houses in the olden time had dirt cellars and raftered garrets, they now have basements and third stories, painted, plastered, curtained, and as much trouble to keep clean as any of the first-floor rooms. As people became educated and traveled, they observed that life went very comfort- ably in Europe for the upper classes (to which, theo- retically, every American belongs), and they thought they would try to import a few foreign notions into their own domestic management. Alas for silly human nature, always trying to overreach, to stand on some- body else, to gamble with Fate! Our shortsighted newly-rich Americans did not reflect that to have upper- class comforts we must have lower-class service, and How to Solve the Housekeeping Problem 159 that when society is divided into fixed strata, the state ceases to be a republic. I suppose we ought to regard with joy the long wail that goes up from the American household over its one “servant.” We ought to contemplate with satisfaction the trials and cares of the mistress and the inefficiency and impudence of the maid. We ought to smile at the struggle for independence going on in the typical repub- lican kitchen. I say “typical,” for I do not know how otherwise to characterize the conditions of the mass of intelligent, well-to-do American citizens. If we were to draw our ideas of contemporary social life from the fashionable magazine stories, we might believe that the only people living in this country were the families that kept a butler, a brougham, and a summer villa, and that the few outsiders existed only as curiosities among the canons of the West, the mountain fastnesses of the South, and the remote back towns of New England. In the absence of statistics I am unable to say whether the single-domestic or one-girl system is the most prev- alent style of American housekeeping; but it is cer- tainly the most characteristic. The primitive plan, where each family does all its own work, is found in every land; but in non-republican countries it is confined to the peasantry, a class that does not exist with us. The complex plan, where each family supports as many re- tainers as it can afford, is found among the rich minority of our large cities, who cultivate, as far as they can in a democratic climate, the style of the European leisure classes. It is to me an interesting fact that the characteristic American type of housekeeping stops at one domestic. In Europe, if people have any domestics, they have at least two. I suppose no English man or woman will 160 Homemaking ever be able to understand how families may move in society in this country (outside the largest cities) and keep but one maid of all work. The life of the average housekeeper in a New England town is beset with cares and perplexities innumerable. With one domestic, who often can not perform a single duty without oversight,: with the care of the children and the family sewing ever at hand, with unannounced company arriving at any hour, the matron is expected to belong to a literary club, to have her meals served in the style of her neigh- bor who keeps several servants, to help get supper at the church sociables, to serve as director in the chari- table society, and to be ready to receive callers at three o’clock every afternoon. : The last item illustrates the difficulty of the situation. In a rural neighborhood the occasional visitor would bring her work and expect to find her hostess likewise employed. In a large city the matron would have her “day,” and having plenty of leisure, would not submit to its infraction. To add to all this, American women in moderate circumstances are probably the best edu- cated women in the world, and the ones most eager for self-culture and most alive to the higher uses of life. The sufferings of such a woman, caught in the vise of the average American housekeeping plan, have been ade- quately described in only one book, “The Story of Avis.” How many thousands of other women, perhaps without _ the artistic gift of Miss Phelps’s heroine, have hope- lessly struggled on, scourged by the Puritan conscience and stimulated by the democratic atmosphere, which makes no allowance for inequalities of fortune, strength, or ability, till they have yielded up their sacrificed lives! Why do not American women keep more servants? To many people this would seem only an aggravation of How to Solve the Housekeeping Problem 161 the evil. It is enough to have one ignorant, wasteful, dish-breaking, relation-feeding foreigner in our homes; with two we should be obliged to seek shelter elsewhere. But suppose competent domestics could be obtained: their expense would place them beyond the reach of all but rich families. In no country is domestic labor so well paid as in America, and in no country is the service so unsatisfactory. Before the Civil War the regular wages for the ordinary maid of all work was one dollar and a half a week. Now the most ignorant importa- tion from a European hovel, who does not know a dust- pan by sight, who “does not prefer” to wash, who will break and burn at pleasure and stop up the sink drain without remorse, can not be induced to come and board in any family at less than six dollars a week. But the wages are the smaller item of expense. Where is the family that would dare offer in the kitchen any less costly fare than appears in the dining-room? In Europe the servants do not dream of eating the same food as the people whom they serve. In America a separate table applies to time and place only, never to things to eat. As Americans live better than any other nation, and as the cook has the first choice of everything brought into the house, the cost of the food of the aver- age domestic probably exceeds her wages in every case. Household service is better paid than almost any other manual labor performed by women. It is done under more comfortable surroundings than many kinds of work in factories, in sewing-rooms, and in shops. It must be the natural lot of the larger portion of women who marry. “Why, then,” exclaims the woe-begone housewife, ‘‘is it impossible for me, willing to pay high wages, to get any trustworthy, efficient service in my kitchen?” 162 Homemaking When people lament that intelligent, self-respecting girls will starve at any other occupation before entering household service, I think of the orations delivered at agricultural fairs. The city magnate, lawyer, banker, politician, or whatever he may be, comes out into the country, extols the beauties of rural life, exhorts the boy to stick to the farm, and exalts agriculture as the noblest occupation under the sun. I always wonder at the boldness of the speaker and at the meekness of the audience. I wonder that they do not punctuate every period with a chorus of “ Why don’t you try it yourself?” He knows, and they know, that nothing earthly would induce him or any other man wishing a comfortable income to depend upon one-horse farming for a living. He knows, and they know, that there is no political econo- mist like the man who has got ahead in the world and wishes to restore the balance by shoving his fellows behind. He knows, and they know, that no occupations are so much to be shunned as those which editors and orators are always urging other people to undertake. The fault with farming is that it brings in no money. The fault with household service is that it commands no respect. Mr. Bellamy is not the only writer who has rebuked our inconsistency in compelling those within our power to perform certain necessary labor and then in despising them for doing it. People will fight for glory who can not be hired for money. The Sisters of Charity shrink from no service, however loathsome, because spiritual enthusiasm goes with it and honor is the reward of their order. Many women will cook in the homes of the poor on account of the romance of benevolence who would feel abused if they had to do the same work for their own families. As long as servants are regarded as a distinct class, sepa- How to Solve the Housekeeping Problem 163 rated from the rest of society by insuperable barriers, so long will there be no health in the social body. The only way to make cooking, cleaning, and the other forms of housework respectable is to have this labor performed by respected people. Education or training is the first step in raising a workman in esteem. We ought to profit by the history of the trained nurses. A friend of mine visiting in Ottawa a few years ago was rather surprised to meet at various social assemblies a trained nurse who, as the guest of Lady L——, was the heroine of the hour. Knowing that the English are not wont to treat governesses or other cultivated people in their employ with special consideration, the American girl could not understand the enthusiasm with which the profession of nursing was regarded. The conservative English adopt some new ideas more quickly than we, but few Americans need to be told that nursing is now looked forward to as a profession by hundreds of Ameri- can girls of good families and refined antecedents. The work is often hard and sometimes of the most menial order; the nurses have to wear uniforms when on duty, and they must become members of others’ households; but their knowledge gives them recognized authority, and their service in saving life confers on them a badge of merit. Another kind of service has lately risen in dignity because it has been taken up by cultivated people. At the summer resorts in many parts of the country, notably at the White Mountains, the dining-room attendance has passed into the hands of college students and local schoolmistresses. A quick eye, a steady hand, a sure foot, and a long memory are the essentials for a skillful hotel waiter, and these requirements are admirably met by our keen-witted youth who are struggling for an edu- 164 Homemaking cation. Their position is recognized by those guests whose wealth is not recently acquired. I lately happened to be seated at a table under the shadow of Chocorua with a gentleman who was a cos- mopolitan of Colonel Higginson’s description — at home even in his own country. Being familiar with the society of European capitals, this gentleman appre- ciated the social conditions of different peoples. When the pretty waitress, evidently the village schoolmistress, and probably a descendant of some Revolutionary sol- dier, came for orders, the gentleman at once addressed her as “Miss.” The great reason why housework is repugnant to self-respecting Americans is not so much on account of the work itself, for other kinds of labor are hard and monotonous, but on account of the conditions under which it is performed. The single domestic lacks society; she is isolated from the family life and she can never call any time her own. Girls will work all day amid the steam of a laundry, the fumes of a factory, the bad air of a sewing-room, because there they have com- panionship, their hours are defined, and they are their own mistresses when the day’s work is done. It is im- possible to have these conditions in domestic service except in very wealthy families, as there the workers must be branded as “servants.” As there is every probability that house wages will go higher rather than lower, and as the girls will not come to the houses, the houses must go to the girls. In thickly settled communities with modern apparatus it is becoming more and more practicable to have house- hold labor done outside the house. There is an immense waste of force in the average kitchen. The time, labor, and fire spent in cooking a dinner for a small family How to Solve the Housekeeping Problem 165 would often suffice for one four times as large. It is possible to make a great reduction in the kinds of food that need to be cooked at home. One important item that might be eliminated is bread-making. Everybody, except on remote farms, has given up the making of butter, and it is needless to state that the creamery grade is far superior to the average homemade article. The quality of bread could probably be as much im- proved if it were made scientifically in large quantities from the best materials. Other departments of housekeeping besides cooking can be handed over to skilled outside labor. All kinds of carpet-cleaning, rug-beating, and window-washing may be hired by the hour in cities. Even such daily routine as dusting, lamp-trimming, and dish-washing may be performed in the same way. Work of this sort in elegant houses must be done by people of intelligent minds and careful fingers, who understand the value of costly bric- a-brac. It has opened up a new occupation for women of refinement suddenly thrown upon their own resources. If we could get rid of the old feudal idea which we inherit from England, that we must feed and lodge and exercise a paternal control over all people in our employ, we could specialize our work to our own advantage and the self-respect of our domestics. The latest phase of American housekeeping, which throws a hopeful side-light on the situation, is the “girl- bachelor” establishment, which is springing up in all our large cities. This method is probably derived from the customs of art life abroad, where economy is so well understood, combined with the reminiscence of the girl’s own school or college experience, when tempting spreads were evolved in one’s study parlor over a gas stove.’ 166 Homemaking This is the way one of a trio of young college women, two of whom had earned the degree of Ph.D., describes their family life in her class letter: “We hire a house of eight rooms. [It was in the country.] All our laundry work is done outside. Our bread is sent up from the city. [Observe that bread- making is always given up when people are trying to live simply]. On Saturday we hire native talent to come in and scrub. We have a boy to tend our furnace and do our chores. The rest we do ourselves. [They were all engaged in teaching.] Come and see us. Our house is made of India rubber, and I wish you could taste my chicken croquettes.” There are hundreds of little flats in New York and other cities where two or more bright business and pro- fessional women have joined forces and solved the housekeeping problem, independent alike of the boarding mistress and the servant girl. Such a way of living does not admit of ostentation, hardly of ceremony; per- haps, like Mrs. Whitney’s “‘Real Folks,” the ladies may dine in their kitchen or “kitch” in their dining-room. But we may be hopeful about the future when people of culture are willing to perform the humble tasks of every day. THE LITTLE WOMAN AND THE BUSY MAN! IN WHICH IS TOLD How THE Busy Man “ DiscHArGED” THE COOK By ELEANOR HOYT BRAINERD M4 so firmly convinced of his wife’s shining vir- NN tues, that down in his secret soul he did n’t believe half her fussing over domestic matters to be quite unnecessary, and wasn’t convinced that he could handle the servant problem without trouble if it came within his province. And there’s seldom a married man who does n’t sooner or later say, with a greater or less degree of forbearance, according to his temperament and training: ‘“‘My dear, there ’s no sense in putting up with such things. I would n’t stand it for a moment. If she is n’t satisfac- tory, discharge her and get some one else. I have no such trouble in the office. If a boy or man is n’t what he should be, I simply fire him and hire another. That’s the way to run things. The moment you truckle to your employees that moment you get poor service and imper- tinence. They don’t respect an employer who isn’t masterful. You must make your maid understand that you are mistress in your own house, instead of cringing before her and humoring her and sacrificing the family comfort to her whims.” A very young wife is likely toargue the question, to point out that the situation in the office and the one in the 1 Fyom “The Ladies’ Home Journal.”’ Copyright, 1910. 167 = a in was never a man so besottedly in love, 168 | Homemaking home are totally different; that the supply of office-boys and the supply of competent general-housework servants do not balance; that the loss of a cook means more serious discomfort than the changing of a bookkeeper; that every mortal has the defects of his qualities, and that when a servant has a host of good qualities allowances must be made for faults and she must be handled diplomatically for the sake of her virtues. The Little Woman achieved positive eloquence along this line during the first year of married life. Then, being a sensible Little Woman, she realized that irrefutable logic and incontrovertible fact left her liege lord of the same opinion still, so she gave up argument. When the Busy Man was moved to hold forth upon the subject of servant management she smiled amiably and thought about other and pleasanter things. The hardy perennial border which she intended to plant in her garden, whenever they should acquire the farm of her dreams, furnished a most delectable retreat at such moments, and gave her grace to say none of. the truthful but unflattering things which she might have thought of if she had not been busy planting phlox and ‘delphinium. Every wife would do well to cultivate a hardy border of one kind or another, and a tired husband might find a reclaimed orchard or a model stable a pleasant refuge in time of trouble. The one subject which usually precipitated the Busy Man’s discussion of the servant problem was a pleading request that he should try to be at home in time for dinner. In spite of all the Little Woman’s knowing theories about mutual understanding and her appreciation of a working- man’s trials, she did cling to the purely feminine idea that dinner should be served at a given hour, and shrewdly sus- pected that a lack of conviction in regard to the sanctity The Little Woman and the Busy Man 169 of the dinner hour frequently had as much to do with the Busy Man’s tardiness as pressure of office work. So, once in a while, when the deity presiding over the kitchen showed signs of profound disgruntlement, the Little Woman made her plea, and the Busy Man was inva- riably surprised and hurt. ‘Do you suppose, my dear, that I stay at the office late by way of self-indulgence?” he would ask with over- emphasized politeness, his halo showing a reprehensible inclination to tip over sidewise. “Why, of course not, dear; but sometimes, perhaps, you _ don’t realize how late it is and go on working at something that can’t be finished before the next day anyway — and ten or fifteen minutes does make such a difference in Emmeline’s temper. When you don’t get home till eight or half past, you see, she can’t get out in the evening at all, and _)? “Tf Emmeline does n’t like our meal hours discharge her and get a girl who will.be reasonable over accidental delays. Just have it understood from the first that dinner is often late and that you won’t stand for any bad temper.” He was started. The Little Woman wandered off along the hardy border, and the man, seeing the absent look in her eyes, pulled him- self up and apologized. ‘“‘Of course, you manage beautifully, Honey, and Emme- line certainly can cook; but you ’re such a duck and so good-hearted that anybody can impose upon you. You must n’t let a servant bully you. Just assert yourself and lay down the law. ‘Tell her what ’s what, and if she does n’t like it tell her to pack and go.” The Little Woman decided to plant the Canterbury bells just in front of the Madonna lilies. White and blue were so lovely together in a garden. 170 Homemaking The Busy Man’s hours continued to be most erratic, and Emmeline was soothed, placated, bribed into serenity. The household ran with apparent smoothness. When the Busy Man came home a good dinner and a cheerful wife were waiting and all was outwardly serene, although there were times when the Little Woman looked fagged and showed faint signs of quivering nerves. It was in January that the looking fagged became a habit and that her eyes began to look so big and her face so white; and it was on the first of February that she was taken to the hospital for an operation, the Busy Man for once forgetting his office and given over to blind, helpless panic, although outwardly he kept up a pathetic, white- lipped pretense of manly self-control and widespreading cheerfulness. 7 All that last day at home she was planning for his com- fort. during her absence, and holding long conferences with Emmeline — a softened, sympathetic Emmeline, furtively wiping tears from her black cheeks and divided ’twixt distress over the Little Woman’s danger and awful joy in the dramatic situation. When the doctor came with the carriage the Busy Man went with him into the Little Woman’s room. She was writing at her desk, and looked up smiling. “T ’m all ready except my coat and hat. Give these to Emmeline, will you, Dick? They ’re the menus for two weeks. I’ll be back by that time.” The Man went hastily toward the kitchen with a mist over his eyes and something clutching at his heart. She ’d be back by that time, if — “Don’t worry, darling,” she said later, as she bade him good-by before the operation. ‘It’s coming out all right. I’mnotabit afraid. I ’ll be back home again be- fore you know I’m gone, and Emmeline will take splendid The Little Woman and the Busy Man 171 care of you — and, Dick, do be just a little careful about her, won’t you? She’s such a good maid I ’d hate to lose her.” When he went home, five hours later, limp and shaken, Emmeline gathered him in and fed him the things he liked best and praised the Lord the ‘‘bresséd lamb” was “‘ gettin’ on so fine,” until he caught a little of her buoyant opti- mism and grim fear relaxed its merciless grip on his heart. ‘For a week all went well at hospital and home. Then the tension began to relax and life to resume its normal values. The Little Woman was practically out of danger. The call of business made itself heard more insistently. There was much to be done in the office and there was no wife waiting at home to greet him. He stayed a little later than usual one night. The next night he was later still. The thing went on for a week, and Emmeline’s face began to lengthen. Her mistress was getting well, her sympathy declined, and the memory of the Little Woman’s entreaties before leaving home grew fainter and fainter. The “‘two weeks” lengthened into three, seemed likely to lengthen into four or five, and the third week Emmeline’s temper burst the bonds of her loyalty. When the Busy Man came home to dinner at eight o’clock on one Friday evening she served him an excellent dinner with quiet skill; but he noticed that she did not lend herself readily to cheerful conversation, as had been her custom since the Little Woman’s absence had thrown upon her shoulders the responsibility of “chirking the master up.” After the dinner dishes were washed and the kitchen put in order Emmeline made her appearance in the living- room, where the Busy Man sat reading the evening paper. 