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LIBRARY OF THE
NEW YORK STATE COLLEGE
OF HOME ECONOMICS
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
ITHACA, NEW YORK
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THE COMPLETE HOME:
AN
Encycmpibia of Domestic Life ai Affm
THE HOUSEHOLD,
IN ITS
Foundation, Order, Economy, Beauty, Healttafnlness, Emergencies,
Metliods, Cblldren, Lilteratnre, Amusements, Religion,
Friendships, Manners, Hospitality, Servants,
Industry, money, and History.
% iolunte of Irattkal (^^perimtes JPopkIg|Iktrateb.
BY
MRS. JULIA McNAIR WRIGHT.
'*0 fortunate, O happy day y
When a new household takes its birth.
And rolls on its harmonious way
Among the myriad homes of earth''
—Longfellow.
J. C. McCURDY & CO.,- Publishers,
PHILADELPHIA, PA.,
CINCINNATI, O., CHICAGO, ILL., ST. LOUIS, MO.
Copyriglit, by JuLiA McNair Wright, 1879.
PREFACE.
|ETWEEN the Home set up in Eden, and tr YiKime before u»
in Eternity, stand the Homes of Earth in . long succession.
It is therefore important that our Homes should be brought
up to a standard in harmony with their origin and destiny.
Here are " Empire's primal Springs; " here are the Church
and State in embryo ; here all improvements and reforms must rise.
For national and social disasters, for moral and financial evils, the
cure begins in the Household. In no case could legislation and
commerce lead back a day of honesty and plenty, unless the Family
were their active co-worker. Where sou/s and bodies are nourished,
where fortunes are builded, and brains are trained, there must be
a focus of all moral and physical interests.
Is it true that marriages and American-born children are lessening?
Does the Family fail in fulfilling its Divine intention ? Why should
young men fear to marry, and by undue caution deprive themselves
of the joys and safeguards of domestic life? Why should young
women, having but little instruction in the duties, dangers and possi-
bilities of the married state, wed in haste, and make the future a long
regret ? Why, when the final step is taken, should the young pair
not know all that it is needful to know to secure their Home in its
integrity, that it may be happy, orderly and beautiful, that they
may know how to preserve health, train children, make, save and
spend money? The author hopes that this book may help answer
these questions. Every day has its full share of troubles, but, by
troubles well met, we grow stronger. We rise —
" By stepping stones
Of our de»d selves, to higher things.''
How then shall the Home fulfill the great duty lying before it — the
duty of restoring confidence and energy, of eradicating evils, of
(3)
4 PREFACE.
bringing much out of little, and affording to every Family in the
land an assumed competence? The answer to these questions, the
indication of the means of reaching an end so grand, will take hold
on Moral Principles an& their practical out-working.
This Book — the product of years of careful investigation, of actual
experiences, and of a profound veneration for the Divinely instituted
Home — undertakes to show how every sound man and woman may
safely marry, how every family may have a competence, how every
home may go on from good to better, and how each household may
be not only gladsome in itself, but a spring of strength and safety to
the country at large.
This book treats of the individual as set in Households : it regards
the household as a unit in its affections, aims, success. The rights,
duties, privileges, preferences of every member of the family are dis-
cussed. The Home itself, in its practical working, its food, clothing
and shelter, its earnings, savings and spendings, its amusements,
industries and culture, will be found faithfully portrayed.
There is no thought more beautiful and far-reaching than this of
the solidarity or oneness of the Family; here, man is indissolubly
bound to his fellows. The individual is solitary, but God setteth the
solitary in families. The stream of time is crowded with the ships of
Households, parents and children, youth and infancy, age with its
memories, childhood with its fancies, youth with its loves, maturity
with its cares. A beautiful picture represents such a life-scene. The
Household bound for the same eternity, trying the same fates.
" In Childhood's hour, with careless joy
Upon the stream we glide,
With Youth's bright hopes, we gayly speed.
To reach the other side.
" Manhood looks forth with careful eye.
Time steady plies the oar ;
While Old Age calmly waits to hear
The keel upon the shor* ."
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
AunT SoPHRONiA — Her opinions — Her nieces — Offers of marriage — The Buildia;}
of a Home — Some modern misses' opinions — Have we capital enough to marry ?
— What is this capital ? — The rock on which the Home foundation rests — Whaf
is the Corner-Stone of Home ? — The need of good health to make a Home
happy — When young persons should resolve upon celibacy — Man builds hi?
Home from without, woman from within — Intimate knowledge of character
requisite to a safe engagement — Long and short engagements — What is more
important than a trousseau ? — A couple may marry on small means — Let there
be NO DEBTS — The necessity of some fixed means of making a livelihood — Thir
importance of a thorough knowledge of Housekeeping — No Home safe
without this — It is equal to a large cash capital — Thorough Housekeeping a
fine art — Economy — Micawber financiering — Capacity for self-denial — Begin
moderately — Value of knowing how to sew, make, mend, cut, fit — Burns'
house-mother — Excellence of culture — Need of good temper in the Home-
Home our Treasure House — Are two better than one ? — Look the future in the
face — Count the cost — Make no leap in the dark — A well-portioned Bride —
Two weddings — A Benediction on the Home 11-31
CHAPTER 11. ^
OHDER — Time-Saving — A suitable age for marriage — What one should study-_
When to study music or art — A young wife's studies — How to have time for
everything — A wedding gift — The great time-saver — Dangers of Disorder^
How to manage work — Helen's domestic management — Is mistress or maid to
blame for disorder? — How a young woman arranged her work — Impoitant
hints on dress — A word on good I'lanners — A morning call — A new method
of sending clothes to the wash — When to mend clothes — How to wash lace
and embroidery— A disorderly house-mother — A place for everything — A
pleasant sitting-room — A window-garden — A well-arranged kitchen — How a
young woman can best economize in her kitchen — How to get time for charity
work — When to do the fall and spring sewing — The 'House-cleaning — Order
in individuals — Order in a farm-house — A model farmer's wife — Preparedness
for emergencies — Cousin Ann's method of doing her house-work — A time for
everything — A place for everything — The month, week, day, hour, minute for
various kinds of work — Don't crowd -vioxY — A daughter's best dowry. . .32-55
1 tv)
Vi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER III.
EcoKOMY — The Pounds and Pence — Ashamed of economy — How shall we begin
to economize ? — Reducing u servant's wages — Economy and charity — The
seamstress' view of hard times — How working-people should meet hard times —
Where people begin their economies — Servants and employers — Needjiil rise
and fall in wages — Fit expenses to your station in life — Don't blush at wearing
CALICO — What constitutes a lady ? — Rights of masters and employes — How to
meet a reduced income — The real cost of a new silk dress — Need and pride —
Pride a hard master — Little savings and little wasting^ — Losing a hundred
one-dollar bills — Paying for breakages — What servants have no right to expect
— Making-over dresses — Making-over neck-ties^ — To clean silk, velvet, and
merino — Economizing on the table — A soup relish — Cheese and parsley —
Ashamed of economy or ashamed of extravagance — Making the best of what
we have on hand — Aimless savings — What to do with old clothes — Ten dollars,
worth of clothes for one dollar — "Jumping in a bucket" — A genms for House-
keeping — A mother's meeting — Charity pays — Foreign economy — Ameri-
cans are extravagant — Why ? — Extravagance in coffee-making — Rich French-
men and poor Americans — Foreign Housekeeping — Saving in fuel — Buying
in littles — Keeping meats and vegetables sweet — Manner of keeping milk and
butter cool — Neatness in pantries — A home-made refrigerator — Charcoal, cold
water, and a bit of netting — Ammonia and plaster of Paris — A useful present —
Economy honorable 56-86
CHAPTER IV.
tHiLDREN — Their Rights and Liabilities — Position of children in a Home —
Variety in training — Mistakes of good people — When to begin training —
What is a child's first lesson ? — Teach a child patience — How to teach children
to cry softly — Noise — Quiet needful to young children — Causes of summer
diseases — Dangers in nurse-maids— rHow children are treated by maids — Dan-
gers of baby-carts — What to require in a nurse-maid — Don't burden your little
daughter — An over-worked child — What every mother should do for her own
child — Care of a babe's food — Frightening children — How to treat terror in a
child — English nurses — Teaching children engaging manners — Teach the child
to be generous — Errors and crimes — Obedience — Truth — Generosity — Respect
for authority — Early good habits — Common-sense — Worth of the will — Rules
and rights — Variety in penalty — Accidents — Teaching a boy to raise a dinner —
Clean speech — Truthfulness — Teasing — Firmness — A root of dishonesty —
"Mother! can't I go fishing?" — Teasing Anna — Care of a child's hair —
Developing a child's beauty — A handsome family — Elements of beauty — Clothe
children plainly — Answering children's questions — Encouraging a love of natu-
ral history — Mothers must read — Destructiveness and constructiveness — Obedi-
ence — Plato 87-117
CHAPTER V.
biCKNESS AND WICKEDNESS — A grain of sense — Where diseases rise — Our bodies
should be cherished — Too much and too little physical culture — The care of
Household health woman's work — Why Mrs. Black'? family were ill — Use of
CONTENTS. v:i
flannel —Thick shoes^Loose clothes — Exercise — Sunshine — A fine bed-room
and a healthful bed-room — Beauty and health — The housekeeper is the health-
keeper — Care of the garret — Care of the cellar — Cellar and parlor — Drains —
Danger of refuse suds — Spores of disease — The germ theory — Use of sal-soda
— Sink-pipes — Dangers of decay — House walls — Dish-cloths — Pot-closets — ■
Cisterns — The eyes of Argus — How to have a healthful Home — A farm-home
scene — How shall we have healthy children ? — Dr. Guthrie on long life — Value
of good rules — Cousin Ann's tea-party — The sleep of children — A child's
food — When to eat — Care of a child's sight — Infant's toys — Care of a child's
feet — Care of beds — Exercise and play — Seats and pillows — Preventing curved
legs — Baths — Boys' sports — What is proper for girls — Nursing the sick — Helpless
women — Choosing a, sick-room — How to furnish it — Value of a fire-place^
Escaping infection — Manufacturing conveniences for a sick-room — Make it
cheerful — Making a closet — A model nurse — Her dress — Her manners — Her
authority — Sympathy — A nurse's duties — Harmony between nurse and physician
— How to sweep-^How to put on coal — Morning cares — Too much medicine-
taking — Take care of the beginning of disease — A case in point — Another case^
Never trifle with disease — Food for Invalids — A neatly served meal — How to
poach an egg — How to bake an apple — Have a sick-room note-book — Variety
— Forget nothing — Neatness — ^A beautiful dish — A Salad — Sal^id dressing-
Sandwiches — Tea relish — Best way of roasting meat — Sleeplessness— Sleep a
gift of God 118-149
CHAPTER VI.
Home Adornment — Building the walls of Home — What finishes the wall — Good
taste— Beauty important in a Home — Cash value of beauty — How to ornament
a country Home — Children who love Home are inexpensive in habits — Why our
young folks often hate the farm — Secret of hard times — Where national wealth
lies — Farm-lands should be more productive — Fertility oi Palestine — Egypt — ■
Chaldea — Why Cousin Ann's boys love the farm — Youth craves beauty —
Beauty is cheap — A good start in life — How children can create Home beauty
— Wonderful boys and a wonderful mother — How a Home increased in money
value — Hester a hoi^sekeeper — How a poor girl made her Home beautiful —
A beautiful western cabin — Good taste creative — How to find time for beauty
— Winter ornaments — Dining-table ornaments — Value of a tasteful table — A
centre-piece — Bouquets — A hanging lamp — How to arrange a table — Worth
of little things — Care of table-cloths — Always a way to get on — Trimming
dishes — Ornamenting a boiled tiam — Cold meat — Stewed meat — Serving boiled
^ggs — Sandwiches — Costliness is not beauty — Fancy napkins — An ugly parlor^
What is needful to a beautiful room — Beauty and eyesight — Care of the eyes —
How to escape colds — Preventing croup — Loftiness of beauty — Prime elements
of beauty — How to buy furniture and carpets — Make comfort an aim — Care of
furniture — Give children low seats — Do not crowd furniture — Let us help
others to find beauty — Children's rooms — Servants' rooms — Visiting the sick
and poor — An invalid's window — The power of beauty — An elegant screen-
Ornamenting glass — Painted windows — A beautiful basket — Home decora-
tions 150-170
Viii CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VII.
Industry in the Home — Books — A call from Miss Black — Finding something
to do — People and their work — Work a duty — A maiden lady of means finds
work — What Miss Black does — Helping servants — What ought girls to do ? —
Housework should be learned — Are you making Home happy ? — Duty of parents
to train children to industry — Home a centre of activity — A family well trained
— A habit, and an object — Well-directed industry — Making industry pay — We
should study our children — Working for the future — Give children a share in
work and profit — Boys' help in the house — A nice pair of lads — Work not an
end — What is the end ? — How work injures — Fierce work — Work of pride —
Work for the lazy— Fretting over work — Unsystematic work — Killed by fuss —
Rest in the evening — -Evening work — Sabbath rest — Holiday rest — Rest in
change of work — Disease from indolence — Vigor rises from labor — Saving and
earning — Escaping doctors' bills — Hire your seamstress — Getting a summer
seamstress — Two little children at work — Mischievous children — Work for a
small boy — Teaching boys a trade — Every girl's trade — Success from diligence
— Model family 171-191
CHAPTER VIII.
Literature in the Home — How to improve a Home — Homes and books —
Value of newspapers — A farmer's opinion of papers — An evening scene — On
a stock-farm — -Brought up on books — A favorite book — Scrap-books — Begin at
the beginning — Train for the future — An age of books — Hugh Miller's first
library — Dickens' first library — Child's books — Sabbath books — How children
are taught to love the Bible — Pilgrims' Progress — How to lead children on in
literature— Cultivating a love of science — What to read — We must and will
read — History— Biography — Travels — Explorations — Poetry — When to read
Milton and Shakespeare — Essays — Scientific reading — When to read novels —
What novels — The most valuable book — Reading in the line of our work —
What lawyers, doctors, and farmers should read — Fred's four scrap-books —
What Thomas and Belinda thought — A letter on what not to read —Good and
evil of the press — We never forget — Books form our habits of thought — Do
not read what lessens strength, or" robs of earnestness or reverence — Do not
read secular books on Sabbath — Do not read what you desire to hide — Do not
read from foolish curiosity — When to read — Saving moments — Books in
parlors — Reading saves from dissipation — Systematic reading — Morning and
evening reading — What to do Saturday evening — Reading and kitchen woik —
The benefit of a Literary Society — How to read — Rules for reading — Learn
what you can about authors — Study what you read— Don't be discouraged —
What Hugh Miller says — Dr. Guthiie's opinions — The morals of the Ice-
landers — Studious working people — Welsh workers — Seneca's remarks on
education — Choosing books for children — We must crowd out evil reading
No excuse for being without books — Lay up a book fund — A Home without
books 192-216
CHAPTER IX.
Accidents in the Home — How to meet an accident — Presence of mind I>,
John Brown, of Edinburgh, on presence of mind — Value of this quality Ita
CONTENTS. jj
elements — Instilling children with courage — Boys and bugs — Belinda at a
wedding — A mortifying act — A little girl's presence of mind — >"red and the
fire — Better to act than to scream — Cutting a blood-vessel — Screaming murder
— The child in the well — Martha's wisdom — Mentor's advice to Telemaque— .
A finger cut off — A burnt arm — A remedy for burns — Accidents by fire —
Careless use of kerosene — Of powder — A lesson — Care of lamps — Of fires —
Of ashes — Kindling-wood left on the stove — Clothes drying — Dangers of hot
ashes — Peter Stuyvesant's fire-law — Carelessness with matches — Insurance does
not cover loss — Fighting fire — Danger from falls — Glass or cinder in the eye
— A dog-bite — Sunstroke — A mad dog — Fear of horses — Child on fire — ^A
child choking — Choking on thimbles — Dye in cloth — Antidotes for poison —
Screaming and incapacity — Never frighten a child — Careless nurse.. .317-237
CHAPTER X.
Rbligion in the Family — He did not believe in religion — Morals and religion
— The state and religion — The Sabbath question — Religion the basis of laws —
Sanctity of the family — Family founded on the Bible — How the Bible approves
its origin — The family and the state — Religion and crime — Piety and pauperism
— Religion and independence — A family anniversary — Home-building fijr
eternity — Every-day religion — Why cultivate family piety — The comfort 'of
religion — The finest inheritance — Religion in Cousin Ann's Home — A Sabbath
well spent — Family worship — No unkind criticisms — An irreligious family; —
Helen's Sabbath instructions — Bunyan's Mr. Talkative — A church-going habit
— Religion while travelling — Citizenship in Heaven — Danger of late hours —
Parental vigilance" — The family guide-book — A word from Plato 238-261
CHAPTER XI.
Hospitality in the Home — A garden of roses — The queen of social virtues—'
Varieties in hospitality — Ostentatious hospitality — Spasmodic — Nervous — Mrs.
Smalley's hospitality — Common-sense hospitality — Hospitality without apology
— Biblical hospitality — Selfish hospitality — Excessive hospitality — Elegant hos-
pitality — The right kind of hospitality — -A sewing society discussion — What
our minister said — Bible instances — Plainness in hospitality — Manners of
guests — As good as a sermon — A home view of hospitality — -A guest-room —
The mother's room — Abuse of hospitality — Mountain cabin — A western settler's
Home — Good Samaritan deeds — The poor — A remarkable instance — Valuable
thoughts — Decrease of hospitality — Old-time manners — A singular incident —
Choicest form of rural hospitality 262-282
CHAPTER XII.
Friendships in the Home — Boys in the street — Dangerous playmates — A child
is a social animal — Responsibility of mothers — Gold, silver, and brass training
— Bringing Tom to order — Friends are a necessity of our nature — A young
girl's companion — Our minister's sermon on friendship — Sympathy in opinion*
-Dangers of evil company— Youth has strange grounds of. choice — Safety of
brothers — Country Homes — Entertain your son's friends — Mrs. Black's despair —
A wicked child — Mutual aid — Aunt Sophronia's party — Life-long friendships —
Grounds of friendship — Women's friendships — Men's friendships — Friendships
of men and women. , 283-J05
X CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XIII.
■ Value of Good Manners — How to learn good manners — Books on etiqnttt*
— Cash value of elegant manners — What Emerson says — Train early in good
manners — Little children's manners — Manliness of good manners — Advice to
a. boy — Good manners in conversation — Kindness creates courtesy — How to
teach children good manners — Dr. Guthrie on manners — French manners-^
Manners to our servants — To our children — Life's small change — A polite
young man — Cousin Ann's rules — Virtue of reverence — Where taught — Man-
ners of the present age — Saucy literature — Why we exalt the past — A good
boy to his mother — Manners at meals — Farm-house tables — Take time for
meals — Children and company — Shy children — Forward childrert — Cultivate
children's manners — Old-fashioned courtesies — Politeness to mothers — What not
to do — Waiting on sisters — Be sincere — Be sympathetic— Be self- forgetful —
Be thoughtful — Cultivate conversation — Politeness the sum of littles — Home
deserves good manners — Be pleasant in the morning — Little sins — Be modest
— A model girl — Accept reproof kindly — Chesterfield's opinion — Courtesy the
flower of Home 306-331
CHAPTER XIV.
Methods of Doing Work — Causes of insanity — Insanity and over-work — Why
is there over-work ? — Religious insanity — Indolence and insanity — Over-work
and under-rest — Work is a blessing — Dangers of ignorance — Value of resting
' — Needless work — Hard common-sense — The sewing machine — Saving hours —
Different ways of doing the same work — John Rocheford's story of pancakes —
How to get supper — Knowing how to do it— Fear of seeming lazy — We are
all a little mad ! — Reason applies to baking, boiling, and dish-washing —
Unfairly distributed work — Dr. Curwen's opinion — Rest by change of work —
Over-taxed house-mothers — Need of perfect quiet — Need of firmness — Sleep —
Food — Don't bear imaginary burdens — How to clean an oil-cloth — To clean off
rust — Cleaning knives — Shells for cleaning pots — Cleaning tins — Paper for
cleaning — Keeping a stove clean — Paper for glass cleaning — Care of silver —
. Care of iron utensils — How to clear off a table — How to wash dishes — How
to teach a servant — How to sweep a room — Care of carpets — Irving's Dutch
housewife — Let need form the rule — Washing — Babies cross on Monday ! —
Why we have broken-down women — Cleaning lace curtains — Excellent
recipes 332-359
CHAPTER XV.
The Unity of the Home — The Home is a unit — A rope of sand — A false Home
— Dangers of secrets between man and wife — Oneness of aim — Inform children
of family affairs — Confidence between parents and children — " Women's
extravagance" — Helpmeet — A criminal's confession — A newspaper paragraph
— Concealment is criminal — The marriage service — The Doctor in " Stepping
Heavenward " — A deceived young man — Hiding purchases — Miriam's opinions
— Relations-in-law — Time an avenger — Mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law —
An Arab proverb — Need each family live alone? — Paying family debts —
Attention to the old and aged mother — A large family — A step-mother—
Excellent testimony — Dangers of partiality — Maiden aunts — Whittier's maide'
CONTENTS. XI
aunt — A step-mother's position — Her duty — Her rights — Her disadvantages^
Love and duty — False accusations — My cousin's step-mother — A motherless
family — A silly prejudice — Children's manners to each other — Unjust charges
— Quarrels — Miriam's children settling a family dispute — A loving family —
Keeping birth-days — Yearly holidays — Thanksgiving day — ^Jean Ingelow's
thought — Scriptural view — Responsibilities of parents — Law of rebound —
Wedding days — A thirtieth anniversary — A fine farm — Which is dearer, child
or grandchild ? 360-384
CHAPTER XVI.
l"ilB Use and Abuse of Money in the Home — An argument between two
boys — Aunt Sophronia's decision — Money a means, not an end — The miser's
Ipve — Unlawful love of money — Evils caused by money-loving — Right love of
money — The good uf mone^ — All toil means money — Affectation of disdaining
money — Virtue and poverty — Crime and poverty — Extravagance among the
poor — Agur's prayer — A man not poor — Three great precepts — Cicero's precept
— ^Joubert's precept — Loi'd Bacon's precept — The Home's money basis — The
comfortable position for the Home — Economy a revenue — Economy and
meanness — Little savings — Two young housewives — Rules for getting rich —
What is it to be rich ? — What Astor got for his wealth — Four rules for money-
making — Which is the hardest ?— "Betsy Rourke's riches — Economy in poverty —
What a cook laid up — Worth trying — When not to save — A field for self-
denial — Setting out in life — Begin moderately — Living beyond our means —
What is extravagance ? — A portrait of extravagance — Know your income —
Mark expenses — Keep accounts — Washington and Wellington as account-
keepers — How to keep accounts — Value of persistency — Disastrous changes —
A farmer's wife — Slow and safe — A family experience — Debts shorten life —
Poverty is only relative — Making haste to be rich — Avoid illiberality — A hard
bargain is a bad bargain for the proposer — No mortgage on the farm — Give
the children toys — Don't begrudge flowers — Too much money given children
— False ideas — Worth of earned money — Monitions given to a boy. . .385-409
CHAPTER XVIL
Attention to Dress — Belinda and her new gown — Do we think too much about
dress ? — The duty of thinking about dress — Authorities on dress — Certain odd
fashions — Belinda's views — Paul's precepts — Dressing the hair — ^Hearing a
sermon — How we think too much of dress — Selfishness in dress — The dressy
dauohter — Reason and common-sense in dress — Vast importance of dress —
Dress as it regards health, honesty, charity — We must think about dress —
Fashion tried by laws 6f common-sense — Ear-rings — Beauty of the ear —
Frizzes — The human head — How to care for the hair — How to dress it — The
hair in its Home appearance — Oriental and western fashions — High-heeled
boots — Their dangers — Affecting the spine — Injury to the eyes — Insanity —
Chinese and American absurdities — The mania for compression — The waist
— Evil effects of tight-lacing on the appearance — Artists and the natural figure
— Hindering a figure — Long trains — Modesty and immodesty in dress — Walk-
ing dresses — Great underlying principles — Dress as it adds to Home comfort
— Carelessness in dressing children in winter — An extravagant woman — An
xii CONTENTS.
untidy woman — Dress and health — Under-flannels — Care of the feet — CoTet
the head — Lightness in dress — Fashions for children — Questions in buying
dress — Dress and honesty — Begging fine dress — Train children to honest judg-
ments about dress — Sumptuary laws — Curious laws on dress — Beauty and
taste in dress — Husbands, lovers and sons — -Few clothes, but good ones —
Rules of beauty — What dress suits large and small people — Colors for dark
and fair folks — Dress for small companies — For children's parties — For church
— Durable goods — Flowers as ornaments — Ribbons — Jewelry — Too splendid
articles 410-435
CHAPTER XVIII.
Mistresses and Servants — Importance of a servant's position — The Home
reaches beyond itself — Inefficient servants — Creating paupers — Positive and
negative losses — In a family and not of it — The Home-tie for servants — The
common womanhood — Mrs. Black's expression — Miss Sophronia's opinion —
Frequent change of servants — Trusting our servants — Cultivating trustworthi-
ness — A model mistress — Good rules — An old proverb — A servant in distress
— A little love-story — Permit no negligence — No disobedience — Allowing visi-
tors — •" Followers " — Need of advice — Unjustly particular — The servant-girl's
guardian — What hiring a maid means — A brutal maid — A generous maid —
Servants' instruction — Their rooms — A grateful servant — Politeness — See that
children treat servants kindly — Kitchen conveniences — Good example and
good advice — A thrifty woman — Mending household linen — Be ruled by prin-
ciple — Encouragement — Incentive — Praise — Warnings — Good mistress, good
maid — Dangers of housekeepers' ignorance — A fashion of complaint— Keeping
too many servants — A new way of increasing efficiency — Decision— Care of
brooms^What a servant may be — My servant — A wise servant — Her library
— Martha contrives a filter — How to save sugar — Caring for servants' comfort
— Three maiden ladies — A widely extended charity 436-459
CHAPTER XIX.
,A Young Man who Expects to Marry — A deep question — The secret of Home
happiness — Conscientiousness — A surprise party — The subject of the evening —
How to buy furniture — Buy for use — Kitchen furniture — Choice of furniture —
How to buy a carpet — Harmony in furnishing — How to study effect — A
compliment to a lady — How to make furniture — How to make a chair — A
table — A sofa — Window-curtains — Shades — Divans — How to make a bracket
— A toilette table — A lounge — How to make a paper-carpet — A French
author's view — How to maintain the happy Home — Care of furniture — How to
destroy a Home — How to discourage a man-=-How really happy 'children
played — Small ways of destroying Home — ^Courtesy in the happy Home-
Punctuality — A punctual housewife — Dinner to the minute — Keep calm tem-
pers — Have enough to eat — A proper family-table — Where we waste and save
— How NOT to cook beef — How to use cold meat — Cheap varieties of food —
Foresight in housekeeping — How to make a luncheon — Need of lunch — A
mid-day meal — A late supper — How to give a small dinner-party — How to set
the table — IIow to arrange the dining-room — The two chief elements of a
• dinner-party — Salad for fish — How to cook potatoes — Nuts and salt — Cabv
CONTENTS. xiii
ness — Ease — No haste — Dinners without wines — Calculation — A model hoiise-
"irtfe — House-plants — Causes and treatment of their diseases — How to keep air
moist — Care of frosted plants — Let children share their cultivation — Music in
the Home — Reading aloud — What is good reading — The art of telling a story
well — Tale-telling at meals 460-483
CHAPTER XX.
