The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1853-1911, 1865-09-07
a GREAT WANT.

10 hoAU W SCI JCG Tue SeTVlceS OI Iut
queen of the kitchen are an essential ell
ement in the health, the comfort, the GOOD
temper, the enjoyment and the peace Of
every family; and it is true that the art
of cooking is the parent of other arts, and
that eating and drinking are the highest
of animal enjoyments. But the race OF
cooks is becoming extinct in the United
States aud in the matter of food, we are
going back to barbarism at fearful pace.
The day was in which it was rule of ev-
cry household to be well ordered and in
which becoming table, suitable to those
who maintained it, was every housewife S
pride. But that was when mothers and
grandmothers had sway and when a knoxl-
edge of what good housewifery demanded
for the health and comfort of the family
was not thought to be too low for any
young lady's attention. Our modern sys-
tenn Of female education, which is the re-
suit of combined vanity and stupidity,
has changed all that. And it is the rule
of most families in which manual labor of
all the members is not demanded, to so
rear the daughters that they shall be,
while unmarried, Of less real use in the
world than anything else upon which the
sun shines They are taught to sputter
little French, Of which no native of
France could possibly understand sim
gle word years OF precious time are spent
in obedience TO a n0nSensical dictate of
fashion, in the vain endeavor to acquire
little proficiency on the most abused of
ali instruments, the piano forte; and if
the expiration of the pupilage finds them
able to drum out common waltz or
march without agonizing the bystanders
who know music, they have done well +;
and, if in addition, they can sing Ger
man Or French song in a style which
gives pleasure TO neither themselves nor
any body else. they are accounted prodi-
gies, as indeed they are. A few of them
draw (never beefSteak of gridiron or
loaf from the oren) so well that if the
subject of the sketch is stated in fair print
underneath, the looker-on will know at
once what was intended by it. Most of
them paint, (we believe rouge is the fash
ion just now, but thousand of them
could not earn a house painters wages by
the most assiduous exercise of this ac-
complishment. Reading is confined, for
the most part, to the inevitable novel of
the sentimental school and to the sensa-
tiOnal parts of the daily paper, while the
solid elements Of education are almost
wholly neglected. In a word, those
things which, are in their nature purely
ornamental, and which, iG nine cases out
of ten, are forgotten long before middle
age is reached, are insisted upon to the
exclusion of other things that are the bus
iness of every day life. Youth, the time
for preparation for the duties of middle
age, is virtually wasted. Nothing which
relates to the great matters of maternity,
to the care of children or the manage
ment of the household is taught. On
these things, blank ignorance is the rule.
This race of women who have had this
training, are now the mothers of families,
and to them the education of cooks is in
trusted. As for the cooks themselves,
we need not say what their early education
was. They 20 to service to learn, and
what they learn from teachers who know
nothing of what servants ought to acquire,
let the experience of nearly all the fami-
lies of this city bear witness. In anoth-
er generation the art Of cookery will be
lost art if there is not reform. 1t is
kept alive now only by the foreigners who
come among US, bringing the training
and experience of their early homes but
they, too, soon follow in the wake of A
merican progress" and new Bridget
and Katrina think that it is only genteel
to copy the example of the daughter to
the maor born, and despise the art by
which health is promoted and home made
comfortable.
Wanted, cook. Until female educa-
ton has new direction in this country,
that want will be unsupplied in thousands
of we'll -to-do families in which the next
thing to tarvation-starvatio in the
midst of abundance-is curse only tenn
porarily and at long intervals relieved
because the real difficulty is not that
Bridget will not learn, but there is no.
body to instruct her. She has good in
tentions and is so far human, that for her
own eating she prefers good bread to half
cooked and sour dough, and tender, jul
cy steak to burnt, tough and unpalata-
bic chip. She desires high wages as the
reward of competence and skill in pref
erence to small pay for ignorance and un-
thrift but cooking is an art, and she has
and can have no instruction. Her en-
ployers are worse off than she is, and
maid and mistress alike 60 hungry. The
truth is that the Americans, in the prep
aration of their food, are only few de-
grees removed from the savages that they
have driven off the soil and in all af-
fairs of domestic economy the retrograde
movement is the cause of real and justifi-
able alarm. There is show and unboun-
ded expense, but as the pomp comes in
at the parlor door, comfort escapes through
the kitchen.
Wanted, as the precursor of cook, a
system of female education that shall
make the duties and business of life mat
ter of prime concern, and that treats ac-