172 Homemaking He looked up at her, smiling, but the smile died a violent death as he saw her face. Here was an Emmeline he did not know, an Emmeline with lips set and a deep furrow between her eyes, with shoulders resolutely squared and arms akimbo. Determination was writ large upon her. Even her well- starched apron crackled defiantly. “Tf you please, suh, I’ve come to give notice.” She was respectful but firm. To find the enemy heaving solid shot across his bows without any preliminaries threw the Busy Man into help- less confusion. He tried a mild joke upon her. It fell feebly away from her majestic dignity. “Of co’se Ill not go befoh the Madam comes home,” she explained. ‘I would ’n leave her in a fix that way — an’ her sick; but she ’ll be comin’ along right soon now and I’m givin’ notice so ’s you-all can get somebody else in as soon ’s she ’s home an’ settled.” The Busy Man put down his paper and stared at the disturber of his peace in consternation. “But you mustn’t go that way, Emmeline. Mrs. Randolph would n’t know what to do — she must n’t be worried — I really don’t see — why, what in the deuce is the matter, anyway?” Even as he spoke a sense of guilt sent the blood to his face and he cast a furtive look at the clock. “Yes, suh,” said Emmeline, following his eyes. ‘An’ I can’t stay nowhere where I can’t have my evenin’s.” He recognized an ultimatum when he met one. This was an ultimatum. “Well, of course, I was a little late this evening. A man dropped in and delayed me, but that was an accident. It does n’t happen often, I —” The Little Woman and the Busy Man 1738 “You ’ve been late every night this week.”’ “Oh, not every night.” “Yes, suh. I did n’t get to church, an’ I did n’t get to my lodge, an’ I missed a party I was goin’ to an’ had a new blue dress for, an’ I jes’ natch’ly can’t stan’ it. I would n’t mind missin’ an evenin’ once in a while —I allus told the Madam so; but I can’t get along this way nohow, so Id better go.” Now here was a Heaven-sent chance to demonstrate his capacity for handling labor crises and employees. The Busy Man realized his opportunity; but, some way or other, his system did not seem to fit the case. He had never had an office boy just like Emmeline. Office boys did not deliver ultimatums. They did not put their hands on their hips and calmly propose shattering the peace and comfort of a home. Of course the thing to do was to carry out the program he had so often outlined for his wife — to say, ‘“You may go at once; here is your money,” and close the interview with a majestic wave of the hand; but he had a sudden vision of the Little Woman’s face when she would hear that Emmeline was going, and his heart sank within him. The Scotts had had six cooks since Christmas. Three of them drank, and one stole Mrs. Scott’s silk stockings, and one had ten callers in a single evening, and one gave paregoric to the baby. And the Wilsons — well, Wilson had been obliged to take most of his meals at the club all winter because they could n’t get a servant who could boil water without a recipe. And Courtney never dared take a friend home to dinner unexpectedly — and then the Little Woman was still so white and weak. She would n’t be strong for a long time 174 Homemaking yet, and every little thing would worry her. Why, she cried now at the drop of a hat. “T don’t think you ought to leave this way, Emmeline,” he said, with an heroic effort to be calmly judicial. ‘Mrs. Randolph will come home far from well, and she won’t feel equal to training a new maid. I should think you’d have some consideration for her.” Emmeline looked at him without the slightest symptom of relenting. She had this futile man creature where she wanted him and she realized that this was the time for a demonstration that would make her pathway smoother in the future. “T ain’t got nothin’ against the Madam. She’s allus treated me white. Many a time I’d ’a’ left if she had n’t been so nice; but I’m a workin’ woman, an’ I’ve got to think about myself.” The Busy Man quite lost hold upon the curt dismissal and the majestic hand wave and cast about him for a life preserver. The idea common to all men that the blackest of grievances can be settled on a money basis came to his rescue, and he temporized weakly. “Tf your wages are n’t satisfactory, Emmeline —”’ A gleam of inspiration lighted the gloomy eyes. ““Well, I’d ought to have thirty dollars anywhere.” “That willbe allright. I ‘ll raise your wages to thirty.” “Yes, suh. Thank you, suh. But I’ve got to have my evenin’s, an’ you can’t get home at seven, an’ so I’m sorry, but I’ll have to go.” He looked at her helplessly. She was so big, so unyield- ing, so competent, so essential. A sudden appreciation of the Little Woman’s trials and of her surpassing diplomatic skill flooded his brain. After all, women knew how to cope with domestic problems. For a moment he hesitated, ashamed to strike his colors, ‘ The Little Woman and the Busy Man 175 afraid to flaunt them. Then he surrendered uncondi- tionally. “T guess I can arrange about the dinner hour, Emmeline. ‘You can count on my being here at seven.” “Yes,suh. That lbeallright. Thank you kindly for the raise, suh.” She swept out of the room like a galleon under full sail; but in the kitchen she gave way to subdued chuckles. | ‘‘Ain’t I allus said the Madam wuz too easy with him?” she said gayly to the teakettle. ‘‘You ’ve suah got to be masterful with them men — an’ that five a month wuz jes’ velvet — jes’ silk velvet. I never would ’a’ thought of it.” The next morning, at the hospital, the Busy Man led the conversation adroitly around to household matters. ““By the way,” he said carelessly, ‘“‘I raised Emmeline’s wages yesterday. She’s taken awfully good care of things since you ’ve been away.” The Little Woman beamed upon him. “Why, Dick! How sweet of you! But can we afford it?” “Oh, well, good servants are scarce. I guess we can stand it.” She lay looking at him from behind drooping lashes and the ghost of a smile hovered around her lips. “Now I wonder what really happened at home and what Emmeline did to him,” she said to herself. _But because, as has been said before, she was a wise little woman and knew that when a man is struggling, in Chinese parlance, to “‘save his face” it is a foolish thing to let him know he is not accomplishing the feat, she asked him no embarrassing questions. SCIENCE IN THE MODEL KITCHEN! By ANNA LEACH (aha CENTURY ago Brillat-Savarin not only 7 Ki made literature about the art of cooking, b EV] # but gave serious advice concerning its value — to the state. It has taken Americans some time to master each of the many lessons they have had to learn but when a subject is reached they exhaust it. Savarin said: “It has been proved by a series of rig- orously exact observations that by a succulent, delicate, and choice regimen, the external appearances of age are kept away for along time. It gives more brilliancy to the eye, more freshness to the skin, more support to the mus- cles; and as it is certain in physiology that wrinkles, those formidable enemies to beauty, are caused by depression of muscle, other things being equal, those who understand eating are comparatively four years younger than those ignorant of that science.” For a good many years we persuaded ourselves that that was frivolous nonsense. We were a lean and hungry race. Other countries said that our women faded in the early thirties, and spoke pityingly of our national dyspepsia, but we had answers for everything. We said that Ameri- can men were too busy to eat and American women too delicate, or we topped off by Wordsworthian remarks con- cerning plain living and high thinking. That anybody did any high thinking on some of our foods, showed our greatness as a people. With the most abundant and the 1 From “The Cosmopolitan.” Copyright, 1899, by the International Magazine Company. 176 Science in the Model Kitchen 177 richest raw food materials in the world, we were one of the poorest fed. It is a fact that within ten years nine out of ten American families, the country over, fried their beef- steaks, and when they entertained their friends gave a “‘high tea” in which the table was loaded with cold meats, preserves, pickles, and china. Everybody remembers parties in the dead of winter where the company was sent home, past midnight, fortified with ice cream and cake. Mr. W. D. Howells says that a popular refreshment at one time in New England was apples and water, and he has attended festivities where the apples were omitted. But we have changed all that. A well-known college professor recently spent ten days closely watching a man sealed inside a box that he might learn some of the secrets of nature’s laboratory where she turns food into capacity for mental and physical work. In the rebound from the old idea that it was good for the mind and the soul to starve, and that eating was a gross indulgence, we have almost come to the point where we consider the young human brain like a bee embryo, ready to become a drone, a worker, or a queen, according to its nourishment. One of the first hints came from the teachers among the poor. They discovered that the well-fed children were quicker to learn and apply than the ill nourished. At the first glance, that would appear to be only a mat- ter of natural inheritance. The child of thrifty parents, intelligent enough to earn good food and supply it to their children, might be expected to show greater cleverness than the child of the shiftless. But the patient teachers spent time in investigations. They visited the children in their homes, won the friendship of the mothers, and per- suaded them that cereals and milk were as cheap as heavy bread and bitter coffee for a child’s breakfast. The effect of the change of diet was ridiculously instantaneous. 178 Homemaking Wholesome food seemed to digest into an ability to add and to subtract. The subject found its expounders and exploiters, and was elaborated into something more than a theory built on isolated facts. As time went on, cooking was introduced into the public schools in many places, notably Boston, and every small town had its cooking classes and lessons in domestic science. As an adjunct to this came new theories of sanitation. The old-fashioned wood fire, perfect for roasting or broil- ing, and the charcoal fire which every French cook once demanded, had disappeared. Soft coal and hard coal, both full of dust and odors, made the only available fuel, and, with no means of carrying these away, it was a wonder- ful city housekeeper whose kitchen was an agreeable place. Architects would probably have gone on building miser- able kitchens forever had the domestic-science classes not taught women themselves. As it is, not one book has been written upon kitchens. It is possible to collect a library upon every other part of the house from orna- mental roofs to door-knobs, but the heart of the house is too humble for mention, although the kitchen has become as complete in its appointments as any other chemical laboratory. It is quite as clean and dustless, for women know all about the growths from heat, moisture, and darkness. The kitchen should be exposed, if possible, to sunlight, be so placed as to avoid shadows, and should open directly to the outside air. The room itself should have a vitrified- tile floor, laid in hydraulic cement. In making his plans, the architect has the floor slightly fall from the walls to the center, not enough to be perceptible to a person walk- ing on it, but sufficient to insure against water flowing toward the walls or appliances put against the walls. The BREAKFAST IS READY Science in the Model Kitchen 179 floor should never be drained with waste-pipe, and the side walls should be finished with a vitrified-tile base. The walls of the modern kitchen may be made as beauti- ful as the purse allows, and in some of the splendid new houses they vary the cream or white of the tile with the blue of delft, or the brilliant mosaic effects. The tile is always the handsomest finish, but architects are inclined to consider the very much cheaper Keene cement equally sanitary. It costs so much less that there is never any hesitation in putting it behind anything, and, thoroughly enameled (not painted), it is waterproof and impervious to any vermin. If at any time it becomes cracked through the settling of the house, it is easily mended. The beauti- ful tile has its disadvantages. The glaze will sometimes crack, or ‘‘craze,” leaving, after the enamel has fallen, a spongy “‘biscuit,” which is as absorbent as a sponge. There have been new cements invented which have fas- tened the tiles more firmly to the walls than was once pos- sible, and a brass or nickel-plated screw holds many of them. A wall made entirely of vitrified brick is one of the handsomest and most sanitary. Some of the floors are made of trazzazo instead of brick or tile. This is a sort of cement filled with particles of marble, and it can not be insured against cracking. The ceilings of many of the new kitchens are washed in French water-colors (never in oil), but old-fashioned whitewash is as brilliant as anything, besides being a most excellent disinfectant. In the early days of the renaissance of the kitchen, some architects placed it at the top of the house, that the odors might pass away without permeating the other apart- ments. This was speedily discovered to be a mistake, not only on account of its inconvenience, but because the passage through the house of supplies and refuse was as 180 Homemaking bad as the original trouble. Then new plans were made for ventilation. The system of kitchen ventilation is constructed quite separate from the rest of the house or apartment. Over the range is placed a large hood, as low as it is convenient for the cook to work under. At the top of the hood, in- side, is placed a large register with movable louvers, another at the level of the top of the range, and a third just above the baseboard. The best theory is to connect these with a ventilating duct and force the air out by means of electric fans. But around tile pipe placed inside the chimney answers every purpose. The registers are connected with this, and the hot air forces the air from the kitchen up and out. Some of the new houses have been put in plenum, keeping the air in the entire house under constant pressure by means of electric fans. By this means air is brought in, rendered dustless by contact with water, heated through coils of steam, and carried through the house. Naturally all gases and odors are pushed out at the nearest exit. This is most desirable, but beyond the means of the ordinary housebuilder. The hood which carries off the odors is spoken of as a comparatively recent fixture, but it has been in use in some of the older countries for centuries. In Belgium it is com- mon to find a wide kitchen with a brick fireplace almost in the center, brooded over by a cavernous hood, around whose edges are hung gay tankards and cups, and sparkling copper utensils. The new kitchen also has its glitter. The pipes are nickel-plated, and are fully exposed everywhere. When a grease trap is used, it stands under the sink, as important looking as a silver vase. But the architects and plumb- ers dispute over the grease trap. The architect insists Science in the Model Kitchen 181 upon a sink of enameled earthenware — not iron “porce- lain-lined,” but earthenware. The high back of the sink is planted directly in the wall. The waste is trapped di- rectly under the sink, and the trap is what is known as a half-S, or running trap, which should be not less than two inches inside. The waste must be dropped directly down to the drain. This change of direction should be made with what is known as a three-way branch — one to take the waste water to the iron waste-pipe, one to have a brass ferule and screw cap, which may be removed for inspection and clean- ing, the other to take the vent, which should pass directly up with a Y, one arm of which will serve for ventilation, while the other is fitted with brass ferule and screw cap. This avoids the necessity for the grease traps, which are considered unpleasant in some instances. The drain-board for the sink must be made of strips of maple, clamped together until they are water tight. The cook’s table should be of the same wood, and not of heavy porcelain, because the cook has never been discovered who likes a porcelain table. Marble, which dissolves in some of the acids and clogs with all kinds of oils, should never be used. The modern kitchen has its accompaniment of side rooms. Besides the storeroom for dry groceries, with its bins for barrels, its drawers for boxes, and its glass cup- boards for jars and bottles, there are the refrigerator for meat and the refrigerator for milk, with a quite separate compartment for fruit and vegetables. The milk and vege- table compartments are lined and shelved with heavy glass. When artificial refrigeration is used, the coils of pipe are let in at the top, and they are provided with drip pans. When ice is used, it is put in an entirely separate chamber. All the hooks in the refrigerator are heavily tinned. 182 Homemaking When we come to the kitchen utensils, we discover a field all by itself. The room for their proper disposal must be large in one of the scientific kitchens, for the num- ber is given as nearing three hundred. It is interesting to hear the law expounded in different quarters. The archi- tect, anxious for effects in his model kitchen, insists upon copper utensils, and, with pictures of the Belgian kitchens in his mind, says that a clean cook will delight in seeing pots and kettles hung in a row near the range to reflect her reputation. One of the best-known lecturers upon cooking, a woman of practical experience, laughs at copper, and advises one of the enameled ironwares. In Paris shops and in some American shops are sold sets of kitchen utensils which are so beautiful to look at that they tempt the eye. A brass or nickel rod, with upright posts ready to screw to the ends of a table, is hung with a set of kitchen utensils in planished copper or in blue enamel. These are always to hang within reach of the cook’s hand, and are a pictur- esque feature against the glittering white walls. The hot-water tank is put into a room of its own, that its heat may not affect the temperature of the kitchen. When a gas range is used, the hot-water tank has a heater of its own. The butler’s pantry might also be called a part of the kitchen. Here are the linen closet, and the strong steel safe built into the wall for the safety of the silver. A slide opens from the kitchen, through which the dishes may be passed. The butler’s pantry, in many houses, is lined by the china closets with glass doors, the drawers for the linen being below. In the butler’s pantry stands the plate warmer. This has been, until very recently, heated by hot-water pipes in the lower compartment for use in the winter, and by gasin the upper forsummer. But in nearly Science in the Model Kitchen 183 every one of the elaborate kitchens the plate warmer is now heated by electricity. When this is possible, it will be found that the electrical box gives a zest to food almost equal to that with which it comes direct from the fire. By means of an automatic switch the temperature is kept at exactly the right degree— no more, no less. There are no coils of pipe for dust collection, or possible gas leakage, but solid steel walls. Many of these appliances are possible only in the homes of the rich, but with the cheapening of electrical power will come many innovations in the more modest houses — where, on account of the fewer servants kept, they are most needed. But the domestic uses of electricity is a wide subject in itself. In almost all well-appointed houses there are two ranges, one for coal and the other for gas. They are of French wrought steel, and preferably not bricked in. In many of the smaller houses and apartments there is only the gas range. In this case the kitchen must be heated after the fashion of the rest of the house, and a separate heater added for the water tank. Every foot of space must be utilized. It is a stern rule of the architect that no laundry work shall be done in a cooking-room, and yet it is a rule that he makes to break every month in the year. Some of the tubs which are put inare ornaments in them- selves, being of ivory English porcelain. The covers for them are of maple similar to the worktable. The plumb- ing is all open, leaving not one spot where dust may cling or hide. The electric range is the particular boon of the small apartment. It is made of soapstone, or of the heavy earthenware, 184 Homemaking solid or built of tiles, for it consists only of a series of shelves with the points of attachment to the current let into the back. It is so simple that a child can manage it, and, like the plate warmer, every saucepan and cover can be regu- lated automatically. Electricity is making its way into the kitchen through the parlor and the dining-room. For some time it has been used for the heating of the five o’clock teakettle, eliminat- ing the dangers which are always incurred when an alcohol lamp is used. A teakettle, coffeepot, or chafing dish may be adjusted to the nearest lamp in a house wired for elec- tric lighting. The experienced cook knows that there are dishes which are never seen in their perfection ten feet from the fire that cooked them. People who have passed their youth in the country grow peevish over the way years have deteriorated the flavor of some simple early favorite of the table. Electrical appliances have done something to bring back the old conditions. Griddlecakes baked on a steel griddle, electrically heated to the exact temperature, lightly brushed with oil, are a crisp delight as they are flipped from griddle to plate. But while this appliance can be used with the illuminating current, it requires an extra attachment, as that current is too weak. This is generally put in at the leg of the dining-table. Up to this time electricity has been used almost exclusively by the woman who makes a fad of experimental cooking, and she has her electric kitchen fitted up like a small laboratory, far from the domain of the family cuisine. The whole paraphernalia might fit into a tiled closet almost anywhere, so hooded and ventilated that no odor escapes into the surrounding rooms. In one of the apartment houses in New York, dainty little electric kitchens have been fitted up where the tenants have asked Science in the Model Kitchen 185 for them, although the apartments were not designed for housekeeping originally. Tiled walls and trazzazo floors are among the impossibili- ties to the owner of the average kitchen the country over, and so are insulated storerooms and automatic ovens. But she has a compensation for which the city woman would give much. This is open air and sunshine. Our grandmothers knew little of the germ theory, yet no ster- ilized milk can be sweeter than that set away in a ‘“‘crock”’ which has been scalded and set in the blazing sun for a day. The walls of a kitchen whose windows are wide, and open out to wide spaces, are as healthful with a fresh coat of lime whitewash as if they were tiled; and a floor as tight as a boat, on whose boards the sun may rest nearly all day, is harboring few plague spots. They do not need to be put in plenum, for Nature moves the air through if she is given the chance, and a knowledge of domestic science gives her the chance., Sunshine, fresh air, cleanliness, are the priceless things. There is no other disinfectant like the sun. A country kitchen whose walls are freshly washed, and whose closets are fragrant, need have no longing for the costly apparatus to fight what does not exist for it. Every stove or range should have a hood. That is one of the essentials anywhere. And wherever there is plumb- ing it should be open and dustless. Upon the cook of a household depends much, not only of the family’s health, but of its temper, and its capacity for ready judgment, and considerable of its presentment be- fore the world. The kitchen should be one which makes her work easy and pleasant for her. It should be not only sanitary, but comfortable. As women, learning day by day the importance of food, go more and more into their own kitchens, ready to give the 186 Homemaking finest of their intelligence to the study of