The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-12-26
TEACH YOUR DAUGHTER TO
 WORK
!Harper,s RazaAr.l

own daughsers possible future husband. but who icxes the race and desires its best advancement, will consider in her scheme of education for that daughter the advantages of a thorough knowledge of cooking. All the more will she do SO if she is herself ignorant of the mysteries of the aTt of cooking, or has suffered any thing in consequence ct such want of knowledge, skill, or practice.
 It is all very easy to talk about gluttony and epicurism, and to lay stress upon gross tastes and selfindul9ence but so long as we have bodies to nourish, those bodies will make their own demands, and be unnou1shed if unsatis6ed; and since this is a need of nature, 1t is a need that disregard, as if it were an affair of mere animalism that ought to be subdued. in- deed, the best medical authorities treat their cases with large reference to noar- ishment, and where food used to be ad- ministered at starvation rates it is nov given every few hours and in good quan- tity; and the old idea of the ethereal be. ing spiritual through going without food has been entirely exploded, under the full comps ehension that If food is to be gone without, the being is to become ethereal and spiritual indeed.
 It being thus quite we'll understood that food in sufficient quantity and of tempting quality is essential to the m ain- tenancc of any good standard of health. the idea of grossness and of unpardon- able self-indulgencc in desiring and hay ing 1t has to be dismissed: and the ad. mission must be made that it is not only a pleasure but a duty to attend to its proper provision. As an ackno nowledged duty, then, it becomes a part of the edu cation of those in whose province it lies to learn how to prepare this necessary food in the most fitting manner, 1t being assumed that it really does fall into the province of the woman, since even the most fervent claimant of an enlarged sphere for her might think it unfair if the other party had to provide the food and cook 1t too.
 That the more education in other mat ters cook has, the more training to her wits, the more her cookery is likely to ex- eel, is so entirely apparent on the face of it that we will not dwell upon the proposi- ton. But although n enlarged and trained intellect is an excellent thing to bring to bear on the subject, II has to be capped with habit and familiarity !; for one may know a solution to all the prob lens in physics and yet not know the precise point of time to toss over the sim mering doughnut, have the tea-biscuit leave the pan hourless on the under part, the batter pudding without Jumps, all the buttermilk worked out of the butter. the potatoes boiled to the perfection of bursting mealiness, or just the right touch given that flinders the cake from heaviness the bread from falling.
 Many head of family, in the usual life of this country of ours-not the life of the very rich, but of those who keep but one "girl "-has been thrown into dismay by the sudden temper of her "girl," who dashing down her d,shcloth, leaves without warning, with dinner to get and bread to bake, and the house hold work at that point where, add it up as you will, it carries ten over to the next day and she has realized that in the ab solutely important affairs of comfort sine knows less than her hired girl. and that if we should begin all over again, as any shipwrecked community might, upon a desert island, it is she who would be in tue pUotuOu OI e anQ tk ID this same hired girl who would be mis- tress of the situation. The fact, even fl she did not recognize it as fully as this, was appalling to her, and lest she should again be left in the lurch with bread sour. ing and meats spelling and fires deaden- ing, she has become sort of subordinate to her next "girl," and so far does every thing in her power to prevent catas- trophe with her that she is herself, so to speak only slave of that fortunate in. dividual.
 All this vexation which our head of a family has been called upon to undergo may be saved to her daughter by an edu- cation, crowning her book education, in those very things where she herself has been ignorant. Provided that she is not ignorant, then she may have felt with equal vividness the blessing of her coigne of vantage and if she is wise, she has already resolved that her daughter shall know all of the kitchen and household arts that she knows, and the young per son is taken into the region of the yeast jug and the flour barrel, and inducted unto the first mysteries of the white art a, a tender age.
 It is not necessary that this household education should be made very oherous to the young girl. If she learns to make bread at some odd hours of her early ap- prenticeship, she will at another time learn to make coffee and tea exactly right, to do a roast to turn, and one by one to prepare the grains and vegetables, till at last in the course of years she reaches the graduating point of pastry and cake and jcllies and all dainty compounds If, upon leaving Vassar, or Wellesley, or the Harvard Annex, she had to go into the kitchen and begin this service and ap- premiership, she might feel it some hard ship; but by judicious management of time, long before she has reached the graduating point of her books, she can have accomplished herself in the kitchen arts, and have become mistress of the