Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1888-09-19
WORK FOR WOMEN.
Sensible Comments ON q Topic OF Cssms
polftan Interesf

Anero - pienty o1 WOrk, says the IonQon
Truth, for the daughters of the middle
classes to do, If parents viii only teach them
how to prepare for the many employments
which are open to them, and if the girls
themselves, when employment is at their
command, will only frankly accept it and
work bravely at it, instead of Numbering
pestilent rubbish about occupations that are
not "genteeL" For instance, Is it not q
National shame and disgrace that good cooks
should be so scarce, and that wellto-do peo-
pie should have bitterly to complain that
their lives are made burden to them by
that something which is perpetually
going wrong IN the kitchen-so wrong, in
deed, that when special guests are enter
tanned, the dinner has to be sent in from the
pastry-cook'sl Why do not middle-class
mothers, whose husbands only earn mod
crate income, teach their girls to cook, and
cook thoroughly, beginning the course of
culinary tuition, say, at ten years Of agei
II is at that age that a French mdTmitOn
begins his education in the kitchen, and at
twenty he is fit to be second or third cook.
In this country there is an absurdly mis-
chievous notion that a girl can be made
competent cook by desultory course of
training extending over somesix months. In
reality she will require from six to eight
yt6Eo DClOEO sue CAL COOK cluClc1IlY. AN
not such q visionary as to imagine that the
middle class mother can always afford to APP
prentice her daughter to a first-rate chef, or
to pay heavy premium for her to enter as
an "improver " in the kitchen Of a club;
but she can have the foundation of the girls
training laid by sending her for a short
time TO a tirst-rate school of cookery, and
continuing the training day by day, week
bv week, and month by month at home.
Nor would it be difficult for her to make the
acquaintance of one of those professed
female cooks who go out " on job" and who
for very small sum would give the girl
some useful hints about making sauces,
garnishing and dishing up; and finally, the
girl herself should be taught to love the
art of cookery, and on her shelf one
of her most priced volumes should be
a thoroughly good cookery book. 1t must
be remembered that boiling potato well is
neither the beginning nor the end of good
cookery; the science is essentially an ex-
perimental one, and consequently, any one
practicing it should be continually melted to
make culinary experiments in the way Of
connecting savory made-dishes or pretty
little tiny kickshaws. 1t may be objected
that these experiments would cost great
deal of money. As a matter Of fact, they
would cost very little. The simpler kinds
dish can be as well prepared from block or
naments as from the superior categories of
meat; and -four, spices, butter and suggr
would, as an outlay, be certainly not ruin
Gus to the family, when it is consid-
cred that they would partake of
the dishes prepared, and that those
dishes would grow nicer and nicer every
day as the youthful cook progressed in her
art. A professed female cook is worth
! from ESQ to go year wages; and a young
lady would not in the slightest degree
derogate from her social position by &C
cepting such post, seeing that the cook is
emphatically Queen of the Basement, and
that not only her fellow-servants, but her
employers, if they are sensible folk, must
defer to her, for she literally rules the
roast, and appeals to all our feelings through
/ the potent medium of the stomach.
Again, l fail to see why girls of the
middle classes should not be trained, and
carefully trained, to go out as ladies'
maids, to fill which responsible, and COM
Portable and even elegant, posts they would
take no harm if, in addition to being COM
petent dress-makers and efficient hair-dress-
ers, they did not forget their French, and
especially if they cultivated their caligraphy
and their photography. A sultured femme
/ dc chdmbre soon becomes more than half
the private secretary of the 0rdndc dame
whose service she enters, and is valued ac-
cordingly. l will not say any thing at
present about the deslrability of training
middle-class girls to be artists. In the first
place, because South Kensington girls and
Slade School girls have an unhappy
tendency when they have had little sup
CRITICAL training in art or waste their
time in painting ambitious pictures in
oils for exhibition at the Royal Aca-
deny, which pictures, as rule, are not dis
| played on the walls of Burlington House
and, next, it must be remembered that the
love of art is gift, and not an acquire
ment, and that the mediocre artist is as
helpless creature as the mediocre must
clan. But repeat there are very large
number of suitable and remunerative en-
pigments open to young women, if only
they arc sedulously trained up to them.
They can, for instance, enter life as clerks,
book-keepers, shop assistants, type-writers,
shorthand correspondents, nurses, hotel
keepers, advertising canvassers and com
mercial travelers-the last calling which
is ignorantly assumed to be monopolized by
men. Then, q well-educated, well-mannered
girl, quick at her needle, and a clever cut
ter, need not abandon her home, but can
make a comfortable addition to her meager
allowance of pocket-money, If she will only
condescend to go out few mornings every
week to ladies' houses to overlook and keeI
wardrobes in repair. The needlewoman who
docs condescend to undertake such work Is
rs a rule, either coarse, clumsy, or fractions
or an uppish young party who does hel
work, it is true, fairly well, but does very
little of it, and who is, besides, sadly hur1
IL she be not provided with an elaborate
lunch, moistened with claret, and followed
up by the facilities for taking a slight nap.