nourishment, they work out its restoration to its proper place in the house. The first room in the first house was a kitchen, and every other room is its adjunct. The servant problem is losing some of its horrors in this new method of domestic study. When the proper respect for the feeding of a house comes, an ignorant, untaught servant is not expected to be an expert in what is seen to be a delicate art. A chemist is not expected to make orig- inal discoveries and brilliant experiments before he learns the commonest rules, yet that is what has sometimes been expected of the kitchen chemist. In these days women are asking that their cooks shall have been educated, and where they take them without certified qualifications they see that the opportunity to acquire is given to them, and see, too, that they may perform their careful work without undue annoyances and trouble. In New York alone are dozens of cooking classes which are attended by cooks whose mistresses have paid for their lessons. One of the most important of these lessons is the care of the new kitchen — how to prevent the wrong sort of chemistry going to work there. One of these beautiful rooms, these laboratories for the making of good food, is a sorry thing in incompetent hands. PREPARING FOR A TEA PARTY IN 17—! By HARRIET BEECHER STOWE Brown and Mrs. Jones and Deacon Twitchel’s wife to take tea with her on the afternoon of June second, a.p. 17—. The Widow Scudder was one of the sort of women who reign queens in whatever society they move; nobody was more quoted, more deferred to, or enjoyed more unquestioned position than she. She was not rich, —a small farm, with a modest ‘‘gambrel-roofed,” one-story cottage, was her sole domain; but she was one of the much-admired class who, in the speech of New England, are said to have ‘‘faculty,’”’—a gift which, among that shrewd people, commands more esteem than beauty, riches, learning, or any other worldly endowment. Fac- ulty is Yankee for savoir faire, and the opposite virtue to shiftlessness. Faculty is the greatest virtue, and shift- lessness the greatest vice, of Yankee man and woman. To her who has faculty, nothing shall be impossible. She shall scrub floors, wash, wring, bake, brew, and yet her hands shall be small and white; she shall have no perceptible income, yet always be handsomely dressed; she shall have not a servant in her house, — with a dairy to manage, hired men to feed, a boarder or two to care for, unheard-of pickling and preserving to do, — and yet you commonly see her every afternoon sitting at her shady parlor window behind the lilacs, cool and easy, 1 From “The Minister’s Wooing.” By permission Houghton Mifflin Company. Copyright, 1896. f as RS. KATY SCUDDER had invited Mrs. , 187 188 Homemaking hemming muslin cap-strings, or reading the last new book. She who hath faculty is never in a hurry, never behind- hand. She can always step over to distressed Mrs. Smith, whose jelly won’t come, and stop to show Mrs. Jones how she makes her pickles so green, and be ready to watch with poor old Mrs. Simpkins, who is down with the rheumatism. Being asked to tea in our New England in the year 17— meant something very different from the same invi- tation in our more sophisticated days. In those times, people held to the singular opinion that the night was made to sleep in; they inferred it from a general confidence they had in the wisdom of Mother Nature, supposing that she did not put out her lights and draw her bed- curtains and hush all noise in her great world-house with- out strongly intending that her children should go to sleep; and the consequence was, that very soon after sunset the whole community very generally set their faces bedward, and the tolling of the nine o’clock evening bell had an awful solemnity in it, announcing the end of all respectable proceedings in life for that day. Good society in New England in those days very generally took its breakfast at six, its dinner at twelve, and its tea at six. ‘““Company tea,’”’ however, among thrifty, industrious folk, was often taken an hour earlier, because each of the in- vitées had children to put to bed, or other domestic cares at home; and, as in those simple times people were in- vited because you wanted to see them, a tea party assembled themselves at three and held session till sun- down, when each matron rolled up her knittingwork and soberly wended her way home. Though Newport, even in those early times, was not without its families which affected state and splendor, rolled about in carriages with armorial emblazonments, Preparing for a Tea Party in 17— 189 and had servants in abundance to every turn within- doors, yet there, as elsewhere in New England, the ma- jority of the people lived with the wholesome, thrifty simplicity of the olden time, when labor and intelligence went hand in hand in perhaps a greater harmony than the world has ever seen. Our scene opens in the great, old-fashioned kitchen, which, on ordinary occasions, is the family dining and sitting room of the Scudder family. I know fastidious moderns think that the working room, wherein are car- ried on the culinary operations of a large family, must necessarily be an untidy and comfortless sitting place; but it is only because they are ignorant of the marvelous workings which pertain to the organ of ‘‘faculty,” on which we have before insisted. The kitchen of a New England matron was her throne room, her pride; it was the habit of her life to produce the greatest possible results there with the slightest possible discomposure; and what any woman could do, Mrs. Katy Scudder could do par excellence. Tverything there seemed to be always done and never doing. Washing and baking, those for- midable disturbers of the composure of families, were all over within those two or three morning hours when we are composing ourselves for a last nap, and only the fluttering of linen over the green yard, on Monday morn- ings, proclaimed that the dreaded solemnity of a wash had taken place. A breakfast arose there as by magic; and, in an incredibly short space after, every knife, fork, spoon, and trencher, clean and shining, was looking as innocent and unconscious in its place as if it had never been used and never expected to be. The floor, — perhaps, sir, you remember your grand- mother’s floor, of snowy boards sanded with whitest sand; you remember the ancient fireplace stretching quite 190 Homemaking across one end, — a vast cavern, in each corner of which a cozy seat might be found distant enough to enjoy the crackle of the great jolly wood fire; across the room ran a dresser, on which was displayed a great store of shining pewter dishes and plates, which always shone with the same mysterious brightness; and by the side of the fire, a commodious wooden ‘‘settee,” or settle, offered repose to people too little accustomed to luxury to ask for a cushion. Oh, that kitchen of the olden times, the old, clean, roomy New England kitchen!—who that has break-’ fasted, dined, and supped in one has not cheery visions of its thrift, its warmth, its coolness? The noon mark on its floor was a dial that told off some of the happiest days; thereby did we right up the shortcomings of the solemn old clock that tick-tacked in the corner, and whose ticks seemed mysterious prophecies of unknown good yet to arise out of the hours of life. ‘How dreamy the winter twilight came in there,— when as yet the candles were not lighted, — when the crickets chirped around the dark stone hearth, and shifting tongues of flame flickered and cast dancing shadows and elfish lights on the walls, while grandmother nodded over her knit- ting work, and puss purred, and old Rover lay dreamily opening now one eye and then the other on the family group! With all our ceiled houses, let us not forget our grandmothers’ kitchens! But we must pause, however, and back to our subject matter, which is in the kitchen of Mrs. Katy Scudder, who has just put into the oven, by the fireplace, some wondrous tea rusks, for whose composition she is re- nowned. She has examined and pronounced perfect a loaf of cake, which has been prepared for the occasion, and which, as usual, is done exactly right. The best Preparing for a Tea Party in 17— 191 room, too, has been opened and aired, — the white win- dow curtains saluted with a friendly little shake, as when one says, ““How d’ ye do?” to a friend; for you must know, clean as our kitchen is, we are genteel, and have something better for company. Our best room in here has a polished little mahogany tea table, and six mahog- any chairs, with claw talons grasping balls; the white sanded floor is crinkled in curious little waves, like those on the seabeach; and right across the corner stands the “buffet,” as it is called, with its transparent glass doors, wherein are displayed the solemn appurtenances of com- pany tea table. There you may see a set of real China teacups, which George bought in Canton, and had marked with his and his wife’s joint initials; a small silver cream- pitcher, which has come down as an heirloom from un- known generations; silver spoons and delicate China cake plates, which have been all carefully reviewed and wiped on napkins of Mrs. Scudder’s own weaving. Her cares now over, she stands drying her hands on a roller towel in the kitchen, while her only daughter, the gentle Mary, stands in the doorway with the afternoon sun streaming in spots of flickering golden light on her smooth pale brown hair, — a petite figure in a full stuff petticoat and white short gown, she stands reaching up one hand and cooing to something among the apple blossoms; and now a Java dove comes whirring down and settles on her finger, and we, that have seen pictures, think, as we look on her girlish face, with its lines of statuesque beauty, on the tremulous, half-infantine ex- pression of her lovely mouth, and the general air of sim- plicity and purity, of some old pictures of the girlhood of the Virgin. . But Mrs. Scudder was thinking of no such Popish matter, I can assure you, — not she! I think you could 192 Homemaking not have done her a greater indignity than to mention her daughter in any such connection. She had never seen a painting in her life, and therefore was not to be reminded of them; and furthermore, the dove was evi- dently, for some reason, no favorite, for she said, in a quick, imperative tone, ‘‘Come, come, child! don’t fool with that bird; it’s high time we were dressed and ready,” —and Mary, blushing, as it would seem, even to her hair, gave a little toss, and sent the bird, like a silver fluttering cloud, up among the rosy apple blossoms. And now she and her mother have gone to their respective little bedrooms for the adjustment of their toilettes. THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD: IN PROSPERITY AND ADVERSITY By OLIVER GOLDSMITH ge WAS ever of opinion that the honest man i who married and brought up a large family did more service than he who continued single and only talked of population. From this motive, I had scarce taken orders a year before I began to think seriously of matrimony, and chose my wife, as she did her wedding gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but for such qualities as would wear well. To do her justice, she was a good-natured, notable woman; and as for breeding, there were few country ladies who could show more. She could read any English book without much spelling; but for pickling, preserving, and cookery, none could excel her. She prided herself also upon being an excellent contriver in housekeeping; though I could never find that we grew richer with all her contrivances. However, we loved each other tenderly, and our fond- ness increased as we grew old. There was, in fact, noth- ing that could make us angry with the world or each other. We had an elegant house, situated in a fine country, and a good neighborhood. The year was spent in a moral or rural amusement; in visiting our rich neighbors, and relieving such as were poor. We had no revolutions to fear or fatigues to undergo; all our ad- ventures were by the fireside, and all our migrations from the blue bed to the brown. As we lived near the road, we often had the traveler 193 194. Homemaking or stranger visit us to taste our gooseberry wine, for which we had great reputation; and I profess, with the veracity of an historian, that I never knew one of them find fault with it. Our cousins, too, even to the fortieth remove, all remembered their affinity, without any help from the herald’s office, and came very frequently to see us. Some of them did us no great honor by these claims of kindred, as we had the blind, the maimed, and the halt amongst the number. However, my wife always insisted that, as they were the same flesh and blood, they should sit with us at the same table. So that, if we had not very rich, we generally had very happy friends about us; for this remark will hold good through life, that the poorer the guest, the better pleased he ever is with being treated; and as some men gaze with admiration at the colors of a tulip or the wing of a butterfly, so I was, by nature, an admirer of happy human faces. However, when any one of our relations was found to be a person of very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house I ever took care to lend him a riding coat or a pair of boots, or sometimes an horse of small value, and I always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them. By this the house was cleared of such as we did not like; but never was the family of Wakefield known to turn the traveler or the poor de- pendent out of doors. Thus we lived several years in a state of much happi- ness, not but that we sometimes had those little rubs which Providence sends to enhance the value of its favors. My orchard was often robbed by schoolboys, and my wife’s custards plundered by the cats or the children. The Squire would sometimes fall asleep in the most pathetic parts of my sermon, or his lady return my The Vicar: in Prosperity and Adversity 195 wife’s civilities at church with a mutilated curtsey. But we soon got over the uneasiness caused by such acci- dents, and usually in three or four days began to wonder how they vexed us. My children, the offspring of temperance, as they were educated without softness, so they were at once well formed and healthy: my sons hardy and active, my daughters beautiful and blooming. When I stood in the midst of the little circle, which promised to be the supports of my declining age, I could not avoid repeating the famous story of Count Abensberg, who, in Henry the Second’s progress through Germany, while other cour- tiers came with their treasures, brought his thirty-two children, and presented them to his sovereign as the most valuable offering he had to bestow. In this manner, though I had but six, I considered them as a very valu- able present made to my country, and consequently looked upon it as my debtor. It would be fruitless to deny my exultation when I saw my little ones about me; but the vanity and the satisfaction of my wife were even greater than mine. When our visitors would say, ‘‘Well, upon my word, Mrs. Primrose, you have the finest children in the whole country.” — “Ay, neighbor,’’ she would answer, ‘they are as heaven made them — handsome enough, if they be good enough; for handsome is that handsome does.” And then she would bid the girls hold up their heads, who, to conceal nothing, were certainly very handsome. Mere outside is so very trifling a circumstance with me that I should scarce have remembered to mention it had it not been a general topic of conversation in the country. The temporal concerns of our family were chiefly com- mitted to my wife’s management; as to the spiritual, I took them entirely under my own direction. The profits 196 Homemaking of my living, which amounted to but thirty-five pounds a year, I made over to the orphans and widows of the clergy of our diocese; for, having a fortune of my own, I was careless of temporalities, and felt a secret pleasure in doing my duty without reward. I also set a resolution of keeping no curate, and of being acquainted with every man in the parish, exhorting the married men to temper- ance, and the bachelors to matrimony; so that in a few years it was a common saying that there were three strange wants at Wakefield, —a parson wanting pride, young men wanting wives, and alehouses wanting customers. Matrimony was always one of my favorite topics, and I wrote several sermons to prove its happiness: but there was a peculiar tenet which I made a point of supporting; for I maintained with Whiston, that it was unlawful for a priest of the church of England, after the death of his first wife, to take a second; or, to express it in one word, I valued myself upon being a strict monogamist. It was thus, perhaps, from hearing marriage so often recommended, that my eldest son, just upon leaving college, fixed his affections upon the daughter of a neighboring clergyman, who was a dignitary in the church, and in circumstances to give her a large fortune. But fortune was her smallest accomplishment. Miss Arabella Wilmot was allowed by all (except my two daughters) to be completely pretty. Her youth, health, and innocence were still heightened by a complexion so transparent, and such an happy sensibility of look, as even age could not gaze on with indifference. As Mr. Wilmot knew that I could make a very handsome set- tlement on my son, he was not averse to the match; so both families lived together in all that harmony which generally precedes an expected alliance. Being con- vinced, by experience, that the days of courtship are the The Vicar: in Prosperity and Adversity 197 most happy of our lives, I was willing enough to lengthen the period; and the various amusements which the young couple every day shared in each other’s company seemed to increase their passion. We were generally awakened in the morning by music, and on fine days rode a-hunting. The hours between breakfast and dinner the ladies devoted to dress and study; they usually read a page, and then gazed at them- selves in the glass, which, even philosophers might own, often presented the page of greatest beauty. At dinner my wife took the lead; for, as she always insisted upon carving everything herself, it being her mother’s way, she gave us upon these occasions the history of every dish. When we had dined, to prevent the ladies leaving us, I generally ordered the table to be removed; and sometimes, with the music-master’s assistance, the girls would give us a very agreeable concert. Walking out, drinking tea, country dances, and forfeits shortened the rest of the day, without the assistance of cards, as I hated all manner of gaming, except backgammon, at which my old friend and I sometimes took a twopenny hit. Nor can I here pass over an ominous circumstance that happened the last time we played together. I only wanted to fling a quatre, and yet I threw deuce ace five times running. Some months were elapsed in this manner, till af last it was thought convenient to fix a day for the nuptials of the young couple, who seemed earnestly to desire it. During the preparations for the wedding, I need not describe the busy importance of my wife, nor the sly looks of my daughters; in fact, my attention was fixed on another object — the completing a tract, which I intended shortly to publish, in defense of my favorite principle. As I looked upon this as a masterpiece, both 198 Homemaking for argument and style, I could not, in the pride of my heart, avoid showing it to my old friend Mr. Wilmot, as I made no doubt of receiving his approbation; but not till too late I discovered that he was most violently attached to the contrary opinion, and with good reason; for he was at that time actually courting a fourth wife. This, as may be expected, produced a dispute, attended with some acrimony, which threatened to interrupt our intended alliance; but on the day before that appointed for the ceremony, we agreed to discuss the subject at large. It was managed with proper spirit on both sides. He asserted that I was heterodox: I retorted the charge; he replied, and I rejoined. In the meantime, while the con- troversy was hottest, I was called out by one of my relations, who, with a face of concern, advised me to give up the dispute, at least till my son’s wedding was over. “How,” cried I, ‘‘relinquish the cause of truth, and let him be a husband, already driven to the very verge of absurdity? You might as well advise me to give up my fortune as my argument.” “Your fortune,” returned my friend, ‘‘I am now sorry to inform you, is almost nothing. The merchant in town, in whose hands your money was lodged, has gone off, to avoid a statute of bankruptcy, and is thought not to have left a shilling in the pound. I was unwilling to shock you or the family with the account till after the wedding; but now it may serve to moderate your warmth in the argument; for, I suppose, your own prudence will enforce the necessity of dissembling, at least till your son has the young lady’s fortune secure.” “Well,” returned I, ‘if what you tell me be true, and if I am to be a beggar, it shall never make me a rascal, or The Vicar: in Prosperity and Adversity 199 induce me to disavow my principles. I’ll go this mo- ment and inform the company of my circumstances; and as for the argument, I even here retract my former concessions in the old gentleman’s favor, nor will allow him now to be an husband in any sense of the expression.” It would be endless to describe the different sensations of both families when I divulged the news of our mis- fortune; but what others felt was slight to what the lovers appeared to endure. Mr. Wilmot, who seemed before sufficiently inclined to break off the match, was by this blow soon determined: one virtue he had in per- fection, which was prudence, too often the only one that is left us at seventy-two. The only hope of our family now was, that the report of our misfortune might be malicious or premature; but a letter from my agent in town soon came, with a confir- mation of every particular. The loss of fortune to myself alone would have been trifling; the only uneasiness I felt was for my family, who were to be humble without an education to render them callous to contempt. Near a fortnight had passed before I attempted to re- strain their affliction; for premature consolation is but the remembrancer of sorrow. During this interval my thoughts were employed on some future means of sup- porting them; and at last a small Cure of fifteen pounds a year was offered me in a distant neighborhood, where I could still enjoy my principles without molestation. With this proposal I joyfully closed, having determined to increase my salary by managing a little farm. Having taken this resolution, my next care was to get together the wrecks of my fortune; and, all debts col- lected and paid, out of fourteen thousand pounds we had but four hundred remaining. My chief attention, there- fore, was now to bring down the pride of my family to 200 Homemaking their circumstances; for I well knew that aspiring beggary is wretchedness itself. “You can not be ignorant, my children,” cried I, “that no prudence of ours could have prevented our late misfortune; but prudence may do much in disappointing its effects. We are now poor, my fondlings, and wisdom bids us conform to our humble situation. Let us, then, without repining, give up those splendors with which numbers are wretched, and seek in humbler circum- stances that peace with which all may be happy. The poor live pleasantly without our help; why, then, should not we learn to live without theirs? No, my children, let