AHHENT AND MEDIEVAL HoMES — A Christmas week — Christmas the Home
feast — ^The first form of the Home — Patriarchal life — Servants — The encamp-
ment — Their occupations — Diversions — Music — Dress — Jewels — Food — Prin-
cesses as cooks — Hospitality — The Classic Home — Description of Roman
house - - Fountains — Draperies — Heating — Ventilating — Draining — Ancient
family worship — Books — Slaves — Dress — A Roman dinner — The Roman
table — Cooking utensils — Family life — Holiday amusements — The successors of
Roman civilization — The Celt and his Home — Character of the Celts — Theit
places of worship — Beehive huts — Celtic cookery — How they buried their
dead — Saxons and their Homes — A Saxon tomb — Sources of information —
The Jews as architects — Saxon houses — The board — Fuel — Larder — Lights —
Tumblers — Saxon babies — Occupations — Amusements — Education — Guests —
Marriage relations — Our names for food — Bed-rooms — Parlors — Naughty
dames — Clothes as heirlooms — Early English furniture — Western cabins —
Indian wigwam , 484-5 1 '
CHAPTER XXL
Model HoME-Plato's letter — The sanctity of marriage — Immortality of the Home
— Its divine origin — Bishop of Winchester on marriage — Building a house —
General principles — Position — Frame work — Place for bed-rooms and kitchen —
Chimneys — Closets — Beware of fires — Cisterns and filters — Open fires — Furnaces
— Color of walls — Paper — Color in furnishing — Decisive hues — The surround-
ings of a Home — Rustic furniture — Gardens — Convenient houses — Use of
Homes — Families — Too large families — Home comfort — Religion — Extension
of Home influence — Home blessing 512-532
CHAPTER XXIL
Things that all should know — Soup-making and serving — Meats and their
cooking — Game — Fish — Frying and roasting — Vegetables — Cleaning and
cooking — Good recipes for — When to use — What to use — Made dishes — Side
dishe; — T-wo hundred ways to cook an egg — As many ways of cooking a
tomato — Cooking for ch'ldren — For the sick — Puddings — Cakes — Something to
please children- How to make candy — Desserts — How to clean and repair
clothes and furniture — Cleaning silk — Cloth — Furs — How to make household
linen last long — How to sew — How to make over old clothes — Very needful
recipes for bread, yeast — Gruel — Tea and coffee — How to save — Poisons and
their antidote — Fits and fainting — How to meet accidents — Hysteria — Care of
children — Amusements in the Home — Safe games — Exercise — Gardening —
Drains and sewers — Care and cure of diphtheria — Gas and gas poisoning-
Plumbing — Smoke-houses — Cellars — Management — Economy 533-573
The Complete ■ Home.
CHAPTER I.
THE FOUNDATION OF A HOME.
|UR AUNT SOPHRONIA lives in one of our inland
towns. She is the relative of many of the townspeople
— ^the Oracle of all. Firmly intrenched in her own
opinions, and more than usually self-complacent, she is
yet ready to give other people their due ; her ideas are broad
and sound, and she is no doubt a great blessing to our com-
munity. An indefatigable diarist, she has for many years
recorded the best of what she thinks and learns on her favorite
theme — the home. These journals being too voluminous, and
too full of private affairs, to present bodily to the public, she has
at our earnest solicitation reproduced part of them topically,
and with a happy facility in discussing her subject from the
beginning. — J. M. N. W.
Aunt Sophronia discusses, First —
THE CAPITAL UPON WHICH TO MARRY.
It will be a long day before I call myself old, simply because
I don't feel old, and I have been much too busy in my life to have
time to grow old ; but these three girls, who were babes in my
arms when I was woman-grown, are women now, and talking
(11)
i2 THE COMPLETE HOME.
of marrying — at least the two elder ones. I suppose they have
been going on, while I have stood still ! At least so it looks to
me, as it does to people riding on fast trains, as if all the world
were moving and they themselves stationary ! The three girls
are my three nieces: Miriam I brought up; Helen was brought
up by her grandmother ; and Hester came up as she chose, as
her mother, my sister, died when the child was ten, and John
Rochedale, her father, says, he " thinks every individuality ought
to be left to develop on its own line." Of all things ! If / had
married John Rochedale, as once seemed likely, instead of my
sister, he and I would have had some very serious differences
of opinion, this subject of " developing " being one of the many
whereon we don't agree. I am not particularly sorry that it was
Ellen instead of me who became Mrs. Rochedale ; not that I
object to the married state : I do not doubt that the Lord knew
what he was about when he set a married pair at housekeeping
in Eden ; but the single state has also its advantages, as Paul
saw. However most people who preach up " Paul on single-
blessedness " seem to forget that, in the Bible, our great Guide-
Book, the Lord's opinions for matrimony come a long ways
before Paul's for celibacy. I don't think that women should feel
that, merely because they are not wives, they have no place nor
work in the world, no home-life, no effect on coming genera-
tions ; and I don't think that women, who, for various reasons,
have not married, should set themselves up as holier or better
off than their married sisters.
I've given my nieces a deal of good advice, and among the
rest I've advised them to marry, if the matter came reasonably
to hand, without making it an object in life.
I saw well enough what Mark Rogers was coming to our
house so often for, and finally he called upon me, telling me he
wanted my consent to his marrying Miriam.
I have no objections to Mark. If I had, I should long ago
THE FOUNDATION OF A HOME. J 3
have stopped his coming. I don't believe in putting off any
duty until its performance is useless. I told Mark that they had
my consent, provided they were not in too great haste about the
marriage.
"Pshaw!" cried the impatient Mark; "never mind the trous-
seau: what I want is Miriam."
I replied: "What you want, Mark, is a good wife, and what
Miriam wants is a good husband. The step you two contem-
plate is important, especially because it is final : if you make
mistakes now, you must bear their burden through your joint
lives. The preparation of the trousseau is the last thing now in
my mind: I should be sorry to have Miriam. at once .so engrossed
in dress and fineries, which in two years will be out of date, and
in twenty quite forgotten, that she will have no calm time for
consideration, and to prepare herself to face and solve problems
which shall be of the last importance, not only to herself, but
probably to many others."
I had some simple observations to make to my Miriam upon
the step which she contemplated taking, and I concluded that
my other two nieces might as well have the benefit of them, so
I invited them to tea.
Hester declined, and as she is scarcely sixteen, I reflected that
I should have plenty of time to advise her about matrimony ;
however, after tea, just as we had adjourned- to the piazza, over
came Hester. As usual, her splendid dark hair was carelessly
braided, and she had forgotten her necktie, pin and gloves ; she
swung her hat by the strings, her gingham dress had no fit, and
her shoes were too large. John Rochedale has a theory that
■ the physical should be utterly untrammelled in its growth. I
don't know how his theory will turn out for Hester's health and
figure — at present she looks very slovenly. I have often been
vexed at the meanness of her attire. John is dreadfully stingy,
except in the matter of books and education. He thinks btain
14 THE COMPLETE HOME.
is the only thing worth spending money on. Since my sister
died, John, Hester, and a servant girl live alone in that large,
handsome, half-shut house. A splendid library and cabinets are
the centre of the whole. The servant is careless, John and
Hester up to their eyes in books, and at nights I see two solitary
lights, which show where the two are separately pursuing their
lonely studies. The library is open to Hester, and I think there
are plenty of books there that a young girl should not read ; but
John says, "There's no trash in it," and so Hester reads as she
likes. The only sense he has shown is to get her staid old men
for tutors.
Well, up came Hester just as we were seated. I must say she
walks like a queen. John is a blond man, and Hester is dark,
yet not at all like my sister. She seems a revival of some old
type long ago lost out of the Rochedales. I said to her :
" I thought you were not coming, Hester."
"Why," says she, "Mrs. was going to lecture-, and I
meant to go and hear her, when of all things my father declares
that it is not woman's sphere to lecture — that it is bold and
L'ldecent, and that I shall not go."
"Well, isn't he right?" asks Helen.
"Certainly not," returns Hester, with assurance. "If she
knows how to lecture, she has as much right as a man. The
question is, Can she lecture well ? There is no boldness in it if
she thinks of her theme and not of herself / shall speak in
public when I grow up. I shall be a lawyer like my father, and
then I must speak."
" What folly !" says Helen. "Then you'll never marry. Mir-
iam here is to marry Mark Rogers, and I shall marry, too; I'll
•take Frank Hand."
"How long beforr you will change your mind?" asked
iMiriam, reprovingly.
"I won't change; I must stop changing. Grandmother says
THE FOUNDATION OF A HOME. 15
I'll go through the woods and pick up a crooked stick at last.
Suppose I don't marry? I have not enough to live on; I shall
get old, ugly and crabbed, and have nothing to do. Yes, I must
marry."
"If you marry on sUch grounds as those, Helen," I said, "you
will iind your lot worse than to be single."
"I thought Mr. Fitch was the man," said Hester.
" O, I was engaged to him for a week, and I w;ished him in
the bottom of the Red Sea all the while, so I broke it off And|
then there was Mr. Merry : I couldn't quite make up my mind
to take him ; and Tom Green I got tired of in two months."
"I should think you would be ashamed to treat people so
heartlessly," said Miriam.
"I should think you would be ashamed to treat yourself so\"
flamed Hester. "Do you think your affection and confidence
are of so small value as to be conferred and taken back like
penny toys ? Have you no respect for your own word, or your
own dignity? or are you just an animated lay-figure, with reason
and honor and emotions left out when you were made ? "
"You speak too harshly to your cousin, Hester," I said.
"Well, I kate a dunce!" cried she, so like John Rochedale.
Helen retorted with some spirit: "You, Hester, are so differ-
ent from what / think it is nice for a girl to be, that I should be
very sorry if you did like me."
"O, I like you well enough," said Hester, with her royal
indifference, "only I don't approve of you; but we'll get on
without quarrelling, as cousins should. And so, Miriam, you
are going to many Mark? Do you consent to that. Aunt
Sophronia?"
" Yes," I said ; " if Mark and Miriam have capital enough to
enter safely into the married state."
" I did not know you were so mercenary," said Helen. And
Miriam quite sadly said : " But we have no capital, aunt"
|g THE COMPLETE HOME.
" I will explain myself, girls," I added. " Let me first call to
your minds the Scripture, ' Which of you, intending to build a
tower, sitteth not down first and counteth the cost, whether he
have sufficient to finish it; lest haply after he hath laid the
foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold begin
to mock him, saying: This man began to build, and was not
able to finish.'
" Now, my children, if it is so important, and so customary for
those who build, or enter into any business enterprise, to count
the cost when failure will not be final — when, if they err, they
can retrieve themselves, or they can give up all, and be, at least,
the richer for the experience — is it not far more needful to count
the cost of such a step as marriage ? to consider whether you
have wherewith not only to lay the foundation but rear the
superstructure of a Home? Remember that the Home is an
institution of God himself; it is his ideal of the life of humanity;
upon it, as basis and model, he builds up nations. A Home is
not an isolated fragment of life : it is an integral part of society.
Every home has its influence, for good or evil, upon humanity at
large. Its sanctity, its honor, its importance, is the care of our
Creator. Tell me, girls, in thinking of marriage, how far have
you thought out the problem of your future ? "
" Why," says Helen, " I have thought of the eclat of the
engagement, and then the buying lots of things and having
them made up in the very latest style, and the cards, the cake,
the presents, and the bridesmaids. I shall have an elegant veil
and a white silk, and be married in church, and have three
Saratoga trunks, and a wedding trip, and — well, that's as far as
I've gone. I suppose after .that one boards at a hotel, or has to
go to housekeeping, and I'm afraid it would be dreadfully
humdrum. But no more so than flirting with one and another
year after year, and seeing all the girls married off"
" For my part," said Miriam, " I have not looked at all this
THE FOUNDATION OF A- HOME. y.
Style and preparation that Helen describes, because I know I
cannot aftord it. But I have thought I should like a little home
all to myi.?lf, and I would keep it as nice as I could, and I
would try and help my husband on in the world, and we should
have thing-j finer only as we could really afford it. And I
should waiit my home to be very happy, so that all who
belonged iu it felt that it was the best place in all the world.
I should wyint to gather up all the good that I could every-
where, and bring it into my home, as the bee brings all its
spoils to its hive."
"And I," said Hester, " want to make myself a scholar, and I
shall marry a scholar, and we shall be happy in learning, and
in increasing knowledge. And he shall be my helper, and I
shall help him, and so together we shall climb to the top of the
tree."
Vanity, love, ambition. These were the three Graces, which,
incarnated in my nieces, sat on my piazza. I said to them ;
"Let me talk to you seriously upon the subject of a Home,
Two young people marry; they are united until death do them
part; their union is the beginning of the household; that house-
hold, in its first members, may last fifty or even seventy years ; '
and whenever it is broken by the dea.;h of one or both of them,
it will most likely live on in other lives and other households,
which in it have found their origin. The household, then, starts
in wedded man and woman : the man is a part of society ; he has
his business in the world ; he goes among his fellows carrying
the atmosphere of his home with him ; his ideas of honor, of unsel-
fishness, his objects, his ambitions, his energies, his geniality,
his sympathy, his physical vigor, are largely derived from his
home; his acts are stamped with his feehngs; whether he ia
goaded to grasp all and trample on all by a mad thirst for gain,
or a wild effort to cover his expenses by his receipts — whether
he is happy or sorry, hopeful or discouraged, interested in good
18 THE COMPLETE HOME.
or evil things, depends largely on his home life. Thus the
various homes among men appear as active but invisible spirits
in all the departments of business life — with the preacher in the
pulpit, the doctor by his patient, the lawyer in the court, the
broker, the trader, the mechanic, the laborer, making or marringj
insensibly but effectively, in all that is undertaken in the world.
The wife is also a part of society : she has her friends, her social,'
church and philanthropic duties, sometimes even some business
of her own. Into these she brings her spirit as it is fashioned
in her home; if order, graciousness, good judgment, probity,
reign there, she goes forth a spirit of graciousness, or abides at
home a shining light to all who come there, teaching either by
precept or by silent example. She makes her home a fountain
of bitterness, or a well-spring of strength, bracing her husband's
good impulses, or developing his meaner instincts. She makes
her home a model of economy, beauty and propriety, or it is a
false light of extravagance, spurring others to waste, or it is a
head-quarters of misrule.
" Children are born in this home : they shall be in all their lives
what this home makes them ; they shall train up their future
children to be ennobled or warped, as here they learned; they
shall carry their energies and example into the world for better
Or worse, as here was taught them. The Home never dies ; guests
and servants come and go, and carry out its influences ; like the
souls in whom it began, like God its founder, it abides without
end. In this home children receive also their instruction : their
worldly occupations are chosen, and fortunes are laid up for
them: their moral character is determined. You see thus that
all the energies, the business, the industries, the inventions of the
world, have really their centre, their inception in the Home : it is
the world's animate heart. Erase all homes, all home life, ties,
needs, joys, and how long would the wheels of labor and com-
merce move on ? The inventor would drop his useless pursuits,
THE FOUNDATION OF A HOME. j^
the miner's toil would cease, the artisan would no longer ply his
useless tools, man would find himself without spur or object in
life. How important, then, is every Home ! what a tremendous
responsibility surrounds its founding ! how needful to count the
cost ! What have you in yourself of reserve force to make this
new home a root of blessing? Count the cost, whether you
have wherewith to lay a solid foundation and build a goodly
superstructure."
"Mercy!" cried Helen; "if I faced such responsibilities, I
should be frightened to death."
" Let us begin at the foundation," said Miriam ; " tell me,
what is the first thing needful in starting a home ? "
" The first thing," said I, " is sound moral principle. Let me
tell you that I do not believe there are impregnably good prin-
ciples that are not established on religion as a basis. The heart
is so deceitful, and temptations are so strong, that unless the
soul i^ braced with religion, principle is not secure of withstand-
ing the onset of the world, the flesh afld the devil. The true
ideal of the home, then, is its inception in two who are Chris-
tians, and who have a oneness of religious belief True, there
have been very happy homes where parents held different dog-
mas ; but now we are speaking of the best that can be brought
together for the founding of the model home, and we say first a
oneness of religious principle. Religious principle, which takes
the 'thus saith the Lord' as an ultimatum, is a family anchorage
not on shifting sands. The Divine Law is a court of appeal by
whose decisions all the household will abide, and thus, where
there is oneness of religious principle, the wedded pair have
confidence in and for^ach other; they have found a solid rock
stratum whereon to set up their new Home."
" Well, aunt," said Helen, " both Miriam and Mark are mem-
bers of the same church. Now I don't look at that in the light
that you do, and I shall not refuse Frank Hand because I am
% church-member and he is not.''
^0 THE COMPLETE HOME.
"Why should you?" demanded Hester; "have, you ever in
iny way put yourself out for your church membership ? "
I hastened to forestall a dispute. "Yes," I said, " Mark and
Miriam have that oneness of rel> pious principle which I demand
as the foundation of a good home."
^ " You are unromantic," said Helen ; " I should have thought
you would have said love came first. What an idea, for a man
and woman to set up a model home with love left out ! "
" If they have sound religious principle they will not marry
without love, because they will know that God demands deep
and abiding love in a married pair — love that will not grow cold
nor weary. Love that has no basis in religious principle will
often prove a passion, fleeting as night-shade blooms, leaving
only some seed of discontent. Those who have religious prin-
ciple, recognizing the sacredness and the lasting nature of the
marriage bond, will be very sure that they are not marrying for
whim, for passing fancy, or from motives of convenience, but
that they are really choosing from the world one whom they
love better than all the world, whom they can take for better
or worse, until death do them part. Therefore, having sound
religious principle as the rock-basis whereon to build, we lay in
loyal love the corner-stone of Home."
" Miriam,"-said Helen, mischievously, "have you that love?"
Hester came brusquely to the rescue. "As Miriam has not
frittered away her emotions in flirtations, as she has not shown
her low estimate of love by breaking two or three engagements,
we will believe that at twenty-two she knows her mind, and only
accepts a suitor to whom she gives a heart which she has care-
fully guarded as a thing of worth."
" Hester," I said, " young as you are, you are older than these
other girls in your opinions."
" I have lived with books and not wasted my time with silly
people," said Hester, scornfully.
THE FOUNDATION OF A HOME. 21
" I'm afraid you are getting hard and cynical, my poor child,"
t said;' "what will become of you !"
" Never mind me/' said Hester; "continue to instruct these
other two on the subject of a Home."
" Love so enduring and ardent as fits it to be the Home's cor,
ner-stone, must be the result of something more than a hasty
fancy : love should be built on sincere respect, and this should
arise from thorough acquaintance. This respecting love does
not claim the perfection of its object, because those worthy of
our heartiest and most admiring affection may have many faults;
but they are what may be called superficial faults — they are not
the crimes of falsehood, meanness, cruelty, self-serving or unfaith.
To have a proper groundwork for love in a thorough acquaint-
ance, young people should not rush into engagements after a
short intimacy, else in a little while longer they may discern
that there is no congeniality between them. Neither do I believe
in engagements formed between the vory yoiing. Young people
change so between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one, that they
can hardly be recognized as the same persons. Especially if
they are parted from each other during this period of changing
tastes, they will grow into great unlikeness : in ninety-nine cases
out of a hundred neither will become the ideal of the other, and
neither will prove to be that manner of persons which they were
once supposed to be by the other. Under these conditions the
engagement trammels them, and can only be productive of mis-
ery. I should say, then, let an acquaintance as long as possible,
or long enough to promote a thorough understanding of each
other's character, precede a matrimonial engagement."
"And then," interrupted Helen, "just long enough time to get
your trousseau in good order."
" Not so fast, my dear. I do not advocate what is called a
long- engagement, but not so short a one as a few weeks occupied
by shopping, dress-makers and milliners. I should want time
22 THE COMPLETE HOME.
enough for the young people to calmly lay their plans, furthei
count the cost of their new undertaking, and grow into greater
oneness of opinion and object. Life is full of trials and reverses;
constantly things are occurring to give love a rude shock, and
care should be had that the love is so well settled in knowledge
ind esteem, that it will deepen and not lessen by trials ; that it
will endure with patience; improve with time, like good wine;
that it will, like the morning and the path of the just, grow
brighter and brighter."
" I am afraid," laughed Helen, " that a few months engage-
ment would give me time to change my mind. I should see
my beloved's imperfections so clearly as to decline further
acquaintance."
" Better change your mind, if you change at all, before you are
aaarried than after, and get into a divorce court," said Hester.
" Why, Mi .s Lawyer, I supposed you were strong-minded,
&nd did not decrj' a divorce court," retorted Helen.
" I've a m!nd to shake you! "cried poor Hester, in a rage.
"A woman who has really strength of mind will be strong
enough to se'? that all that defies God's law is really weakness.
Divorce is wicked ; but no wonder it is frequent when so many
people jest at being variable and fickle."
" We interrupt aunt," said Miriam. " How shall true love
show itself in home-building ? "
" Love, like faith, shows itself by works : now what capital
have you in yourself wherewith to build up for your love a
worthy Home? -What material have you in yourself to enablfl
you to show your love? Love desires the happiness of its
object. What have you to ensure that happiness? My MiriarK
has ju?t said rather sadly that she and Mark have no capital
I think in this counting of the cost of the Home Building, 1
have just shown you that relig-ious principle whereon to build
is the first part of the capital needed, and Love as a corner
THE FOUNDATION OF A HOME. 23
Stone comes next. Courage, then, Miriam ; possibly you may
discover that you are a larger capitalist than you thought'
Happiness is largely dependent upon health. Here one would
hesitate to lay down arbitrary rules, for there are so many
circumstances which alter cases: and yet, as health is so largely
a spring of happiness ; as sickness or constant feebleness brings
so much misery into homes ; and especially as so many diseases
are hereditary, and the unhealthful parent entails a physical
curse on his children to the third and fourth generation — I should
say, that where people know themselves the heritors of scrofulous
diseases — of insanity, or manias," or other hereditary ills — then
they would do well, early in their history, to choose for them-
selves a single life."
" But suppose a woman preferred to care for the last days of
one whom she loved ? " said Miriam.
"As I said, rules cannot suit every case," I replied.
" Pity that her affections should have been entangled by ond
who ought not to marry," said Hester.
" Yes ; because the sacrifice of herself may entail the life-
misery of her children," said Helen, soberly.
I continued .
"Is it very heroic or honorable for a feeble young man,
especially without capital to bequeath to a family, to marry,
and having been nursed and mourned over by his wife for a few
years, to die, leaving an impoverished widow, with several
sickly children? Would it not have been a nobler part for this
young man to control his expectations and desires, to accept
the lot which was laid upon him, to mingle only generally in
society, devoting himself especially to no one, and, bearing
his own burden, go out of the world glad of this at least, that he
had not made others sharers in his diseases ? "
" My father says," remarked Hester, " that this rule should
hold for those who have a love of alcohol, or who have kleptc
24 THE COMPLETE HOME.
mania. Who would wish to raise a family of thieves or of
drunkards ? "
" I think, on the whole," said Helen, " that more feeble girls
C:han young men marry, and that men are the ones who igno-
rantly or intentionally are deceived. It is not so, aunt ? Loot
it that side of the question."
"A young man making his way in the world finds the struggle
bard enough : how much harder is it when he marries some girl
(vho seems as healthful and happy as others, but who knows
herself that she has organic disease, some insidious madness
hanging over her, which, speedily developed by the cares and
burdens of life, keeps her a helpless invalid, entailing her mis-
eries on her children ? Such young folks would be likely to
live longer, and more comfortably, and surely with less anxiety,
and less cause of self-reproach, if they had remained single.
Friendships, activities, social pleasures, and philanthropies were
open to them, wherein they might serve God and humanity. It
ii. a vile selfishness to marry merely to be taken care of! So.
Miriam, as you and Mark are, so far as you both have experi-
ence of yourselves, sound in body and in mind, you have at once
a very large portion of that capital needful for upbuilding a
happy and long-enduring Home.''
" Thanks to you, aunt, who have prepared me to meet life
courageously in my new Home."
"That Home, Miriam, you are to build up within, while Mark
buildb without. On his part is needed business knowledge and
ability in whatever line of life he has chosen, and sonne settled
line of life already entered upon. A man has a right to ask a
woman to share humble circumstances with him, if she loves
him well enough to do so, and if he is honest in telling her
exactly what his means are ; but no man has a right to offer any
woman half of nothing: he has no right to be a pauper himself
nor to make other people paupers. A healthy, industrious
THE FOUNDATION OF A HOME. Ofl
young couple can live on very little money indeed ; they can
save and they can earn, but there should be something to save
and some means of earning, and that ' something ' and those
' means ' should be equally and fairly understood by both
Especially no young couple should start in life burdened by
debts. Expenses in a household are likely to increase and not
diminish. Nothing so breaks the spirit as a load of debt. Let
every young man clear off the last dollar of his debts before he
takes a wife. It is safe in very many cases, we might say in
every case, where the young pair are healthful, industrious and
economical, to start without any cash capital, if there is in the
young man's possession some reliable business, with its reason-
ably settled gains ; but it is not safe to start hampered by any
debts. 'Owe no man anything — but to love one another.'"
" Well, Mark has no debts, and he has a business," said
Miriam, with a sigh of relief
"While Mark in his daily business, which furnishes him a
reasonable prospect of support, builds up his Home from without,
do you, Miriam, know how to build it up within ? What do you
know about housekeeping ? If it is Mark's to make money, it
is yours to spend it judiciously : to save it so far as you can,
without sacrifice of comfort and decency. Will you be able to
take his income and out of it produce in your home refinement,
taste, plenty, good order, strict economy, and achieve at least
Micawber financiering, which will save a dollar out of the year's
allowance ? That is, will you fall within the income, even if it
be by never so little, and not fall without the income, even if it
be by never so little ? This, Miriam, can be done only if you
are prepared like the wise women in Proverbs to look well to
the ways of your household ; to look at them understanding^.
You must know how everything should be done, even though
you may not have to do it yourself If you rely on telling your
maid to make good bread, and yet do not yourself know how
26 THE COMPLETE HOME.
that is to be done, you are likely to have poor bread, or bread
wastefully made. If you tell your servant to be economical, and
do not yourself know all the items of economical practice, be
sure there will be waste somewhere. Streams do not rise higher
than their source, and first-rate housekeeping is secured only
where there is a first-rate housekeeper at the head of affairs,
although she may not personally perform any of the labor."
" This may be pleasing talk to Miriam," said Helen, " but it
gives me the horrors. What a delinquent am I ! bread !
economy ! financiering ! "
I ignored her interruption, and continued :
" Now, Miriam, I consider a true ability for housekeeping, a
masterly knowledge of it, one of the finest capitals a woman can
bring into a marriage partnership ; I should set it against any
large cash capital which her husband had, as without it his
capital would be likely to be wasted ; it should counterbalance
grand business abilities on his part, because if it is lacking,
capital is not likely to increase by his abilities. Don't sneer,
Helen, and mumble that it is ' vulgar, common knowledge ; '
housekeeping is not vulgar : it is a fine art ; it grasps with one
hand beauty, with the other utility; it has its harmonies like
music, and its order like the stars in their courses. I fear really
good housekeeping, which exhibits itself not in occasional enter-
tainments, or a handsome parlor, but the good housekeeping
which extends from the attic to the cellar, and through every
hour in the year, is far from common.
" So, after religious principle as underlying rock, after love as
a corner-stone, after health as a foundation, I say, let us begin
to lay up the walls of your home with really good housekeeping
on the wife's part, and honest industry in his business, whatever
it may be, on the husband's."
"You, aunt, should be able to say whether I am a good house
keeper," said Miriam.
THE FOUNDATION Of A HOME. 27
"I should condemn myself, Miriam," I replied, "it I had
allowed you to grow up in ignorance of housekeeping. Fa-
miliarity, says the proverb, breeds contempt, but it is ignorance
of housekeeping which breeds contempt for that art; true
familiarity with all its departments begets profound respect for it."
"Aunt Sophronia," demanded Hester, " do you consider gooc^
housekeeping and good scholarship incompatible ? "
" Surely not," I replied. " Very many most admirable, prac-
tical housekeepers are not scholars ; scholarship has not come
in their way, nor suited their taste ; but wherever a woman is a
sound scholar, she ought to be therefore the finer housekeeper.
Reaching toward perfection in any one thing should lift us
higher in all things ; it should beget a habit of application and
thoroughness. Housekeeping embraces a very large part of
our home duties, and we should all feel that nothing is too
good and beautiful to be laid on the altar of home. Scholarship
produces logical thought, correct taste, order, sound judgment;
and all these are needful to good housekeeping, to say nothing
of the scientific knowledge required, and which many use imitat-
ively, not knowing that science is concerned. If classical study
makes a preacher a better preacher, and a lawyer a better
lawyer, it should make a housekeeper a better housekeeper ; a
woman who could read the Georgics oueht not to burn her beef-
steak ; the training which teaches her to construe an eclogue
should bid her take the steak from the fire when it was properly
cooked."
" But her mind might be so absorbed in the eclogue as to for-
get the beef," said Helen.
