The Grange advance. [volume] (Red Wing, Minn.) 1873-1877, 1875-10-06
BOARDING.
From Harper's Bazar.1

a long term of years, who has beer
obliged to cater daily for the three meals
of an ordinary family, without much in
terruption, the prospect of boarding is
most inviting. Such one imagines that
she is about to enter kind of fairy-land,
where dinners, breakfasts, and teas ap.
pear as if by magic, invoked by the
gnome of the bell; land
where dish washing and busting, where
marketing and cooking, and all the name
less ills to which housek ecpers are heirs,
will have become obsoiete--at least so
tar as she is concerned; where the
butcher, the baker, the grocer's boy and
the milk-man will no longer demand at
tentlon, and become strangers to her, and
where she will not need to earn her
bread and butter by the sweat of her
brow. And indeed there is something to
be said in favor of boarding.; it offers an
asylum free from the stern contempla-
ton of steaks and roasts, from the ex-
acting claims of pastry and buildings.
from the heavy responsibility of house
hold economy--of making sure that to.
days joint shall furnish for tomorrow
mornings hash, and that not coldly;
that Yesterday boiled potatoes shall re-
appear brown and crisp at to. days break
fast; that the crust of bread shall be
transformed into griddle-cakes, and the
surplus milk into blanc mango; that the
maids shall not squander her substance,
nor pllier from the larder for the benefit
Of their cousins widow; that the pre-
serves shall be secured from fermenta-
ton as we'll as the family temper, and all
things be seasonable and in order. Only
those who attempt it know how wcari.
some this drudgery becomes after long
service. and how like haven of rest and
refreshment the boarding house looms
up against tae mental horizon. The
good housekeeper is necessarily so intent
upon her routine, in order to maintain
the comfort of her household, so absorbed
with the exigencies of the day and the
hour, so fervent in baking and brewing,
in spring cleaning and in setting her
house in order, that she is in danger Of
neglecting much which it would be both
pleasure and profit to attend to, such as
the cultivation Of mind and society. The
accomplishments Of her youth are apt to
grow rusty for want Of practice, the
piano is dumb because her lingering be-
comes stiff and awkward, her French and
German fade from her remembrance and
become dead languages, her pencil forgets
its cunning. Sentiment and friendship
require time, and she has none to give
them but what has been already be-
spoken it is hand to hand fight if she
would keep up with the literature of the
day, if she would not sit like a mum.
chance while others discourse of the
latest poem or the last discovery in
science, and even this is sometimes done
at the expense of those dependent upon
her for attention and comfort, and also
at the expense of her reputation. ''My
parlor must either go undusted or my
mind unfinished, the young house
keeper declares, and she generally at.
tempts to compromise, and neither fur.
nishes her mind nor keeps her house in
Pimlico. She is ambitious to make the
best bread, to preside at the best table,
to put up the best tomato catsup and
the best marmalade, to entertain company
in the most perfect manner, to secure the
most desirable home for her children and
bring them up in the way they should
go; and at the same time she is am.
bilious to read Browning and Herbert
Spencer and Huxley, to have an opinion
on the last book. the last picture and the
last opera; and nothing is more difficult
than to ride two hobby horses, for one or
the other is certain either to throw or
run away with the rider.
But what infinite leisure does the
boarding house life seem to supply !
What long forenoons for the practice of
sonatas and symphonies, for shopping
and calling, with no need to hurry home
to make the buildings for dinner, or to
see that Bridget is not entertaining in
the drawing-room; gracious afternoons,
wherein no haste is, that may be spent at
matinees or over a novel what seasons
for study and severe thought: what days
CONVEX alton and the interchanges of
ideas-days in which we seem provided
for as easily as the children of Isreal in
the wilderness: days in which we literal
~ take no thoughts as to wherewithal We
shall be fed Mays into which 10 hegira
and no spring cleaning enter; hours in
which no contentious with unruly Noras
intrude, with which no contentious with
which no untimely warnings of theirs in
terfere. Not that we would. by any
means, recommend wholesale boarding
out, and their inmates take to the some
what responsible and vagobond life of a
clearinghouse. One who has spent a
great portion of her life in boarding will
make poor hostess. so the legend runs.
Doubtless it is the last place in the world
IN which children should be reared, the
last place in which to become initiated
into the graces and amenities that con-
stitute the charm Of family life. The
young giElsaswho has boarded much is
90 " -t;rn11;ahod Erorn tho one uhn h q 6