us from this moment give up all pretensions to gen- tility; we have still enough left for happiness if we are wise, and let us draw upon content for the deficiencies of fortune.” As my eldest son was bred a scholar, I determined to send him to town, where his abilities might contribute to our support and his own. The separation of friends and families is, perhaps, one of the most distressful circum- stances attendant on penury. The day soon arrived on which we were to disperse for the first time. My son, after taking leave of his mother and the rest, who mingled their tears with their kisses, came to ask a bless- ing from me. This I gave him from my heart, and which, added to five guineas, was all the patrimony I had now to bestow. “You are going, my boy,” cried I, ‘“‘to London on foot, in the manner Hooker, your great ancestor, trav- eled there before you. Take from me the same horse that was given him by the good Bishop Jewel — this staff; and take this book too; it will be your comfort on the way; these two lines in it are worth a million —I have been young, and now am old; yet never saw I the righteous The Vicar: in Prosperity and Adversity 201 man forsaken, or his seed begging their bread. Let this be your consolation as you travel on. Go, my boy; whatever be thy fortune, let me see thee once a year; still keep a good heart, and farewell.” As he was possessed of integrity and honor, I was under no apprehensions from throwing him naked into the amphitheater of life; for I knew he would act a good part, whether vanquished or victorious. His departure only prepared the way for our own, which arrived a few days afterwards. The leaving a neighborhood in which we had enjoyed so many hours.of tranquillity was not without a tear, which scarce forti- tude itself could suppress. Besides a journey of seventy miles, to a family that had hitherto never been above ten from home, filled us with apprehension; and the cries of ~ the poor, who followed us for some miles, contributed to increase it. The place of our retreat was in a little neighborhood consisting of farmers, who tilled their own grounds, and were equal strangers to opulence and poverty. As they had almost all the conveniences of life within themselves, they seldom visited towns or cities in search of superfluity. Remote from the polite, they still retained the primeval simplicity of manners; and, frugal by habit, they scarce knew that temperance was a virtue. They wrought with cheerfulness on days of labor, but observed festivals as intervals of idleness and pleasure. They kept up the Christmas carol, sent true love-knots on Valentine morn- ing, ate pancakes on Shrovetide, showed their wit on the first of April, and religiously cracked nuts on Michael- mas eve. Being apprised of our approach, the whole neighborhood came out to meet their minister, dressed in their fine clothes, and preceded by a pipe and tabor. A feast also was provided for our reception, at which we 202 Homemaking sat cheerfully down; and what the conversation wanted in wit was made up in laughter. Our little habitation was situated at the foot of a sloping hill, sheltered with a beautiful underwood behind, and a prattling river before; on the one side a mea- dow, on the other a green. My farm consisted of about twenty acres of excellent land, having given an hundred pound for my predecessor’s good will. Nothing could exceed the neatness of my little inclosures, the elms and hedgerows appearing with inexpressible beauty. My house consisted of but one story, and was covered with thatch, which gave it an air of snugness; the walls on the inside were nicely whitewashed, and my daughters undertook to adorn them with pictures of their own * designing. Though the same room served us for parlor and kitchen, that only made it the warmer. Besides, as it was kept with the utmost neatness — the dishes, plates, and coppers being well scoured, and all disposed in bright rows on the shelves — the eye was agreeably relieved, and did not want richer furniture. There were three other apartments: one for my wife and me, another for our two daughters within our own, and the third, with two beds, for the rest of the children. The little republic to which I gave laws was regulated in the following manner: By sunrise we all assembled in our common apartment, the fire being previously kindled by the servant. After we had saluted each other with proper ceremony — for I always thought fit to keep up some mechanical forms of good breeding, without which freedom ever destroys friendship — we all bent in gratitude to that Being who gave us another day. This duty being performed, my son and I went to pursue our usual industry abroad, while my wife and daughters employed themselves in providing breakfast, The Vicar: in Prosperity and Adversity 203 which was always ready at a certain time. I allowed half an hour for this meal, and an hour for dinner, which time was taken up in innocent mirth between my wife and daughters, and in philosophical arguments between my son and me. As we rose with the sun, so we never pursued our labors after it was gone down, but returned home to the expecting family, where smiling looks, a neat hearth, and pleasant fire were prepared for our reception. Nor were we without guests: sometimes Farmer Flamborough, our talkative neighbor, and often the blind piper, would pay us a visit, and taste our gooseberry wine, for the making of which we had lost neither the receipt nor the reputation. These harmless people had several ways of being good company; while one played, the other would sing some soothing ballad — Johnny Armstrong’s Last Good-night, or the cruelty of Barbara Allen. The night was concluded in the manner we began the morning, my youngest boys being appointed to read the lessons of the day; and he that read loudest, distinctest, and best was to have an halfpenny on Sunday to put into the poor’s box. When Sunday came, it was indeed a day of finery, which all my sumptuary edicts could not restrain. How well soever I fancied my lectures against pride had con- quered the vanity of my daughters, yet I still found them secretly attached to all their former finery; they still loved laces, ribbons, bugles, and catgut; my wife herself retained a passion for her crimson paduasoy, because I formerly happened to say it became her. The first Sunday in particular, their behavior served to mortify me. I had desired my girls the preceding night to be dressed early the next day; for I always loved to be at church a good while before the rest of the con- gregation. They punctually obeyed my directions; but 204 Homemaking when we were to assemble in the morning at breakfast, down came my wife and daughters dressed out in all their former splendor; their hair plastered up with poma- tum, their faces patched to taste, their trains bundled up into a heap behind, and rustling at every motion. I could not help smiling at their vanity, particularly that of my wife, from whom I expected more discretion. In this exigence, therefore, my only resource was to order my son, with an important air, to call our coach. The girls were amazed at the command; but I repeated it with more solemnity than before. “Surely, my dear, you jest,” cried my wife; ‘we can walk it perfectly well; we want no coach to carry us now.” “You mistake, child,” returned I, ‘‘we do want a coach; for if we walk to church in this trim, the very children in the parish will hoot after us.” “Indeed,” replied my wife; “I always imagined that my Charles was fond of seeing his children neat and handsome about him.” “You may be as neat as you please,” interrupted I, ‘and I shall love you the better for it; but all this is not neatness, but frippery. These rufflings and pinkings and patchings will only make us hated by all the wives of our neighbors. No, my children,” continued I, more gravely, “those gowns may be altered into something of a plainer cut; for finery is very unbecoming in us who want the means of decency. I do not know whether such flouncing and shredding is becoming even in the rich, if we consider, upon a moderate calculation, that the nakedness of the indigent world may be clothed from the trimmings of the vain.” This remonstration had the proper effect. They went with great composure, that very instant, to change their The Vicar: in Prosperity and Adversity 205 dress; and the next day I had the satisfaction of finding my daughters, at their own request, employed in cutting up their trains into Sunday waistcoats for Dick and Bill, the two little ones, and what was still more satisfactory, the gowns seemed improved by this curtailing. At a small distance from the house my predecessor had made a seat overshadowed by a hedge of hawthorn and honeysuckle. Here, when the weather was fine and our labor soon finished, we usually sat together to enjoy an extensive landscape, in the calm of the evening. Here, too, we drank tea, which now was become an occasional banquet; and as we had it but seldom, it diffused a new joy, the preparations for it being made with no small share of bustle and ceremony. On these occasions our two little ones always read for us, and they were regularly served after we had done. Sometimes, to give a variety to our amusements, the girls sung to the guitar; and while they thus formed a little concert, my wife and I would stroll down the sloping field, that was embellished with bluebells and centaury, talk of our children with rapture, and enjoy the breeze that wafted both health and harmony. In this manner we began to find that every situation in life may bring its own peculiar pleasures: every morning waked us to a repetition of toil, but the evening repaid it with vacant hilarity. OUR HOUSEKEEPING! By CHARLES DICKENS T was a strange condition of things, the honey- moon being over and the bridesmaids gone home, when I found myself sitting down in —_ my own small house with Dora; quite thrown out of employment, as I may say, in respect of the deli- cious old occupation of making love. It seemed such an extraordinary thing to have Dora always there. It was so unaccountable not to be obliged to go out to see her, not to have any occasion to be tor- menting myself about her, not to have to write to her, not to be scheming and devising opportunities of being alone with her. Sometimes of an evening, when I looked up from my writing, and saw her seated opposite, I would lean back in my chair, and think how queer it was that there we were, alone together as a matter of course — nobody’s business any more — all the romance of our en- gagement put away upon a shelf, to rust— no one to please but one another — one another to please, for life. When there was a debate, and I was kept out very late, it seemed so strange to me, as I was walking home, to think that Dora was at home! It was such a wonderful thing, at first, to have her coming softly down to talk to me as I ate my supper. It was such a stupendous thing to know for certain that she put her hair in papers. It was alto- gether such an astonishing event to see her do it! I doubt whether two young birds could have known less about keeping house than I and my pretty Dora did. We 1¥From “ David Copperfield.” 206 Our Housekeeping 207 had a servant, of course. She kept house for us. I have still a latent belief that she must have been Mrs. Crupp’s daughter in disguise, we had such an awful time of it with Mary Anne. Her name was Paragon. Her nature was represented to us, when we engaged her, as being feebly expressed in her name. She had a written character, as large as a Procla- mation; and, according to this document, could do every- thing of a domestic nature that ever I heard of, and a great many things that I never did hear of. She was a woman in the prime of life; of a severe countenance; and subject (particularly in the arms) to a sort of perpetual measles or fiery rash. She had a cousin in the Life Guards, with such long legs that he looked like the afternoon shadow of somebody else. His shell jacket was as much too little for him as he was too big for the premises. He made the cottage smaller than it need have been, by being so very much out of proportion to it Besides which, the walls were not thick, and whenever he passed the evening at our house, we always knew of it by hearing one continual growl in the kitchen. Our treasure was warranted sober and honest. I am therefore willing to believe that she was in a fit when we found her under the boiler; and that the deficient tea- spoons were attributable to the dustman. But she preyed upon our minds dreadfully. We felt our inexperience, and were unable to help ourselves. We should have been at her mercy, if she had had any; but she was a remorseless woman, and had none. She was the cause of our first little quarrel. ““My dearest life,’ I said one day to Dora, ‘‘do you think Mary Anne has any idea of time?”’ “Why, Doady?” inquired Dora, looking up innocently from her drawing. 208 Homemaking “My love, because it ’s five, and we were to have dined at four.” Dora glanced wistfully at the clock, and hinted that she thought it was too fast. ‘‘On the contrary, my love,” said I, referring to my watch, ‘‘it ’s a few minutes too slow.” My little wife came and sat upon my knee, to coax me to be quiet, and drew a line with her pencil down the mid- dle of my nose; but I could n’t dine off that, though it was very agreeable. “Don’t you think, my dear,” said I, ‘‘it would be better for you to remonstrate with Mary Anne?”’ ‘“‘Oh, no, please! I could n’t, Doady!” said Dora. “Why not, my love?” I gently asked. ‘‘Oh, because I am such a little goose,”’ said Dora, ‘and she knows I am!” I thought this sentiment so incompatible with the estab- lishment of any system of check on Mary Anne that I frowned a little. “Oh, what ugly wrinkles in my bad boy’s forehead!” said Dora, and still being on my knee, she traced them with her pencil, putting it to her rosy lips to make it mark blacker, and working at my forehead with a quaint little mockery of being industrious, that quite delighted me in spite of myself. “There ’s a good child,” said Dora, ‘‘it makes its face so much prettier to laugh.” “But, my love,” said I. ‘““No, no! please!” cried Dora, with a kiss, ‘‘don ’t be a naughty Blue Beard! Don’t be serious!” ‘“My precious wife,’’ said I, ‘‘we must be serious some- times. Come! Sit down on this chair, close beside me! Give me the pencil! There! Now let us talk sensibly. You know, dear’; (what a little hand it was to hold, and Our Housekeeping 209 what a tiny wedding-ring it was to see!) “you know, my love, it is not exactly comfortable to have to go out with- out one’s dinner. Now, is it?” ‘“N—n—no!”’ replied Dora, faintly. ““My love, how you tremble!” “Because I KNow you ’re going to scold me,”’ exclaimed Dora, in a piteous voice.” “My sweet, I am only going to reason.” “Oh, but reasoning is worse than scolding!” exclaimed Dora, in despair. ‘‘I did n’t marry to be reasoned with. If you meant to reason with such a poor little thing as I am, you ought to have told me so, you cruel boy!” I tried to pacify Dora, but she turned away her face, and shook her curls from side to side, and said, ‘‘ You cruel, cruel boy!”’ so many times, that I really did not exactly know what to do: so I took a few turns up and down the room in my uncertainty, and came back again. “Dora, my darling!” “No, I am not your darling. Because you must be sorry that you married me, or else you would n’t reason with me!” returned Dora. I felt. so injured by the inconsequential nature of this charge, that it gave me courage to be grave. “Now, my own Dora,” said I, ‘‘you are very childish, and are talking nonsense. You must remember, I am sure, that I was obliged to go out yesterday when dinner was half over; and that, the day before, I was made quite unwell by being obliged to eat underdone veal in a hurry; to-day, I don’t dine at all, —and I am afraid to say how long we waited for breakfast, — and then the water did n’t boil. I don’t mean to reproach you, my dear, but this is not comfortable.” “‘Oh, you cruel, cruel boy, to say I am a disagreeable wife!’ cried Dora. 210 Homemaking “Now, my dear Dora, you must know that I never said that!” “You said I was n’t comfortable!”’ said Dora. “T said the housekeeping was not comfortable.” “It’s exactly the same thing!” cried Dora. And she evidently thought so, for she wept most grievously. I took another turn across the room, full of love for my pretty wife, and distracted by self-accusatory inclinations to knock my head against the door. I sat down again, and said: “T am not blaming you, Dora. We have both a great deal to learn. I am only trying to show you, my dear, that you must — you really must” (I was resolved not to give this up) ‘‘accustom yourself to look after Mary Anne. Likewise to act a little for yourself, and me.” “T wonder, I do, at your making such ungrateful speeches,” sobbed Dora. ‘When you know that the other day, when you said you would like a little bit of fish, I went out myself, miles and miles, and ordered it, to sur- : prise you.” ‘And it was very kind of you, my own darling,” said I. “‘T felt it so much that I would n’t on any account have even mentioned that you bought a Salmon — which was too much for two. Or that it cost one pound six —which was more than we can afford.” ““You enjoyed it very much,” sobbed Dora. ‘And you said I was a Mouse.” “And I’Il say so again, my love,” I returned, ‘‘a thou- sand times!”’ But I had wounded Dora’s soft little heart, and she was not to be comforted. She was so pathetic in her sobbing and bewailing that I felt as if I had said I don’t know what to hurt her. I was obliged to hurry away; I was kept out late; and I felt all night such pangs of remorse SAIMINV4 OML 3HL ADSVUNNW fq Our Housekeeping 211 as made me miserable. I had the conscience of an assassin, and was haunted by a vague sense of enormous wickedness. It was two or three hours past midnight when I got home. I found my aunt, in our house, sitting up for me. “Ts anything the matter, aunt?” said I, alarmed. “Nothing, Trot,” she replied. ‘Sit down, sit down. Little Blossom has been rather out of spirits, and I have been keeping her company. That’s all.” I leaned my head upon my hand, and felt more sorry and downcast, as I sat looking at the fire, than I could have supposed possible so soon after the fulfillment of my brightest hopes. As I sat thinking, I happened to meet my aunt’s eyes, which were resting on my face. There was an anxious expression in them, but it cleared directly. “‘Tassureyou, aunt,” said I, ‘‘I have been quite unhappy myself all night, to think of Dora’s being so. But I had no other intention than to speak to her tenderly and lov- ingly about our home affairs.” My aunt nodded encouragement. “You must have patience, Trot,” said she. “Of course. Heaven knows I don’t mean to be unrea- sonable, aunt!” “No, no,” said my aunt. “But Little Blossom is a very tender little blossom, and the wind must be gentle with her.” I thanked my good aunt, in my heart, for her tenderness towards my wife; and I was sure that she knew I did. “Don’t you think, aunt,” said I, after some further contemplation of the fire, ‘“‘that you could advise and counsel Dora a little, for our mutual advantage, now and then?”’ “Trot,” returned my aunt, with some emotion, ‘‘no! Don’t ask me such a thing!” 212 Homemaking Her tone was so very earnest that I raised my eyes in surprise. “T look back on my life, child,” said my aunt, ‘“‘and I think of some who are in their graves, with whom I might have been on kinder terms. If I judged harshly of other people’s mistakes in marriage, it may have been because I had bitter reason to judge harshly of my own. Let that pass. I have been a grumpy, frumpy, wayward sort of a woman, a good many years. I am still, and I always shall be. But you and I have done one another some good, Trot — at all events, you have done me good, my dear; and division must not come between us, at this time of day.” “Division between us /”’ cried I. “Child, child!” said my aunt, smoothing her dress, ‘how soon it might come between us, or how unhappy I might make our Little Blossom, if I meddled in anything, a prophet could n’t say. I want our pet to like me and be as gay as a butterfly. Remember your own home, in that second marriage; and never do both me and her the injury you have hinted at!” I comprehended at once that my aunt was right; and I comprehended the full extent of her generous feeling towards my dear wife. “These are early days,Trot,” she pursued, “‘and Rome was not built in a day, nor in a year. You have chosen freely for yourself”; a cloud passed over her face for a moment, I thought; “‘and you have chosen a very pretty and a very affectionate creature. It will be your duty, and it will be your pleasure, too, —of course I know that, I am not delivering a lecture, — to estimate her (as you chose her) by the qualities she has, and not by the qualities she may not have. The latter you must develop in her, if you can. And if you can not, child,’”’ here my aunt rubbed her Our Housekeeping 213 _ hose, ‘‘you must just accustom yourself to do without ’em. But remember, my dear, your future is between you two. No one can assist you; you are to work it out for yourselves. This is marriage, Trot; and Heaven bless you both in it for a pair of babes in the wood as you are!” My aunt said this in a sprightly way, and gave me a kiss to ratify the blessing. “Now,” said she, “‘light my little lantern, and see me into my bandbox by the garden path,” for there was a communication between our cottages in that direction. . “‘Give Betsey Trotwood’s love to Blossom, when you come back; and whatever you do, Trot, never dream of setting Betsey up as a scarecrow, for if I ever saw her in the glass, she ’s quite grim enough and gaunt enough in her private capacity!” With this my aunt tied her head up in a handkerchief, with which she was accustomed to make a bundle of it on such occasions, and I escorted her home. As she stood in her garden, holding up her little lantern to light me back, I thought her observation of me had an anxious air again; but I was too much occupied in pondering on what she had said, and too much impressed — for the first time, in real- ity — by the conviction that Dora and I had indeed to work out our future for ourselves, and that no one could assist us, to take much notice of it. Dora came stealing down in her little slippers to meet me, now that I was alone; and cried upon my shoulder, and said I had been hard-hearted and she had been naughty; and I said much the same thing in effect, I be- lieve; and we made it up, and agreed that our first little difference was to be our last, and that we were never to have another if we lived a hundred years. The next domestic trial we went through’ was the Or- deal of Servants. Mary Anne’s cousin deserted into our 214 Homemaking coalhole, and was brought out, to our great amazement, by a piquet of his companions in arms, who took him away handcuffed in a procession that covered our front garden with ignominy. This nerved me to get rid of Mary Anne, who went so mildly, on receipt of wages, that I was sur- prised, until I found out about the teaspoons, and also about the little sums she had borrowed in my name of the tradespeople without authority. After an interval of Mrs. Kidgerbury — the oldest inhabitant of Kentish Town, I believe, who went out charing, but was too feeble to execute her conceptions of that art — we found another treasure, who was one of the most amiable of women, but who generally made a point of falling either up or down the kitchen stairs with the tray, and almost always plunged into the parlor, as into a bath, with