" That is about as reasonable as to say that because the lawyer
learned to scan hexameters, he would suddenly become absorbed
in them and forget his business when applying for a writ of
habeas corpus."
"You make me think of our Nora," laughed Hester; "fathei
28 THE COMPLETE HOME.
cried out to her, ' Nora ! your salad is not crisp : it seems wilted ;
did you have it in water ? ' ' Faith it was floatin' in the pan
better nor half an hour ; be that token, some lies there yet,' says
Nora. -I went to look, and sure enough there it was, but in
picking the leaves from the stem she had laid them all face
down. I said to her, ' See here, Nora, you must cover these
leaves with water, or put them bottom-side down.' 'An' why
will I do that ? ' says Nora. ' Because they have no mouths
on the upper surface to drink in the water,' I told her. ' If you
say so, I'll put 'em so,' said Nora, ' but it's not meself iver see a
mouth in a salad leaf, here nor yet in ould Ireland, where ivery-
thing is made right.' "
"Well, Hester," said I, "you see that botanical knowledge,
did not come amiss in the kitchen ; neither does artistic knowl-
edge, for I W.1S at Mrs. Burr's lately and saw on her tea-table a
salad served with a wreath of blue violets around the edge of
the platter, and a cluster of lilies of the valley in the centre ; the
dish was as lovely as one of those paintings for which she
receives such great prices, and as for flavor, it was the finest
salad I ever ate, while the whole table looked beautiful in its
beauty. But to go on with our discussion of the capital needed
for founding a home. In the housekeeping I have included
order and neatness, for that is half. the whole; merely to know
how to cook food is not good housekeeping. Economy will be
especially demanded of young people who have no fortunes but
in themselves. Are you capable of self-denial and self-sacrifice ?
Can you be cheerful while others, your friends, make a greater
display and have more showy pleasures ? Can you be resolute
to save a little every year, even if it is very little indeed ? This
strength of character which can attain to self-denial, to persever-
ance, self-sacrifice, is fine capital for the founding of a home.
Can you sew? Can you cut out garments? Can you make,
mend, and re-make ? Rich or poor, every woman should know
THE -FOUNDATION OF A HOME. 29
how to do this ; if she is rich, she may be poor some day and
need the knowledge, or she can now do this work for the objects
of her charity, and so increase her means of usefulness. Burns,
in the world's loveliest pastoral, says, his house-mother ' gars
auld claes look amaist as good as new.' You who begin in
humble fashion shall move on this road of tasteful, neat econ-
omy in your clothing toward the virtuous woman's height of
' clothing her household in scarlet, and making herself coverings
of tapestry, and her clothing silk and purple.' While in the
olden time the housewife ' laid her hands to the spindle and held
the distaff,' now machinery performs for her these labors, and
she can devote herself to cutting and fitting, darning, basting
and turning, satisfied that to save is to gain ; and if she saves for
love and duty's or holy charity's sake, she makes the work
beautiful and honorable. Every woman should be a good seam-
stress as well as a good housekeeper, whether she be obliged
to use her needle herself or not. There is a growing neglect
of nice hand-sewing, and I know young women who are not
ashamed to proclaim that ' they don't know how to make a
button-hole, and their hemming looks like witches.' "
"Well," laughed Miriam, " I can sew: so that's more capital."
"Another important item in founding a home is, that the
young people have and cultivate equable, cheery dispositions,
that their homes be bright and attractive. A gruff, fault-finding,
never-pleased man makes his home hateful ; a morose, quer-
ulous, spiteful woman makes her home equally hateful. If
such dispositions are in you, you must conquer them for the
sake of Home comfort, that over your Household may rest the
blessing of peace. Cultivate also for. your home, intelligence;
there are other matters of interest needed to converse about
than the price of potatoes and the draught of the kitchen
chimney.
" Stories generally end with the marriage'ring, but here the
30 THE COMPLETE HOME.
most important story of life begins. After the marriage-ring
come the greatest beauties of self-sacrifice, the strength of
perseverance, the heights of courage, the tenderness of sym-
pathy, the need of patience. Search yourselves and see whether
you have in your hearts the germs of these things, which need
may develop into luxuriant growth. Have you in yourselves
the essentials for the founding of a home? Have you any
home-making capacity? If not, then, out of consideration for
the world's already sufficiently great burden of misery, don't
marry.
" But if you can look honestly at the future, see that it will
not all be love-making and plenty and pleasure, but that
' No lot below
For one whole day escapeth care; '
that there will be clouds with the sunshine, and want mixed
with plenty, and sorrow with joy, and pain with comfort ; and if
you find you have in you ability to
' Make a sunshine in a shady place; '
if you can see two walking courageously together because they
be agreed, lifting up each other when they fall, standing by
each other in disaster, and liking good better because it is
shared — then marry ; and there will be one more true Home
in the world, one more source of good, one more fountain of
joy to generations to come ; the state and the world will be the
better for you and for your Home."
" Why ! " cried Hester, in her dashing way, " who is sufficient
for these things?"
"All honest hearts who are capable of loving, and are cour-
ageously resolved to do, day by day, their very best, living
down their disasters, and repairing their mistakes."
" I see," said Miriam, " why you do not want the whole time
• of an engaged couple consumed in preparations of dress and
THE FOUNDATION OF A HOME. 31
house-furnishing, that leave them no time to think, when the
subject is of so great importance."
"If you take it so seriously, Miriam," said Helen, "you will
grow as perfect as Aunt Sophronia's model, Mrs. Winton. As
for me, thinking of so many duties would make me gray in a
week. I think I shall have to risk the married state without
finding in myself any particular capacity for it."
So in this world we walk according to our lights. Does the
light burn low because we were started in life with very little
oil in it, or because we have not been taught to tend and trim
it properly ? Miriam is a very different girl from Helen, and /
will not say it is my training that has made the difference.
However, such as they were they married : Miriam and Mark,
and Helen and Frank Hand. Frank and his wife had the most
money ; but Mark and Miriam had what I called the most real
capital for the founding of a home — good religious principle,
true love, health, knowledge of housekeeping and business,
industry, economy, courage, intelligence, good dispositions;
they were not perfect, but very fair samples of humanity.
Miriam and Mark had a plain wedding and no wedding tour.
They had a snug little cottage into which they went on their
marriage day, and I called that evening to bid them "good-
night." As I went away I prayed David's Prayer : " Let it
please thee to bless the house of thy servant, that it may con-
tinue forever before thee : for thou, O Lord God, hast spoken it.
and with thy blessing let the house of thy servant be blessed
forever."
CHAPTER II.
ORDER IN THE HOME.
AUNT SOPHRONIA'S IDEAS OF TIME-SAVING.
HAD invited my three nieces to spend my birthday with
me. During dinner Hester informed us that she wa.1
going away to school, and expected to remain most of
the time for four years.
" Ridiculous ! " cried Helen : " you will then be past twenty,
without having been in society; at whrt age do you expect to
be married at that rate ? "
" I have set no period for that important event," said Hester,
with her lofty smile. " However, I have in my reading hap-
pened upon a deal of advice on that subject, and I find that
physicians and other wise people consider from twenty-two until
twenty-five the best age for marriage, and they assert that many
evils of early deaths, feeble health, unhappy homes, sickly chil-
dren, and so forth and so on, result from premature marriages."
" If you must go to school," said Helen, deserting the first
question, as she always does when Hester begins to argue, " I
hope you will learn music. Every one does, and you will seem
dreadfully stupid and unfashionable if you cannot play."
" I shall not study music, as it would be a waste of time
and money," replied Hester ; " only those who have some apti-
tude for music should study it ; as for me, I have neither voice
nor 'ear, and why should I drill on an art where I can never
achieve success ? Why study music merely because it has be-
come the fashion to pretend to pursue it? If I spend on music
(32)
ORDER IN THE HOME. 33
t\vo hours a day during my four years' course, I spend two
thousand five hundred and four hours, and four hundred dollars
upon music, and then can only drum on the piano, and not play
with taste and sympathy. All those hours and that money, on
the other hand, might put me in possession of some branch foi
which I have real aptitude. Folks should study what is suited
to themselves, to their own needs and abilities, not merely some-
thing that other people study. Goethe says, 'We should
guard against a talent which we cannot hope to practise in
perfection.' "
" Well, there is painting, Hester," said Miriam : " you have ^
real taste for the beautiful art."
" I have taste, but no genius," said Hester j " I can appreciate
what other people do, but I cannot create beauty myself; I
should be merely a mediocre artist, and there are plenty of them
in the market. Now, I have ability for scholarship; natural
sciences and languages are my delight; therefore I shall pursue
that in which I can succeed."
" Is it better," asked Miriam, " to know something of every-
thing, or everything of something ? "
"Absolutely, one can do neither," I said.
" Well, within human limitations, understood."
"It is better," said Hester, "to know everything o* something,
for thoroughness is in itself a great virtue, and \\ill entei intc
all your life, making one in all things painstaking and honest."
" This devoting yourself to one thing, however," said Helen
" will make you one-idead, crotchety, a hobby-rider, and you
will be detestable."
" These people of one idea have been the people who moved
the world," retorted Hester.
" The fact is, my dear girls," I interposed, " no one branch of
study stands isolated ; it reaches out and intermingles and takes
hold of others. Hester's ideas are in the main correct; study
34 THE COMPLETE HiiME.
that for which you find in yourselves most aptitude ; aspire to
completeness in whatever you undertake ; value knowledge, and
seize whatever comes in your way, and put what you acquire to
use as fast as you can. The Lord found great fault with the
servant who buried his talent in a napkin."
" What do you suppose his talent was ? " asked Helen.
" Time, perhaps : the one talent common to all."
"And what was the napkin wherein he buried it?" asked
Hester.
" Disorder, doubtless ; for you can bury more time in disorder
than in any other way."
" I must be very disorderly, then," laughed Helen, " for since
I went to housekeeping I have no time for anything ; you have
no idea how behind-hand I am. I have not opened my piano
except on a few evenings ; I have a whole basketful of accumu-
lated sewing, and hose for darning ; I haven't read anything but
two or three novels ; I have not done a bit of fancy-work — "
" My dear girl ! " I cried, " if this is your record now, what
will become of you when cares increase ? — say, for instance, if
there were two or three little ones."
"I'm sure I don't know," said Helen; "I should have to set
up another servant or two, and then we should be bags of rags,
and all our buttons would be off, I expect."
" Indeed Helen," I urged, " there must be a sad mistake some-
where if you have reached this result. Living here in the vil-
lage, with but two in the family, you have a very modicum of
household cares ; what think you of young wives on farms who
nave chicks to feed, several hands to cook for, butter to make,
oftentimes no servant, or but a young girl ? and yet nearly all
of them would make a better showing than this. I remember
when Cousin Ann's three elder children wjere little things, and
she kept but a half-grown girl, there were no rags and no mend-
ing in arrears, and all the farm-work being done by half-past
ORDER TN THE HOME. 35
two, she could sit down to make or mend, and in the evening
pick up a book or a newspaper. She made a point of reading
as much as she could, so as to be able to interest and instruct
her children. Her son Reed's wife has a young child and keeps
no help ; she sends butter and eggs to market, and manages so
well in all her work that she has spare hours for making pretty
and useful things for her house, for reading, and for doing all
her own sewing, and not being behind-hand with it. Depend
on it, the secret lies in industrious order — in what is called good
management."
" But I cannot understand it, Helen," said Miriam : " your
house has only ten rooms beside the bath, and you keep a
servant: where does your time go?"
" How can / tell where it goes, when I never can find it ? "
grumbled Helen. " I dare say j/(?« don't understand it. Why,
aunt, there is Miriam doing the most of her own work ; no
matter when I go there, the work is all done ; the house is neat
as a pin ; Miriam is sitting at her reading or her sewing ; she
has made perfect gems of fancy things that stick here and there
in her house ; even in her kitchen she has fancy wall-pockets for
string, paper and little bags ; fancy holders, a pincushion hung
by the window, a crocheted scrap-bag, and, if you'll believe me,
always a bouquet in the window ! "
" Why not have it nice ? " said Miriam. " I have to be there
often, and I can work faster where things are handy, and enjoy
myself better when things are pretty. Why should I run up-
stairs for every pin I want, or look five minutes when I need a
string, or have scraps of rag and paper stuffed in corners for
want of a convenient bag to put them in ? "
" What amazes me is," said Helen, " where you get the time
for all these things."
" I got it from Mrs, Burr for a wedding gift," said Miriam.
" Do explain : I wish she had been as liberal to me."
36 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" She sent me a book of her own making, two boards of gray
Bristol, bound in red satin and painted with one of her lovely
landscapes. Inside was only a single page: that was while
Bristol, illuminated with a wreath of flowers, bees and butterflies,
and this motto within: 'Always be one hour in advance of your
work.' I saw at once that here was the key to the Order that
reigns at Mrs. Burr's. If I were an hour beforehand with work
I should never be hurried nor worried ; if I began at once, the
habit of being in seasoil would be fixed. I saw also that the
one hour would by good judgment in planning grow to many,
and I should always have time to spare. I concluded to think
the housekeeping matter out and have an exact routine for
it ; it was little trouble to do that : I had only to copy Aunt
Sophronia : she always had exact order here."
" But I hate routine," yawned Helen.
" Then you hate what you never tried," quoth Hester.
" I believe," cried Helen, " that it is all my servant that makes
the difference. You, Miriam, are not plagued with a girl. I
dare say, Hannah has no order about things, and then, she is so
slow ! "
" But you, as her mistress," I said, " have a right and a duty
to arrange an order, and see that it is maintained ; if there is no
order, of course she will be slow ; disorder is the slowest worker
in the universe. Have you any fixed time for anything ? When
do you breakfast?"
"When the breakfast is ready," cried Helen, "and the same
for dinner and tea ; only Hannah is prompter with tea, so that
she can get out."
"And on what day do you make your bread ? "
" Why, when the bread runs out, and usually Hannah ' forgot,'
or ' didn't know,' or something of that kind, and we have a day
of baker's brfead."
"And do you not look after the state of the bread-box and see
ORDER IN THE HOME. 37
that Hannah minds her work ? Do you not know how many
loaves you need weekly, and have a regular day for baking, one
day before the bread is out, so you will not cut hot bread and
gain dyspepsia thereby, while you waste bread? And what day
have you for sweeping ? — what day for washing ? "
" Well, I try to have Monday for washing-day, and Friday
for sweeping, but sometimes we find ourselves out of all pie,
cake and bread, and then we have to make a change. And if I
go off Friday morning expecting Hannah to sweep, I come
home, and perhaps she has done something else — dear knows
what ; and then Saturday all is flurry, and I have no decent place
to sit down to my mending, and it is put off until the next week,
and then I am tired, and there is a great deal of it to do, and so
it goes on."
"All the result of not having a time and a place for everything;
a lack of plan and energy on your part, Helen, is ruining your
servant, and your domestic comfort. A Household should have
laws like the Medes and Persians, which never change ; and
privileges which are like an Englishman's house, an impregnable
castle," I said.
" Miriam," I asked, " what and how much do you read and
study?"
" We take two monthly magazines and a daily paper, and I
read those regularly ; and Mark and I enjoy talking over the
news and the various articles at meal-times."
" Why," exclaimed Helen, " I haven't read a paper since I was
married, and Frank might as well talk about the affairs of the
moon as of daily news, for all I know of it!"
" Then Frank will begin to go from home for company," 1
said ; " by all means read, Helen, and have something to talk
about beyond Hannah and the butcher."
" Go on, Miriam: what else do you read? " said Hester.
"I arrange for an hour each morning, except oy Saturday,
38 THE COMPLETE HOME.
for study, and I spend half of that hour on French, and the
other half on History. It is very little, and would not satisfy
such a student as you, Hester, but it serves to keep those
studies fresh, and I gain a little. Then I have always on hand
a book or two : the popular book of the month, or something
that Mark has read and likes, or that some one who knows
about books has recommended to me, and that keeps my mind
fresh and active. I get what books and articles I can on house-
keeping, on cooking, furnishing, decorating, repairing, window
gardening, anything that will serve to improve our home at
small cost, or save expense, and introduce variety ; and I have
set up a scrap-book of valuable items."
" But where do you get the time ? for I often find you at
sewing or fancy work," said Helen.
" I took from the very first an hour a day for sewing ; that so
far does for my mending, and keeps me with work in advance
finished. When I feel inclined for fancy work, and on rainy
days when there are no calls, and in evenings when friends drop
in T can do a good deal, if it is all at hand in my basket. \ go
out every day, sometimes in the morning, to give the orders at
the grocer's and market, and as I keep a list of needs in my
kitchen-book, I am saved the trouble of frequent errands; and
one afternoon in a week I give to social duties, calls, visits and
the like ; and so I find time for everything."
" Because you have a time for everything. Are not youi
meals at a set time? Don't you have a set time for each kind
of house-work ? " asked Hester.
" On Monday my laundress comes early. She washes out
clothes — of course it is a small wash. While they are drying,
she scrubs, blacks the stove, cleans, windows, or does anything
I want her to do. Then in the afternoon she irons the clothes ;
after tea I mend them and put them away. She is a strong,
active woman, able to give a good day's work, and I pay her
ORDER IN THE HOME. 39
considerably over the ordinary price for the sake of thorough-
ness and despatch. She finds everything ready for her work
when she comes, and with a cup of hot coffee for her dinner,
jhe gets done without over-fatigue."
" Why Hannah dajvdles all day over just our little wash,"
complained Helen.
I resolved to find out some time the "reason why" of
Hannah's " dawdling."
" Friday is my sweeping-day ; and on Saturday I bake bread,
pies, cake, apples, a variety of things," said Miriam.
"And you do all your own work besides?" asked Helen.
" The laundress' boy comes to clean the front-steps and the
grass-plot — he does any little thinj I need."
" Dear me ! and your hands don't look any the worse for it,
either," said Helen.
" I take care of them," said Miriam. " I have a mop for the
dishes, and a high-handled scrubbing brush for pots and pans,
and a cork two inches high for polishing the knives — and
nothing is so nice for knives as corks for the bath brick and
the after rubbing — and I use gloves when I sweep and dust, and
whenever else I can. I shall not sacrifice my hands needlessly,
nor shall I sacrifice my work to save my hands."
" Now tell me why you don't keep a girl ? " asked Helen.
" As a matter of economy," said Miriam. " Mark has only
a thousand a year. We coidd keep a girl, and he urged it ; but
I am amply able without the least injury to myself to do this
work. If we kept a servant, with the wages, the board of the
sen^ant, and the fact that she would, however well watched, be
less saving than I am, our living expenses would be increased
by one-third. Without the servant we can lay up something,
and we can buy more books, and give ourselves various little
gratifications. There was, in fact, nothing to sacrifice but a
little false pride, and I dared to be independent."
40 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" Why is it that maids are bound to be less economical than
raeir mistresses ?" asked Hester.
" Because their money is not invested in the housekeeping,"
iaid I ; " the dollar saved will not go into their pockets ; so, even
■vith average honesty and economy, they will throw away fai
more than the mistress. Human honesty is a curious affair, and
embraces very many degrees. ' The cloak of truth is lined with
lies,' saith Longfellow's 'Aromatic Jew.' "
" You' remind me of our Nora," said Hester. " I met her
going out with a pail of milk : she said, ' Sure the bye left me
Ann Skinner's pint, and her me quart. Troth I'm on me way
to change the same.' 'I should think,' I said, 'that Ann would
have seen the error before now; he left her the milk first' 'An'
why should Ann see it? ' says Nora: 'she has the quart!"
" Just give me, Miriam," I said, after we had laughed at Nora's
logic, " a sketch of your day."
" We rise at seven ; by eight breaktast is ready, and while it
was cooking I had set the table and put my bed-room in order.
Always by half-past nine, sometimes sooner, my work is done.
Then I take my hour's study. After that I sometimes go out
for shopping, or leaving orders. If not, I sew an hour. Then
I begin to get dinner, and intermixed with that comes generally
half an hour or so, while things are cooking, when I can read.
After dinner is out of the way I dress up for afternoon ; if I have
not been out in the morning, I go out then ; if I have, or it rains,
I have fancy-work or reading to occupy me. I do not usually
cook anything for supper, except the tea. I have cake, fruit,
cold meat, sandwiches, salads ; there are plenty of nice, simple
things ; if there is a salad, I prepare it while I am getting dinner.
Before I go to bed I go to the kitchen, see that the tea-kettle is
filled, put the rice, or cracked wheat, for breakfast, to soak, and
get the potatoes ready ; this takes me only a few minutes and
saves me a deal of time in the morning. If Mark had to be at
ORDER IN THE HOME. 41
his business before nine, or did not come home until the five
o'clock dinner that some have, of course I should only get
myself a lunch, and there would be a deal more time for the
books or needle-work, but I have plenty of time as it is. Satur-
days I neither study nor sew ; I have the baking, which takes al'
the morning, and I go up-stairs for a while in the evening tc
sort and mend the clothes for Monday's wash. Friday I sweep,
and that uses up the time of the walk, the reading and the fancy-
work. But I always have time to go anywhere with Mark, or
to see our friends, or for anything extra. I never feel hurried
at all — thanks to Mrs. Burr's rule, and yours, aunt, of having a
set time for everything, and a place for everything."
Our conversation had extended past dinner and nearly through
the afternoon.
For some weeks thereafter I was absorbed "by Hester's prep-
arations for departure. In her own and her father's atrocious
neglect of proper dress, I feared she would go off deplorably
shabby. I poured out my complaints to Mrs. Winton. " See
how Hester looks : her clothes have no fit ; John is so absurd
in his ideas ; the girl never dresses like other people."
"The evil is not in Mr. Rocheford's ideas," said Mrs. Winton:
"he is right in the opinion that the human figure should be
allowed a natural development, without any compressions ; vig-
orous health and true beauty of form will thus be secured. You
have often admired the upright and elegant person and carriage
of my daughter Grace : she has never worn any article of dress,
from a gown to a glove, which pressed upon her, or in any way
changed or hindered her natural growth. The trouble with
Hester is, that from the extreme of anxiety about dress in which
some girls indulge, she has made the rebound of entire careless-
ness ; her clothing is neither properly made nor properly put on.
I predict for her the soon reaching a happy mean, and being a
model of taste and neatness, while she eschews extravagance and
42 THE COMPLETE HOME.
display. The good order which pervades her studies will sooo
permeate all her life : her cultivated taste will direct her to fit
ness and beauty ; it is well for her to go away to school : she
will be brought into companionship with some good and con«
genial woman, who will become her model. It is most danger
ous to neglect the greater for the less : Hester has been neglect
ing the less for the greater; but increased mental training will
produce harmony in her mind, and she will give less its full and
proper place."
I began to think Mrs. Winton was right, when on going to
see Hester, I found how nicely she had packed her trunk. She
explained it by stating, that first she had packed her books and
pictures handsomely, " because she loved them," and then she
thought that the care which was good for them would serve as
well for other things, and so I found her surveying with much
satisfaction the work of her hands.
As I heartily abhor an untidy woman, I gave Hester some
advice about clean collars properly put on, neat hair, and the
excellence of neck-ties and white aprons. I said to her: " Hester,
there is neither honor nor advantage in the neglecting of little
things. God makes the flower which is to perish unseen in
secret nooks as perfect as that destined to bloom before millions
of admirers ; he carves with the same exquisite symmetry the
shell which is so small as to be almost microscopic, and the great
treasure of the sea. God slights nothing. They who love good-
ness and beauty for their own sakes will slight nothing. An old
writer says : ' Manners makyth man.' Chesterfield advises : ' Pre-
pare yourselves for the world as the athletse used to do for their
exercises : oil your mind and your manners to give them the
needful suppleness and flexibility: strength alone will not do.'
Cultivate graciousness as a duty, and cultivate as a duty also a
harmonious neatness and beauty in appearance and in all that
you do. People, Hester, judge us by what they see. Let not
ORDER IN THE HOME. 43
/our good be evil spoken of, but let your zeal for knowledge be
commended by order and harmony in all that you do."
After Hester was gone I had more time to visit my other two
nieces, and as I was lonely I paid more calls than usual to my
friends in the village. The subject of Order in the Household
was much in my mind, and I quietly gathered up many hints
concerning it. I went one Tuesday morning, about nine o'clock,
lo call upon Helen. As my ring was not answered, I went
round to a side door opening into the dining-room, and walked
in. The door was open between the dining-room and kitchen,
and I saw that Hannah had just finished doing up the breakfast
dishes, and was preparing to do the washing, which had been
" put off" from the day before. I always send my washing to
the kitchen sorted — a bag of coarse clothes, a bag of fine
clothes, and the colored clothes and flannels by themselves.
This facilitates the work of the laundress ; she sees all that she
has to do, and she is not delayed in picking the wash over. I
trust Helen's style of sending down a wash is peculiar to herself.
The door of the back stairs was open, and down these stairs had
been flung an avalanche of soiled clothes — ^towels, sheets, shirts,
hose and table linen promiscuously tumbled into the kitchen,
and lying along the steps. Hannah lazily gathered up some of
these pieces, and dropped them into her tub. A pair of colored
hose went in tangled up in Frank's best shirt, and I perceived
that Helen's nicest collar was kicked by the unobservant maid
into a pile of towels. I saw, also, that the clothes had not been
mended ; a skirt of Helen's, who wears her white skirts trained
and dragging upon the side-walks, had half a yard of the ruffling
torn, and hanging in a great loop ; and one of the sheets was
also rent. I went up-stairs to Helen. She was rocking in the
easy-chair in her pretty room, with a face of discontent. She
cried, as soon as she saw me, " O, I'm glad to see you. I'm sick
of housekeeping, and I'm dreadfully blue : all things go in such
4J: THE COMPLETE HOME.
a turmoil here ! Yesterday Hannah did not wash, because she
thought it would rain, and nov/ she has hardly begun, and she'll
be until tea-time at it, and a helter-skelter dinner too. Then
Frank has asked two gentlemen to tea to-morrow, and there
should be cake and floating island made, and the ironing will be
lying about ; it will be noon before Hannah folds the clothes ,
and only see : I put this lace set in last week, and look how it is
torn, and I want to wear it to-morrow, and it will take me forever
to mend it."
" Now, Helen," I said, " you need a good plain talking to, and
as I shall give it to you, I hope you'll receive it kindly, and
profit by it. As for your washing, it should have been done
yesterday. Then, if it had rained, the white clothes could, most
of them, have been left in a tub of light bluing-water, and have
been put on the line early this morning, while a frame full of
towels, hose and colored clothes could have been dried in the
kitchen, and Hannah could be ironing them now. Your maid
is disorderly; but don't complain of that, when her mistress has
no idea of order." And so I told her how I had seen her clothes
tossed into the kitchen.
" Well, aunt, what ought I to do ? " asked Helen.
" I should say, go right down-stairs, and yourself sort the
clothes that are lying about, and bring those torn pieces up, and
mend them before Hannah is ready for them. It takes twice as
long to wash ragged clothes as it does to wash whole ones.
Just tell Hannah kindly, that you intend to have a new style in
the washing, and that she must be brisk, and that all the clothes
must be neatly folded in the basket, before she goes out this
jvening."
Helen, seeing me reach out my hand for her torn lace, with
evident intention of darning it, started for her kitchen, and
presently returned with the torn skirt and sheet, and set briskly
ftt her mending.
ORDER IN THE HOME. 45
" Do the skirt ^rj^, because she will want to wash that first—
the starched pieces should have the precedence, as they take
longer to dry. Now, Helen, I will mend this set, and hereafter,
do as I do : I always wash my own lace and fine embroidery.
The best intentioned maids will destroy these things sooner than
their owner. The maids have neither to buy them nor repair
them, and human honesty has its varieties ; so docs human igno-
rance. Hannah very likely rubbed this set on the board, and
then boiled it. Have a little bag in your bed-room, and throw
this kind of finery in it as it becomes soiled. When it has accu-
mulated, put the pieces to soak in weak borax or ammonia
water ; some evening, wash them up lightly with your hands and
fine toilette soap ; next morning, scald them. Starch the embroid-
ery, and iron it on the wrong side, laid on a piece of fine flannel
The lace, rinse in weak gum-water ; stretch it, and pin it on a
pillow, though some kinds can be ironed between two pieces of
flannel. On washing-days you should insist on having Hannah
rise early, and begin washing before breakfast. Have the
clothes ready for her in bags ; have a breakfast that is easily
gotten, and needs few pots and pans. Arrange for a dinner,
which shall be but little trouble, and give some help about
preparing it ; you can set the table, and make the dessert ; and so
you will encourage your maid, and have a better meal, for there
is no propriety in making, by means of bad meals, the washing-
day a terror to Frank, as if he were an evil-doer.
