The Van Buren press., 1893-07-15
IN WOMAN'S BEHALF.
A NEW PROFESSION.
1r6ftable Employment Can Always BE
Found for Competent Housekeepers.


1r6htablc Employment Can Always BE
Found for Competent Housekeepers.
A fine and profitable business for
women, pursued as a profession, is that
of housekeeping. Every woman thinks
herself fitted to keep house," but in
sober truth those who are really fitted
for it-that is, those who are thorough
ly educated in its requirements SO that
they would have right to practice it
as they would any other trade or pro-
fession and receive money for it--are
by no means many. Yet if the women
who have peculiarly strong domestic
anclinations would recognize that the
trend of their talent is towards house,
keeping, and then prepare themselves
seriously from the first step to the last,
there would be sensible addition
made to the comfort OF the world and
q new opening established through
which many women, instead of now
and then one, could earn their liveli-
hoods.
Us it now Is, when there seems to be
nothing else that woman can do, and
she has not home into which she can
take boarders for its support she ad-
vertises herself US houselxeeper for a
gentleman's family, 'widower pre-
ferred." If she had learned her bust
ness, as she would have that of dress
making, or type-writing, or school
teaching, or surgery, or any thing
else, in short, she would never have to
make that humiliating postscript of
"widower preferred" In that case the
widower would not be preferred. She
would go into house where there was
wife who wished and wearied for her,
and would pursue her duties under no
offensive suspicion of an intention ulti-
mately to marry the widower. 1t would
make small difference to her if her en-
ployer were man or woman, although
she might perhaps slightly prefer the
woman for the sake of the sympathy
which one woman has for another; but
she would go on with her tasks, her
plans, her oversight, occupied with the
house and keeping it in order, with the
children and their clothes and their
health, with the table, the servants,
the linen, with the whole round of the
years work which keeps house and
home in running order. and would pay
no more heed to the personality of the
man OF the house, as an individual
pleasant or unpleasant to her, than if
she were an automaton that had been
wound up to go through its motions at
his service.
1t is no trifling education that wom-
an will need to be competent for the
place in this light. She will have to
have the ordinary school education, that
she may not be illiterate, that she may
be capable of directing the children's
lessons if she have the oversight of
children she will want some knowl-
edge of the world, and acquaintance
with the manners of the highly bred;
she will want to cultivate all the COM
nonsense with which nature may have
endowed her, in order that she may
carry herself inoffensively; she will
want courage to assert her rights and
to maintain her place among the insub-
ordinate, with neatness, order, patience,
firmness, for6 light, and absolute truth
fulness; she will need good ture and
sweet temper, that she may be an
agreeable feature in the house, and
modesty, that she may be an unobtru-
sive one, and tact, to keep herself out
of the way when not wanted, to put
herself in the way at any demand for
her. She will require low voice, too,
p gentle movement, pleasant manner,
q quiet taste in dress
But beside these things our house,
keeper is no housekeeper at all If she
docs not know the way to handle
broom, the way to fiirt duster the
way to make the intricacies of spring
and fall cleaning endurable to the in
mates of the house; does not know how
the dishes should be washed without
nicking them; how the meats should
be bought, should be cut, be dressed;
how the meals should be prepared and
served, how the sweetmeats, the pick
les, the catsups, should be made; how
to cut out and baste and sew, how the
laundry-work should be done; she must
know, indeed, everything that pertains
to the practical side of the family com
fort and nicety-must know it all, even
If she is never going to be called upon
to do thus and SO with her own hands,
The women who will thus equip them
selves have to advertise for no position;
the schools that can turn them out
will be beset with applicants; and the
women themselves will not only have
provided for their own comfortable and
remunerative support, but they will
have learned how to make suffering
households happy, and will have added
another profession to those already
pursued by women-a profession in
deed, and not an upper class of service
--Harper's Bazaar.