the tea-things. The ravages committed by this unfortunate rendering her dismissal necessary, she was succeeded (with intervals of Mrs. Kidgerbury) by a long line of Incapables; terminating in a young person of genteel appearance, who went to Greenwich Fair in Dora’s bonnet. After whom I remember nothing but an average equality of failure. Everybody we had anything to do with seemed to cheat us. Our appearance in a shop was a signal for the damaged goods to be brought out immediately. If we bought a lobster, it was full of water. All our meat turned out to be tough, and there was hardly any crust to our loaves. In search of the principle on which joints ought to be roasted, to be roasted enough, and not too much, I myself referred to the Cookery Book, and found it there estab- lished as the allowance of a quarter of an hour to every pound, and say a quarter over. But the principle always failed us by some curious fatality, and we never could hit any medium between redness and cinders. I had reason to believe that in accomplishing these fail- Our Housekeeping 215 ures we incurred a far greater expense than if we had achieved a series of triumphs. It appeared to me, on look- ing over the tradesmen’s books, as if we might have kept the basement story paved with butter, such was the exten- sive scale of our consumption of that article. I don’t know whether the Excise returns of the period may have exhibited any increase in the demand for pepper; but if our performances did not affect the market, I should say several families must have left off using it. And the most wonderful fact of all was, that we never had anything in the house. As to the washerwoman pawning the clothes, and coming in a state of penitent intoxication to apologize, I suppose that might have happened several times to anybody. Also the chimney on fire, the parish engine, and perjury on the part of the Beadle. But I apprehend that we were personally unfortunate in engaging a servant with a taste for cordials, who swelled our running account for porter at the publichouse by such inexplicable items as ‘‘ Quartern rum shrub (Mrs. C.)”; ‘‘Half-quartern gin and cloves (Mrs. C.)”; “Glass rum and peppermint (Mrs. C.)” — the parentheses always referring to Dora, who was sup- posed, it appeared on explanation, to have imbibed the whole of these refreshments. One of our first feats in the housekeeping way was a little dinner to Traddles. I met him in town, and asked him to walk out with me that afternoon. He readily consenting, I wrote to Dora, saying I would bring him home. It was pleasant weather, and on the road we made my domestic happiness the theme of conversation. Traddles was very full of it; and said that, picturing himself with such a home, and Sophy waiting and preparing for him, he could think of nothing wanting to complete his bliss. I could not have wished for a prettier little wife at the 216 Homemaking opposite end of the table, but I certainly could have wished, when we sat down, for a little more room. I did not know how it was, but though there were only two of us, we were at once always cramped for room, and yet had always room enough to lose everything in. I suspect it may have been because nothing had a place of its own, except Jip’s pagoda, which invariably blocked up the main thoroughfare. On the present occasion, Traddles was so hemmed in by the pagoda and the guitar case, and Dora’s flower painting, and my writing table, that I had serious doubts of the possibility of his using his knife and fork; but he protested, with his own good humour, ‘‘ Oceans of room, Copperfield! I assure you, Oceans.” ‘ There was another thing I could have wished, namely, that Jip had never been encouraged to walk about the tablecloth during dinner. I began to think there was something disorderly in his being there at all, even if he had not been in the habit of putting his foot in the salt or the melted butter. On this occasion he seemed to think he was introduced expressly to keep Traddles at bay; and he barked at my old friend, and made short runs at his plate, with such undaunted pertinacity, that he may be said to have engrossed the conversation. However, as I knew how tender-hearted my dear Dora was, and how sensitive she would be to any slight upon her favorite, I hinted no objection. Yor similar reasons I made no allusion to the skirmishing plates upon the floor; or to the disreputable appearance of the castors, which were all at sixes and sevens, and looked drunk; or to the further blockade of Traddles by wandering vegetable- dishes and jugs. I could not help wondering in my own mind, as I contemplated the boiled leg of mutton before me, previous to carving it, how it came to pass that our joints of meat were of such extraordinary shapes — and Gui Housekeeping 217 whether our butcher contracted for all the deformed sheep that came into the world; but I kept my reflection to myself. ““My love,” said I to Dora, ‘“‘what have you got in that dish?” I could not imagine why Dora had been making tempt- ing little faces at me, as if she wanted to kiss me. “Oysters, dear,” said Dora, timidly. “Was that your thought?”’ said I, delighted. ““Ye-yes, Doady,”’ said Dora. “There never was a happier one!” I exclaimed, laying down the carving knife and fork. ‘There is nothing Traddles likes so much!” ““Ye-yes, Doady,” said Dora, “and so I bought a beautiful little barrel of them, and the man said they were very good. But I—TI am afraid there’s something the matter with them. They don’t seem right.’”? Here Dora shook her head, and diamonds twinkled in her eyes. “They are only opened in both shells,” said I. ‘Take the top one off, my love.” “But it won’t come off,” said Dora, trying very hard, and looking very much distressed. “Do you know, Copperfield,”’ said Traddles, cheerfully examining the dish, ‘‘I think it is in consequence — they are capital oysters, but I think it is in consequence — of their never having been opened.” They never had been opened; and we had no oyster knives — and could n’t have used them if we had; so we looked at the oysters and ate the mutton. At least we ate as much of it as was done, and made up with capers. If I had permitted him, I am satisfied that Traddles would have made a perfect savage of himself, and eaten a plate- ful of raw meat, to express enjoyment of the repast, but I would hear of no such immolation on the altar of friend- 218 Homemaking ship; and we had a course of bacon instead; there happen- ing, by good fortune, to be cold bacon in the larder. My poor little wife was in such affliction when she thought I should be annoyed, and in such a state of joy when she found I was not, that the discomfiture I had sub- dued very soon vanished, and we passed a happy evening; Dora sitting with her arm on my chair while Traddles and I discussed a glass of wine, and taking every opportunity of whispering in my ear that it was so good of me not to be a cruel, cross old boy. By and by she made tea for us; which it was so pretty to see her do, as if she was busying herself with a set of doll’s tea things, that I was not par- ticular about the quality of the beverage. Then Traddles and I played a game or two at cribbage; and Dora singing to the guitar the while, it seemed to me as if our court- ship and marriage were a tender dream of mine, and the night when I first listened to her voice were not yet over. FIRE WORSHIP! By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE T is a great revolution in social and domestic life, and no less so in the life of a secluded student, this almost universal exchange of the open fireplace for the cheerless and un- genial stove. On such a morning as now lowers around our old gray parsonage I miss the bright face of my ancient friend, who was wont to dance upon the hearth and play the part of more familiar sunshine. It is sad to turn from the cloudy sky and somber landscape; from yonder hill, with its crown of rusty, black pines, the foliage of which is so dismal in the absence of the sun; that bleak pasture land, and the broken surface of the potato field, with the brown clods partly concealed by the snowfall of last night; the swollen sluggish river, with ice-incrusted borders, dragging its bluish-gray stream along the verge of our orchard like a snake half torpid with the cold, — it is sad to turn from an outward scene of so little comfort and find the same sullen influences brooding within the precincts of my study. Where is that brilliant guest, that quick and subtle spirit, whom Prometheus lured from heaven to civilize mankind and cheer them in their wintry desolation — that comfortable inmate, whose smile, during eight months of the year, was our sufficient consolation for summer’s lingering advance and early flight? Alas! blindly inhos- pitable, grudging the food that kept him cheery and mercurial, we have thrust him into an iron prison, and 1 From “ Mosses from an Old Manse.’’ By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. 219 220 Homemaking compel him to smolder away his life on a daily pittance which once would have been too scanty for his breakfast. Without a metaphor, we now make our fire in an air- tight stove, and supply it with some half a dozen sticks of wood between dawn and nightfall. I never shall be reconciled to this enormity. Truly may it be said that the world looks darker for it. In one way or another, here and there and all around us, the inventions of mankind are fast blotting the pictur- esque, the poetic, and the beautiful out of human life. The domestic fire was a type of all these attributes, and seemed to bring might and majesty, and wild nature and a spiritual essence into our inmost home, and yet to dwell with us in such friendliness that its mysteries and marvels excited no dismay. The same wild companion that smiled so placidly in our faces was he that comes roaring out of Aitna and rushes madly up the sky like a fiend breaking loose from torment and fighting for a place among the upper angels. He it is, too, that leaps from cloud to cloud amid the crashing thunderstorm. It was he whom the Gheber worshiped with no unnatural idolatry; and it was he who devoured London and Moscow and many another famous city; and who loves to riot through our own dark forests and sweep across our prairies, and to whose ravenous maw, it is said, the universe shall one day be given as a final feast. Meanwhile he is the great artisan and laborer by whose aid men are enabled to build a world within a world, or, at least, to smooth down the rough creation which Nature flung to us. He forges the mighty anchor and every lesser instrument; he drives the steamboat and drags the rail car; and it was he — this creature of terrible might, and so many-sided utility and all-comprehensive destructiveness — that used to be Fire Worship 221 the cheerful, homely friend of our wintry days, and whom we have made the prisoner of this iron cage. With how sweet humility did this elemental spirit per- form all needful offices for the household in which he was domesticated! He was equal to the concoction of a grand dinner, yet scorned not to roast a potato or toast a bit of cheese. How humanely did he cherish the schoolboy’s icy fingers, and thaw the old man’s joints with a genial warmth which almost equaled the glow of youth! And how carefully did he dry the cow- hide boots that had trudged through mud and snow, and the shaggy outside garment stiff with frozen sleet! taking heed, likewise, to the comfort -of the faithful dog who had followed his master through the storm. When did he refuse a coal to light a pipe, or even a part of his own substance to kindle a neighbor’s fire? And then at twilight, when laborer, or scholar, or mortal of whatever age, sex, or degree, drew a chair beside him and looked into his glowing face, how acute, how pro- found, how comprehensive was his sympathy with the mood of each and all! He pictured forth their very thoughts. To the youthful he showed the scenes of the adventurous life before them; to the aged the shadows of departed love and hope; and if all earthly things had grown distasteful, he could gladden the fireside muser with golden glimpses of a better world. And, amid this varied communion with the human soul, how busily would the sympathizer, the deep moralist, the painter of magic pictures be causing the teakettle to boil! Nor did it lessen the charm of his soft, familiar cour- tesy and helpfulness that the mighty spirit, were oppor- tunity offered him, would run riot through the peaceful house, wrap its inmates in his terrible embrace, and leave nothing of them save their whitened bones. This possi- 222 Homemaking bility of mad destruction only made his domestic kindness the more beautiful and touching. It was so sweet of him, being endowed with such power, to dwell day after day, and one long lonesome night after another, on the dusky hearth, only now and then betraying his wild nature by thrusting his red tongue out of the chimney top! True, he had done much mischief in the world, and was pretty certain to do more; but his warm heart atoned for all. He was kindly to the race of man; and they pardoned his characteristic imperfections. The good old clergyman, my predecessor in this man- sion, was well acquainted with the comforts of the fire- side. His yearly allowance of wood, according to the terms of his settlement, was no less than sixty cords. Almost an annual forest was converted from sound oak logs into ashes, in the kitchen, the parlor, and this little study, where now an unworthy successor, not in the pastoral office, but merely in his earthly abode, sits scrib- bling beside an air-tight stove. I love to fancy one of those fireside days while the good man, a contemporary of the Revolution, was in his early prime, some five and sixty years ago. Before sun- rise, doubtless, the blaze hovered upon the gray skirts of night and dissolved the frostwork that had gathered like a curtain over the small windowpanes. There is some- thing peculiar in the aspect of the morning fireside: a fresher, brisker glare; the absence of that mellowness which can be produced only by half-consumed logs, and shapeless brands with the white ashes on them, and mighty coals, the remnant of tree trunks that the hungry elements have gnawed for hours. The morning hearth, too, is newly swept, and the brazen andirons well bright- ened, so that the cheerful fire may see its face in them. Surely it was happiness, when the pastor, fortified with Fire Worship 223 a substantial breakfast, sat down in his armchair and slippers and opened the Whole Body of Divinity, or the Commentary on Job, or whichever of his old folios or quartos might fall within the range of his weekly sermons. It must have been his own fault if the warmth and glow of this abundant hearth did not permeate the discourse and keep his audience comfortable in spite of the bitterest: northern blast that ever wrestled with the church steeple. He reads while the heat warps the stiff covers of the volume; he writes without numbness either in his heart or fingers; and, with unstinted hand, he throws fresh, sticks of wood upon the fire. A parishioner comes in. With what warmth of be- nevolence — how should he be otherwise than warm in any of his attributes? — does the minister bid him wel- come, and set a chair for him in so close proximity to the hearth that soon the guest finds it needful to rub his scorched shins with his great red hands! The melted snow drips from his steaming boots and bubbles upon the hearth. His puckered forehead unravels its entangle- ment of crisscross wrinkles. We lose much of the en- joyment of fireside heat without such an opportunity of marking its genial effect upon those who have been look- ing the inclement weather in the face. In the course of the day our clergyman himself strides forth, perchance to pay a round of pastoral visits; or, it may be, to visit his mountain of a woodpile and cleave the monstrous logs into billets suitable for the fire. He returns with fresher life to his beloved hearth. During the short afternoon the western sunshine comes into the study and strives to stare the ruddy blaze out of counte- nance, but with only a brief triumph, soon to be suc- ceeded by brighter glories of its rival. Beautiful it is to see the strengthening gleam, the 224 Homemaking deepening light that gradually casts distinct shadows of the human figure, the table, and the high-backed chairs upon the opposite wall, and at length, as twilight comes on, replenishes the room with living radiance and makes life all rose color. Afar the wayfarer discerns the flicker- ing flame as it dances upon the windows, and hails it as a beacon light of humanity, reminding him, in his cold and lonely path, that the world is not all snow and soli- tude and desolation. At eventide, probably, the study was peopled with the clergyman’s wife and family, and children tumbled them- selves upon the hearth rug, and grave puss sat with her back to the fire, or gazed, with a semblance of human meditation, into its fervid depths. Seasonably the plen- teous ashes of the day were raked over the moldering brands, and from the heap came jets of flame, and an incense of night-long smoke creeping quietly up the chimney. Heaven forgive the old clergyman! In his later life, when for almost ninety winters he had been gladdened by the firelight, — when it had gleamed upon him from infancy to extreme age, and never without brightening his spirits as well as his visage, and perhaps keeping him alive so long, — he had the heart to brick up his chimney- place and bid farewell to the face of his old friend forever, why did he not take an eternal leave of the sunshine too? His sixty cords of wood had probably dwindled to a far less ample supply in modern times; and it is certain that the parsonage had grown crazy with time and tempest and pervious to the cold; but still it was one of the saddest tokens of the decline and fall of open fireplaces that the gray patriarch should have deigned to warm himself at an air-tight stove. And I, likewise,—-who have found a home in this Fire Worship 225 ancient owl’s nest since its former occupant took his heavenward flight, — I, to my shame have put up stoves in kitchen and parlor and chamber. Wander where you will about the house, not a glimpse of the earth-born, heaven-aspiring fiend of tna, — him that sports in the thunderstorm, the idol of the Ghebers, the devourer of cities, the forest rioter and prairie sweeper, the future destroyer of our earth, the old chimney-corner companion who mingled himself so sociably with household joys and sorrows, — not a glimpse of this mighty and kindly one will greet your eyes. He is now an invisible presence. There is his iron cage. Touch it and he scorches your fingers. He de- lights to singe a garment or perpetrate any other little unworthy mischief; for his temper is ruined by the in- gratitude of mankind, for whom he cherished such warmth of feeling, and to whom he taught all their arts, even that of making his.own prison house. In his fits of rage he puffs volumes of smoke and noisome gas through the crevices of the door, and shakes the iron walls of his dungeon so as to overthrow the ornamental urn upon its summit. We tremble lest he should break forth amongst us. Much of his time is spent in sighs, burdened with unutterable grief, and long drawn through. the funnel. He amuses himself, too, with repeating all the whispers, the moans, and the louder utterances or tempestuous howls of the wind; so that the stove becomes a microcosm of the aérial world. Occasionally there are strange combinations of sounds, —voices talking almost articulately within the hollow chest of iron, — insomuch that fancy beguiles me with the idea that my firewood must have grown in that infernal forest of lamentable trees which breathed their complaints to Dante. When the listener is half asleep he may readily 226 Homemaking take these voices for the conversation of spirits and assign them an intelligible meaning. Anon there is a pattering noise, — drip, drip, drip, — as if a summer shower were falling within the narrow circumference of the stove. These barren and tedious eccentricities are all that the air-tight stove can bestow in exchange for the in- valuable moral influences which we have lost by our desertion of the open fireplace. Alas! is this world so very bright that we can afford to choke up such a domes- tic fountain of gladsomeness, and sit down by its darkened source without being conscious of gloom? It is my belief that social intercourse can not long continue what it has been, now that we have subtracted from it so important and vivifying an element as fire- light. The effects will be more perceptible on our chil- dren and the generations that shall succeed them than ourselves, the mechanism of whose life may remain un- changed, though its spirit be far other than it was. The sacred trust of the household fire has been transmitted in unbroken succession from the earliest ages and faithfully cherished in spite of every discouragement, such as the curfew law of the Norman conquerors, until in these evil days physical science has nearly succeeded in extinguish- ing it. But we at least have our youthful recollections tinged with the glow of the hearth, and our lifelong habits and associations arranged on the principle of a mutual bond in the domestic fire. Therefore, though the sociable friend be forever departed, yet in a degree he will be spiritually present with us; and still more will the empty forms which were once full of his rejoicing presence con- tinue to rule our manners. We shall draw our chairs together as we and our forefathers have been wont for thousands of years back, and sit around some blank Fire Worship 227 and empty corner of the room, babbling. with unreal cheerfulness of topics suitable to the homely fireside. A warmth from the past — from the ashes of bygone years and the raked-up embers of long ago — will some- times thaw the ice about our hearts; but it must be otherwise with our successors. On the most favorable supposition, they will be ac- quainted with the fireside in no better shape than that of the sullen stove; and more probably they will have grown up amid furnace heat in houses which might be fancied to have their foundation over the infernal pits whence sulphurous steams and unbreathable exhalations, ascend through the apertures of the floor. There will be nothing to attract these poor children to one center. They will never behold one another through that pecu- liar medium of vision — the ruddy gleam of blazing wood or bituminous coal— which gives the human spirit so deep an insight into its fellows and melts all humanity into one cordial heart of hearts. Domestic life, if it may still be termed domestic, will seek its separate corners, and never gather itself into groups. The easy gossip; the merry yet unambitious jest; the lifelike, practical dis- cussion of real matters in a casual way; the soul of truth which is so often incarnated in a simple fireside word, — will disappear from earth. Conversation will contract the air of debate and all mortal intercourse be chilled with a: fatal frost. In classic times, the exhortation to fight “‘pro aris et focis,” for the altars and the hearths, was considered the strongest appeal that could be made to patriotism. And it seemed an immortal utterance; for all subsequent ages and people have acknowledged its force and responded to it with the full portion of manhood that Nature had assigned to each. Wisely were the altar and the hearth 228 Homemaking conjoined in one mighty sentence; for the hearth, too, had its kindred sanctity. . Religion sat down beside it, not in