" To-morrow let Ha'nnah get at her ironing as soon as she
has cleared away the breakfast dishes ; if her clothes are ready
folded in the basket she can go briskly to work ; and do you
prepare the cake and floating island yourself: there will be a
good fire in the range, and you will find it little trouble. In
fact, Helen, if you do not turn over a new leaf and have order
in your house, your housekeeping will be more and more a
misery to you ; you will become petulant and moping under the
46 THE COMPLETE HOME.
burden ; Frank will find you less agreeable, and will wonder
why his home has no regularity. His clothes and drawers
being out of order, and his meals at irregular hours, he will
have cause for complaint, and become, by degrees, a fault-
finder. Your servant will go from bad to worse, for it is very
easy in this naughty world to improve backwards — as cares
mcrease, the complications of disorder will increase. Tell me,
Helen, have you a place for everything? Are your bureau
drawers in order, and has each one its own appointed contents,
so that you could find what you want in the dark ? In your
dining-room, has your china-closet a fixed place for everything?
so of your store-closet, and your tin-closet ? Have you fixed
places for your bed and table linen ? Are your kitchen towels
in a drawer of their own, or do you and Hannah consume five,
ten, twenty minutes here and there looking for things ? "
" Dear me ! " cried Helen : " very little is in order, and it
looks a prodigious task to put things in order, and make
Hannah orderly, or be so myself If I had only begun so
when I was married ! "
" But it will be a deal easier to reform now than next year ;
you had better inaugurate order at once."
" You see," continued Helen, " grandma is a good house-
keeper, bnt she did not care to be troubled teaching me, and I
did not like to be bothered with learning, and we both kept
saying ' time enough.' So the chambermaid took care of my
room, and grandma did my mending if it was troublesome, and
put my bureaus to rights every now and then for me, and now,
really, aunt, order is not in me."
" You must attain to it," I said, " or. you will have a very
unhappy married life. An acquaintance of mine, one of the most
prematurely aged, fretted, worn-out women I ever saw, wrecked
her home on this rock of Disorder. When I knew her she had
six children ; not one of them had a drawer or closet for their
ORDER IN THE HOME. 47
own clothes ; the stockings were mended or not, as it happened
and when it happened; when mended, pairs were not rolled
together, but the family supply tumbled into a basket of
drawer, and at the cry, ' I want a pair of stockings,' came the
reply 'to go and look for them,' and the little ones wore odd
hose as often as mates. Sunday n:\orning was a scene of worry :
buttons off, hats mislaid, shoes lost. The muff, last worn in
early sprihg, was tosseJ upon a wardrobe, or on the spare-room
bed, and found next fall dusty and moth-eaten ; the parasols,
used last on some Fall day, were stood in a closet, or behind a
door, or laid on the bureau of the vacant room, and spring found
them faded, dirty and mice-gnawed. Spasmodic house-cleanings
availed little, as disorder began again as soon as things were
put to rights. No one was ever contented nor sure of anything.
The house-mother was always tired, never had time, was always
in a worry and nervous. A good cook and seamstress, she
accomplished nothing by her knowledge, for where she built up
by ' knowing how,' she pulled down by disorder. Neither her
husband nor children thought their home a ' nice place : ' it was
to them no centre of their desires, no model, no 'dear nest*
whither they would always fly. I tell you, Helen, in a Home it
must be order or ruin. Order is to the house as morality to
the human being — a sheet-anchor."
The next day I went to see Miriam. It was about nine
o'clock, and my niece was just taking her place in the sitting-
room window. She beckoned me in. I said : "Ah I this is the
time when you study."
" That is nothing," she said ; " I am always learning when 1
talk with you. Let us have a morning visit ; you shall stay to
dinner. I can pursue my sewing and fancy work, and the study
can come in by itself some other hour in the day."
Miriam's sitting-room was in lovely order. She is trying
window gardening, and had a jardinet in one window in fine
48 THE COMPLETE HOME.
bloom. A broad board had been screwed upon the window<
sill. Mark had made for it a rustic frame three inches high, and
Miriam had lined that with moss, and planted in the moss com-
mon vines, as " Love Entangled," " Wandering Jew," " Money
Wort," and " Parlor Ivy ; " these drooped nearly to the floor.
Inside the moss lining she had set an old-fashioned square
dripping-pan, and filled it with rich earth well piled up ; in the
centre and in each corner was a green flower-pot with a thrifty
geranium or Begonia; and between the pots grew low ferns,
blue and pink oxalis, pansies and other things, which did not
demand deep rootage. It was a very pretty, cheap and easily-
taken-care-of winter garden, and over it hung a very handsome
basket of drooping plants. I saw in one corner a rather large
basket of work folded into neat bundles. I inquired what it
was. Said Miriam :
" My time for sewing more than suffices for myself, so this is
some work for the Missionary Society, and for the Children's
Home. I have been cutting it out in my spare time for a week
past, and now it is ready to sew upon, and as it is here at' hand
I can set a good many stitches at odd moments. See, here is
some pretty work I am doing for our missionary-box. I like to
send pretty things away, and I thought the little sums I had to
give in this way would go further if I bought material and made
it up. If I have more time after that, I will sew on the material
of those who have no time to give. After Christmas I shall
begin on a set of shirts for Mark. He will not need them
before next summer, but you know Mrs. Burr's rule is to be
before-hand with your work, and in warm weather one feels less
like sewing and there is more company, and Mark and I may
take a little vacation."
Miriam went up-stairs for some patterns to show me, and as 1
(icard a knock at the kitchen door I answered it. The kitchen
was in beautiful order ; the floor was covered with oil-clotb anrf
— ^- '**^f€^':;^'fw^.:.^
•^^
|,||i|-^!^r-^
^r««.
1 1
) i '
4 f Ml I
'Fit—- ^^ ^
ORDER IN THE HOME. 49
there were rugs of carpet lying before the table, stove and sink
The fire had been arranged to burn low until needed for dinner;
the vegetables for dinner were standing ready in earthen basins
of water. I wag glad to see that the table and the wood work
of the sink were covered with oil-cloth. This saves a great deal
of time and of hard work in scrubbing. Young housekeepers
should remember that they cannot practise truer economy than
in investing a little money in things that shall spare them severe
labor, and save their time, as for instance, coverings for kitchen
floors and tables. I was glad also to see that Miriam had been
wise to provide articles for use that were light and easy to
handle. Young folks often strain themselves by lifting enormous
pots and water-pails, when small, light ones would be far more
suitable for a small family. Miriam generally uses white metal
saucepans and skillets instead of iron. In her kitchen every-
thing was handy, to spare steps. Mark had been at some
expense in fitting up an outer shed-room for a snug laundry, so
that the washing should not be in the kitchen, where Miriam had
her work. He had had a new drain opened, and bought a stove
for this work with a stationary copper boiler, beside the clothes-
boiler. Miriam leaves the clothes-bags there, locks the door
into the kitchen, and allows the laundress to have one key of the
laundry door ; therefore, on Monday morning she can come and
begin as early as she likes, and she always finds soap, starch,
bluing — all that she needs — ready. Now while I was at
Helen's the other day, Hannah left her tubs twice to go to the
store, once for soap, once for blue. I don't wonder that that
girl never gets on quickly with her work. I saw in Miriam's
kitchen closet a shelf with plenty of bar-soap cut, and spread to
dry, as this saves it in the washing ; she never gives the laun-
dress soap that has been drying less than three weeks. It is by
small economies and cares, such as this, that large economy is
attained. One does not, in a household, make some great fifty.
50 THE COMPLETE HOME.
or a hundred, or two hundred dollars saving, but it is the
little saving of five, ten and twenty-five cent pieces, of half dol-
lars and dollars, which in the year mounts up to a goodly sum
total, and these savings represent not meanness, but care ; not
cutting down the rations of the hired people, not buying inferior
tea and flour, and poor butter whereof less will be eaten, but get-
ting the best, and in quantity, and then allowing no wasting.
Miriam has in her laundry closet a tea-pot and a little caddy
with some tea, so that her laundress can make herself a cup of tea ■
as soon as she lights her fire, and thus not be forced to work on
faint and hungry until after the family have finished their break-
fast ; a plate of rolls or of bread and butter is left beside the tea-
pot, and thus the working-woman is heartened for her toils, and
can comfortably wait for her later morning meal. Miriam says
that next spring she means to have breakfast at half-past seven,
and as during the summer Mark will have Mr. Cox's place, he
will be home for a five o'clock dinner ; Miriam says she will then
have a deal more time to herself, and she means to do all her
own dressmaking, and plans for many other undertakings.
On Saturday, about five o'clock, I called upon Mrs. Burr. I
found her in the sewing-room, rolling up a bundle of fragments
of cloth. She said :
" The seamstress has been here a fortnight, and has just gone.
Congratulate me ! all our winter sewing is finished ; every item
for household or personal wear is complete ; the last button is
sewed on, and all articles repose peacefully in their places."
" You are early," I said ; " it is only the third week in Sep-
tember."
" I always have my summer sewing done in April, and my
fall sewing in September; then when hot or cold weather comes
suddenly, I shall not hear my household clamoring for garments
that are not ready. A careful inventory of our possessions,
taken in March and in August, shows me what clothing will be
ORDER IN THE HOME. 5^
needed, and I keep supply always in advance of demand. I
begin by cutting out all the work, doing it by degrees as I can
spare time. I put the bundles in a large basket here in the
sewing-room, and with them the thread, silk, tape, buttons — all
the needed materials. The seamstress comes with her machine
for a fortnight, and during that stay I devote most of my time
to superintending or aiding her work. Then we are done, and
before ms lies only the light work of weekly repairs."
'■ Suppose that you could not afford a seamstress ? "
" Then I should pursue the same plan, only beginning earlier,
and I should put less trimming on the clothes, for I think it is
foolish in a house-mother to exhaust her health, and deprive her
children of her company, and herself of improvement, merely
for the sake of a few tucks, ruffles and puffs, the place of which
neat hems and plain edgings can very well supply."
"And when is the House-cleaning coming off? " I asked.
" Next week," said Mrs. Burr ; " first the sewing, then the
house-cleaning, and if nothing unforeseen occurs, the first of
October shall see us ready for winter, our time generally at our
own disposal."
"Ah," I said, " with such management I don't wonder that
your family of three sons always find the mother ready to be
their guide, philosopher and friend ; that your house looks as if
Fairy Order held the helm ; and that you have so much time for
beautiful and lucrative work in your studio."
" Well,'' laughed Mrs. Burr, " I was born with a mania for
order."
" Of order," I replied, " it can be said as Shakspeare says of
greatness. Some are born orderly, some become orderly, and
others have order thrust upon them. You were born with a
talent for order. Mrs. Winton says Hester will become orderly,
and Miriam was, when I first took her, very disorderly, but by
constant training she had order thrust upon her, and now it
reigns in her home."
52 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" Order," said Mrs. Burr, " is called heaven's first law ; the
Apostle bids us, ' Let all things be done decently and in order.'
If knowledge is the mainspring of a home, order is the balance-
wheel ; fully half of Household miseries arise from a lack of
Order."
Pursuing my investigations in regard to Order in the Home,
I concluded that I could not do better than walk out to the
Ridge Farm and pay a visit to my Cousin Ann. We do not
know who sat for the charming portrait of the wise Woman in
Proverbs : Cousin Ann might have done so, if she had been
living in Solomon's time. Cousin Ann is some years older than
I am, and when I was young I often paid her long visits ; also
once I spent a winter with her. The eight-day clock, heired
from Cousin Reijben Ridge's father, did not run with any more
perfect smoothness and regularity than Cousin Ann's household.
At first I could not understand why it was that accidents and
unexpected occurrences, guests or sickness, never threw the
Home into confusion : things went on just the same whatever
happened. Cold weather came remarkably early : well, no
worry about heavier clothes, for Cousin Ann had made them
ready while the weather was warm. Some one was called off on
a journey : no cries of not being prepared, for Cousin Ann always
had clothes in readiness in excess of demand. The family
were hungrier than usual, or an extra hand was called in : the
bread did not give out and precipitate an extra baking day, be-
cause Cousin Ann always baked more than she thought would
be needed. I asked her : "And if that ' more ' is not eaten at
table, is it wasted?" She replied: " Not at all; then I have
stale bread for toast, for puddings, for stuflfing fowls ; when all
the bread is eaten, then I make other kind of puddings, stew the
fowls instead of roasting them — though they are delightful
stuffed with mashed potato — and we go without the toast."
Yes, indeedj the old clock might have got out of order,
ORDER IN THE HOME. 53
though it never did, but Cousin Ann's house could not get out
of order. Well, as I said, I set off for Cousin Ann's on a
delicious May morning, which made the three-miles' walk seem
a very short one. Sarah, Cousin Ann's daughter, was at the
machine making summer gowns for her mother and herself I
asked after Hattie, the younger daughter, who is away at school
for a year, and then I said : " Cousin Ann, tell me how it is that
your work never drags or falls behind."
" Why," says Cousin Ann, " I look ahead and see what is
coming, and I keep a little in advance of demand. I don't lose
an hour in the morning and expect to make it up in the evening:
night is the wrong end of the day to borrow from : work never
goes briskly in the after part of the day; in the morning it is
cool : we are rested, fresh and strong, and then is the time to get
the work out of the way."
" I suppose you have a regular time for everything ? "
"I should think so," laughed Sarah :" a regular month for
house-cleaning and heavy sewing, and meat-curing and fruit-
drying ; a regular week for gathering herbs, for putting by winter
bedding, and clothes in the big chests — all mended before put
by: a regular day for sweeping, cellar-cleaning, baking, churn-
ing ; a regular hour for milking, hunting eggs, feeding chicks ; a
regular minute for rising and retiring, for breakfast, dinner and
tea; give Hattie the day of the week and the hour of the day^
and she knows what we are doing here at home."
" Well," said Cousin Ann, smiling, and setting her pudding
in the oven, " that is the way to get through. Nothing is for-
gotten : nothing is left undone. This, for instance, is the week
when the herbs are cut and dried, while they are green and
strong ; all the neighbors look to me for simple herbs. This
week my girl washes the blankets, suns the heavy quilts, and
I clean, mend and put by furs, thick clothes, winter hats, and
winter bedding, and Sarah finishes the summer sewing. In the
54 THE COMPLETE HOME.
fall it will be a pleasure to take out clean whole things which
have lain packed in camphor and lavender ; we also shall be all
ready for haying and harvesting with the extra cooking. Just
now my girl churns every morning ; while she does that, I get
breakfast, and little Jack sets the table and brings wood for the
box, and feeds the chicks ; Sarah meantime is making beds,
filling water-pitchers, getting the sitting-room to rights, and the
hall and front porch. When we sit down to breakfast the house
is clean. As soon as breakfast is over. Jack cleans up the back-
door yard, and gets from the garden the lettuce or young greens
for dinner : then he's off to school ; I, as soon as we finish the
breakfast, go to the spring-house to the butter and milk : Sarah
attends to the pudding or biscuit baking, or on ironing day .sets
at the fine ironing, and the girl does up the breakfast-dishes,
cleans the kitchen and makes the vegetables ready for dinner.
On washing day Dick churns before breakfast so that the giri
can get on with the wash. It is easy enough, all of it, if you
know fairly what you want done, and how to do it, and then
don't dawdle away any time thinking what to do first, and who
shall do it."
" I always thought Order was a mainspring in house-work," I
said, " and now I am sure of it : how could any one get on with
farm-work without it?"
" There are plenty who try it," said Cousin Ann, " and they
are fretted sick and grow old before their time, besides being
hindered in family comfort, and in making money. And there
is another thing to be observed in Order: don't crowd work.
Notice the clock : it ticks one second at a time, and gives
each second its due. Some folks kill themselves trying to
wash, iron, bake and clean, all on one day. We bake twice a
week, and one of the baking days, is also ironing day: that is
Tuesday, for it saves having such a big fire on an extra day.
When I was doing my own work and my family was smaller I
ORDER IN THE HOME. 55
never did any baking but bread on ironing day, so as not to
over-do myself; now I bake what I please, and Sarah and
the girl do the ironing. I can tell you; Sophronia, if mothers
would only look at the matter fairly, they would see that an
example and habit of Order was one of the nicest dowries
they could give a daughter : one to prolong her life, to build
up her home, and be always a source of comfort to hersell
and family."
CHAPTER III.
ECONOMY IN THE HOMlL
POUNDS AND PENCE.
iO>j| DON'T think our little town ever before saw such truiy
)1;| hard times as we are passing through now. Our bank,
"^ which we always thought as safe as the Bank of Eng-
land, has failed. Its fall dragged down two of our
largest mercantile houses. A fire last autumn destroyed a manu-
factory, where some two hundred of our working-people found
employment. The flood in the spring damaged the roads and
some of our public works, and so our taxes have increased.
There is hardly any one about here that does not feel the
pressure of these hard times. Economy must be the order of the
day. But what especially strikes me is, the various methods in
which people practise their economy, and the different effect it
has on their minds. Now some are ashamed of it, and had as
soon be caught stealing as saving.
Among our other troubles, a railroad, in which a good many
of us had invested, stopped paying dividends, and so our
incomes are lessened. I saw that I must reduce my expenses,
and I sat down to consider how. I did not wish to cut down
my giving, for the harder the times are the more need there is
of "charity. I had calculated to lay out about fifty dollars on
my winter wardrobe, in work and material. I cut that down to
ten, just enough to make over by myself what I had on hand ;
it would be a pity if I were ashamed to dress according to my
means at my time of life. I always had kept a big fire all
(56)
ECONOMY IN THE HOME. 57
winter in the parlor : it looks well, and I have the room comfort-
able to see my friends. However, my dining-room is nice and
always in order — I can see my friends there : that parlor must
be shut for the winter. I keep only one servant, Martha ; she
is very efficient, and I have paid her very high wages. I said
to her : " Martha, my income is much lessened this year, and I
cannot pay such high wages as I have done. I think, however,
you are worth all you can get, and if you can find another place,
where they will give you what you have now, it will be right
for you to take it." •
Martha said she would think about it. At the end of a week
she said she would stay for whatever I could give. She
remarked that a good home was a thing worth keeping; that
when hard times pressed on everybody, she did not expect to
be the only one to escape. She was very sorry that I was
pressed for means, for her brother had been thrown out of work
and could hardly feed his large family, and Martha had thought
of asking me to allow her niece, ten years old, to come to us
for her board ; that would relieve her parents of her support,
and would put the child where, by learning to be a skilled
servant, she could be in the way of making her living.
I thought this over. Surely it was a work of charity to help
the poor man provide for his children. The little girl would be
greatly benefited. In hard times it becomes every one to help
his neighbor. I called Martha.
" Martha, if we took Ann, do you think that by a little
closer economy in the house we could provide for her board ?
We have never been wasteful, and we must not be mean ; but,
possibly, we could manage the cooking a little more econom-
ically, and have it just as good, and it will be an advantage
for Ann to see the most scrupulous care exercised in the
household."
Now this was putting Martha in a position where her inteiesta
58 THE COMPLETE HOME.
would be my interests. She replied: "Well, ma'am, if you're
so kind as to take Ann, I'll not let her cost you a cent, nor
make a particle of trouble."
" Very well," I said ; " bring her here, and train her carefully,
for my niece, Mrs. Rogers, will want a girl some day, and that
will be a fine place for Ann, if she is deserving."
Shortly after this, Kitty Merry, a seamstress, came in. She
complained of the hard times, and of lack of work. She has a
dollar a day with her machine. I asked :
"Do you pay more for your lodging than last year?"
She said, " No."
So I said, " Well, as times are hard, why do you not reduce
your price to seventy-five cents a day? People are ^onomizing
in everything."
" But I'm worth a dollar as much as ever."
" Very true ; but why expect to be the only one who does
not feel the pressure? You must sacrifice as do the rest."
" I think it is wrong for folks to begin their cutting down on
the work-people," said Kitty.
"All do not begin there. I began on my wardrobe, on the
number of my fires, and on my preserves and cake, and then to
the wages. You must reflect that there will be even larger
demands on our charities than usual. It is better for you to
lower your prices, and get full work at seventy-five cents a day,
than half work at a dollar ; when you are out you get your board-
ing. An employer finds his income cut down from two thousand
to fifteen hundred, and he proposes to pay his servant two and
a half instead of three dollars. The servant gets her board
and washing just as usual, but cries out against losing one-sixth
of her cash income, when the master has lost one-fourth of his.
The working-classes refuse to take less wages ; the employers
presently find that they can get on without hiring servants ;
suddenly there is a host of the unemployed living on their past
ECONOMY IN THE HOME. 59
savings, borrowing of each other, or going in debt ; and then a
loud cry of need and of working-people in destitution arises, and
if employers hire them again, it is at a greater reduction than
was first offered. Wages rose with flush times, and they must
fall with close times. Masters and servants are virtually in one
boat, and must share the same storms and calms."
" Well, Miss Sophronia," said Kitty, " is that fair to divide the
servant's little, because the master loses of his much? You say
the hired girl loses a sixth of her wages ; but it costs her just as
much to buy a yard of merino as it does her mistress ; and
takes just as many yards for her gown."
" It appears to me, Kitty, that people should provide for them-
selves according to their station in life. I don't see that the
maid must buy merino, because her mistress does, nor that she
must have three frills and a train, because a banker's wife does.
Why, Kitty, must you fret yourself to death for money to buy
two or three button kid gloves, and button boots, and aprons
with edging, because Mrs. Hand wears them ? She always has
had these things. In the providence of God she was born to it.
You can get good thread gloves, neat hemmed aprons, laced
or elastic boots for half the money, and why not be suited wit"h
them ? As a child you went bare-footed and bare-handed, and
wore blue check, and no shame to you ; you were always
healthy, honest, cheerful, useful and esteemed; why torture
yourself to keep pace with fashions of a sphere pecuniarily
beyond your reach ? Some day you may find large means at
your command : be sure you will know how to spend them
without any previous practice."
"And," said Kitty, " you think I'd better reduce my prices ? "
" Yes, and your expenses. Don't be ashamed of untrimmed,
turned, or neatly mended clothes ; don't be ashamed of calico.
You'll always look like a lady, if you cultivate the manners and
scrupulous neatness of a true lady; and nothing is so unrefined
as cheap finery."
60 THE COMPLETE HOME.
Mary Semple came to-day, complaining that she could not
get laundry work ; people were giving out less ; she was out of
work, and her expenses were the same as ever. I asked her
what she had a dozen ; she said, promptly, " a dollar, and for
rough-dry, half a dollar, and dresses were extra, and when she
went out, a dollar a day." I said to her:
"Just give out that you'll take clothes at seventy-five cents a
dozen, and thirty cents for rough-dry, and reduce your price
for going out twenty-five cents : you'll get work enough."
" But I'm worth as much as ever," said Mary.
" True ; but people cannot give it. Hard times pinch the
moneyed classes, and they pass your share on to you ; if you
won't take it cheerfully in lessened wages, it will be forced on
you in no work. Half a loaf is better than no bread. You
made no trouble about a rise in wages. I remember when fifty
cents was a day's wages, and fifty cents a dozen good pay
for washing. What laundress grumbled when prices doubled ? "
" I ought to get me work's worth," persisted Mary.
"You can't get something out of nothing," I said ; " nor more
cash out of a purse than goes in. What you have a right to
claim is prompt pay when your work is done. People have no
right to ask you to take your pay in driblets when you do the
work promptly, nor to keep waiting and coming for your pay
when you served them promptly. You estimate people's means
by houses which they bought and furnished in flush times.
You forget that they have to pay taxes and keep those houses
up, and that their property is often an embarrassment in hard
times."
"I'd take the property and'Ca^e. embarrassment, willing! " cried
Mary.
" Very likely ; but the Lord has not given us our own choice
of evils. If he had we'd manage to make fools of ourselves
somehow or other."
ECONOMY IN THE HOME. 61
"And you don't know any one to help me, Miss Sophronia,"
urged Mary.
" Yes, you can help yourself by lowering your prices, and
economizing a little closer ; so doing you will tide over these
hard times."
Wherever I go, whatever caller I receive, there is the same
cry of hard times and of economy, and for the last there are
dozens of methods. Mrs. Black, for instance, has taken her
children out of school, taken a poor servant in place of a
very good one, stopped her contributions, given up her church
pew, discontinued her magazines and newspapers, while her
two grown daughters are just as idle, and the family are just
as dressy as ever. Now she calls that economy — / dorii.
I went to see Helen. Frank's salary has been cut down, and
his railroad stock is bringing him nothing. Helen was quite
unhappy.
" What am I to do ? " she cried. " We have five hundred a
year less to live on, and I don't know where to lessen expenses.
Now I must have a new silk dress : that will cost a hundred
dollars."
"Yes," I said; "and then you will want a new set of lace and
a new hat to wear with it, and some other new things, and they
v/ill be fifty dollars more."
"And where is the money to come from ? " queried Helen.
" Why not give up the silk ? Your dark -blue and youj
brown silks are good."
" But I've had them ever since I was married, and how it
looks ! — always the same old dresses."
" But they are handsome, and with Kit;ty Merry's, help you
can put them into this year's style. You will then feel no need
of the little extras which the new silk would demand. Your last
winter's ihat, rejuvenated by your own good taste, would do very
Well. With no fine new dress to display, you will care less fo«
62 THE COMPLETE HOME.
going into society. If you go less, you will be at liberty to
entertain less company; and if you entertain less company,
your housekeeping expenses will be lessened. Moreover, if
you go out less you will have time to attend to your own baby,
and you can dismiss your nurse-maid, who is very careless, and
is likely to ruin your child, and the little one will thrive better
under mother-care. I will lend you my little Ann now and
then to help Hannah. If you will give up the idea of the new
silk, you will, in its consequences, save some two hundred
dollars. You will thus be likely to keep out of debt ; and don't
hang the mill-stone of debt about Frank's neck : it may ruin
him ; and with an increasing family, debts will increase instead
of being cancelled."
"But dear me, aunt! No nurse-maid! no new clothes! To
withdraw from going into, and giving companies! How it will
look ! It would be an open declaration of poverty.''
" Not poverty ; but of needed economy, and brave honesty."
" But, aunt, what will people say? "
" Then you get the silk, and you keep the nurse for the sake
of. strangers' tongues ? It is a mere matter of pride ? Now,
Helen, don't let pride get a foothold in your household. What
, does Franklin say of it ? ' Pride is as loud a beggar as want,
.and twice as saucy. When you have bought one fine thing
you must buy ten more, that your appearance may be all of a
I piece; but it is easier to suppress the first desire, than to satisfy
. all that follow.' Come, Helen : to save is to earn : to earn is
>your husband's part, to save is yours. Frank will be happier at
home with you and his child than out in society ; he will like
(privacy more than the company that is bringing him into debt.
'Every wise woman buildeth her house, but the foolish plucketh
it down with her hands.' Every house-mother should begin to
,}ay the foundations of her children's fortunes, and not introduce
-idebt as the moth and the rust which will destroy all accumula-
tions."
ECONOMY IN THE HOME. 63
"That is true, aunt, but see how mean it makes me feel.
There are the Blacks all out in fine new clothes, and Mrs. West-
cott has bought new parlor carpet and curtains."
" You mean she has gone in debt for them. Now, Helen, we
must not measure our expenses by other people's outlays, but
by our own purse. How would you view Martha's wanting a
Lyons silk because I wear one ? In home living every one is
emphatically a law unto themselves. It is a false sentiment
which demands display: this emulation in domestic establish-
ments often lays the foundation of ruin. Women ought to be
able to create a public sentiment in favor of economy and of a
simple and delicate taste in the administration of their homes :
they could create such a taste only that they are ashamed of
practising economy, and hide it as a crime. They respect and
imitate the showy, rather than the solid. Now, Helen, where
you stand three roads meet. Indulge your desires, your emula-
tion of those who spend more than you can afford to spend, and
you will pass along the road to ruin. . Frank will become a
broken and discouraged man, and probably die early and in
debt. If you enter into no debts or extravagances, you may
keep on just as you are, with a very small margin to work
upon, and nothing laid up for a growing family, always in appre-
hension of disaster. By careful economy, living within your
means, saving a little, and being your own law in expenditure,
you may enter the road of assured prosperity. The hand of the
diligent maketh rich."
" You couldn't get very rich, aunt, with such servants as mine :
they waste and break so much."
" Then if you keep one less servant there is so much less of
this cause of complaint ; if you will go about your own house
more there will be less breakage and waste : the eye and hand
of the mistress always present is a great safeguard in these par-
t.cuh,/-s. As to breakages, they are the result generally of care-
64 THE COMPLETE HOME.
lessness, and sen'ants have no right to be careless. For their
own sakes as well as your own, you should talk the matter over
kindly with them,, and tell them that they must replace what
they break. It is well to know how to excuse, to forgive, and
to relax your rule on occasion, but it is no honesty to yourself,
nor kindness to your servant, to allow her to recklessly destroy
your property. In your house she should be schooled in care
and in honesty, so shall she be more fitted rightly to direct her
own. Talk over matters with Hannah : tell her frankly that you
must use stricter economy; that you shall do without a nurse,
and that she cannot have quite so much time for herself; that
you can no longer afford to replace her breakages, and that as
you shall not allow your narrower means to reduce her wages,
you expect her to help you save carefully in your house. Why,
Helen, as I came up here, I saw Hannah scrubbing the porches,
with half a bar of fresh soap lying melting in her pail ; and she
explained a terrible smell of smoke in the kitchen, by saying
that she was burning up the bone and skin and trimmings of a
ham, because ' if she threw them out it made the rats worse, and
the rats were eating up all your potatoes.' Now, child, what
sort of economy is this ? All that rough fat should be saved in
a place secure from rats, and Hannah should each month make
up a little keg of soft-soap for scrubbing and dish-washing; and
Hannah should be taught not to leave her bar-soap melting in
the pail ; while, as for the rats, you should with a good trap,
and caustic-potash laid at their holes, declare persistent war until
such destructive pests are banished. If you permit mice and
rats to destroy your provisions, and stray cats to ramble into
your cellar — as I just saw one doing and returning with the
leg of a fowl — there will be in your house a hundred little
leaks, which it will take more than a hundred one-dollar bills to
stop."
"Oh, aunt, what shall I do!" cried poor Helen.
ECONOMY IN THE HOME. gg
" Practise economy as a Fine Art: make a duty and a pleasure
of it ; it is the mortar wherein you lay up the walls of home ;
if it is lacking, or is poor in quality, the home building will
crumble. Don't be ashamed of economy: study it; consult
about it; don't confound it with meanness : economy is the nurse
of liberality. Meanness is going in debt for luxury: is keeping
behind-hand the wages our work-people have earned : is making
a show on the street and withholding charity : is presenting cake
and confections ostentatiously to our callers, and stinting the
kmu or quantity of our servants' food."
Then I invited Helen to take tea with me next day, and meel
Miriam and Mrs. Winton.
Then I went over to Miriam's. She was in her spare-room,
and called me to come up.
"What, Miriam," I cried, "a handsome new black silk!"
" No, indeed," said Miriam, " it is the old one that I have worn
this four years ; " and she took it from the bed to display it.
"And how ever did you make it look so nicely ? "
" I sponged it with a teaspoonful of ammonia, mixed in haW a
pint of warm, weak coffee ; then I pressed it. I sponged and
pressed it on the right side as I meant to turn it. The velvet of
the cuffs, collar, pockets, button covers, and so on, is from my
old black velvet waist."
" But that was so wrinkled and mussed ! "
" I steamed it thoroughly, laying it wrong side down on a wire
netting over the boiler, shaking it a little now and then ; it made
it look almost like new. See, here is my old black cashmere :
I ripped it up, washed it in warm water where soap bark had
been steeped, and irohed it on the wrong side. I shall get a
couple of yards of silk for trimming, and make it as good as
new. Here, too, is my ancient brown merino, ripped, sponged
and pressed, with a small investment in fringe and velveteen — it
must come out a new gown j so I buy nothing this fall. Yoa
66 THE COMPLETE HOME.
know Mark expected two hundred dollars advance in his salary,
and instead, he gets one hundred less, so I must economize
closer than ever. Mrs. Burr told me how to rejuvenate my
gowns, and she has taught me several new ways of economizing
for my table."
" Mrs. Burr is a perfect Domestic EncyclopEedia," I said.
" Pray tell me some of her suggestions : I am myself retrenching,
in my own behalf, and for the sake of my neighbors."
"The first thing I think of is cheese," laughed Miriam.
" Mark is extravagantly fond of it, and we pay eighteen cents a
pound. Mrs. Burr says she cuts two or' three pounds up into
squares, and puts it in a very dry place ; then it always is grated
before it comes to the table. Used in this way, it is much more
delicate than cut in pieces, and one pound of cheese goes further
than two as generally used. Sometimes she varies the dish by
mixing a little parsley, chopped very fine, among the grated
cheese. She says her physician told her that people do not
understand the virtues of parsley : it is excellent for the nerves,
and for use in rheumatism, and should be constantly used in
preparing dishes. I have learned from Mrs. Burr to make
several new soups ; and a white soup made of fresh bones, with
rice, a little macaroni or tapioca, chopped potatoes and chopped
parsley in it, is delightful, if you put a tablespoonful of catsup
and a teaspoonful of grated cheese in each dish as you serve it.
The last time I took tea at Mrs. Burr's, she had a very pretty
dish of bread, cut thin in diamonds or rounds, spread with
butter, and then with grated cheese, and laid on a little china
dish, with a wreath of parsley around it."
"I remember," I said, "that Hester told me she should, in her
housekeeping, use a deal of parsley, because the ancients did so;
that both Virgil and Horace note it as holding an honorable
place at festivities."
" Mrs. Burr," continued Miriam, " knows how to use up little
ECONOMY IN THE HOME. 67
things in her household, in a very appetizing way. You know
one often has a little jelly left from a meal, or from making a
cake — only a spoonful or two goes a good way, attractively, if
bread is cut thin in pretty shapes, and spread lightly with the
jelly. Mrs. Burr said when her children were little these 'jelly
breads ' were their delight, and often served them in place of
rich cake or meat at tea, which- she did not think safe so near
their bed-time, while the good bread, spread with fruit-jelly, was
wholesome for them. The last time I was at Helen's, Hannah
had thrown away half a loaf of bread and a dish of broken
pieces, which she said were getting mouldy, and were of no use.
1 sent her two recipes which I had from Mrs. Burr. Here they
are."
Miriam handed me her note-book, and I copied the recipe
for — •
Bread Sauce. — " Cut stale bread in fine pieces ; mix with it
pepper, salt, sweet herbs, a little fine chopped onion, if desired ;
moisten with warm water, and stir in meat-gravy or soup-stock
until it is nearly as soft as bread-pudding ; bake half an hour.
If more convenient, milk and butter can be used instead of the
gravy."
The other recipe was —
Bread for Breakfast. — " Dry pieces of stale bread until they
are. hard all through. When needed for use put in an earthen
dish milk enough to half cover them, a spoonful of butter, and
one of sugar; cover tight, and let them simmer. Smooth a
teaspoonful of corn-starch or of wheat flour in a little milk, and
stir it in ; serve as soon as the bread is well softened without
breaking."
" They are both nice for variety, and serve as a good way to
keep bread-crusts and scraps from wasting. You can do
crackers the same way as that Breakfast Bread."
" One good turn deserves another," I said. " I will write ir
your note-book my recipe for —
gg THE COMPLETE HOME.
"Mock Macaroni. — Take broken crackers of any kind ; crumb
them up rather fine, and stir into them sweet milk, a little butter,
pepper, salt and two tablespoonfuls of grated cheese. Have
enough milk to bake them for three-quarters of an hour; let
them be a light brown on top."
"Apropos of the grated cheese," said Miriam, "last evening
Mrs. Black walked into my house, and hunted me up in the
dining-room — a liberty which she allows herself For my part
I prefer that my dearest friend should knock. She looked at
the table. 'What! pine-apple cheese! I cannot afford that for
my family these times.' ' No/ I said, ' it is common cheese
grated.'
"She looked curiously at me. 'Why did you say that?
Now I would have let it pass for pine-apple.' I replied, ' Mrs.
Black, economy is honorable, and I am not ashamed of practising
it. I should be ashamed of any extravagance. If I did not
need, as I do, to economize for myself, I should feel it a duty to
do so for the sake of others who are in straits.' "
Miriam and I went down-stairs. I' remarked: "Your work
basket looks like a rainbow."
"Another bit of economy: all my neck-ties are getting made
into the latest styles. This cream silk washes as well as muslin;
so, washed and ironed, it is getting a frill of nice lace around the
ends, and appearing in a new character. I think this black one
will be lovely."
She had made the scarf-tie into a bow, button-holed the edges
with rose-colored silk, and embroidered a pair of rose-buds in
each of the ends. A pink silk tie had also taken the form of a
knot, and she had transferred some elegant embroidery on the
ends. I should have thought it had just cost two dollars.
" Mark Rogers will never be poor with you for a wife„
Miriam." I said. " He got a fortune in the wife who said she
had no capital. Yours, my dear, is perpetual capital."
ECONOMY IN THE HOME. 69
I engaged Miriam to come to tea next day, and then intended
to go home, but Mrs. Smalley called me in. She was com-
plaining as usual — a woman with many good points, but who
does not know how to manage, and is chronically indignant
because her sister is richer than she is. Well, I went in. She
said:
" I tapped for you. Miss Sophronia, because I never make a
stranger of you, and you usually manage to give me some
advice when we are in a tight place — as me and Mary most
generally are. I do feel vexed about Mary. She's as nice a
girl, and as pretty a girl, if I do say it, as her cousins, and it
is hard that they have everything they want, and she gets
nothing."
" Pshaw, ma," said Mary.
"Its so" said her mother. " Now Smalley has just said he
can't afford for us to have the dressmaJ<er here this fall, and we
must do our own sewing. 'Twon't be such a heavy job, for
Smalley is so short of cash we'll get precious little to sew on —
and there's Sara's girls all out in bran, span, new clothes."
" Pshaw, ma," said Mary, again.
"It's so," retorted her mother ; " and we get little enough time
to sew. We've had no girl since last spring."
" But you are only three in the family, and of the three you
two are grown women — perfectly well, also. I should think you
would get the work done easily, having fully half of every day
for sewing, or such quiet work."
" Well, we don't, somehow. I keep things neat as wax, any
one will allow that ; and nothing in the kitchen goes to waste :
we make our own soap, and our own bread and yeast; and
half this house is covered with rag carpets I made myself; and
just see these rugs — a dozen of them in this house — Mary has
braided out of strips of old woollen and flannel clothes." '
" They are very pretty and useful." I said. " I see the braids
70 THE COMPLETE HOME.
are made heavy, and_ are sewed together by the edges, either in
round or oval shape."
" Yes ; and I must say a girl that is that industrious ought to
have as nice clothes as Sara's girls. But no — not she."
" Pshaw, ma ! " reiterated Mary.
"Its sol' insisted her mother. "And now, Miss Sophronia,
what would you do in our place ? I want Mary to be nice.
And she gets invited out with her cousins, and she won't go ;
because she says they have such a power of nice things, like
other young girls, and she has none. Her best frock is all out
of fashion; and she has no fancy aprons, no nice ties, nor spen-
cers, nor jackets, nor pretty collars ; and if I set out to buy
them it would take a mint of money, and when Smalley says he
can't — he can't.' Why the money he has laid out for her hardly
will buy one good dress, to say nothing of the other things ; and
what would you do if you were me ? "
" It seems never to enter your mind, Mrs. Smalley," I said,
" that you might possibly use what you have on hand."
" We never have anything on hand," said she. " We wear
our things clear out, or outgrow 'em, and then they're done
for."
"Mother never throws away things," said Mary, "and we
have a whole trunk of bits of things, and a closet solid full of
old worn-out, outgrown dresses and jackets. But they're none
of them worth anything."
" You see, Mrs. Smalley," I said, " when you want something
in recent fashions, you go and buy one new thing and have it
made up. You never make over your clothes, or use the
dresses of past years to remodel for this year. What I would
do would be to keep that money for something else, and not
buy Mary a new gown at all."
They both looked dismayed and astonished.
" If you'll promise to exactly follow my directions," I said,
ECONOMY IN THE HOME. 1\
" I'll engage that you shall fit Mary out nicely with the money
Mr. Smalley gave you ; and what is more, you know I shall not
lalk about it."
" Trust you for that, Miss Sophronia," said Mrs. Smalley.
" I says to Mary the other day : ' I dare say anything to Miss
Sophronia, for it 'ud take the Resurrection Angel himself to
aiing out what's once been buried in her ears.' "
I said to Mary : "As for that closet of clothes, you know 1
saw it last winter, when I was here while, your mother was sick."
'And I'll never forget your kindness if I live to be a thou-
sand," interrupted Mrs. Smalley.
" So come, Mary," I said ; " you and I will go up-stairs:, and
if you'll take my niece, Mrs. Rogers, into our partnership, I'll
agree to teach you what shall be worth a fortune to you."
Mary and I went up-stairs. Mary said : " Do please show me
how to be nice on a little money, so that mother will not fret so
at the difference between me and my cousins."
I like Mary: she is a friendly, industrious girl. I remember
once when I was ill she came to my house every day, insisting
on being of some use, even to helping Martha. I thought I
might not only relieve her of some present annoyance, but might
give her a lesson of use for all her life. Mrs. Smalley is one of
the kind of people who save aimlessly ; opposed to wasting, she
hoards, but her stores are practically wasted, because she puts
them to no use. I wished to teach Mary to use what she had
before purchasing more.
Mary opened the trunk of fragments, odds and ends of all
kinds, collected during a score of years, and neatly rolled in
bundles. I said to Mary : " Here is a parcel composed of silk
and ribbon : those shall be your neck-ties."
" There is scarcely anything nice there," she replied.
" You must take them to Mrs. Rogers, and she will show you
how, by the aid of a little embroidery silk, to create use .-xnd
"^2 THE COMPLETE HOME.
beauty out of these fragments. This Httle roll of embroidery and
scraps of edging shall be a nice outfit of collars and cuffs and
under-sleeves. Come and spend Friday with me, bringing these,
Haifa yard of fine linen, and half a yard of fine lawn, and I will
show you how by taste, a little knowledge of transfer work, and
your neat sewing, you can provide yourself ten dollars' worth of
pretty articles for less than a dollar. It is early in the season :
let the matter of your dress go until you are encouraged by the
wonders which you perform in other ways." I opened the closet.
" Here is an out-grown dress of barred muslin. That shall make
you two white aprons with ruffles ; get it ripped and washed.
And here is the pretty embroidered muslin you had when you
were twelve."
"The nicest frock I ever had," sighed Mary.
" Rip it up : with the aid of edging and insertion from that
bundle, you shall have a lovely fancy sacque to wear to evening
companies."
Mary's face brightened up. " I believe we can make use of
these old things, and I shall go right to work ripping and
pressing."
When I went home I casually remarked to Martha that I
had been at Mrs. Smalley's.
" I hope she was redd up, and fit to see you, ma'am."
"Oh, yes: but really, Martha, I cannot see why Mrs. Smalley's
work occupies all her time ; she and Mary are neat, good
workers, and have only Mr. Smalley to work for in that six-
roomed house."
" Dear knows, ma'am," said Martha ; " Mrs. Smalley is busy
enough, if that is all ; she is one of those folks who would stand
and jump in a bucket all day, and then wonder why they didn't
get on far, when they kept agoing all the time." With which
parable Martha left me to my meditations.
Miriam came early next day^ and I told her about Marv
ECONOMY IN THE HOME. 73
Smalley, and asked her to invite the girl to spend a day or two
with her, and then teach her how to make up the pretty articles
of dress which she needed. " She will prove an apt pupil, and I
wish you would show her what you have done for your own
wardrobe : I know you are not ashamed of your contrivings in
that line."
" Oh, by no means : quite proud, on the contrary ! "
"And then, my dear, do let her stay all day, and help you get
dinner and tea, and expound to her your ' order ' and your
method of getting work done. \t may go far to making a happy
woman of her, and her future home a place of content and not
of worry. You, Miriam, have a real genius for housekeeping,
and you should in this way let your light shine on your young
neighbor: it will perhaps influence all her life."
" Certainly: I shall be glad to have her, and help her; I will
write a note now, and let Ann take it to her."
So Miriam wrote her note, and then began to tell me of a
"Mother's Meeting" which had been started. Some of our
ladies meet with poor women who are now in unusual straits
from lack of work; they give them materials to make up cloth-
ing, or sell them at wholesale prices what they themselves have
purchased at such prices; or even lower, things which, having
funds in hand, they have bought at auction sales. They en
courage the women to bring clothing for their families to be
remodelled or mended ; and spend the time of sewing in dis-
cussing domestic aiifairs, in exchanging recipes, in giving informa-
tion about domestic economy, and rules for keeping houses
healthy, and making cooked food yield its full value to the
consumer. " Cousin Ann is President," she added.
"That is a great charity," I said, "and very kind in you to
take part inrit."
" Indeed, aunt," she replied, " I begin to think charity pays ;
I am sure I nave learned in those meetings a great deal that has
74 THE COMPLETE HOME.
saved me as much money as I have contributed to them. Be
sides, the ladies are showing these women how to repair clothes,
foot stockings, and do various things, which I had never thought
of, and I can make my charity-work go twice as far by knowing
these methods."
Presently Helen and Mrs. Winton came, and the talk soon
turned, as I meant it should, on domestic economy. Mrs. Win-
ton has lived much abroad, and has thus had an opportunity of
observing the home life of many peoples. She talks fluently if
she perceives that her hearers are being interested and benefited.
I presently led her to my subject. She said :" We Americans
are an extravagant people : our land is so wide for its popula'
tion, and brings forth, or can bring forth, so much more than its
inhabitants consume, that we know nothing of the saving and
careful economy of people of the Old World's thronged States.
Lavish abundance of common things surrounded our ancestors,
and they used it lavishly : we inherited the prodigal habit : but
now our cities and some of our districts have a crowded popula-
tion, and want is the result of waste. With us a poor laborer's
family will spend more and waste more than a family in middle
station in Italy, Germany or France ; our middle classes spend
and waste what would appall a Frenchman of fortune ; in fact, we
seem to lack the very means and methods of saving, which are
open to all in the Old World ; we despise saving; we call careful
economy penuriousness ; a woman who looks well to the ways
of her household here is styled 'stingy:' abroad she is a good
housekeeper doing her legitimate duty. Take our way of
making coffee: a large quantity of ground coffee is mixed up.
with an egg or half an egg, as the case may be, and this is
emptied into a coffee-pot of boiling water, and very possibly it
is allowed to go on boiling, pouring steam out of the spout.
The size of the pot has very little reference to the number of the
family; after breakfast from a pint to' three pints of coffee
ECONOMY IN THE HOME. 75
remain over : it may be thrown out, or it may be boiled ovei
next morning. Abroad, the French pot rules the day: it is a
pot made with two stories of about equal size. The lower one
must hold as many cups as the family are likely to use. The
upper story has two fine filters. The ground coffee, about half
as much as needed for the other style of making, is put in the
upper and coarser filter, and slowly over it is poured water
sufficient to nearly fill the lower pot, when it shall have worked
its way through the second fine filter. No egg, no mixing of
any kind is used. The spout and the top have air-tight caps :
the coffee is thus hermetically sealed up, and is set back on the
stove where it shall keep scalding hot, but in nowise boil. In
ten minutes the coffee is all in the lower pot, with every par-
ticle of strength from the grounds carried with it, and all its
aroma held in itself, and not diffused through the house. Not
a particle of grounds reaches the lower pot : you take the cap
from the spout, and a clear bright stream of coffee goes into
your cup. Boil those grounds afterwards, and there is no color
or strength to be found in them. All the coffee is used each
day : there is none to throw away, and French pots do not take
kindly to the iniquity of coffee boiled over."
"But," said Helen, " suppose an unexpected guest is at table."
" Your Frenchman meets the difficulty by letting some mem-
oer of the family quietly go without, or what is better, filling up
the grown people's cups, and then pouring a little more boiling
water in the pot; and giving the juveniles weaker drink; or he
makes his original pot of coffee proportionately stronger, and
pours a little boiling water into each cup ; he will manage some
way, rather than have coffee to throw out. The foreign house-
wife does not tnink it mean to count heads, and then count her
potatoes and eggs. She knows whether her family takes one or
two apiece of each, and she cooks accordingly; she is wise to
•eave a oroper margin of one or two in case of somebody's extrt
76 THE COMPLETE HOME.
appetite. She does not feel embarrassed, if her son calls for
a third egg, calmly to remark that there are no more cooked; and
she knows that with his proper quota of eggs and other food,
he can complete his meal on bread and butter : she would feel
much Inore embarrassed at having food to throw away."
"And then," said Miriam, "suppose some one's appetite fails,
or does not increase to that ' margin of one or two ' ? "
" Suppose that one egg is left, or one potato. Here, Bridget,
or the housewife herself, says, ' one is not worth keeping,' and
throws them into the swill-tub. The French housewife is not
tempted by that unhappy institution always yawning at hand.
On the contrary, suppose the egg is soft-boiled. She drops it
into a tin-cup, and makes it hard-boiled at once. One hard-
boiled egg chopped fine is what she needs in composing a salad,
and the French housekeeper is wise in behalf of health, of good
taste, and of the beauty and variety of her table, to have salads
innumerable — as many kinds of salads as Bottom had of wigs.
There is the egg — the salad shall grace the tea-table. Or, there
is the one potato. Your French housewife knows the value of
soup ; she does not make a huge soup, and expect her family to
dine upon it ; she does not have her soup always of one kind —
she varies the kind ; and she has a small dish of soup as a
prelude to her dinner: here she serves health and variety. The
potato nicely ;ut in wedges shall be one of the ingredients of
her soup. The beginning of her soup is generally of bones. She
has a stone jat irid the bones are usually trimmed closely out
of the uncooked meat, sprii;kled with salt and pepper, and put
in this jar, over ivhich a cloth is tied, and it is kept in a very
:oo] place. Almost every day, with a few bones and a variety as
to other ingredients, jhe will concoct a wonderful soup — a white
soup, a brown soup, a clear soup, a vegetable soup — and the
spoonful of beans or peas, the few slices of tomato, the remnant
of the rice or the macaroni, shall not be ignominiously cast out,
ECONOMY /JV THE HOME. Tj
but the soup shall be as is most convenient to the stock on
hand, and all these fragments, neatly kept, are to go therein.
The French are not remarkably religious, but they do follow the
monition : ' gather up the fragments that nothing be lost.' In
one of our families, suppose that we have a cup of milk left
from breakfast ; in our closet is a slice or two of sponge or cup
cake, a small saucer of jelly or preserve. In the American
household, the milk is frequently thrown out, or one of the
children is bidden to ' drink it up.' Biddy adds the preserve or
jelly to her own breakfast, ' so she can have the saucer to wash.'
The cake is given the children as an interlude to meals, to spoil
their appetites. Lo, the foreign housewife ! The cup of milk
with an egg, a little flavoring and a trifle of thickening turns to
custard ; the cake is cut in thin pieces, spread with the conserve,
and laid in a white pudding-dish ; the custard is poured over it ;
it goes for ten minutes into the oven ; the white of another egg
is, with a little sugar, converted into a meringue, and spread on
top; now the yolk of the second egg is beaten with a little
cream or milk, and sugar and spice, into a sauce, or instead of
the cream, a little home-made wine, or the juice left from some
canned fruit is used : and here is a sauce for the dessert. We
eat it. Delicious ! What dainty extravagant things these foreign
people use ! Instead, we Americans would have thrown away
the chief part of this dish, and would have provided for dessert a
huge pie, more costly, and not half so wholesome."
" You mentioned being freed from the yawning of the refuse-
pail," I said. "How is that?"
" There is very little to put in it. The foreign economist has
nearly all her vegetables scraped, and not peeled — the thick
parings taking away a fourth of the food ; she remembers,
perhaps, that the most nourishing and richest part of the food
lies close to the skin, or she has simply been taught that she
cannot afford to pare it. An old potato, a yam, a carrot, even a
78 THE COMPLETE HOME.
turnip and a summer squash, can be' scraped, if Biddy thinks so
and will take the trouble. Often, also, vegetables are cooked in
their skins, and then the skin is pulled off with a knife and fork
before serving: this saves the waste of the phosphates and
starch in the boiling water. If peeling must be done, the knife
is sharp and the peel is very thin. The housewife's eyes are
over all her household ; the cook cannot throw out and waste
undiscovered. Madame has studied her subject : she knows
how long the vegetables, the meat, and the condiments should
last, and they are made to reach that requirement. A very
small vessel will hold the waste, and if in the country it is at
once turned to further use. The foreigner cultivates the
unwholesome pig far less than we do : he prefers chickens. '
The housewife, when she has fowls, has the parings and scraps
put on the fire in some vessel kept for the purpose ; she stirs in a
handful of meal, and a little pepper, and serves her fowls a hot
breakfast, to be repaid in more and better eggs, and less cost in
feeding.
" In foreign countries the shops expect to sell in littles : a
penny's worth of this, and two-pence worth of that. Exactly
what is needed for use is bought, and there is nothing to be
wasted. So many people live in ' flats ' or in lodgings, and have
little or no cellar and closet-room, that they must buy as they
use ; and the shopman does not despise selling in littles : half
fiis sales are made in that way.
" In the matter of fuel, we Americans are terribly wasteful
Wood and coal have been dangerously cheap to us. I feel
heart-sick when I travel and see grand trees sacrificed for waste
in fuel, and mighty trunks and branches rotting on the ground.
Along some of our telegraph lines, you will see lying below
each pole one or two other poles, moulding and rotting on the
ground, waiting for the possible ruin of the standing post, and
often that post is cedar, and will continue to stand until the
ECONOMY /TV THE HOME. 79
waiting poles on the ground have rotted into uselessness. They
call this forethought. It is a fool's waste. A shed Here and
there along the line, with a pole or two laid on trestles, and so
kept sound and fit for use, would be thrift.. I have travelled in
Southern Jersey, along swamps and barrens which would have
been an Italian's fortune in fuel. In Jersey it rots on the
ground, or is burned over 'to get it out of the way ; ' and, maybe,
in the burning the woods catch fire, and a thousand dollars
worth of good timber is sacrificed. In Italy every particle of
vegetation that will burn is used for fuel. Trunks and large
limbs go for cord- wood; all the small branches are trimmed up,
and sold by the load by themselves ; the twigs and slender bits
are gathered by children, sorted into bundles for kindling or for
making a light blaze, are tied up with a virte or withe, and are
considered worth saving and selling, when these little fascine
go to you from the shop at two or three for a cent. The big
dead weeds, the mullen and thistle-stalks, the brambles, are cut
down, raked together, packed solidly on a cart and carried into
the city, and sold to the bakers for heating their ovens. The
stumps of old olive trees, the roots of dead olives and vines, the
prunings of the vine and olive roots are gathered up, reduced
in a mill to a kind of coarse sawdust, pressed into flat cakes to
weigh half a pound each, called fumes or smokers, and are sold
two or three for a cent, to keep a fire which you wish to leave
very low without having it go out. From the pine woods on
the hills the cones are gathered ; their resinous wealth does not
rot on the ground as here ; but they come by wagon-loads as
kindling, and Sell five for a cent, or so much the bushel or hun-
dred, as you choose to buy them — great cones, four or five
inches in circumference, from the dark, poetic heights of
Valombrosa. Children and aged people, who here would be
paupers or quarrelling on door-steps, in Italy pick up a spare
but honest living g3Xh.Qr'mg fascine, or making the vine prunings
80 THE COMPLETE HOME.
into fagots and selling them through the streets. A rich Italian
would turn pale at our paupers' waste of wood."
"And how,'' asked Miriam, " have these foreigners learned so
much better economy than we?"