the priestly robes which decorated and perhaps disguised her at the altar, but arrayed in a simple matron’s garb, and uttering her lessons with the tenderness of a mother’s voice and heart. The holy hearth! If any earthly and material thing, or rather a divine idea embodied in brick and mortar, might be supposed to possess the permanence of moral truth, it was this. All revered it. The man who did not put off his shoes upon this holy ground would have deemed it pastime to trample upon the altar. It has been our task to uproot the hearth. What further reform is left for our children to achieve, unless they overthrow the altar, too? And by what appeal hereafter, when the breath of hostile armies may mingle with the poor, cold breezes of our country, shall we attempt to rouse up native valor? Fight for your hearths? There will be none throughout the land. Ficut ror your stoves! Not I, in faith. If in such a cause I strike a blow, it shall be on the invader’s part; and Heaven grant that it may shatter the abomination all to pieces. BUILDING A HOUSE By HENRY WARD BEECHER BHHOUSE is the shape which a man’s thoughts ar take when he imagines how he should like SEG to live. The interior is the measure of his social and domestic nature; the exterior, of his esthetic and artistic nature. It interprets, in material forms, his ideas of home, of friendship, and of comfort. Every man is, in a small way, a creator. We seek to embody our fancies and thoughts in some material shape —to give them an incarnation. Born in our spirit — invisible and intangible—we are always seeking to thrust them forth, so that they shall return to us through some of the physical senses. Thus speech brings back our imaginings to the ear; writing brings them back to the eye; painting brings out the thoughts and feelings, in forms and colors, addressed, through the eye, to several inward tastes; and building presents to our senses our thought of home life. But one’s dwelling is not always to be taken as the fair index of his mind, any more than the richness of one’s mind is judged by one’s fluency in speech or skill in writing. The conceiving power may be greater in us than the creative or expressing power. There are other considerations which usually have more to do with building, especially in America, than a man’s inward fancies. In fact, in the greatest number of instances, a man’s house may be regarded as simply the measure of his purse. It is a compromise between his heart and his pocket. It is a memorial of his ingenuity in procuring 229 230 Homemaking the utmost possible convenience and room from the least possible means; for our young men — ninety-nine in a hundred — are happily born; that is, born poor, but determined to be rich. This gives birth to industry, frugality, ingenuity, perseverance, and success, inward and outward; for, while making his fortune, the man is making himself. He is extracting manly qualities out of those very labors or endurances by which he achieves material wealth. In the career of every such young man his accumula- tions have to perform three functions, —-to carry on his business, to meet the annual expenses of his little but growing family, and to build and beautify their home. Thus, his property, slender at best, even if it all rose in one channel, must move in a threefold channel, to carry three mills. The portion set apart for building, there- fore, must be very little. Indeed, it is to be doubted whether one in a hundred knows how he shall pay for more than half his house, when he begins to build, and he is seldom much wiser when he ends. He draws upon hope, and when, in five or ten years, the house is paid for, it would puzzle him to say how he had done it. Under such circumstances, it would be absurd to look for what are called architectural effects. There must be, if possible, a kitchen and a bedroom. In pioneer life, even these must come together, and one room serve every purpose. But, usually, a man can afford a kitchen, a dining-room (which is also a parlor), and a bedroom. These three rooms are the seed and type of all other rooms which can be built; for all apartments must serve our bodily wants, our social domestic wants, and our social public wants. The kitchen and dining-room, and all appurtenances thereof, are for the animal nature; our bedroom and sitting-room and library are for our Building a House 231 home social wants; and our parlors, halls, and other rooms for our more public social necessities. While one is yet poor, one room must serve several uses. In the old-fashioned country houses the kitchen was also the dining-room; and never will saloon, how admirable soever, be so pleasant as our remembered hours in the great, broad, hospitable kitchen. The door opened into the well room, on one side, whence came the pitcher, all dripping and bedewed; another door opened into the cheese room, rich with rows of yellow cheeses; while the front door, wide open in summer, attracted clucking hens and peeping chickens, who cocked an eye at you, or even ventured across the threshold after a stray crumb. The sitting-room and parlor, too, must often be one and the same, and in the same space must be the library, if such a thing is known in the dwelling. Bedrooms are more independent and aristocratic than anything else, cultivating very exclusive habits. Yet, even bedrooms must contrive to be ingenious. Curtained corners, cloth partitions, trundle-beds and sofa-beds, that disappear by day, like some flowers, unfold only at night. But, in proportion as one’s means increase, the rooms, like branches in a plant, grow out-of each other, kitchen and dining-room must separate and live by themselves. The sitting-room withdraws from the parlor, taking all the ease and comfort with it, and leaving all the state- liness and frigid dignity. All the books walk off into a little black-walnut room by themselves, where they stand in patient splendor and silent wisdom behind their glass doors. The flowers abandon the windows, and inhabit a formal conservatory. Bedrooms multiply, each one standing in single blessedness. The house is full-grown. 232 Homemaking Alas! too often all its comfort goes, just when it should stand full blossomed! How many persons, from out of their two-story frame dwellings, have sighed across the way for the log cabin! How many persons have moved from a home into a house; from low ceilings, narrow halls, rooms of multifarious uses, into splendid apart- ments, whose chief effect was to make them homesick. But this is because pride or vanity was the new archi- tect. For a large house is a grand and almost indispen- sable element to our fullest idea of comfort. But it must be social largeness. The broad halls must seem to those that enter like open arms, holding out a welcome, not like the aisles of a church, lifted up out of reach of human sympathy. ‘The staircase should be so broad and gentle in inclination that its very looks invite you to try it. But, then, a large house ought to have great diversity; some rooms should have a ceiling higher than others; doors should come upon you in unexpected places; little cozy rooms should surprise you in every direction. Where you expected a cupboard, there should be a little confidential entryway. Where the door seems to open into the yard, you should discover a sweet little nest that happened into the plan as bright thoughts now and then shine in the soul. Adl sorts of closets and queer cup- boards should by degrees be found out. Now, such a house never sprang full-grown from an architect’s brain, as did the fabled deity from Jupiter’s head. It must grow. Each room must have been needed for a long time, and come into being with a de- cided character impressed upon them. They will have been aimed at some real want, and, meeting it, will take their subtle air and character from it. Thus, one by one, the rooms will be born’ into the house as children are into the family. And, as our affections have un- Building a House 233 doubtedly a certain relation to form, color, and space, so our rooms will in their forms, dimensions, and hues, indicate the faculties which most wrought in their pro- duction. We all know what is meant, in painting, in music, and in writing, by conventionalism. Men write or fashion, not to give ease to an impulse in them that struggles for birth, but because they have an outside knowledge that such and such things would be proper and customary. So do men build conventional houses. They put all the customary rooms in the customary manner. They ex- press themselves in this room as kitchens are usually expressed; they fashion parlors as they remember that parlors have been made; they go to their books, their plans, and portfolios of what has been done, and, select- ing here a thing and there a thing, they put a house together as girls do patchwork bedspreads, —a piece out of every dress in the family for the last year or two. These are conventional houses. Such are almost all city houses — the original type of which was a ladder;. from each round rooms issue, in ascending order, and the perpendicular stairs still retain the peculiar properties of the type. Such, too, are almost all ambitious country houses, built in conspicuous places, in the most intrusive and come-and-look-at-me manner; painted as brilliantly as flash peddlers’ wagons, or parrots’ wings. Until men are educated, and good taste is far more common than it is, this method of building houses, by the architect’s plans, and not by the owner’s disposition, must prevail; and it is not the worst of earth’s imper- fections. But a genuine house, an original house, a house that expresses the builder’s inward idea of life in its social and domestic aspect, can not be planned for him; nor can he, all at once, sit down and plan it. It 234. Homemaking must be a result of his own growth. It must first be wanted — each room and each nook. But, as we come to ourselves little by little and gradually, so a house should either be built by successive additions, or it should be built when we are old enough to put together the accumulated ideas of our life. Alas! when we are old enough for that, we are ready to die; or Time hath dealt so rudely with our hearts that, like trees at whose boughs tempests have wrought, we are not anxious to give expression to ourselves. The best way to build, therefore, is to build, as trees grow, season by season; all after branches should grow with a symmetrical sympathy with older ones. In this way, too, one may secure that mazy diversity, that most unlooked-for intricacy in a dwelling, and that utter variation of lines in the exterior, which pleases the eye, or ought to please it, if it be trained in the absolute school of Nature, and which few could ever invent at once, and on purpose! We abhor Grecian architecture for private dwellings, and especially for country homes. It is cheerless, pre- tentious, frigid. Those cold long-legged columns, hold- ing up a useless pediment that shelters nothing and shades nothing, remind one of certain useless men in society, for ever occupied with maintaining their dignity, which means their perpendicularity. In spite of Mr. Ruskin, we do like Grecian architecture in well-placed public buildings. But it gives us a shiver to see dwell- ings so stiff and stately. We have, too, a special doctrine of windows. They are designed to let the light in, and equally to let the sight out; and this last function is, in the country, of prime importance. For a window is but another name for a stately picture. There are no such landscapes on canvas as those which you see through glass. There are Building a House 235 no painted windows like those which trees and lawns paint standing in upon them, with all the glory of God resting on them! Our common, small, frequent windows in country dwellings are contemptible. We love rather the gener- ous old English' windows, large as the whole side of a room, many-angled, or circular; but, of whatever shape, they should be recessed — glorious nooks of light, the very antithesis of those shady coverts which we search out in forests, in hot summer days. These little cham- bers of light, into which a group may gather, and be both indoors and out of doors at the same time; where, in storms or in winter, we may have full access to the elements without a chill, wet, or exposure, — these are the glory of a dwelling. The great treasures of a dwell- ing are the child’s cradle, the grandmother’s chair, the hearth and old-fashioned fireplace, the table, and the window. Bedrooms should face the east, and let in the full flush of morning light. There is a positive pleasure in a golden bath of early morning light. Your room is filled and glorified. You awake in the very spirit of light. It creeps upon you, and suffuses your soul, pierces your sensibility, irradiates the thoughts, and warms and cheers the whole day. It is sweet to awake and find your thoughts moving to the gentle measures of soft music; but we think it full as sweet to float into morn- ing consciousness upon a flood of golden light, silent though it be! What can be more delicious than a sum- mer morning, dawning through your open windows, to the sound of innumerable birds, while the shadows of branches and leaves sway to and fro along the wall, or spread new patterns on the floor, wavering with per- petual change! THE SELECTION OF A HOME? By CLARENCE A. MARTIN = AST or west, hame’s best,” runs the adage = now so often carved or painted over the prin- | cipal fireplace in the house as expressive of the sentiments of the family. It may or may not be true that ‘“‘hame’s best.” It depends upon a great variety of conditions, not the least important of which is the wisdom or unwisdom that has dictated the selection of a site. In this process of selection, primary at least in point of time, if not in some other respects, two sorts of considerations are nearly always taken into account, the practical and the esthetic. As long as we remain what we are, creatures in whom the possibility of intellectual and esthetic enjoyment is strictly dependent upon physical well-being, so long the practical considerations, those that affect the material welfare and the health, particularly the health, of the dwellers in the home, must remain the fundamentally im- portant ones. Fortunately, it happens somewhat rarely that a site esthetically desirable is incorrigibly bad from a sanitary point of view. The healthful location of the home is indeed a matter of the gravest importance. It not infrequently accounts for all of the difference between the rugged health and prosperity of one family and the poverty-stricken in- validism of another. The gospel of “pure air, pure soil, and pure water” has been heralded abroad vigorously, 1¥rom “The Cosmopolitan Magazine.” Copyright, 1903, by the International Magazine Company. 236 The Selection of a Home 20 but not vigorously enough. How can one expect to rear healthy, robust children on a soil saturated with filth, in an air laden with noxious gases or disease germs, and with water that is little less than a saturated solution of decaying vegetation or that may be subject to pollution from cesspools or barnyards, or may be the drainage from pestilential swamps? When one goes out to seek a site for the building of a home — or if he go out to find a home of the ready-to- occupy kind — he should go with a mind well fortified to think for himself, and to weigh most carefully the advantages and the disadvantages of every site proposed. Or, trusting to the real-estate agent for a full presenta- tion of the advantages, both real and imaginary, he may very profitably confine himself to seeking the disad- vantages of each site. 3 The considerations are many and complex, some of them conflicting, many of them individual and personal. The suburbanite doing business in the city may well consider the proximity to the railway station or the elec- tric cars, the number and time of trains or cars, the cost of travel to and from business, and the like. Then one must always consider the neighborhood — whether the human environment be desirable or undesirable, and whether it is likely to grow better or worse in view of possible or probable future development. With the rapid growth of transportation facilities, thousands of families who were formerly obliged to live in cramped city flats are now able to go far out into the suburbs, or even into the country proper, where they may locate on comparatively broad areas and build themselves real homes, differing only in degree from those of their more wealthy neighbors who build more sumptuously and on larger fields. 238 Homemaking The general introduction of automobile stage lines will also modify the general scheme of residence, inasmuch as places hitherto impossible can without difficulty be made easily accessible. Whether one build large or small, the same questions come up. If I build here, how shall I dispose of the sew- age? Is there good, natural drainage for the property, or are the surroundings such that thorough drainage will be costly or impossible? Is the soil pure and clean, or is it contaminated by leaching cesspools on neighboring lots or by foul drainage from properties higher up? Have we here for our building good mother earth, or have we a place filled up as a city dump with all sorts of foul refuse, unsanitary to a degree and treacherously unstable? These and a thousand others of more or less importance are the questions that the prospective home builder should ask himself. That a lot is located on high ground or even on the top of a hill may be presumptive evidence that it is well drained; but it is not by any means a guarantee of good drainage, as many a heavy, soggy bit of land lies well up on the hilltops. It is true, however, that a lot ele- vated somewhat above the general level may usually be well drained without great difficulty or expense. The © general character of the soil plays an important paft, both in the matter of drainage and in the safe and secure building of the house. If the location be such that the household wastes may be discharged into a public sewer, the problems are simplified, and heavy clay or rock becomes unobjectionable as a foundation; but, if the sewage must be cared for on the premises, it is important that the soil be of such a nature that it will dispose of the foul wastes to the best advantage. Until some better method can be devised for the disposal of sew- The Selection of a Home 239 age at a reasonable cost under ordinary conditions, the dweller in the country must continue to have recourse to the common leaching cesspool, notwithstanding its well- recognized unsanitary aspect. Even with the most tol- erant, however, the cesspool becomes intolerable in a heavy clay soil or in rock that holds that foul matter, causing it to back up into the house drains or overflow on the surface of the ground. The parable of the wise man who built his house upon a rock, and of the other man who built on the sands, was uttered before the ‘“‘house with modern improvements” had made its appearance or modern sanitary science had been evolved. A rock foundation is unimpeachable for stability, but it may be very bad when it comes to a matter of drainage, whether it be for the disposal of sewage or of surface or ground water. A cellar excavated in the rock is usually a wet cellar, because the water leaches through the crevices and seams in the rock, and it is both difficult and expensive to trench and drain properly about the walls of a building in a medium so hard to excavate. To be sure, if the rock drops away quickly on a sharp grade, this difficulty may be altogether a minor one. A good gravel soil is one of the best to build upon in respect both to drainage and to the stability of the house; and compact sand, if not subject to the action of running water, is a most excellent foundation and a thoroughly good medium. The inexperienced home builder is altogether likely to underestimate the importance of these things that lie at the very foundation of good building. In one instance, a prospective buyer had all but closed negotiations for a site for his home; but, as a last thought, to make assur- ance doubly sure, he called upon his architect for advice. An inspection of the site disclosed, as the desirable fea- 240 Homemaking tures of the place, a most attractive outlook in several directions, a fine group of forest trees well distributed, and a comparatively small price for the property. The level of the lot was several feet below the street level; but this, it was explained, could easily be filled up, and the drainage appeared to be excellent. A more careful inquiry, however, disclosed the fact that there were no sewers to receive the wastes from the house, while a superficial inspection showed solid rock within a foot of the surface of the earth — an impossible proposition for a cesspool, unless, indeed, it were to be made a per- fectly tight reservoir, from which the sewage would have to be pumped at frequent intervals. The filling in of the earth to bring the grade up to the level of the street would most surely kill all the trees, and, furthermore, no one seemed to have any definite idea as to where earth could be obtained for the filling. A bit of prospecting discovered another property only a few rods distant from the first, on the opposite side of the same street. The outlook from this second property was excellent, though not quite so attractive in some ways as that from the first; the surface of the lot was higher, and a bed of clean gravel some ten or twelve feet deep overlaid the rock; no grading nor filling in would be required, except such as might be done satis- factorily with the earth taken from the cellar; and this grading would in no wise disturb the trees, which were fully as fine as, if not finer than, those on the first lot. The cost of the second location was something like three hundred dollars more than that of the first, but the cost of building on the first would have been fully one thou- sand dollars more than on the second, and the final result would have been far less satisfactory. In general, it may be said that a dry soil is likely to be The Selection of a Home 241 healthful, and a wet soil unhealthful, although it would be very unwise to let the conclusions rest on this evidence alone. The dry soil may be light, spongy, and treacher- ous artificial filling, absolutely unfit to build upon; or . the wetness of a piece of ground may be due to a single spring of water that might be easily carried off and dis- posed of by inexpensive drainage. The dangers of the soil are real dangers, all the more real and the more to be feared because they are so easily covered from sight, and allowed to work their mischief in the dark and undetected until the health of the family is thoroughly undermined. After one has satisfied one’s self with reference to the soil and the drainage, including the disposal of the sew- age, the next step should be to place himself on the loca- tion of the proposed house and take a good look about, endeavoring to see everything, to see it in its best and in its worst aspect, and to consider it in its relation to one’s future home. It is not always possible to face the house toward the south; but a southern exposure, even in the heat of summer, and certainly in the cold of winter, is distinctly desirable; while a direct northern exposure is the least desirable of all. The front door should see much of the sunlight if it would be a cheery and inviting entrance. If the exposure is right, the next consideration is the sur- roundings. Are there any mills or factories in the im- mediate neighborhood to pour out