Mrs. Winton replied: "Trouble and sorrow bring always in
one way or another their compensations. This economy,
whereby these kingdoms are surviving wars and despotisms, and
are rehabilitatmg themselves, bearing fruit in their old age,
renewing themselves into youth, is the outcome of long ago
schooling in tribulation. They have been scourged by famines,
by plagues, by ravaging armies, by shameless taxations, and they
have been forced since neir earliest times to save every particle
that could be turned to any use, to economize with the strictest
methods. Now famines have fled before the face of civilization,
governments have grown less oppressive, plenty smiles where
want was known, and tbe good habits learned in ages of penury
will make these nations rich and strong. America must learn
this lesson of economy, for the noblest land cannot endure the
drain of waste. If people could only be taught that economy is
a thing of littles and of individuals, and of every day, and not a
thing of masses and of spasmodic efforts, then a true idea would
begin to tell upon the habits of our domestic life, and its effects
would be seen in general and national prosperity, for the thrift
and thriving of the individual is the thrift and thriving of the
nation."
"I should think, at this rate," said Helen, "that the foreign
housewife's existence would be a perfect slavery: she must be
forever on the watch, sacrificing her time and strength for small,
poor savings."
" In this, as in all our lives," said Mrs. Winton, " order is
everything: system is the grand time and strength saver. The
housewife inculcates upon children and servants the habit of
saving; she notes every deficiency; she has her rules, and hei
ECONOMY m THE HOME. gj
order qf using and saving. Wiien she goes through her house-
hold, if hers happens to be the duty of superintendence rather
than of execution, she notes all that is on hand, and orders it to
its proper uses ; she descries and checks every waste. It takes
no more time nor strength to attend to this thoroughly than to
go negligently over the house, chafing at wastes and deficiencies
which she has neither energy nor wisdom to correct."
" Many things that might be kept to be useful,"- said Miriam,
" spoil, mould, or grow stale in a temperature a little too warm :
what is a good method of preserving such things, especially rf,
saving everywhere, one must save also on the ice bill, and buy
very little ice, or even none ? "
"Our foreign economist," said Mrs. Winton, "knows the value
of three things: charcoal, evaporation, and a piece of muslin.
A bit of thin muslin tied over pots and jars, instead of putting
on them a close cover, will keep out flits and dust, and will
admit air to aid in preserving things. For mould, every little
fragment of it should be quickly removed, and jars or cans
where it has been should be scalded and scoured, for mould is a
vegetable gro^vth, every particle producing spores, whereby, as
by seeds, it reproduces itself Charcoal kept near meats or other
food absorbs into itself the germs of decay, and aids in preserv-
ing what is placed upon or beside it. Evaporation aids like ice
in lowering the temperature. That stone jar for the bones, for
instance, is to be kept cool. Tie a bit of muslin over it, pin a
towel or thick cloth around it, and keep that wet — the evapora-
tion will reduce the temperature: so by a wet cloth you can
keep your butter jar in order, or a stone pot wherein you arc
keeping a piece of cooked meat."
"All this is very nice to know," said Helen, "and is also*
reasonable; but to put it in practice seems penurious, a fretting
about trifles, a saving rather beneath people."
"That is because we do not look at it in a right light," said
g2 THE COMPLETE HOME.
Mrs. Winton. "Christ, the Lord of all, who could command
food for thousands at a word, did not think it beneath him to
set his apostles to gathering up scraps of fish and bread, which
he had produced at so little apparent effort and cost. He
showed his power in providing, his liberality in bestowing, his
tarefulness in saving. ' ' Did he not this altogether for our sakes ? '
— to give us a lesson of that economy without which the human
race cannot be maintained? All that is — the bread on youi
table, the meat, the egg, whatever we use — is the ultimate pro-
duct of Christ's creating skill, and the result to us of his benev-
olence. What divine chemistry in the fruit matured for our
tables! Economy is a high Christian duty, that nothing be
lost."
Housekeepers in the country are able to avoid waste in keep-
ing things far better than city housekeepers can do. There is
usually the spring-house with its running water ; and with the
freer air and the shade trees, closets and store-rooms can be kept
cool and sweet. I was talking with Cousin Ann about this:
she says that many housekeepers do not realize the need of
keeping the butter and milk in a place where there is no smell
of cooked meats, or of vegetables or pickles. Some people will
set a plate of pickles down by a pan of milk, or a dish of ham
or mashed turnip warm from the table close by their fresh butter,
and then wonder why their milk and butter taint so fast ! Other
people do not give air enough to places where they are keeping
things, and they let in too much light, and are not careful to
keep out flies. Cousin Ann has mosquito-netting nailed over
the lower halves of her pantry and store-room windows, and
she had the boys make latticed shutters for the windows, which
shutters she keeps bowed all day : thus she has no flies in these
places, and plenty of air. She now has wire covers to put over
meat and vegetables set by from the table ; but before she could
afford these covers she put such things in deep basins of cheap
ECONOMY IN THE HOME. 83
red earthenware, and carefully tied pieces of netting over the
tops. She remarked to me the other day that some people did
themselves more damage with their ice-chests than going with-
out ice would do them, for they crowded all manner of things
into them, and were not careful to cleanse them thoroughly of
all bits of food that might be scattered from the dishes. For
people who cannot buy a refrigerator a nice ice-box can be thus
made : take a common store-box as large as you Want your ice-
chest; get another box about two inches larger each way;
sprinkle a layer of sawdust in the larger box ; bore three sma^
auger-holes in the bottom of the smaller box, and set it in the
other, upon the sawdust ; pack the space between the boxes with
sawdust to within two inches of the top; drive small strips of
board over the top of the sawdust to prevent its scattering out;
bore in this outer box three small auger-holes low down, one in
the side, and one in each end. Take a lid that will fit the inner
box: nail stout cloth on it rather loosely, so that it can be filled
in with sawdust before the last end is tacked down ; put a
handle, made of a strap of leather, in the centre ; now if your
cellar has rats in it, set into the ground four bits of old stove-
pipe as pegs for the chest to rest upon, and if this is kept
properly cleaned you have a good ice-chest, which will
preserve ice far longer than many patent and expensive ,
refrigerators.
I think if any one could give instructions in domestic
economy it would be Cousin Ann: not a thing is wasted at
her house ; not a board or bit of wood as big as your hand
left to rot — all put under shelter for fuel ; every scrap of
waste grease goes for making hard and soft soap; a leach ol'
wood ashes is always in use ; old bones do not lie around, un-
sightly litter, but there is a "bone heap," which is burned every
year; no weeds overgrow the vegetable garden: Cousin Ann
starts, in house-boxes, lettuce, radishes, onions and cucumbers;
84 IHE COMPLETE HOME.
she has the earliest vegetables that are raised around here, and
she says the truest economy in saving health, escaping bills for
medicine, and even in saving in provisions, is attained by having
plenty of fresh early vegetables on the table three times a day.
Cousin Ann is well-to-do, but she says " prosperity came by
economy, and she will not deride the bridge which carried her
safely over perilous places:" she says economize in little things,
and great economies will take care of themselves. Cousin Ann
always has in each room where there is a fire a box of paper-
lighters to save matches; her bread-board and pan have no
dough left clinging to them ; there is no scattering around her
flour-barrel, and all the scrapings of pots and plates go to the
chicks.
" These are such trifles. Cousin Ann."
"Well, your life is made up of seconds," replies Cousin Ann
in a parable.
" Very valuable trifles, after all ; have you no more of the
kind, Cousin Ann?"
" Perhaps I have not mentioned to you two bottles in my china-
closet which I value very highly. One is a large-necked bottle
of plaster of Paris. It costs me ten cents to fill it, and ten dol-
lars would be a very small estimate of what that amount saves
me. If the walls, especially the hard-finished ones, get scratched
or nicked in ugly little holes, I mix a little plaster of Paris with
water and cover the injury: all is then as good as new; for
doing this work I keep by the bottle a thin, handless knife -blade.
If any crockery is broken, I mix some of this plaster with a
little strong glue or with some white of egg, fasten the broken
parts together, hold or tie them in place for a few minutes, then
they are dry and I scrape off the plaster which has exuded from
the crack, and the dish is firmly mended. China, glass and
earthenware can be used in this way. If the dishes do not look
well enough to come to the table^ they will yet do to set away
ECONOMY IN THE HOME. 85
things in the store-closet, or for keeping jelly, marmalade, oi
preserves. For mending such things I keep an especial glue-
brush; one must work quickly as the plaster dries so quickly;
the knife and brush used in it are fit for nothing else; and I
mix the plaster as I need it in a clam-shell, always keeping two
or three clam or muscle-shells besides the bottle: the bottle
must be kept corked. Speaking of clam and muscle-shells:
they are ten times as good as knives or spoons to scrape out
pans or pots : some folks spoil table-ware, and waste time, when
using a shell would be greatly better in all regards. When my
lamp-tops come loose I don't send them to town : I mend them
with plaster of Paris. The other bottle I mentioned is for
Ammonia: I get that at twenty-five cents a quart at a wholesale
house in the city. Nothing is like it for cleaning looking-glasses,
windows, silver or paint,- for washing lace or embroidery, for
cleaning black silk or cloth, for washing your best glass, for
sprinkling in soap-suds over your house-plants once a week.
Keep the bottle corked ; mix a little ammonia in warm water as
you need to use it, making the water stronger of ammonia for
glass and silver, weaker for flowers or paint or clothes. We
always clean our combs and brushes well with it about once a
month : it keeps them white and stiff; and mixing a little am-
monia with a teaspoonful of bay-rum and half a pint of warm
water we use it for cleaning our heads : it frees the head from
dandruff, and the hair from dust, and helps the growth. I don't
know of anything nicer in a bath, when one is very warm, has
been perspiring freely, or engaged in hard, dirty work ; add a
little ammonia to the bath-water, and you feel clean, fresh, and
rested; indeed the ammonia pays for itself a hundred times
over. In house-cleaning times it saves soap, brushes and paint,
and time in washing wood-work or windows ; it is a grand thing
for carpets: if they look faded aijd soiled, sweep them well;
then after the dust has settled wipe them with a dry flannel ;
gQ THE COMPLETE HOME.
then put some ammonia, say a dessertspoonful, in two quarts of
warm water: wring out a clean flannel cloth in it and wipe the
carpet all over, wringing the cloth out in the ammonia water
several times. I believe it destroys moths, worms, and carpet-
bugs, and sets the color, besides taking off" all grease and stains.
So, Sophronia, / wouldn't keep house without my plaster bottle
and my ammonia bottle."
" Well, Cousin Ann," I replied, " I shall give my nieces each
two of these famous bottles, with their virtues and uses inscribed
on the outside."
"Do," said Cousin Ann: "it will be better to them in the
long run than a silk dress."
"Yes," I replied, "the dress would soon be spoiled, and
might encourage extravagance or love of display, but this gift
will help them to attain that virtue of life-long benefit, Economy
in the Home."
CHAPTER IV.
CHILDREN IN THE FAMILY.
WHAT AUNT 30PHR0NIA HAS TO SAY OF THEIR RIGHTS AND
LIABILITIES.
\
HAVE always had the deepest interest in children, and
a Strong affection for them. They are the very centre
of the Home ; in fact, a Home without children hardly
seems to me a Home at all ; and yet, these, who are
designed to be the Home's choicest blessing, often become its
heaviest sorrow. I think people have more varieties in their
fashions of dealing with or bringing up children, than in any-
thing else; and I suppose there should be differences in
methods, inasmuch as there are so great natural differences in
children. But, after all, there seem to be certain fundamental
rules, which apply to the right training of all children : these
rules I find entirely ignored by very many parents.
Children, as human beings, must come into the world with
certain inalienable rights. A great many parents seem to
regard their children as mere chattels, without any rights what-
ever. Children, as sharing our fallen nature, need certain
restraints. Many parents seem to forget this, and let them
come up in entire ignorance or defiance of that excellent thing
—law. Children are the noblest of our possessions. They are
the only immortal part of our possessions. They deserve, there-
fore, in virtue of their intrinsic value,- our most vigilant care and
guidance. But many parents will bestow more training on a
young colt or heifer than on their child ; more care on a sewing
(87)
88 THE COMPLETE HOME.
machine than on son or daughter ; more time on a piano than
on their own offspring ; more affection on some pet cat, bird or
poodle than they exhibit for a child. They will try harder to
understand the eccentricities of a cooking-stove, than to under-
stand the human mind, which God has committed to their
keeping. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.
Thoughts on the rights, needs and duties of children in the
home, have pressed upon me more forcibly than ever since
there are children in Helen's and Miriam's homes.
I find that people's grandest mistakes and most unutterable
failures are connected with the training of their children. Thus
it has been in all time, and even in the families of holy people.
Isaac seems to have had his hands more than full with son
Esau ; and Jacob found plenty of trouble among his thirteen.
David's sons turned out sadly, some of them. It is no wonder
that Ishmael went out of the ways of Abraham so quickly, when
Abraham turned him adrift so early ; and while Lot's children
seem to have been a desperate set, Mrs. Lot was most likely to
blame for that, especially with Lot's going to live in a wicked
place like Sodom just for gain, which no father of a family
should have done. It appears to me that when there is failure,
Ive can usually go back and put our finger on some error and
say: " Here is where the wrong began." But then it is always
easier to see the beginning from the end, than the end from the '
beginning. We know well enough roads that we have travelled
over ! Then when the evil is done, it is often too late to mend
it How circumspectly then we should go over unknown
ground, where a false step may be fatal !
I remember Mrs. Winton and I went to see Helen when little
Tom was a fortnight old. Helen seemed to have some sense of
her responsibility, and she said : " What a charge I shall have
when it is time to begin to train and educate this child ! "
Mrs. Winton looked up : " Helen, you should have begun to
CHILDREN IN THE FAMIL Y. gg
train and to educate a fortnight ago. Education should begin
with the first hour of a babe's Hfe, and it should from that hour
have a fixed end."
" I don't understand you," said Helen.
" The end of our education should be to develop the child in
every direction, into the very best and highest which it is
capable of attaining. We must always remember that the child
wilUlive forever in another world than this ; that in this world it
will be a member of a social system, and will have duties to its
race. It is also an individual, with its private and particular
nature and emotions, which are to be regarded in its up-bringing.
So, Helen, begin at once to train your babe : as an individual,
■ with regard to its rights ; and as a member of society, with
regard to its duties."
" But, Mrs. Winton, what can one teach so young a child ? "
" Patience is the child's earliest lesson. It can be taught to
wait. Don't give it what it is crying for while it cries. Calm it
tenderly first, and then promptly give the food or the toy ; as it
grows older, whatever it is proper for it to have : it soon asso-
ciates receiving with quiet and pleasant asking. So you can
teach the child, as a member of society, to cry softly, and not
disturb the house with wild shrieks. You can calm and soothe
a very young child to mild crying, and get it habituated not to
roar and bellow." •
" I always noticed, Mrs. Winton," I said, " that your children
cried quietly, and did not fill the neighborhood with shrieks."
" I always pitied them when they were hurt, not in the ratio
of the noise they made, as many do, but in the ratio of their
gentleness about their trouble. Children love sympathy, to be
petted and pitied — if shrieking like Comanches is the price of
notice, of course they will shriek. I used to say ' softly, softly,
and then I shall feel so sorry for you. Ah ! what a good child
to be so patient ! ' They learned a pride in patience and endur-
90 THE COMPLETE HOME.
ance. I have seen mothers feeding a child with two spoons,
nurse and mother feeding together, to keep the child from
screaming as soon as its mouth was empty. The thing is a fact,
and ruined the child's temper and digestion. A child should be
taught to wait patiently while its food is preparing, and while
itself is being made ready to eat it. Naturally, the little one is
the centre of its own universe, and believes the world was made
when it was, and for it. We must early teach the child, in
patience, gentleness and generosity, to know that it has
compeers whose rights are as settled as its own."
Mrs. Burr also called upon Helen with me while Tom was a
young infant. Helen said to her :
" Mrs. Burr, your family is considered a model : give me some .
of your rules for training little children."
" I esteem quiet vety highly," said Mrs. Burr, "both in behalf
of the child's health and its good manners. A little child is a
delicate organization, and its nerves are delicately strung; but
nurses frequently jounce, toss and tumble it, tickle it, jump and
scream at it, and take its nervous contortions or forced laughter
for expressions of pleasure. Do we see cats or birds serving
their young in this way? No, they supply their needs, keep
them warm and quiet, and let them develop their faculties natur-
ally. Grown people could not endure the torments through
which they put a young child, calling it 'amusing it' I have
known children given spasms, or fixed in nervous diseases, by
this folly. Nurses are especially given to this error. They are
often of a hoydenish, noisy class, and they use these manners to
a child. If physically the child escapes harm, its manners are
injured; it is rampant, boorish, disturbing every one with its
uproar, which is called liveliness and healthfulness by the
parent, yet is 'really a bad habit. Children disturb their elders
more by their noise than in any other one way, yet parents delib-
erately train up their children in a noisiness, which they cannot
CHILDREN IN THE FAMIL Y. gj
endure, and as a next step drive them out into the street in
order to be rid of their uproar."
" But, Mrs. Burr, I have supposed that noise was natural to
children, and that only feeble children were veiy still."
" The noise of children," said Mrs. Burr, " has its proper
limitations of time, place and kind. Ugly noises they should
be trained to eschew ; the happy noise of their plays, shouts
and laughter are natural and healthful, but even they must not
be brought among the aged, the sick, nervous, or where a young
child is sleeping. Children can be taught to keep their bolster^
ousness for their own play-room, the field or the garden ; to speak
in gentle tones, to choose quiet plays when they play around
their elders. It is easy, Helen, to begin right in these matters,
and it insures a happy home ; it is hard to begin later, when two
or three children have become fixed in unpleasant ways ; it is
dangerous to family peace and juvenile manners not to begin at
all. And let me say a word on the subject of nurses. Our chil-
dren are often permanently injured mentally or physically by
their nurse. The nurse may have a loving disposition, and may
grow to have a fondness for her charge, but it is idle to expect
from her a warm affection for every child whom she is hired to
attend. Your safeguard then is in good principles; but how
many of those who aspire to the very responsible office of child's
maid, are trained in good principles ? It frequently happens that
the child of well-to-do parents, able to hire a nurse, gets poorer
care, and has less chance of its life, than the child of poor
parents. The fearful summer mortality among poor children can
be accounted for in close, hot rooms, impure air, dirty clothes,
bad food, and often general neglect. The richer child has good
food, air, room, clothes, cleanliness, but he has a nurse-maid,
whose hidden carelessness often forfeits the life of her charge.
How often have I seen a delicate babe sent out by its mother
for an airing in its carriage! The nurse, chatting with hef
92 THE COMPLETE HOME.
friends, or hastening to overtake a companion, dashes the httle
buggy over curbs and crossings. I have even seen a child flung
bodily out of its carriage by such a jolt. In our parks I have
seen maids rushing the little buggies down slopes, ovei drains,
around curves, in a manner to endanger the spines and brains of
infants. Or the nurse sits down on a door or a church step fot
a long talk : the babe, exposed to heat and flies, often the sun
blazing on its undefended face, begins to wail. Hundreds of
times have I seen the nurse shake or slap it for its cries. After
an hour or two of such a ' ride for health,' the child goes home
fevered, weak — no appetite. Dozens of cases of illness or of
deaths, which parents and doctors ascribe to "summer heats,' or
the 'diseases incident to summer,' are the result of exposures and
excitements which grown people could not endure. The lovely
babe of a friend of mine died after agonizing illness — the victim
of a nurse who was very fond of it. After a hot day she sat with
the child on a porch during a thunderstorm, giving the babe no
protection for its bare neck and arms, until it was chilled through.
Many nurses privately administer opiates to their charges.
Almost all nurses that I ever knew do not hesitate to frighten
children by noises or tales ; or, to keep them from being ven-
tui-esome, teach them fears of almost every place and thing.
The mother, who wants a brave son, begins by handing him over
to a nurse, who, for the first three years of his life, labors to
make him a coward."
"You alarm me, Mrs. Burr," said Helen; "but what is to be
done? — ought not nurses to be hired?"
"T think," said our friend, "that mothers often injure them-
selves and their babes by endeavoring to assume the whole care
of the child. The mother begins the charge in a weak state of
health ; she is burdened with family cares, possibly with sick-
ness in the house, with broken rest at nights; she is feeble and
uervous, and this nervousness reacts upon the child, while often
CHILDREN IN. 7 HE FAMILY. 93
a mother's health is shattered and she dies prematurely, leaving
her babes to strangers, when by sharing the care of them her
life might have been prolonged. So, and in an even greater
degree, the figures and health and tempers of unfortunate little
eldest daughters are sacrificed to being.made reliable child's maids
for their juniors. There is hardly a being on earth whom I pity
more than such a little eldest girl, prematurely old and eare
worn, never knowing what a jolly childhood is, always with the
children on her mind or in her arms. Better by far to dress
this little girl in plain calico, and send her to church in a white
sun-bonnet, while the money for fine dress pays a maid to carry
and attend the little ones, than to have the poor creature in her
own childhood burdened with a mother's cares, and compelled
by her own grievances and privations to consider children an
unmitigated nuisance. A lovely lady once said to me, ' I feel
often horrified at the little love I have for my brothers and sis-
ters — they are less to me than strangers ; but it was my mother's
error. Those children were the curse of my early life. I had
no rights and no privileges, no toys which the little ones were
not allowed to destroy. I could not have company, because " I
had enough brothers and sisters," or "company disturbed the
baby." I could not visit, because the children missed me, or
should have been asked to go with me. If I went in the street
I dragged a carriage or led or lugged a child. I spent the even-
ings until my own bed-time shivering in a cold room, waiting
for some child who chose to be afraid to go to sleep. I never
went anywhere with my mother, because when she was out I
must be at home. I saved the lives of the little things a few
times by my courage and presence of mind, and I almost
regretted it, because the more reliable I was the more I was
laden with a woman's duties. I remember when once or twice
death came to our crowded circle, my first irresistible thought
was — now I would get a little more time to rest and read. Even
94 THE COMPLETE HOME.
my school and lessons were sacrificed to these children. All
this was pecuniarily unnecessary, but my parents felt that nurses
were unreliable, and I, alas, was trusty! I often wished I had
been born without a conscience, so that my parents would
have been afraid to trust me, but I was so constituted that I could
sacrifice life rather than duty. The memory of my youth is a
nightmare. A pestilence broke up our family within a week.
I sorrowed for my dpad, but I was free from slavery. Now my
remaining brothers and sisters are to me chiefly associated with
the long weariness, sadness, sacrifice, and rebuffs of my early
life. When I was twenty-four my own first child was laid in my
arms, and there surged over me that feeling of burden and dis-
tress, that horror of great darkness, that closed my childhood in ;
but I soon found that a woman's joyous love, her knowledge,
her skill, her strength for responsibility, her command of the
situation, for her own babe, is a very different thing from the
experience of a child so recklessly overburdened as I was.' "
"Dear Mrs. Burr," cried Helen, "if I ever have a little
daughter, she shall have the advantage of that little story. But
tell me what to do. I cannot, it seems, have a nurse, nor do
without one: where is the middle course here?"
" If you can afford, by any sacrifices of luxuries or fineries
even, to keep a nurse-maid, Helen, do so. But first be sure
about the girl you are getting: know something of her family,
her history ; see to it that she is healthful, modest, cleanly, kind.
You cannot be too scrupulously particular about these things.
Then consider that you get her, not to take your place to the
'babe, but to relieve you in lesser cares, so that you can with
•better strength fulfil the rest. A tnother should always bathe,
^dress, undres.i, and feed her own child : no one else will
exercise such tender, wise care as she in these immensely
important particulars. If your child, unhappily, must be fed
' from its birth, see yourself to the preparing of its food, and the
CHILDREN IN THE FAMIL Y. 95
washing, keeping and cleansing of the vessels in which that food
is prepared and administered. If the nurse puts the child to
sleep in the day time, let her do it in a room where you are
sitting ; but I should say, always put your own child to sleep,
and let the nurse take any work that might at that time occupy
you. At night put the child to bed yourself: then you will be
sure that it is not frightened nor made uncomfortable. If pos-
sible, accustom the child to going to sleep itself when laid on
the bed, and teach it to sleep without a light : a light burns up
the oxygen of the room, depriving the child of good air, and its
constant use makes the child timid in the dark. However, some
children cannot be taught these things : nervous fear is con-
stitutional. Remember, then, what Horace says: 'You can-
not drive out nature with a fork.' Keep away the causes of
nervous fear, and by degrees the child will outgrow it. That
splendid child, Grace Winton, was from her birth constitu-
tionally fearful of lightning ; frantic terror took possession of her
at the slightest flash. No matter where she was, nor how
occupied, if an electric storm appeared, Mrs. Winton repaired to
Grace, and she never allowed her to go far from her, or for a
long time. Grace was ashamed of her uncontrollable fear;
friends told Mrs. Winton that she spoiled the child in this point.
She replied : ' No ; I shall solace her unreasoning age, and trust to
developed reason to control her.' She explained early to Grace
the reason, uses and theories of storms ; she showed utter fear-
lessness herself; and from the time she was eight, Grace lost her
terrors, and is now as brave as her mother in all particulars.
But to return to the nurse. She can hold, carry, exercise with
the child, but do not let her go ofiT alone on long perambulations
with it. If she goes beyond your sidewalk or garden go with
her; if you cannot go, keep her under your eye and out of
temptation. The only time I ever broke that rule, my youngest
nearly died from getting the whooping cough in the midst of
96 THE COMPLETE HOME.
bis teething; the nurse was a trusty girl, too; she merely called
on her sister, not knowing the cough was in her family ; but if I
had been with her she would have made no calls. Nurses, in
their calls, expose children to foul air, vermin or diseases ; and
keep them warmly wrapped for hours in close rooms, and then
go out in the cold with them. Often, in low parts of the city,
have I seen babes crying in their buggies at doors where nurse-
maids were inside gossiping, and once I knew of a child stolen
under such conditions."
" But suppose, Mrs. Burr, I am too sick to feed or bathe the
child, or to go out with it, or put it to bed? "
" Get a friend to go out with it, with the nurse, or keep it at
home ; and have the nurse feed, bathe and put it to bed where
you are present to overlook the matter."
" But in some families nurses take the whole care of children,
and often in England they bring up the children entirely."
" God sometimes mercifully confers on children, thus left by
their mothers, a nurse more faithful than the mother. But I
don't think we should indulge neglect, expecting Him to make
up for our delinquencies. One may have a mature, judicious
nurse many years, and trust her more and more as she shows
herself reliable : yet, ought a mother "to desire to delegate those
duties and services which her little child has a right to claim
from her? In England long terms of service are more common
than here. Here a nurse is changed once a year, or half a
dozen times a year ; or as soon as her little' charge can toddle
she is dismissed. She loses the affection of habit, and does not
expect to become identified with the family interests. In
England a nurse spends often her whole life in one family,
nursing two generations ; the family feel that one who was
devoted to their helpless infancy has more than a pounds-and-
pence claim on them. In this respect the feeling of the colored
nurses in the South, formerly, was like that of the English rather
CHILDREN IN THE FAMIL Y. 97
than the ordinary American nurse, and resulted in the safety of
the nurseling."
I trust Helen profited by this talk of Mrs. Burr; but being
naturally indolent, she left a good deal too much responsibility
to her nurse-girl. However, the first one was a good nurse, for
I engaged her myself; unfortunately she soon left.
Mrs. Burr's remarks about educating children into noisiness
and timidity struck me, and doubtless caused me more partic-
ularly to notice several little street incidents. I walked out one
day and saw our minister's wife at her garden gate talking to
Cousin Ann's son Fred, who was in his wagon. She had in her
arms her babe, a year old. The farmer's horse put his head
over the gate : the child shrank back to his mother's neck.
" Pretty horse ! " said his mother, in her musical voice ; and
taking the child's hand in her own she stroked the animal's
face. " See his ears : see his nice eyes." Grown suddenly bold
the child poked his finger at the horse's great dark eye, but the
watchful mother seized his hand : " Softly ! be kind to the horse.
Poor horse. No, no ; don't touch his eye."
The child's next move was to tap the beast's nose as hard as
he could. '
"Softly! gently; so, so; you must not whip the good horse;
pat him so, softly."
The child learned now that there was to be neither fear nor
abuse, and, crooning in a tender tone, he stroked the animal's
face with his white dimpled hand. A square farther on I saw a
young woman on the edge of the sidewalk buying vegetables
from a cart. She had a child in her arms, and as the cart-horse
turned his head to look, the little one reached out laughing.
The horse's head was two or three feet from the child, but the
mother howled : " O now ! owh ! he'll bite you ! " in a voice to be
heard a block off. The child burst into a shriek of terror, and
was carried in-doors, having learned that a very common animal
98 THE COMPLETE HOME.
was an object of mad fear. Near my own home I saw a young
woman with z. two-years-old boy in her arms, as she stood talk-
ing to some friends who were in a buggy. The child had a
Ivillow switch with which he was striking about. The mother,
k boisterous creature, shouted: "Whoa! get up! Hit the horsey!
Hit him hard! That's right; crack him good! whoa!" The
youngster bellowed as loudly as his progenitress, and hit right
and left as well as he was able. He was getting his lesson : a
lesson of noise, of cruelty to a domestic animal, of needless
words, uproar and excited actions — he was in a fair way to
become hard-hearted, and very uncomfortable to live with.
When Miriam's little Dora was a few months old, Miriam
invited Mrs. Burr and myself to tea. Very naturally, our talk
turned on the training of children, and Mrs. Burr made some
good remarks on the subject. She said: " Miriam, don't expect
your child to be perfect. That is our first demand on our chil-
dren : we expect them to be angelic beyond others, yet, when
we come to look at ourselves, we shall see how very insufficient
A foundation we have for such an expectation. Don't feel that all
faults are equally heinous. Childhood has errors which we may
reprove or correct very gently, or even ignore altogether, rather
than to be always condemning, trusting that the whole moral
training of the child will correct some faults of which individual
notice has not been taken. Childhood has its crimes which can-
not be permitted without destroying the child's character. I
should say the three primary crimes are disobedience , falsehood,
and selfishness. Of the first, nothing so insures the happiness
of the child, and the comfort of the Home, as obedience; obedi-
ence includes respect for all who are in authority; the respecting
delegated as well as parental authority; true obedience has none
of the blatant, 'I shan't mind you; you ain't my mother,' style,
which some parents even think very amusing. If we begm early
snough with a child, it will acquire the habit of obedience before
CHILDREN IN THE FAMIL Y. 99
It knows that it is learning anything, and it will grow into
obedient dispositions, as the plant grows as you have trained it.
Some parents command and re-command, and then permit the
child to disregard the order; others are angry and upbraid or
punish, without stopping to consider whether the child has
understood the order. I have seen idiots who will tell a
child a year old to put down or pick up something, and when
the order is not obeyed, they begin to shake and slap, never'
questioning whether the new denizen of this world apprehends
their instructions, or appreciates what it is to do. The child
becomes terrified and nervous; that is set down as obstinacy,
and ' a will that must be broken.' What did the Lord bestow
the Divine Power of the will for, if not to be a stronghold to the
human being .? It must be guided in the way of righteousness.
I have noticed Mrs. Winton : she never allows her word to be
disregarded, and never has a battle. I have seen her tell a
young child to put down something, which the child, looking at
her, still clutched. There was no second order; she quietly
unloosed the little fingers and the thing was put down. She
said if the child did not understand the phrase "put it down,'
the act expounded it ; if it did, and concluded to hold on, the
loosing of its grasp secured the accomplishment of the parental
demand, and taught it that instant action must follow an order.
So when she bid a little one pick up something, as a bit of bread
which it had thrown down, once told, if obedience did not follow,
she quietly clasped the little fingers over the object and secured
the performance of the act; her children have grown into an
assurance that the mother's order must be followed by execu-
tion, while no bitter antagonisms have been awakened. One
reason of her strength in government, is that she never demands
or asserts a thing concerning which she has not herself full
assurance, and then she never changes : her words are like the
laws of the Medes and Persians ; and while law is thus inflexible,
100 THE COMPLETE HOME.
her children have their acknowledged rights, which are to them
as impregnable as an Englishman's home. I notice, too, that
while she does not stop to argue things with her children, she
is always ready to explain, sometimes before, sometimes after,
the performance of an order: thus her children's acts are estab-
lished on reason, and sound judgment is developed in them,
while they are not forever saying, ' Why ? ' Obedience is the
corner-stone in Home training. The child should not grow up
feeling that obedience is due only to one parent: that authority
resides only in one — that father must be minded, while mother
can be twisted as they choose; that mother rules them, while
father is a figure-head, or an animated purse. They must not
find one parent concealing their acts from the other, or one
parent permitting what the other prohibits."
I said : " While in our civil laws one kind of penalty meets
one offence and another another, in domestic training there is
too often only one kind of punishment for all misdoings : crimes
or mere errors meet the same reward ; a lie or an accident
receives equal reprobation. This is the sure way to destroy
moral sense."
"Accidents should never receive punishment," said Mrs. Burr,
" but a child should be always required, as far as possible, to repair
them : thus carelessness is corrected. True, the child's bungling
repairing may all need to be done over again by the parent, but
in giving its time and its labor, the child has learned carefulness.
A nephew of mine was shamefully wasteful of his food ; his
mother preached good manners, his father general human needs,
and depicted poor people hungering for his waste : he wasted
still. When he was twelve years old, my brother reformed him
thoroughly : he made him raise, one summer, a quarter of an
acre of corn, and the same amount of potatoes. Ben planted
and hoed, weeded and pursued potato-bugs ; he thought it fun
at first, work presently, purgatory soon after. His father had
CHILDREN IN THE FAMIL Y. \{y\
hired the half acre, paid for the seed and the ploughing ; poor
Ben learned what it costs to produce food He dug his potatoes,
cut and husked his corn, found a sale for both, repaid his father's
outlay, and pocketed a dollar and a half for his summer's work ;
but he pocketed a lesson worth thousands. He knew how to
raise his dinner out of the soil, and he knew what labor food
represents ; he is now the most scrupulously saving fellow I evei
saw, *
" The children of a friend of mine were remarkable for the
purity and propriety of their language. She procured this
niccness by an odd method. Children readily pick up vulgar or
bad words; whenever she heard such an one, she calmly looked,
into the little mouth whence it came : ' Dear, dear, what a dirty
mouth ! Such a word does not leave a clean mouth ! Come, let
us wash it.' The mouth was carefully washed with soap and
water, rinsed, wiped. ' Go, now, and be careful ; don't get your
mouth dirty any more.' No matter how busy she was, the great
business of keeping clean mouths was always heeded, and her
children learned a positive disgust for all low language and
a hearty respect for cleanness of speech. My cousin Ann's
mother had a custom akin to this. When her grandchil-
dren dropped an evil word, she rubbed a little aloes on their
tongue. A bad word was a bitter word to them, and they,
also, talked as they ought. The same disease requires different
remedies to suit the patient. I had my eldest at Cape May
when he was three, and from a family of boys at our hotel, he
learned to swear. Imagine my consternation ! He picked up
their speech as he did mine, knowing nothing of its meaning.
The more I reproved and punished, the more firmly the evil
language was fixed in his mind. I went home with him to
escape bad company. I wept over the affair to my mother.
She said to me : ' The child knows no more harm in those words
than in a nursery rhyme. All your measures are fixing them
102 THE COMPLETE HOME.
in his memory; at home he hears nothing of the kind. Ignore
his use of these words, and he will forget them in a fortnight'
I took her advice, and in a week the objectionable words had
faded from his memory."
Our minister's wife has remarkable success in training hei
children. I was talking with her one day on the subject, and
>ve happened to come upon the matter of truthfulness. She
said:
"Nothing is more beautiful than truth, and we must first
teach it to our children by our own example, by showing and
inculcating inflexible principles of honor. Many parents make
their children liars by a severity which first makes them
cowards, and by a doubting of their words, and by a readiness
to accept any stranger's word against the child's statement.
This is an error as great as that of being credulous, an easy
dupe, and falling a prey to any misstatement the child may
make. Parents should study the character of their children to
see whether they are honest or no, and what are the causes of
dishonesty. Very vivid imagination in young children causes
them to state things as they appear to them, which look like very
false statements to grown people. We must consider how
small the child is in comparison with his surroundings, h 5W
new the world is to him, and how little grounds he has for
forming a judgment, before we call his misstatements lying.
In early ages, knowing little of scientific fact, people attributed
to witchcru.ft and the supernatural what are now the easily ex-
plained operations of nature ; ignorance begot superstition; igno-
rance may make children appear false ; we should be careful to
instiuct them, and to let no error of statement pass, so that we
may obtain a noble clearness and truthfulness in them. A lying
child is a mean and a dangerous child; and a parent's most
vigilant and earnest efforts must be given to ensuring absolute
truthfulness."
CHILDREN IN THE FAMILY. 103
Our minister preached a sermon to the young on Truthful
NESS. He does not often quote the old philosophers : he prefers
to instruct from the Scripture, as getting there the best that can
be giv^en; but I noted a quotation or two which he made from
Plato on Truth. " Is there anything more akin to wisdom than
truth ? Or can the same nature be a lover of truth and a lover
of falsehood ? The true lover of learning then must from his
earliest youth, as far as in him lies, desire all truth." " God is
perfectly simple and true, both in deed and wOid; he changes
not ; he deceives not, either by dream or by waking vision, by
sign or word."
I think Miriam's children should grow up to be blessings
to their parents and to society, for she and Mark both train as
they desire the child to develop, and to be when it is mature.
One evening I was there, and Mark brought home for the child
some little treat. Dora, seated on her mother's lap, proceeded
to help herself Mark said :
" There is nothing more detestable, more cruel, more ruinous
to society than selfishness. Don't begin now, Miriam, by
letting Dora think only of her own satisfaction ; teach her that
nothing is truly blessed until it has been shared."
" That," said Miriam, " is Mark's rule for Dora, and I think it
a very good one : always to offer to others a part of what she
has. She seems naturally inclined to be selfish, but we want to
teach her a habit of giving, and we always praise her when she
divides with others. We go through the form of sharing with
her on all occasions."
"Some parents," said Mark, "themselves divide the child's
possessions; but that is not teaching the child to give; it is
depriving it of the luxury of giving. Children should be taught
spontaneity in giving. I have seen parents take forcibly the
child's property and give it to others ; that is merely to incul-
cate the right of might, and to give a lesson in robbery : a rightly)
i04 THE COMPLETE HOME.
eonstituted child would resent and question such a proceeding.
If the child's giving to its mate must be final, so should the
parent's gift to the child be final ; and if it is to be given away,
the child should be the free-giver. Yet children should be
taught not to give, trade, or take without honoring its parental
guide by asking advice. The parent, as judge, can condemn
some ill-used possession as forfeit, or can adjudge the child to
make restitution in kind for damage done to its neighbor's
property; here the parent bases his decree on principles of
common equity, and here is a grand and not to be slighted
opportunity for teaching justice between man and man, human
property rights, and the majesty of law, as guardian over all its
subjects, and with eye fixed on the common good."
" Indeed, Mark," I said, " very few parents consider that boys
should do justice and deal honorably by each other: I have
Been over-reaching called ' smartness ' — destruction ' playfulness.'
A child loses his playfellow's toy and says he's sorry, but is not
taught to give up his own property to replace the loss. And
how frequently are children allowed to give and then take
back ! "
" There," replied Mark, " is the root of much dishonesty
among men : they began it when they were boys, their parents
ignoring it, or abetting it, or setting an example. Ingrain hon-
esty in a lad, arid you are sure of an honest man. Girls and
boys should be allowed independent property dealings with
each other; their parents remarking, and advising and care-
fully insisting on rigid honesty. Girls should not be taught
that in virtue of their sex they may change their minds, break
their promises, or deal fast and loose. Upright business prin-
ciples are as good for girls as for boys, and they should learn
them."
During these years my niece Hester has several times
returned home for short visits, and I have seen with satisfaction
CHILDREN IN THE FAMILY. 105
Mrs. Winton's prophecies concerning her proving true. While
no less decided, she is less aggressive: she is just as fond of argu-
ment as ever, but proceeds with it by question, rather than con-
tradiction; she says this is the " Socratic method." Whatevei
method it is, I like it better than the one which she had formerly
in use, though I will admit that this Socratic method is rathei'
hard on her opponents in usually betraying them into contra-
dicting themselves ! Hester, having graduated, was still pur-
suing her favorite studies in New York, when she came to spend
a few weeks with me, her father being absent. He accompanied
an Exploring Expedition to South America. I don't appreciate
John Rocheford's studies and explorations, simply because they
are selfish. What is the use of heaping up knowledge if one
does not intend to make any use of it ? It seems to me very like
a miser heaping up money, for its own sake, and not for what it
will procure : it is merely a more refined kind of miserliness.
It seems to me that we should put our knowledge, as well as
our money, to use : keep it in circulation. I think when our
dear Lord condemned hiding talents in the earth, he meant more
than mere cash. That is a true scripture : " No man liveth to
himself, and no man dieth to himself." We ought, indeed, to
use every little thing we have or know in some way to benefit
the world; then in serving our fellows we serve our Lord. One
would not be quite useless in the world, if one even knew and
taught a better way of cooking a piece of meat. That is what I
say to John ; he heaps up knowledge, and knows no one will
gather it — it will go into the grave with him.
Well, Hester came to visit me, and I had, among other thingt,,
opportunity to see how Hester applied her common sense and
her education to the training of children. I have always said
that if there was one foolish thing above another in training
children, it was to allow them to stand and tease, tease forever
about a thing, say "no" half a dozen times, an<5 then give up,
106 THE COMPLETE HOME.
and say "yes" as a reward of merit for teasing. When a parent
acts in that way, how much respect is a child hkely to have
for the parent's judgment and truthfulness ? We should neither
grant nor deny so hastily that we have not well considered a
question. There is much which our children must be denied :
therefore, when we can consent to their wishes, let us do it
heartily and cheerfully. If we deny, let it be because we must,
and then not go back on our principles by finally agreeing to
what we think wrong. I remember once I was visiting Cousin
Ann at the farm, and I was in the garden with Ann's sister-in-
law, and this lady's little son Bob came up :
"Mother! can I go fishing?"
" Why, no, Bob ; what do you want to fish for? you never
catch anything, and you'll be sure and get cold."
"Why, I like to fish, and all the boys are going, and I never
get cold; say, can't I go fishing?"
"No, child, I -say; I'm sure you have not weeded the cab
bages, and you've got your composition to write."
" Hoh ! I wrote my composition last night: it's all done, and
I finished the cabbages an hour ago — can't I go fishing ? "
" Dear me. Bob, what a tease. you are ! no: it's too damp."
" Damp ! oh, dear: then it'll never be dry; it hasn't rained for
A week, and the dew's all gone, and it is such nice weather — •
can't I go fishing? — Dick's going!"
" Dick's going! Well, he'd stay home if his mother said so.''
"But she lets him go— can't I go fishing, mother?"
"I never s^v^ your like to tease; well, do go along."
" But, mother, I want some dinner to take."
" Oh, you'll be home by dinner-time."
" No, indeed ; why it wouldn't be two hours : I want a iunch."''
" Bless me, what a bother ! Well, go find yourself a lunch."
I went into the house just in time to hear Cousin Ann's
Dick begin: " Mother! can't I go fishing?"
CHILDREN IN THE FAMIL Y. J 07
Cousin Ann looked carefully at Dick, as if considering his
health, wants, and various capabilities in the fishing line. Then
she looked out of doors, as if summing up the weather. Then
she took a look into the woodrshed, to see if Dick's morning
chopping and cleaning up had been done. Then she said,
cheerfully: "Yes, Dick, it is a splendid day for fishing. Go get
your old trowsers, and your big straw-hat, and I'll put you up
a dinner : that is first and best part of a fishing in your view, I
suppose."
Now I like that straightforward way of dealing with a child :
know what you mean, and stick to it. I found that was one
of Hester's cardinal points in child-training. While Hester
was with me, a cousin of hers was called out of town, and left
her little girl in Hester's care. The child was used to her -own
way, and a perfect tease. One day she asked to go to Mrs,
Black's.
" No : not to-day," said Hester.
" Oh, yes ; let me go ; I want to go ; why can't I go, say?"
" You were there yesterday."
" Never mind that : let me go ; do please let me go."
Hester laid down her book and asked, quietly : "Anna, how
many times do you mean to ask me to let you go? "
" Why, I don't know ; do let me go ; what did you ask that
for?"
" Because if you have made up your mind how many times
you will ask, you might as well begin and ask as fast as you
can, and I can say " no ' all at once, without wasting words."
Anna opened her eyes in astonishment. Then she cried,
angrily : " I'll ask you fifty times ! "
Hester coolly got out a piece of paper and a pencil, and
said : " Now begin ; ask, and make a mark, and when you have
fifty marks, you will be done asking and I will say ' no.' "
Anna caught the paper and began making marks, crying;
,08 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" Let me go ; let me go ; let me go." Finally she stopped :
" There ! that's fifty."
But Hester had kept private tally. "No, dear: it is but-
tAventy; go on."
Anna went on, but she wearied of asking, and wanted to go
off. Hester held her left hand firmly. "No; you must keep
your word. Ask on, until fifty times." Finally Anna had asked
fifty times. " No, my dear: not to-day," said Hester, smoothly,
and took up her book. Anna never again asked her twice for
anything. Anna had been used to going to bed when she chose.
Hester set eight o'clock for bed-time, and her law was like that
of the Medes and Persians. Then we had this scene. " Come,
Anna: it is bed-time."
" Let me sit up : I'm not sleepy."
Hester lit a lamp and took the child's hand.
" Oh, it's too early: I don't want to go to bed."
The two walked off up-stairs together. All the time the
undressing went on Anna protested : " I don't want to go to
bed."
" Now, Anna," said Hester, " it is time to say your prayers.
But we pray to God, and you should think only of Him and
what you will ask of Him as you kneel down. I cannot hear
your prayers while you fret in this way."
A little talk put Anna in a mood for her prayers; she may
have fancied that yielding thus far, Hester would yield in turn,
and allow her to sit up. However, the prayer over, Hester
put her into bed. " I don't want to go to bed ! " screamed
Anna.
"Anna," said Hester, " did I promise to take you to see Cousin
flelen to-morrow? Do you expect I will do so?"
"You said you would," cried Anna.
"And I shall certainly do as I said. But if I did not keep
\^^Y word to you about going to bed and such things as you
CHILDREN IN THE FAMILY. 109
do not like, how could you trust my word when I promised
you what you do like ? "
" Maybe you will not take me if I am bad," said Anna.
" I shall take you whether or no, for I said that I would, and
I cannot break my word."
" No matter how bad I am ? If I scream and holla ? "
" I shall not break my word for any badness. But how well
would you enjoy going with me feeling that I was displeased
with you, and that you had been a bad girl? We are not
happy when we are ashamed : we are happy when we do right."
Anna made no reply, and Hester came down-stairs.
" I hope, Aunt Sophronia, that this child will not disturb you
by her manoeuvres."
" Not at all," I replied ; " I am interested in seeing how you
get along with her."
" It's my view, Miss Hester," said Martha, who came in, " that
you have the patience of Job."
"It is not a question of patience," said Hester; "common-
sense tells me, that if we want to govern children, we must first
govern ourselves. As to yielding to her fretting, it is impos-
sible. Decision is a matter of the first importance in training
children. A ' yes ' should be hearty and unconditional, except
on those understood conditions of life, health and weather, which
are not in human keeping. Our promise should be a rock on
which the child could find unshaken foundation for building up
its plans. Our 'no' should be a wall of brass, which the child
shall give up all hope or endeavor of shaking. Of two evils I
would maintain a foolish ' yes ' and a selfish ' no ' rather than
shake a child's faith in the fixity of my promises. But one, by
taking the trouble to consider, can prevent selfishness and folly
in promises ; and the well-being of these immortal natures is
surely worth our most earnest consideration."
In fact, Hester has some very sound ideas about training
8
110 THE COMPLETE HOME.
children, and I said as much to her, and wondered at it when
she had had no experience, even with younger brothers and
sisters, as many girls have. She said it was merely the applica-
tion of common-sense, and that she believed the reason people
trained children so poorly was, that they did not apply their
common-sense and foresight to the training of their families as
they did to other things.
Hester's ideas of training take hold on looks and manners as
well as on morals. We went one day to see Mary Smalley,
who married a thriving young fellow named Watkins, and lives
on a farm a mile from the village. Mary has a little girl two
years old : a nice child, which she is proud of and worries over.
The child has straight light hair, pretty enough as nature made
it ; but Mary's pride leads her to crimp it, by braiding it tightly
over night, or doing it up over a hot hair-pin. Hester took
exception to this. She said :
" Mary, do you suppose little Nettie cares how she looks ? Is
';he happier for being crimped?"
" No," said Mary ; " but / like to see it."
" Now is not that a little selfish, Mary ? Suppose Nettie lives
to be fifty years old. For the first dozen years of her life she
cares nothing for her looks ; if you keep her hair smooth and cut
short in those years, you secure her a fine growth of silky locks,
•heavy and healthy. From twelve to twenty-five let us say that
she has a little vanity in dressing-up and looking pretty. You
'have secured, in this nice hair, one of the most natural and
admirable ornaments of a young maiden. After twenty-five,
while she is less vain, let us hope that she will desire to be
• comely and pleasing in her looks ; she may have a husband to
admire her; and we know the Scripture says that a woman's
long hair is a glory to her. Of this glory of womanhood and
beauty of girlhood, you, a selfish mother, will deprive your
• daughter, if for your own taste in this first dozen of years you
CHILDREN IN TUE FAMILY. HJ
ruin her hair with crimping, and weaken it by letting it grow
long. Only keeping hair well brushed, and growing naturally,
and cut short will secure a fine growth. Besides, Mary, if
Nettie must be frizzed and crimped as a baby, how much crimp-
ing and braiding and foolish decoration will she want in hef
young ladyhood ? Will you not lead her into those idle vanities
of dressing hair, which the Scripture reprobates in women pro
fessing godliness? "
"Why, I never thought of all this," said Mary; "and is
keeping the hair short, and letting it grow its own way, the
only means to have it soft and abundant when one is grown
up?"
"Yes, Mary," I said; "nothing hurts the hair more than tight
crimping, frizzing on hot pins or rolling up over bits of tin.
Wash the head in cold water, brush it often and briskly, trim off
the ends of the hair ; and for a child, keep it cut short."
" I'll do my best for Nettie's hair then," said Mary; " but now
tell me : Nettie sucks her thumb. Some tell me to make her
stop it, others say it is of no consequence. What do you say ? "
" It is a habit that grows on a child ; it spoils the thumb and
the shape of the mouth ; I should stop it."
" But how? I have tied on a rag, but she sucks it still,"
" Fasten on a little glove-thumb, buttoned around her wrist,
so that she cannot pull it off; and soak the glove-thumb in aloes.
She will soon tire of putting it in her mouth."
Nettie had a blue ribbon on her hair. The child's real defect
,.s, that her ears .stand out too widely from her head. Hester
had the little thing on her lap, and she took off this ribbon, and
re-tied it, placing the edges over the upper part of the ears, bind
(ng 'hem to the head with an easy pressure. She said to Mary,
vho was complaining that Nettie's ears were not pretty :
" ) Tature needs a little aiding. Let her wear her ribbons this
VI ay. flight and day, until she is seven or eight years old, and
112 THE COMPLETE HOME.
you will have conquered the defect entirely. And this fashion
of head-ribbon is becoming to her."
" Hester," said Mary, "you used to condemn dress and vanity
so much, I thought you would call it foolish to care about good
looks."
" Beauty is a gift of God," said Hester; " good looks are, in
themselves, a pleasure to all beholders. To cultivate good look;
or personal beauty is different from cultivating vanity, for in
proportion as self-conscious vanity comes in, really good looks
vanish. Since God is right in sending some children into the
world beautiful, and all with some elements of beauty, we are
right in doing all that we can to aid nature, and to make the
personal appearance beautiful. I think there is no finer sight
than to see gathered about the table a beautiful family; there is
something elevating and refining in that very beauty if it is
unmixed with low vanity and self-display; and in every family
tiiere will be more or less of this beauty, if there is 'neatness,
grace, gentleness, loving-kindness. Plato says : ' Let our youth
dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and beaut>',
the effluence of fair works, will meet the sense like a breeze, and
insensibly draw the soul, even in childhood, into harmony with
beauty and reason.' "
"Ah ! " said Mary, " what a pity that we cannot all be
beautiful ! "
" We can," said Hester. " There are three great elements of
personal beauty: first, healthfulness ; second, intelligence of
expression ; third, youthfulness. By cultivating, then, health of
body, developing our minds to the best of our abilities, and
being too industrious, patient and cheerful to get fretful and
care-lined and old, we shall always be very beautiful. And in
this beauty, parents should train their children."
Helen and Hester have not quite ceased their early disputa-
iions. One day we were all going to visit Cousin Ann. Heste»
CHILDREN IN THE FAMILY. IJO
put on Anna a clean calico frock, a pair of stout shoes and a
wide-brimmed hat ; Helen dressed little Tom in embroidered
skirts, wide sash and kid boots. Hester argued that we deprived
children of their natural right to develop healthfully and free of
care, when we loaded them with fine clothes which they must
take care of "A child of Tom's age is a hearty little animal in
one-half of its nature, and has a right to untrammelled exercise,
plenty of air and sun, and playing in ' clean dirt ' like earth and
sand. Parents are unjust who deprive children of out-door life
for fear that they will mar their complexions, or of exercise, lest
they shall tear their clothes. We load children unnecessarily
with the curse of the Fall, when we load them with unneedful
clothing ; their clothes should not be a care to them, but such
clothes as they could forget and be happy. What a spectacle
to make angels weep did I see lately on Chestnut street! A
nine-year-old miss, in rich silk and lace, and flounces, and
feathers, watch, fan, chains, rings, parasol, necklace, bracelets,
Jaced pocket-handkerchief — costing perhaps six or seven hun-
dred dollars of dress as she stood — mincing along in tight boots
tind tight waist, pale-cheeked, and tired out. And I thought of
plump, rosy, little country lassies, in gingham gown and best
white apron, easy shoes, and sheltering sunbonnet, racing along
the road-sides, swinging a book-satchel, and able to climb fence
or tree like a boy or a squirrel, and I thanked God that there
would be at least a few women left for the next generation."
The fact is, Helen, while fond of her children, feels that hei
chief mission is to their clothes : to keep them well dressed, well
fed, and given nice rooms. She does not realize that the best
thing a mother can give her children is — herself We were at
Helen's one day when little Tom ran in with a fuzzy ball:
" Mamma ! what is this ? "
" Tom, pet ! your feet ! all dusty, and— don't touch my worJ",
your hands are dirty — ^pray throw that thing out."
114 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" But what is it, mamma ? what is it ? "
" Why, I don't know, child : a bit of cotton, perhaps."
Tom looked disappointed. " Such a child," said Helen :
" forever asking questions ! "
Hester took Tom, helped herself to a plate and tumbler, went
out on the verandah, made a large spider captive and returneti
Tom screamed at the spider.
" Come, come," said Hester, " don't be a silly boy. See here :
this is Mrs. Spider. She is a mamma, and instead of three
babies like your mamma, she has about a hundred. To keep
her babies warm and dry, she spun them this fuzzy ball which
you brought in : it is their cradle. Come and look what soft,
yellow silk blankets ; peep in now, while I pull the blanket open;
do you see all those little squirming things ? Those are Mrs.
Spider's babies, kicking about because their bed-clothes are
off. Those little shiny balls are more babies, not big enough
to kick."
" Oh, how little ! will they grow big? " cried Tom.
" Yes, they will be as big as their mamma, by-and-by."
" But so many ! they'll run all over the house."
" No, Tom, as they begin to get out, rain and cold will kill
some ; the birds and big insects will eat a good many, and so
only very few will live to get as big as Spider Mamma."
" Poor weeny spiders ; let's put 'em all out-doors now.''
" Bless me," said Helen, when Hester returned, " you'd be a
treasure to Tom, if you'd satisfy his mind that way.'
" Dear Helen," said Hester, " it is your duty to satisfy his
mind. If you teach him to take interest in natural things, talk
to him, and fill his little head with the good and useful and the
wonders of God's work, you will leave little room in it for vice
Mid folly that some day might break your heart."
" But I've no time, Hester," pleaded Helen.
" Take time for what is so important. Have less ruffles and
CHILDREN IN THE FAMILY. JIJ
fency trimmings ; and you can talk to him while you sew or
nurse the baby ; look at his curiosities, and talk of them."
" But I don't know about all these wonders of nature."