their vile smells in the direction of the home? It should be borne in mind that the winds sometimes carry noxious odors long dis- tances, and final conclusions must not be drawn from investigations within a short radius, and without con- sidering the direction of the prevailing winds. Naturally the question of the outlook from the house 242 Homemaking resolves itself into one of esthetics, though the esthetic and the comfortable go somewhat closely hand in hand, and comfort contributes materially to practical happi- ness. If a man has unlimited means, he can go where he likes and make what he likes; but with a small purse the prospective home builder must needs make many com- promises. He must decide whether it were better for him, in order that he may be nearer his work, to take a small lot within narrow limits, and thus have his neigh- bor cut off all but his street view; or whether he shall go farther into the country, and be less conveniently located with reference to his work, in order that he may have room to grow and breathe freely, and that he may have an outlook unconfined by suggestion of tenement district crowding. It is well worth some effort, even the constant. daily effort entailed by an extra walk of ten, fifteen, or even twenty minutes, to be near to the heart of Nature and to be free from the oppressiveness of your good neighbor’s wall butting almost up to your window ledge. If one may not feast on ‘“‘magnificent distances” over hill and valley, still the middle distances of plain or wood, or even a few of Nature’s own trees of rough and rugged growth, gathered protectingly about the home nest, are treasures that can not be measured in value by the gold standard. If a lot without trees must be bought, then by all means let trees be planted; let them be planted soon and plentifully and without formality. But, after all has been done that man can do, one can not get on the same intimate and loving terms with the cultivated tree that one can with the sturdy, though gnarled and, perhaps, misshapen trees that have survived unaided in the strug- gle with the elements. The immediate surroundings of The Selection of a Home 243 the home, the things that are to become almost a part of the household itself, and the near-by vistas leading temptingly away to — well, to anything one may choose to imagine in one’s dreamy moments, are things.too far- reaching in their influence on the family life to be thought lightly of or neglected. . A broad, distant view is always a desirable thing in any location. In some way it seems to have the effect of broadening one’s mental and spiritual as well as his physical horizon. There are all sorts of beauties in a distant prospect. Even the dust and vapors and the burning sunshine of a treeless plain take on colors that would make the fame of an artist, could he but transfer them to his canvas. Distance, and the cool, comfort- able home as the point of view, lend all the enchantment one could desire. A location that gives a broad view of hills and valleys, with perhaps a glimpse of water, is an ideal situation vouchsafed to a few fortunate ones; but the distant view is robbed of much of its enchantment and becomes more or less an artificial thing, unless it may be traced back through an agreeable foreground that leads even up to one’s own borders and links the whole together in one harmonious and continuous composition. That people appreciate neither sanitary science nor art in the location of a home is amply shown on all hands. As the writer sits at his window, overlooking the city in the valley, he sees literally hundreds of houses, many of them ample, and with a well-to-do air, and not a few of them elaborate and evidently the abode of wealth, built upon a low, flat, sodden plain, with the low-water mark anywhere from two to six feet below the surface of the earth, and the high-water mark anywhere from the surface of the lawns to the level of the first floor, and 244 Homemaking with cesspools and wells of drinking water hobnobbing in brotherly love in spite of the board of health, a good sewerage system and a fair, city water supply. On the hills surrounding this city in the valley are fine building sites innumerable, with perfect drainage, commanding magnificent views for many miles over hills, lake, and valley, and well shaded by good, rugged forest trees of oak, maple, elm, pine and hemlock. These lots are not only much larger than the lots in the val- ley, but cost in the open market considerably less than do the latter; and yet, a considerable majority of the people prefer to live in the valley, with all of its unbear- able oppressiveness, rather than on the hillside, with its fine air, fine drainage, and perfect views; and, not only that, they must needs revile as a ‘‘freak’’ one who dares exult in his freedom. ORGANISM OF THE HOUSE! By HELEN CAMPBELL AN CCUSTOMED as we are to considering (Bh i houses from the inside as conveniences — b A 5 or inconveniences — for living, and from the outside as things to be looked at, or more often to be looked away from,—this thought of the house as an organism with structural necessities and vital processes is perhaps an unusual one to present. But a house is a created thing. It is born of the brain and hand of man; it lives by his care, and dies when its time is come, the quicker if man’s care is withdrawn from it. This we know practically in the fact that a house keeps in repair better when occupied, that a rentless tenant is better than none, and that large buildings when vacated are supplied with “caretakers” to partially inhabit them. To prevent the too rapid ravages of decomposition by air and water, the house must be aired and sunned and internally heated, and intelligent care used to repair acci- dental injuries, as well as those caused by essential decay. The internal organism of the house involves all these considerations: It must be so windowed as to admit light to all parts, lest harm be done unseen; there must be means of access to and examination of all parts; and there should be means of heating all parts with some approach to equability. : A well-cared-for house may be lived in longer and more comfortably than a neglected one. Yet this is but 1¥rom “Household Economics.” Copyright, 1907, by G. P Put- nam’s Sons. 245 246 Homemaking a minor consideration compared with the needs of the living beings inside — the detachments of humanity using that shelter in common. The great reason for ventilation in the modern house is that we live in it all the time. We no longer live out- of-doors and merely go into the house to sleep, — though our primitive-natured children still like to do so. We live and work mainly under shelter, and therefore need that shelter ventilated. The need for air is as definite as the need of food; and the result of foul air is as certain as that of foul food. This we know in a certain dim way, as we know the distance of the fixed stars; but we do not act upon it. We have progressed from the filth and brutality of the savage in many ways, but in some ways not at all. Our eating habits, for instance, are tolerably refined. We like our food to be of good quality, pure and clean in material and preparation, regularly and amply provided, and served to us individually on clean plates. But our breathing habits! We are content to breathe air that the savage would scorn to stay in by day, air insufficient in quantity, irregular in supply, and mixed with all manner of artificial impurities, — mingled more- over in charming catholicity — all of us serenely partak- ing of one another’s breath with a courteous disregard of its manifold circulation through our defiled and outraged lungs. The more a house is lived in, and the more people who live in it, the more it is a place of industry and enjoyment as well as of shelter and rest, — the more it needs air; and as a house is not open to the winds of heaven, its ventilation must be artificially provided. Right here is where the position of woman has had a marked effect on the health of therace. Speaking broadly, she has about half as much fresh air as is enjoyed by her Organism of the House 247 outgoing companion, with the same degree of consequence to herself and children as if she had half as much food as she required. Not only is her air insufficient, it is bad air necessarily, — and commensurately injurious. Nowadays, when tomboydom is recognized and to gad abroad is no longer a reproach, this curse is lifted in large measure; but time was when it was said, ‘‘A woman should leave her home but three times— when she is christened, when she is married, and when she is buried.” Also, ‘‘The woman, the cat, and the chimney should never leave home.” Perhaps that answerless problem of perplexed mother- hood, ‘‘How to keep the boys at home,” might find partial solution from this point of view. Give the boys air, good air and plenty of it. Sturdy little animals with racing blood and vigorous lungs, no wonder they ‘“‘want to go outdoors!”” And it is largely because of the years of association of out-of-doors with its clean wealth of air and accompanying strength and pleasure, and in- doors with its enforced detention and foul suffocation to the poor little lungs, that makes the older boy so in- stinctively refuse to stay at home. We even sometimes compel our children to stay in the house as a punishment, — a colossal mistake for a home builder. Our houses ought to be as pure and fresh in air as they try to be in food, —and they will when women learn household economics. Side by side with even the highest evolution walks prejudice; the ghost of a past that will not down and that perpetually modifies action. It is this ghost that whis- pers, “‘Night' air!” and grins a satisfied grin as windows go down, and the lungs which — from the very fact of slower breathing during sleep — require the purest pos- sible supply of air, become half asphyxiated and take 248 Homemaking their revenge in colds, pneumonia, and all forms of throat disease. The stout German whom I have seen sitting peacefully drinking his beer in a garden white with hoar frost, goes home to hermetically sealed doors and windows, often with cotton in his ears, lest through an unguarded aper- ture some breath of air should find entrance. The Frenchman who dines outside the café on the boulevard until the snow comes, follows the same custom, and Southern Europe is of the same mind, — night air being held to be deadly in its nature. Yet once more one is compelled to ask, if we do not breathe night air at night, what do we breathe? And the answer is that we breathe something so foul that a chemical test applied would show it black and deadly as any Stygian mist. Ben- jamin Franklin, one of the most common-sense men America or any other country has ever known, wrote more than a hundred years ago: “‘I shall not try to ex- plain why catarrhs are caused by damp rather than wet clothes, because I doubt the fact, and suspect that the causes of respiratory affections are totally independent of dampness as well as of cold.” Consumptives who have been coughing their lives away in stove or steam-heated rooms, recover in a lumber * camp. I have seen in Minnesota patients so ill that they were carried on litters, put into a bed of pine boughs in a lumber camp, where air came in at every chink, and where the only defense against it was rolling in blankets, and come out at the end of three months cured. In the pine woods of Maine the same thing has been done for years by a famous specialist in consumption, who has a camp in the deep woods, and whose cures are so certain that a relapse is rarely known. We all know that in war time delicate lungs, which had been watched with Organism of the House 249 lifelong precaution, went into camp, and in spite of camp hardships, came out cured, relapsing only on return to close barrack quarters. Pine balsam is an antidote and the deep woods a pro- tection, but in a variable climate such results would not be possible, says the objector. How then about the hunter, the herder, the teamster, exposed to every pos- sible variation, and emerging more sturdy than before? It is the operative in a steam-heated factory, or the dweller in the hot, weather-proof house of the city, who requires this constantly increasing army of throat and lung specialists, while the conductor or pilot, exposed to the fiercest kind of draft, comes home none the worse for it. The heat habit is as insiduous as the drink habit, and its results are hardly less fatal. In the sort of tempera- ture the American loves, the skin dries and loses any power to fulfill its natural office. The victims of grip, so physicians testify, were, in the great proportion of cases, people who were in terror of a draft, and lived in superheated rooms. Croup for babies, bronchitis, and all the train of throat and lung diseases, are the natural consequence of breathing hot vitiated air, and the na- tional catarrh, partly responsible for the ‘‘ American voice,’’ comes from the same cause. The three essentials of all ventilation may be summed up in a few words. 1. To provide an abundance of pure air in all parts of the house. 2. To avoid drafts, either hot or cold. 3. To provide means of escape for all foul air and odors. Our ventilation, public and private, is a farce which also includes a tragedy. In the magnificent buildings of 250 Homemaking the new Inns of Court in London, judges and jury at their first occupancy of the courtrooms grew faint for want of air, and an adjournment had to be taken, because the construction of the chambers was such that fresh air was forbidden entrance; nor could these chambers be used until alterations had been made to admit the air. New York’s famous five-million-dollar courthouse is similarly faulty in its construction, with the result that several judges have died as a result of diseases caused by its lack of rational ventilation, and men who have mounted the bench with strong and robust constitutions have been made invalids for a large part of the year. A protracted trial in one of these courtrooms is generally followed by an epidemic of sickness among judges, law- yers, jurymen, clerks, and reporters, obliged by their duties to breathe such pollution from morning to night day after day for weeks. We know that fire in every form, from furnace to gas jet or lamp, feeds upon oxygen, and that where these forms of fire are busy satisfying themselves with our store of food, we must ourselves either starve or furnish a double supply. There is but one method warranted to work infallibly, and that is a warm-air flue, the upward heated current of which draws off the foul gases from the. room. ‘This, supplemented by an opening on the oppo- site side of the room for the admission of pure air, will accomplish the desired end. An open fireplace also ac- complishes this as long as fire is burning and a draft created. The simplest plan is to have ample openings from eight to twelve inches square at the top and bottom of each room, opening into the chimney flue. In this case, even if stoves are used, the flue can be kept heated by the extension of the stovepipe some distance up the Organism of the House 251 chimney, and the ascending current of hot air will draw the foul air from the room into the flue. This, as before said, must be completed by a fresh-air opening into the room on the other side. If no other can be had, the top of the window may be lowered a trifle, or a board the precise width of the sash and four or five inches high may be used. Raise the lower sash, put this board under it, and an upward current of air will be created which will do much to purify the room. In the ordinary house, the direct action of heat on the air itself is the ventilating power. In hospitals, theaters, and other large buildings, fresh air must be forced in by a steam engine or electric motor and foul air drawn out in the same way. But remember that the popular notion most people hold, that air will rise simply because it is hot, has been proved to be as untrue as the ‘‘night-air”’ fallacy. Hot air rises because it is lighter than the cold air around it, just as a cork rises and floats in the water. As air heats it expands, and the warm air tends to dis- place the cold air, which, being heavier, glides under it and drives it upwards. To this end we attach a cold-air box to the furnace, so that cold air outside the house can pass through it and drive that which is heated upward through the house. This warmed air accumulates in the top of the room, but does not change so quickly as that near the floor; hence the need of the devices mentioned for changing it. In some flues a gas jet is kept burning to warm them to the necessary point, or the waste heat of another chimney is utilized. A mere ventilating shaft will not ventilate. It requires heat to produce a draft, and where a strong one is required for a very hot fire, as in furnaces for manufacturing purposes, very tall chim- neys are essential. The best mechanical ventilator is the globe ventilator, 252 Homemaking simple and ingenious and designed to overcome the effects of winds which may blow in such a way’as to drive back the rising column of heated air. But in the ordinary dwelling house there will usually have to be much reliance on windows as aids, and in much occupied rooms when their opening becomes neces- sary a screen may always be used to shut off direct draft if there is fear of it. We must remember, too, in connection with ventila- tion, that any causes producing foul air must not be allowed to continue for a moment. A vase of neglected decaying flowers will poison the air of a whole room. A decaying head of cabbage in cellar or area way, a basket of refuse vegetables, a collection of old scrubbing cloths, a foul garbage pail or box, — all these mean disease. Air and sunlight must search every corner of the house, and as nearly spotless cleanliness as may be, be the law. Without these first essentials of all life, constant slow murder will continue to go on, not only in our nurseries, but also in our public schools, whose ventilation, as a rule, is not much better than that of the ‘“‘Black Hole” of Calcutta. In factories and workshops we are equally guilty, — and white-faced, nerveless children grow into white-faced, nerveless men and women, the vicious circle repeating itself unchangingly. As a rule, we overheat our houses to a frightful degree, and we need first and most of all to guard against this tendency. At present, even with their varied ‘‘improve- ments,” the types of hot-air furnaces in use are all open to objections. A furnace is not the mystery the young housekeeper often considers it. It is only a large stove, standing in an inclosed air chamber. This inclosing is best if of brick, but may be of galvanized iron. A cold- air box connects this chamber with the outside air, and Organism of the House 253 the air from this ought to pass at least once around the furnace before entering the hot-air pipes. “Burnt air,” against which the intelligent physician warns patients, is that sent out by a small volume of highly heated air such as the cheap small furnaces fur- nish. The furnace and all its equipments of cold-air box, etc., should be large enough to supply the rooms with a large volume of air warmed to a temperature not exceeding one hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Such a volume will keep the house at from sixty-five to seventy degrees easily. Hot-water and steam-coil fur- naces give a better heat than the old-fashioned hot-air ones; but even these, with water-pan always full, cold- air box opening on out-of-doors, and a properly tended fire, give results not to be dreaded. Seventy degrees should be the maximum temperature of a room, and if the entire house could be kept evenly at sixty-five de- grees, people would be far healthier than they are at higher degrees. The chief advantage of a temperature at seventy de- grees is that it can contain more moisture than a lower one. There is no reason why the old, who require more heat than the young, should not obtain it by wearing more clothing instead of roasting the remainder of the household. Houses kept at from eighty to ninety degrees mean simply slow murder or suicide for all within their walls, and, as in most cases children are quite at the mercy of their elders’ tastes and habits, our national disease of catarrh is easily explained. From eighty-five degrees within to perhaps thirty degrees below without, as in Minnesota or Wisconsin, would give catarrh to a hippopotamus or an ichthyosaurus. If hot-air registers are set in the house, remember that they must always be placed in the partitions of the rooms 254 Homemaking if possible. If they are in the floor, dust is constantly swept into them; the carpets, if you have carpets, must all be cut; people will stand over them and take the most debilitating kind of warm bath. A decided advantage also of partition registers is that the heat is by them diffused more evenly through the room, and there is less waste through the ventilating apertures. Registers can never be beautiful, but wall registers are less harmful than floor registers. Gas is at no time a perfect heating medium, since active currents of air put it out. Gas or oil should only be employed for very temporary heating, as in a bath- room, and an airing of the room looked to when the fire is put out. Natural gas, so extensively used for this purpose where it is found, has all the advantages of ease of handling, cleanliness, and efficiency; but those who use it literally dry up, there being no way of using water- pan or otherwise lessening the drying quality of this sort of heat. Electricity is the agent to which we are to look as the coming heating power, — and if Mr. Tesla’s experiments succeed, we shall in good time be able to use it as freely as water. The matter of lighting really precedes heating; in fact, it belongs to each of the heads we treat here, since at* every stage we must have light as an active help in all cleaning processes, and so arranged that all plumbing may receive it. Natural light, otherwise sunshine, is tonic and disin- fectant in one, and the sunbath ought to be a possi- bility for every house. The best hospitals have now a solarium on the roof, and not only are delicate patients strengthened, but it has been found both quieting and healing in all forms of nervous diseases. Delicate chil- dren are made over by this treatment, and more and more Organism of the House 255 * wise physicians are disposed to banish artificial heat as much as possible and to use sunshine as a formal pre- scription. The artificial-light habit grows with civilization, and a fashionable luncheon shuts out sunlight, which is a keen detective and less friendly to rouge and powder than shaded candles. The softly diffused electric light promised us by Tesla will be almost as pervading as sun- light, but the electric light as we have it at present is hard in quality and trying to the eyes, as well as to dress and complexion. Its best use is as policeman, since its adop- tion in our great cities has lessened crime to a consider- able extent and made some forms of it impossible. The cost of the electric light makes it at present impracticable for average houses, which must still use gas or oil lamps. The uncertain flickering flame of the first is bad for the eyes, and either argand burner or porcelain shade should be used as protection. The steady light of a student lamp is best for all who must use the eyes hours at a time; next best are the Rochester and other like forms, any of them preferable in quality of light to gas, although the heat they throw out is at times very disagreeable. Lamps require constant care in proper filling and trim- ming of the wicks, but they repay the trouble in the im- proved steadiness of the light. Only the best oil should be used. The crust on the burned wicks should be care- fully rubbed off instead of cut, or if cutting is necessary, the corners of straight wicks should be a little rounded up to the center. At intervals in the year, the parts of the burner which carry the wick should be boiled in strong soda water, the only thing that destroys the rank smell of the old oil. A lesson in lamp filling and cleaning is part of any course in domestic training, and in our cities 256 Homemaking experts now go from house to house, as only experts can deal with the finer order of lamps now in use. We come now to the next most vital portion of the organism of the house, its actual circulatory and excre- tory system, — the water service, on which something more than mere individual health depends. Baths in any perfect form are a product of high civilization, and with a system of baths must be also a system for the removal of waste water. In the isolated farmhouse, built on the cheapest plan, both water supply and drain- age fare as best they can, and the intelligent farmer’s wife who reads what science has to say as to the causes of typhoid fever and diphtheria, looks with terror at her own drains and wonders what can be done about them. For most women, however, there is not only ignorance, ’ but also a feeling that plumbing is something about which it is quite unreasonable to expect them to be informed. Even when the theory of sanitation is understood, the details are ignored. Furnaces being practically unknown in English houses and elaborate water service belonging only to the better order of houses, English women have not the responsi- bility of the American woman, on whom double duty has always fallen. Sanitary engineering is a new profession, and sanitary engineers are by no means sufficient in number to give us a competent inspector of plumbing for every town. The time is coming when he will be as much an essen- tial in planning the house as is the architect, but even with such expert service it is still women who must listen and learn. For all houses, whether in the city or in the country, there are six problems which the householder must solve, and these are arranged in order by Colonel George E. Organism of the House 257 Waring, our highest authority as sanitary engineer, and author of ‘‘The Sanitary Drainage of Houses and Towns.” 1. To secure his house against excessive damp in its walls, in its cellar, and, where practicable, in its sur- rounding atmosphere. 2. To provide for the perfect and instant removal of fluid or semifluid organic wastes. 3. To provide a sufficient supply of pure water for domestic uses. 4. To guard against the evils arising from the decom- position of organic matter in or under the house. 5. To remove all sources of offense and danger which may affect the atmosphere about the house. 6. (And almost more important than all the rest.) To prevent the insidious entrance into the house, through communications with the sewer, cesspool, or vault, of poisonous gases resulting from the decomposition of the refuse of his own household, or of other households with which a common sewer or drain may bring him into communication. We will take it for granted that the best possible loca- tion has been chosen. If imperative circumstances force a man to choose a site the soil of which is damp, his wife can always insist on the cheap and efficient remedy of subsoil drainage, and there are books which give simple, plain instructions as to the minutest details, so that a man to this extent can even be his own sanitary engineer. With well-built foundation and drainpipes crossing the cellar at intervals of not more than fifteen feet, the smallest land-drain tile being large enough, and so laid that there is a slight but continuous fall toward the outlet, drainage is at once secured. Earth is to be well rammed over them, and the whole cellar floor covered with concrete. © 258 ~ Homemaking If this is essential for the country, it is no less so for the town with its filled-in spaces and made land, with its strata of dead cats and tomato cans, old boots, coal ashes, and garbage of all kinds. Against the witch’s broth into which any standing water would turn this arrangement of material, only a coat of the best asphalt over the con- erete will afford protection, even in degree. In Euro- pean houses of the better order this coat of asphalt is now taken for granted as a necessary precaution. This provided for, next comes the water supply. Rain water is, of course, the purest type, but as we can not take it direct from the clouds, we have to accept what we get in our cisterns, to which rain water is conducted by pipes leading from the roof. The water must thus, un- less a leader be used to run off the first rush, take up all the dust, soot, and other impurities, and requires filtering. The best cistern will include a filter of some sort, and this is accomplished in two ways. Hither the cistern is divided into two parts, the water being received on one side and allowed slowly to filter through a wall of porous brick, or a division is made into upper and lower com- partments, the upper one containing the usual filter of iron, charcoal, sponge, and gravel or sand. Distilled water and rain water both have the property of taking up and dissolving lead wherever they find it, and for this reason lead pipes, as leaders from or to cisterns, should under no circumstances be allowed, unless the lead is lined with some other material. Well water comes next, the usual supply for drinking in the village home, and with this source there is a series of dangers to be avoided. If a well be shallow and fed by surface springs, all the impurities of the soil will be found init. “A well drains,” writes Dr. Parker, an Eng- lish sanitary expert, ‘‘an extent of ground about it in the Organism of the House 259 shape of an inverted cone which is in proportion to its own depth and the looseness of the soil. In very loose soils, a well of sixty or eighty feet will drain a large area, perhaps as much as two hundred feet in diameter, or even more. The refuse from certain manufacturing and other in- dustries is often poured into our rivers: gas works, slaugh- terhouses, starch works, and the like. In houses, it is astonishing how many instances occur of the water of cisterns and tanks getting contaminated by the leakage of pipes and other causes, such as the passage of sewage through overflow pipes. As we know that typhoid fever, dysentery, and cholera are caused by water rendered impure by emanations from the evacuations in these dis- eases, it is plain how necessary it is to be quick-sighted in regard to the possible impurity of water from inci- dental causes of this kind. All tanks and cisterns should be inspected regularly. Wells should be covered, a good coping put around the opening to prevent substances being washed down from the surface; the distances from cesspools and dungheaps should be carefully noted; no sewer should be allowed to pass near a well, and no well near which a sewer passes should be used. The sum of all sanitation for the village or the isolated home is in this: See that no open cesspool or drain poisons either air or water about the house. Sunk at a proper distance from it, and connected with it by a drain so tightly put together that none of the contents can escape, the cesspool, which may be an elaborate brick-lined cis- tern, or merely an old hogshead tarred outside and in, and sunk in the ground, becomes one of the most impor- tant adjuncts of a good garden, and if used in wetting the compost heap, helps to fulfill one of the great agri- cultural duties of man, which Liebig tells us is “returning 260 Homemaking to the soil as fertilizers all the salts produced by the combustion of food in the human body.” This is the law for water as used from wells and cis- terns or springs, and its general principles apply equally to the great reservoir from which a city or town draws its supply. Here the individual is often almost helpless, the city allowing sewers to be made by contractors who scamp the work at every point, and who have been known to let a drain run uphill rather than pay the cost of blasting out the intervening rock. Settling walls of has- tily built houses often dislocate pipes, the disconnection being very generally at the junction of the soil pipe and the drain, the filthy soakage infecting the soil nearest the wall of the house. All this evil means the necessity for rigid inspection, and the utter abolition of cheap building and cheap sewerage. The testing of joints for any possible defect in the pipes (and even a pinhole means defect and the escape of poisoned air or water) is usually done with oil of peppermint. This is so penetrating in quality that, as it makes its way down through the pipes, — for it must be poured in from above, — the faintest suspicion of hole or crack allows the familiar odor to escape and shows where solder is needed. Perfect plumbing, even of the simplest order, requires such careful fitting of pipes, preparatory to soldering, that it is often necessary to bend, cut, measure, and clip them not less than a dozen times. In a bathroom with four fixtures, I have seen forty-seven joints above the floor, and even more were beneath to complete all con- nections with the waste pipes. A supply pipe, a waste pipe, a ventilating pipe, and a safe waste were part of each fixture, and to make one union on each required sixteen joints. Organism of the House 261 Public sanitation is part of the natural work of women; it should and must be a vital part of their education. The problems it includes call for the widest knowledge and the most thorough training of every power of per- ception. ‘‘The House Beautiful’ can never attain its full ideal until its great circulatory system is made per- fect, and with the new knowledge we are all to own, it will be beautiful not alone for the rich, but for the poor as well, since what harms one harms all. Progress that deserves the name is not for the individual alone, but for humanity as a whole. HOMES OF TASTE By J. E. PANTON F we desire our houses to be tasteful without undue expense, and if we wish our homes to be really charming, and in some measure a reflex of ourselves, and not the exposition of a certain upholsterer, we must not grudge time and trouble to produce this desirable end. Neither must we be unduly swayed by that which is the fashion for the moment, as, unfortunately, if we do, we shall soon become wearied by what is stamped with a certain date, and long for something less absolutely marked as the production of the year before last — or, indeed, of the year before that! If we proceed to decorate and furnish our house at the express speed which is one of the worst characteristics of the age, if we allow the builder to cover our walls with hideous papers, with which he is anxious to “‘decorate”’ the house, not because they are charming, but simply for the reason that he purchased large quantities at a very low cost from some paper-hanger who was delighted to* clear out unsalable goods at merely nominal prices, we may as well give up the attempt to be pretty and have a taste- ful house; for vulgar papers are only accentuated by pretty furniture, and made even more prominent than they otherwise would have been had the builder been allowed to complete this work by turning in some uphol- sterer as unscrupulous and as inartistic as he is himself. Certainly one of the most necessary hints for an econom- ical house of taste is this one of the useful education of the boys and girls who have to live in it, for I have often been 262 k Homes of Taste 263 troubled by the sight of a would-have-been-charming house made ugly and dirty and shabby by the very hands which, properly trained, would have been the very ones to keep dirt at bay, and which could have made it as beautiful as it was the exact reverse. Let me impress this emphatically on my readers who may long for artistic things and dare not embark in them because of the work they entail. If they can do things for themselves, nothing is impossible; and given taste and clever fingers, the house kept up on a very moderate income may, in my opinion, be as artistic and as beautiful in its way as the one main- tained on many thousands. I always admire and much commend the old Ganda plan of every girl beginning to collect for a home of her own from the earliest days. Silver spoons and forks, odds and ends of china, pictures and books, are all given to her with this laudable end in view; and as soon as she can sew, a quantity of linen is bought, and she learns to hem sheets, make pillowcases and tablecloths, and prepare a regular trousseau of house linen. This, in its turn, she embroiders with beautiful letters and monograms, — these of course of her own initials, — thus obtaining slowly and surely what would be out of her own power to procure en masse should she marry in her own rank of life. In Eng- land, of course, the bridegroom provides the house linen; but I think he would not object to find that his bride had her ‘‘dower chest” of fine linen made and marked by her- self, and that her fingers were as useful as of course he con- siders them beautiful. Even if the girl never marries, she would have material to furnish her own house when she has to turn out into the world — a turning-out which must come sooner or later for all unmarried women who survive their parents in the natural way. A house of taste — the house of the future — begins to 264 Homemaking be formed in the nursery, and is made up in a thousand ways. The child who has hideous surroundings, vulgar pictures nailed up against an ugly common paper, blinds which are never drawn up straight — things provided more on the grounds of their use than their beauty — will never care for its own home, and will never learn to have taste. Allow it to tear the paper off the walls, kick the paint for sheer naughtiness, and spill paint, ink, or any other messes all about the house, and it will never care for its own house when it comes to have one. Carefully train it in nice ways, allow it good colors to look at, and good pictures on the walls, and teach it to respect its surround- ings, and I venture to prophesy that it, when it grows up, will have an intelligent love for home, and will always take care to have beautiful surroundings. It may appear absurd to dwell at length on the artistic making of a house. ‘Souls are not saved by dados,” says one; “‘friezes do not take one an inch nearer heaven,” says another; while a third musingly remarks, ‘“‘As long as we are clean, nothing else really matters.”’ But I boldly contradict all these cavilers. I am quite certain that when people care for their homes, they are much bet- ter in every way, mentally and morally, than those who only regard them as places to eat and sleep in; and that heaven is much nearer those who regard beauty as a necessity, and who refuse to be surrounded with ugly things; while if a house is made beautiful, those who are to dwell in it will care for it intensely, and will cultivate home- ' virtues that can not exist, unless they are carefully watched and tended in a place where ugliness is banished entirely. Let us dwell, therefore, emphatically on the absolute duty of any one who is about to form a home, to make that home as lovely as he or she possibly can. A home has an Homes of Taste 265 immense influence, an influence that may never be known to the individuals themselves, but that is none the less real, none the less of absolute service to all those who may be brought within its radiance; and therefore all those who are about to form a new household should recollect that by allowing hideous surroundings, or passing bad workmanship, they are continuing evils which, had they been less weak-minded, would have ceased to exist as far as they are concerned, and would have soon become obso- lete, because nobody wanted them. In these days, except for the speculative builder, we have immensely progressed. In very, very few houses do the old and ugly marble papers of twenty years ago find room. But I wish to go much further; I wish to insist upon the necessity of doing away with shams altogether — with the sham tiles in the dado, the paper rail, or strip of paper which simulates a rail; with the abominable graining as hideous as it is imitative, .and with many other shams all more or less ugly, all more or less attempts at being what they undoubtedly are not. Of course opinions are divided on the subject of what is pretty and what is not. Some people really admire things which to me are absolutely painful; but as long as they have a reason for surrounding themselves with those particular colors, far be it from me to say emphatically that they must not doso. A house to be a home should express the opinions and the taste of those who live within its walls; but let the owners have these opinions, and let them have these particular schemes of decoration be- cause they admire them, and not because the builder has them to sell, or because it is too much trouble to select others which are more harmonious. And let me further impress on those whose time is short, and who have no space in which to look about from shop to shop for their requirements, that it is far better to con- 266 Homemaking sult some one not an upholsterer or a decorator, but some one who has no interest whatever save the desire to do his or her utmost for the employer, who has the different papers and draperies at his or her fingers’ ends, and who can submit immediately to them schemes of decoration, all more or less artistic, but all immeasurably superior to the ordinary villa builder. Thus will the home be far more artistic and complete than it could have been were it left entirely to the tender mercies of a tradesman who has always something he is far more anxious to sell than he is to procure what his client really requires, and who has been made so persua- sive, by long years of selling, that he talks his unfortunate victim out of his preconceived ideas, and so brings into being another of those terrible houses, without any def- inite color or design, with which our suburbs are over- crowded. THE GUEST CHAMBER! By ALICE L. JAMES rar GUEST thinks more of comfort and of cheer- KA ; ful surroundings than of mere beauty and 5 elegance, in the room set apart for her use; a and in furnishing the guest room these points should have due consideration. The room should be airy, cool in summer and warm in winter, and have every con- venience that belongs to a sleeping apartment and sitting- room. Warm, strong colors, but not crude, are the most cheerful for guests’ rooms. Besides the regular set, bedstead, bureau, and wash- stand, there should be a couch, a little table, a small rock- ing-chair, and at least two easy-chairs, so that when the guest has a visitor both visitor and guest may have the assurance that each is as comfortable as the other. Morris chairs are most ‘comfortable, and can be bought for few dol- lars or for many, as the purchaser’s circumstances permit. There should be several generous-sized cushions on the couch and one with a small pillowcase. There should also be on hand an afghan or light wool blanket. If there are no outside blinds to keep out the early morn- ing light or any other annoying excess of light, a second set of shades, of dark green Holland, to pull down over the others, will be appreciated by a guest who wants a dark- ened room for sleeping. In truth, these shades should be in every sleeping room which has not outside or inside Venetian blinds. Wherever white shades are put up, in 1From “Housekeeping for Two.” Copyright, 1909, by G. P. Put- nam’s Sons. 267 268 Homemaking other than bedrooms, a soft-toned green Holland shade as over-shade is frequently added, to temper the light and give a softened tone to the room. A writing desk supplied with paper, pen, and ink, a writing pad, a dictionary, and a little stamp box contain- ing postage stamps, will add much to a guest’s comfort. There must be a shelf for books and for magazines. If one were buying new furniture for the room, and ex- pense were not considered either one way or the other, rattan or bamboo furniture would be charming and home- like. Matting or hardwood floor, with large Axminster rug and cotton hangings of Oriental colorings, would finish out the simple appointments. Sometimes a half-worn parlor suit is relegated to the guest chamber, and if the chairs are comfortable, and the sofa large enough to be used as a couch, it is a good dis- position to make of such furniture. It should be put into good order, all the webbing reinforced and the springs put in place; then with a set of pretty slip-covers, and the addi- tion of bedroom pieces and other accessories, the room is well and suitably furnished. There should be no sharp contrast between the guest chamber’s equipment and that of the other chambers. Shabbiness in one and costliness in the others gives one a’ sense of being slighted. On the other hand, the family rooms should not be shabby and the guest’s room fixed up with an elegance that is conspicuous and perhaps too fine for common use. Everything should be usable, and not so delicate in coloring and quality that it will give the guest distress in taking care not to use it, or the hostess worse distress if it is used and spoiled. Everything should be pretty, but nothing fussy; the vases and bric-a-brac on mantel-shelf should be just enough to take away any pos- sible bareness. The Guest Chamber 269 Let there be a clock that keeps time on the mantel, and if practicable hang pictures on the wall. Things on the dressing bureau, ornamental but useful, must not be so profuse as to be in one’s way when dressing. Put a scrap- basket on the floor, hang a work bag, furnished with thread and needles, a piece bag with scraps of muslin and lawn, black silk, etc., on hooks by the table. If the closet is very large, the guest’s trunk may go in there, but if it has to stand in the room, put a piece of lino- leum down on the floor for it to rest on, and tack another up against the wall. The piece on the floor is to protect the floor from being raked by the casters, and the piece against the wall to prevent it from being battered by the trunk lid being accidentally thrown against it. Instead of the oil cloth, a small screen may be placed behind the trunk. A pretty screen may be added to the room’s fur- nishings and yield considerable comfort to its occupant, when one wishes the door to the hall to stand open. A screen is far nicer than the cretonne portiéres seen so often in bedroom doorframes, as they admit more air and are, moreover, ornamental. ; The dressing gown, bedroom slippers, a dressing or bath mat, and a jar of fancy crackers must not be forgot- ten; nor, in cold weather, a hot-water bag or an earthen jug filled with hot water. See that there are clothes brushes, a buttonhook, a pocket knife, pins of all kinds, complexion powder, cold cream, and hand glass in convenient places. Put castile soap and an extra set of towels in the drawer of the com- mode and several washcloths, so that there need be no embarrassment in asking for these favors if they are wanted. Some guests would rather suffer for the want of extra comfort of this sort than to ask for it. By MARION HARLAND HOSPITALITY WITHOUT GRUDGING (sy MAN’S most valuable earthly possession is v7 KA his Home —the term including the satisfac- b a H tion he has in the enjoyment of the comforts,