" You can know easily enough. 'Newspapers and magazines
are full of articles on natural history ; if you cannot read all that
is in the magazine, omit the stories. There are dozens of cheap
little books on insects, birds, shells, animals ; feel it a duty to
read these for your children's sake. Throw away the novels
and read these. I think fewer wives would complain of loneli-
ness ill the needful absence of their husbands, and their own
severance from society, if they set seriously about being the
companions and 'teachers and friends of their children, and
making these children companions for themselves. Have Mark
put up two or three low shelves in the back of the hall, and
encourage Tom to make a museum there of his wonderful curi-
osities; if you talk with him about them, you may make a
philosopher of him, at least you will make him an observing
and happy little boy. In all your work it would, if you once
accustomed yourself to it, be a relief to your own mind and a
great pleasure also to .iitisfy the curiosity of your child, and
develop his growing thoughts."
Helen presently began complaining how destructive Tom was.
Mrs. Burr had come in, and she said : " Trust me, Helen, where
there is destructiveness there is also constriictiveness ; you can
stop children's destroying things by giving them something to
make. I think all children, but especially boys, should have
scissors and glue, hammer, nails, knife, boards, paper and paste,
and let them invent, and contrive, and manufacture : you will
soon see that they prefer putting things together to pulling them
to pieces."
" But what a house it would be with children provided in that
style," objected Helen.
"They ought to have a place for such work : a corner of tJid
116 THE COMPLETE HOME.
wood-shed or barn, or a share of the attic, or a place curtained
off somewhere if you have no separate room. A small room
over a kitchen, a room with a stove-pipe running through it in
winter, is a choice place for a boy's shop. You were glad when
Tom was born that you had a son : don't now wish that he was
a girl ; or what is as foolish, wish that he developed like a girl
into sewing and doll-playing. The boy spirit will out, and it is
yours to guide it aright."
" I often think I am foolish," said Helen, "to worry over Tom's
ways, his noise, and curiosity and mischief. You have no idea
how mischievous he is."
"I remember," I said, "that Cousin Ann told me how mis-
chievous Fred was when he first ran alone. One day his father
W.1S shaving, getting ready for church ; he had a new high silk
hat on the table ; he heard a crash : Fred had taken the hat and
turning it crown upward had made a seat of it. His father
flew to rescue the hat, and while he tried to straighten it, he
looked up, and there was Fred, razor in hand, getting ready to
shave."
"What ever did she do with such a child ?" cried Helen.
" She said she reasoned that here was the result of great ener-
gies and an active mind. The child must have an outlet for
these in work, study and play. She kept him employed picking
up chips, setting the shoes in the closet in rows, feeding chickens,
observing the habits of birds, making lamp-lighters, even string-
ing buttons ; and finally secured a habit of directing his energies
to useful labor, rather than to mischief Believe me, Helen, we
have not fulfilled our part to our children, when they are fed,
nursed and clothed: we must teach them. And we have not
doHe our part in teaching when we have taught them their pray-
ers, their alphabet, to sew, to count, and have then sent them
to ."^hool. We must guide their energies into proper outlets^
and never wearj' in informing their minds."
CHILDREN IN THE FAMILY. 117
"And," said Mrs. Burr, "we must build them up in honesty,
unselfishness, kindness, industry, purity of mind and word."
"And," added Hester, "all these virtues must rest on the
foundation stone of obedience, regard for law. I remember Plato
says : ' Our youths should be educated in a stricter rule from
the first, for if education becomes lawless, and the youths them
selves become lawless, they can never grow up into well-con
ducted and virtuous citizens.' "
CHAPTER V.
SICKNESS IN THE HOME.
AUNT SOPHRONIA ON NURSING AND HEALTH-PRESERVING.
HEARD a foolish neighbor once remark, that he always
felt angry at sick people — that sickness was a mere out-
come of wickedness. God made people to be healthy,
and when they were not so, it was because they had been
violating some plain principle of life, "doing something that
they ought not to have done, or leaving undone those things
which they ought to have done — and there is no health in them : "
he quoted the prayer-book right then and there. I felt quite
provoked at him, and I said : " My good friend, you'll have to
carry some of your anger as far back as Adam, to find a suitable
object, because sickness is part of the curse of the Fall, and is
the seed of death, which Adam brought into the world. Do
you remember what Christ said about the man that was born
blind ? ' Neither did this man sin, nor his parents, that he was
born blind,' meaning that the blindness was the fruit of no
especial wickedness in them."
However, as I calmly consider it, I see that there was a grain
of sense in my neighbor's observations ; there is in most people's,
and I must relieve my mind by saying that there is not more
than a grain of sense in most people's talk. Still the more 1
think upon it, the more clearly I see that sickness, especially
epidemics, and diseases of a kind which seize upon whole families,
or recur frequently in the same families, are often, perhaps nearly
always, the result of some ignorance or carelessness of our own,
(118)
SICKNESS IN- THE HOME. ^^jl
We do not half understand the laws of health ; we do not study
half carefully enough the needs and dangers of our own bodies ;
we do not half enough respect our bodies, which we should
cherish and regard as homes of immortal spirits, and especially
because, if we will have it so, God himself condescends to
iibide in his people, and to use humanity for his service. That
is a poor form of religion which affects to despise the body that
God made in his own image.
When I read the biographies of such men as Martyn, Payson,
Brainerd and others, who have done great good in the world,
but, doing it burdened by feeble bodies, finally died prematurely,
and so deprived humanity of much more good which they might
have done had they lived to the ordinary limit of human life, 1
consider their evident neglect of their bodies, their reckless
exposure to fatigue and storms, their depriving them of proper
nourishment, a positive crime. Many good men have so lived
that they made it impossible for God to spare them for longer
work, except by a miracle, so did they contravene the laws and
despise the lights of nature. In this present day, possibly, there
is too much devotion to purely physical culture, and good men
indulge their bodies too much, and devote to the'r comfort too
large a proportion of their thoughts and efforts. There is a happy
mean to be attained, and toward that we should move. Sickly
bodies very often produce feeble brains, bad manners, and bad
morals. This is especially true where the feebleness of body
begins in childhood; the weakly child cannot learn with
zeal and plcTTure: it is peevish and cowardly; a house full of
sickly children is a house full of cares, anxious and overtaxed
parents, -onfusion, and often poverty, induced by the heavj*
expenses of illness. The Home can only be really bright and
orderly where there is general health and vigor. A husband
and father works at a great disadvantage, who goes out to his
daily toil wearied with a wakeful night by a sick-bed, and bur-
J 20 THE COMPLETE HOME.
dened with anxiety for the patients left behind him. In God's
providence such seasons occur in most homes, but it is also in
God's providence that we should strive to have them occur as
seldom as possible.
It seem.'; to me that the ancients very appropriately had a god-
Jess as well as a god of health and the healing art, inasmuch as
Hie care and preservation of health comes so largely within the
natural sphere of woman. Vigorous constitutions can be built
up in well-conducted homes, and this even when the natural
constitution is feeble. I have done in my time a great deal of
talking on the subject of healthful homes. At Mrs. Black's
some one is sick half or more than naif the time ; I visited Mrs.
Black once to offer any service in my power, when two of her
daughters were ill. Mrs. Black said : " It is impossible to keep
well in this world where there are so many thmgs to induce
disease." I replied : "We must not blame the world too rashly,
Mrs. Black, for we shall find that while there are many things
to induce disease, there are just as many to produce good
health."
" Look at our changeful climates : hot one day, cold the next."
"True; but if, summer and winter, we would wear a flannel
garment next the skin, varying the thickness of the garment with
the change of season, we should, provided we kept the feet in
sufficiently thick shoes, very seldom be affected by the changes
in the temperature."
"As for flannel," said Mrs. Black, "my girls won't wear it; il
makes them look so stout and full about the chest and waist"
" I hope the day will come," I replied, " when a wasp-waisl
and a pair of thin shoulders will not be esteemed beauty: we
have had our ideas ruined by trash novels, praising 'fragile
forms' and 'delicate beauty,' ' dainty waists,' " snow-drop faces,'
and a lot of other nonsense. What prospect have such beauties
of seeing three-score, or what physique are their sons likely to
SICKNESS jN the HOME. 12I
possess ? Indeed, Mrs. Black, I think you should have made it
a matter of course, from infancy, that your children wore flannel
under-garments. Really, there is nothing cheaper, safer, or
more comfortable. I knew a young girl whose two elder sisters
had died with consumption ; symptoms of the disease appeared
in her : a friend took her to a famous physician. He said : ' She
had better be sent to the south of France.' The lady replied :
' Doctor, her parents are absolutely unable to take her away from
home ; they have not the means.' The doctor meditated : it was
November: ' Has she flannel on?' No, the young lady did not
like flannel. ' Take her home,' said the doctor, ' and put her in
heavy flannel from her neck to her toes, and see that she wears
it, with some variation as to quality, twelve months in the year.'
The order was obeyed, and for ten years she has been in good
health."
"And there is another means of health-preserving, Mrs. Black,
which we greatly ne^ect— sunshine. Plenty of sunshine is a
very wine of life. We should let it fall broadly into our rooms,
especially where we eat, sit and sleep. Nine months in the year
our windows should daily stand broadly open for a sun-bath
In our hot summers, our homes seem to get saturated with
sunshine, unless our houses are very thickly shaded by vines and
trees, and possibly then two hours of early morning sunshine
will be enough."
" But, my dear Miss Sophronia, it ruins the carpets."
" Better sacrifice the carpets than the health : we are too much
the slaves of carpets ; if I could not have the carpet and the sun,
I would give up the carpet. The'sunbeams hold no spores of
disease : carpets frequently do ; sunbeams have no dust, danger-
ous to weak lungs : carpets do. But, Mrs. Black, a drugget, or
a carpet-cover, or even a coarse sheet can be flung over the car-
pet if it needs protecting ; and then let in those invigorating rays,
which God meant should counteract disease. I believe many
122 THE COMPLETE HOME.
diseases can be cured by merely plenty of fresh air and sun
shine."
Mrs. Black was dwelling on my heterodoxy as to carpets.
"Dear Miss Sophronia! banish carpets! bare floors! What
would you do? How would you live?"
" Mrs. Black, it seems to me that we do not sufficiently value
mattings, especially in bed-rooms. They are free from dust ; of
a good quality, they wear a long time; they are easy to sweep;
they look clean ; and the sun does not harm them : remember,
they grew under tropic suns ; they have no harmful dye-stuffs in
them. Some object that they are cold, but this can be obviated
by rugs laid before the bed, washstand and bureau. Let me
tell you my experience: I spent a year once, while my house
was being built, with my half-sister in the city. She treated me
royally; my bed-room was dressed in rose and gray French
chintz, rose-tinted wall-paper, and had a rose-colored velvet car-
pet. It was altogether too fine for the sun to shine in : the sun
would ruin it. A furnace, with air-feeders from out of doors,
kept the house warm and dry ; but nevertheless I was a martyr
to rheumatism. Cousin Ann, hearing this, sent for me to spend
the next winter with her at the farm. My room had white-
v/ashed walls, white curtains, a white counterpane and white
matting."
"Goodness!" interrupted Mrs. Black, "I should think it would
have made you think of a whited sepulchre!"
" Not at all," I retorted : "its conditions were such that it was
unlikely to have in it either rottenness or dead men's bones,
Color was lent it by three or four bright rugs and a colored
set of toilette mats, with a few pictures. I kept wondering why
that simple room looked and felt so beautiful. I perceived that
the floods of sunshine, which, during the whole day, poured in
at one of its three bright windows lent it its chief charm. My
health was perfectly restored."
SICKNESS IN THE HOME. 12&
" Well," said Mrs. Black, " my girls would rather be sick half
the time than get well by wearing flannels and stout shoes, and
going out in the sun exercising and spoiling their complexions,
or having their carpets and curtains faded out by having all th«
blinds open."
"But as a mere matter of beauty, Mrs. Black," I urged.
* There is no beauty in a sallow, sickly complexion, and if
they are sick half the time, what will result ? Medicine and bad
digestion will ruin their teeth ; ill health will make their faces
wan and faded; their color will be lost; their hair will be dry
and thin; at twenty-five they will look ten years older; they
will have a fretted, disappointed, troubled expression, and will
always feel dispirited and uncomfortable."
However, there is no use talking with Mrs. Black. It is no
wonder that her girls are so captious, and look so feeble. Thin-
soled shoes, no flannel, no exercise, very little fresh air, and
almost no sunshine in their house ; and this record might do for
very many other families.
When Miriam and Helen set up housekeeping, I especially
urged on them the advantages of fresh air in their houses, and
plenty of sunshine. I said :
" Don't have any shut-up rooms and corners in your homes
to breed pestilence ; sun and air the rooms that are unused, aa
well as those that are used. Remember, a housekeeper is the
health-keeper of her household; her vigilance should extend
over the whole house from garret to cellar. The housekeeper
should visit her garret to see that it has ventilation, and is not a
tight-box to be crowded with bad air and fumes rising from
the other parts of the house, and being packed there to continue
their corruption, and come down in uuvixpected puffs; the
garret should be kept free from dust, ard should have a lattice-
window always open ; or, if you have not that and cannot have
it. have a small window, or half a window, with a piece of stouf
124 THE COMPLETE HOME.
muslin nailed tightly over it: that will secure ventilation and
sufficiently turn rain.
" When a wise man goes abroad, he puts a hat on his head
and shoes on his feet, protecting both extremities. Don't forget
the feet of your house — feet planted in the cellar : have a clean
cellar and a dry cellar. I should have the cellar lime-washed,
drained, and made dry, if I went without a parlor sofa or a best
•set of china to be able to get the means for these improvements."
"Upon my word, aunt," said Helen, "I thought Hannah
•ould be trusted with the cellar!'
" Not a bit of it, my dear ; she could much more safely be
trusted with the parlor; she would take more interest in that,
and could better appreciate the need of tidy dusting to make a
place fit for callers, than the need of cellar-cleaning to make a
louse healthful. You have a swing-shelf: suppose a bowl of
gravy is there upset and left to mould ; that in a corner of the
floor half a peck of small potatoes are left to sprout long, sickly
stems ; that on a box a few cabbage-leaves hastily stripped from
the head lie rotting ; that an odd turnip, carrot, beet, parsnip or
two are also decaying here and there. All of these things
generate disease ; from this vegetable decay, housed in a cellar,
which Hannah never thinks to air, there will float into your
pretty bed-room, your immaculate parlor, spores of fever and
sore throat. Your milk and butter, brought from this poisoned
cellar, are mysteriously corrupted before you eat them, and
they vitiate your blood. You should visit your cellar at least
ivery other day. If the potatoes begin to sprout, you should
,aave the sprouts rubbed off and carried away, not left to die in
ihe cellar. Every week the shelf should be scrubbed with hot
soda-water or soft soap-suds, the floor swept, the windows
opened for a thorough airing; not a scrap of animal or vege-
table matter should be left there to decay. Trust me, Helen, a
cel'iar is a very important part of the house, and a house cannc
Oe healthy whore there is an ill-keot cellar."
SICKNESS IN- THE HOME. 12.1
I was very glad that Mark and Miriam realized the necessities
Di* ventilation and thorough drainage. The drain, which carried
off the water from the washing, sloped well, and ran some dis-
tance from the house. I have seen people fling washing sud?
out close to their houses. " What odds clean suds ? " they cry
It seems to me that the suds which our soiled clothes are
washed in cannot be very clean ; and as we know that the suds
which garments of small-pox, cholera and fever-patients are
washed in contain the germs of the disease, and cast upon the
ground are likely to breed that disease in their locality, so we
might suppose that many of the lesser ailments of our bodies
contribute their share of disease germs, which can do harm in
their own proportion, through the decaying suds -of a family
washing. Again, some very tid)' housekeepers do not realize the
excessive caution that should be used with sinks and drains
where bath-water, dish-water and scrubbing- water are cast out.
More diseases than we now suspect are propagated by minute
spores. It is about a century since the "germ theory" of dis-
ease was first announced, and we are daily learning more and
more, that as the air is filled with spores of cryptogamous
plants, distributing fungus and all varieties of mould, so is the
air filled with floating particles of disease, gathered not only
by swamps and sick-beds, and by sloughs of confessedly and
notoriously unclean matter, but very often from places which
we suppose to be clean and safe. Dr. Richardson tells us that
the spores of small-pox, yellow, typhoid and scarlet fevers,
cholera, diphtheria, measles, and kindred diseases are so small
that twenty thousand of them, end to end, would not reach the
length of an inch ; fifty million might be put in a cubic inch.
Yet each spore could create its own disease in a human frame,
falling on some tissue irritated by cold, or inflamed, or weakened,
or even normally healthy.
I had a talk once with Miriam on the subject of sai-soda.
126 THE COMPLETE HOME.
which talk Miriam thought very beneficial to her. I said to her.
" Miriam," — for I was with her in the kitchen, where she was
making pies, and I was knitting by the window — " Miriam, there
is hardly a more valuable agent in household cleanliness than
sal-soda. It is very cheap, from two to four cents a pound. If
you put a pound of it in a gallon of water and throw half a tea
cup of this solution into your dish-water once a day, say at din
ner, you will find the trouble of dish-washing reduced one-half,
as the soda destroys the grease : your dish-cloth or mop would
be kept white and pure with very little rubbing: you would save
soap, and you could more easily keep your sink and its drain
clean. Your sink is scrubbed beautifully clean, but you cannot
so scour the pipe which carries out the water. The particles of
animal and vegetable matter in the dish-water, the gjease which
it contains, adhere by degrees to the sides of the pipe, coat it,
and there corrupt. You scald the sink wkh Iiot soap-suds, that
pass into the pipe and are a help in removing this decayed
matter, but cannot remove all of it. If the pipe is metal, the
decay unites with the metal and produces mineral as well
as animal and vegetable poison. A current of air drives up
through the pipe, and carries with it viewless atoms of violent
poison and dangerous decay, and they tremble in the air of your
house : or ever you are aware, they have entered your nose,
throat and stomach. These atoms can produce influenza, diph-
■ theria, fever. Therefore, at all cost, let us have these drain-pipes
clean. The sal-soda in your dish-water will here be a great help,
devouring the grease in the dish-water and on the sides of the
pipe. Twice a week take some strong boiling sal-soda watei
and pour it slowly down your sink. Once a month at least treat
-it in this way with concentrated lye-water; boiling soft-soap
suds is also very valuable for this use. Cousin Ann, who
always has a leech of ashes set up, mixes boiling water and
strong lye, and "pours it through her drains once a week : she
SICKNESS IN- THE HOME. 121
uses a little lye-water instead of the sal-soda for her dishes also.
A little sal-soda water used in scouring tables, floors which
are unpainted, pie-boards, rolling-pins, and other woodenware,
keeps them immaculately clean at small cost in trouble and
expense."
I noticed what Mrs. Burr said one day in regard to the health
of Homes. " We have yet to come to a realizing sense of the
danger to our health that lies in decaying things. Decay is part
of death ; atoms of decay planted in the tissues of our bodies
are so many seeds of death. And yet how are we surrounded
by this decay, and unconscious or careless of it ! We use the
same wall-paper for years, or leave a whitewashed wall, season
after season, untouched. In these walls, especially in those
hung with paper, are planted atoms of corruption breathed out
by sick people, wafted from beds of fever, gathered out of
malarious air. Shelves, sinks, drains, wooden vessels are washed,
and look clean, but buried in their fibre is corrupting animal
or vegetable matter. Cleanly housekeepers, of course, will be
sure to have perfectly clean dish-cloths, towels and kettle-cloths ;
and yet hundreds who would resent being called dirty have a
mass of filthy rags tucked into corners for use in the kitchen,
and around cooking vessels, any rag of which is foul enough to
breed a pestilence. More than half our servants doat on a pot-
closet as a convenient dust-hole, and few of therti are so cleanly
that their mistresses may be exempted from a personal inspection
of that locality. The soap-grease firkin and the swill-pail be-
come centres of corruption, and before we know it the cistern,
built, as most of them are, without a filter, becomes deadly.
A housekeeper needs the hundred(»eyes of Argus to see that her
home is free from these dangers. And why not ? Argus was
merely watching golden apples, but the housewife is set on guard
over the health of husband, children and guests."
When children came into the homes of Miriam and Helen,
128 THE COMPLETE HOME.
and other of my young friends and relations, I felt more than
ever anxious that they should know how to preserve the health-
fulness of their homes. I was talking to Cousin Ann about this
one day, when she laughed and said she would make my nieces,
Mary Smalley, and some other of the young folks, a present. A
k^ weeks after she sent them each a large card, with a few lines
handsomely printed upon it, thus :
HOW TO HAVE A HEALTHFUL HOUSE.
Have plenty of sunshine in your living rooms.
Keep the whole house well aired.
Have a clean garret, well ventilated.
Have a perfectly clean, dry cellar.
Renew whitewash and wall-paper often.
Have every drain clean and carried far from the house.
Allow no decaying refuse near the house.
Keep the walls and floors dry.
Use freely, in cleaning, lye, ammonia, and sal-soda.
Use freely lime, especially as whitewash.
I took one of these cards in triumph to Mary Smalley; it was
about a year after she married Samuel Watkins, as fine a young
fellow as one would wish to see. Mary was nursing little Nettie,
and I sat down with her in the kitchen. It was a lovely June
afternoon. The honeysuckle vine over the porch was in bloom;
the door-step and the yard around were clean as a broom could
make them ; the kitchen floor was well painted in yellow, and
Mary's favorite mats were scattered about, and a pretty cover
of her manufacture was over a little stand by the window
Mary had followed her own good taste in many of her arrange-
ments, and she had taken example also by Miriam, who had
been very friendly to her.
She had taken a girl of about twelve from an asylum to help
her in the house, and this girl was out under an apple tree scour
SICJCNESS IN THE IfOME. 129
ing tins. The whole house and its environs made a pretty pic-
ture of comfort, thrift and content. I said as much to Mary.
"We get on very nicely," said Mary. " I do not get my work
done quite as easily as Mrs. Rogers; but then she had not tjie
cows and the chickens and the farm-hands, as I have. But
thanks to mother's teaching me how to work, and Mrs. Rogers
showing me good methods of doing it, I succeed very well."
I gave Mary the card: she read it and was well pleased; but
after looking at it for a time, she said :
" This tells us how to have a healthy house ; but is that all
we need to know to have healthy children ? Let her tell us how
we must take care of them — to have them hearty and healthy in
this healthy house."
I thought Mary's point was very well made, so I said :
" Truly, Mary, you are interesting yourself in a subject which
should occupy every mother's thoughts. I will speak to Cousin
Ann on the matter, and see what information she can give you."
I went out accordingly to visit Cousin Ann, and as we sat
comfortably together between dinner and tea, I took from my
pocket a bit of Doctor Guthrie's writing, and read to her as
follows :
" With care and prudence human life may be extended con-
siderably beyond the ordinary period. The truth is, few pepple
die a natural death. Some are murdered ; but the greater part,
who have arrived at years of discretion, commit a sort of suicide,
through their neglect of the ordinary rules of health, or their
injudicious use of meat, drink, or medicine."
"That is true enough," said Cousin Ann, adjusting her sijec-
tacles; "but a large part of the human race do not arrive at
years of discretion : those who die in childhood, I suppose Doc
tor Guthrie would set down as murdered after a sort, namely, by
the ignorance or indiscretion of parents."
"A nd doubtless, cousin, the foundation of living in a serene
ISij THE COMPLETE HOME.
old age, 'beyond the ordinary 1-mit of human years,' is laid in
infancy, by careful physical culture."
" Be sure it is. I devoted my cares to securing health for my
children from their first breath."
"And very likely you found your cares more efficient and
judicious for your sixth child than for your first."
" Certainly ; else where would be the good of experience ? "
"And if, in the babyhood of your first child, some well-expe-
rienced mother had given you the benefit of her observations, it
might have been exceedingly useful to you, and yours."
" Yes, certainly; only in a measure, rules being laid down, we
must learn to apply them for ourselves. Still, good rules are
of unspeakable value."
" Well, Cousin Ann, these young mothers among our friends
want to gi"t the benefit of your experience, and desire that you
should g've them some instructions in regard to training physi-
cally their little ones."
"Bless me, Sophronia," said Cousin Ann; "as far as that
goes, you have looked into the subject of health-keeping as
fully as I have, and can tell them all they need to know."
"That may be, cousin. Yet, as you have raised six hearty
children, the advice might come with more weight and authority
from your lips than from mine, even though the advice was
identical in both cases."
So after a little talking Cousin Ann agreed to make a tea-
party and afternoon visit for our young friends, and I went
around with the invitations. They came early, and were all
expectation to hear Cousin Ann's advice.
" Come," said Helen, " we expect to be packed full of learn-
ing which shall benefit our descendants at least to the fourth
generation. Begin, Cousin Ann ; time is not tarrying."
"How am I to begin?" asked Cousin Ann. "Upon my
word, I don't know what I ought to say, nor where to com
mence."
SICJCNESS IN THE HOME. i.j]
"Begin at the beginning," said Miriam. "Here are these
blessed babies; they are darling little animals which spend
:.alf their time in eating, and the other half in sleeping, and if
there is any time left over, they occupy it in staring about."
" They act as nature dictates," said Cousin Ann, " and which
(vork — eating or sleeping — is the more important I cannot tell.
As to the sleeping, strive to promote it, for by it a babe grows.
Never let rude noises rouse it; let no pride in displaying the
child, no neighborly curiosity, call it from slumber ; let it sleep
in silence, and in a room moderately darkened ; have an abso-
lutely regular time for putting it to sleep at night, whether it
seems sleepy or not : habit is all-powerful. At that bed-time
strip off all its day-garments, don't leave for night even a shirt
worn in day ; and let the child sleep in flannel which is clean,
and during the day has, been well-aired and sunned. Some
children thrive on a bath both at rising and at bed-time ; some
are better only for the morning-bath. If the child is not fully
bathed at night, wash its head well in cold water, and rub the
whole body briskly with your hand or a soft towel : this pro-
motes circulation and induces slumber. Until a child is six
years old, encourage it to sleep late in the morning, for the first
years of a child's life need much sleep. After the child is six,
have a regular hour for rising as well as for retiring ; but never
fail to send it early to bed until it is thirteen years old. A
child should be covered warmly, but not too warmly; its
sleeping place should be well aired, and it should never sleep
with its head covered up. Neither is it good for. a child to
sleep sunk in feathers, or in a bed with grown people ; for the little
creatures sink down and injure their blood by inhaling bad air.
A moderately hard bed, which daily is well aired and sunned,
is best for a child. I prefer to any other a straw bed, where the
straw is renewed at least every three months — better every two
Little children should sleep much in the day-time; even if
132 THE COAfPLETE HOME.
they do not seem sleepy it is better, morning and afternoon, to
wash their hands and faces, put on a loose slip, remove their
shoes, and place them on a bed : they will soon get a habit of
sleeping at these intervals ; their constant activity when waking
and the necessities of growth demand much rest."
Cousin Ann paused, and our party discussed the sleep ques
tion for some time. Then Mary Smalley said :
" Cousin Ann, what about the other point — the child's food ? "
" Nature itself teaches," said Cousin Ann, "that if a mother is
healthful and able to nurse her babe from her own breast, she
should do so. If this is impossible, I would prefer feeding a
child to the dangers of wet-nursing. Some physicians advocate
goats' milk rather than cows' ; whichever milk is used, a mother
should prepare it and the vessels in which it is placed herself,
using most scrupulous care as regards the purity and the
soundness of the food, its temperature, quality and flavor. You
ruin a child's health by giving it one while hot milk, again
cold milk ; now unsweetened, now loaded with sugar ; letting
the bottle or cup smell of stale milk, or the milk offered be on
the verge of acidity.
" I have seen people give a child of six or eight months old
all kinds of food, even to cucumber-pickle and salt pork. A
young child should have milk alone for six months at least.
Possibly then a little well-made, clear mutton-broth or beef-tea
might be given occasionally. The next addition to diet could
be ground rice made into a thin giuel, provided you grind the rice
yourself. By the time a child is ten months old it might be
allowed a bit of broiled beefsteak or a wing of fowl to suck in its
own fashion. When it is a year old, boiled oats, rice, a baked
potato smoothly mashed, a little corn-meal mush or gruel, and ripe
fruit may find a place on its bill of fare. Never give a child, under
six years old, cake, preserves, pies, tea, coffee or pickles. Let
their food be plain, given at regular intervals, well cooked, usin;^
SICKNESS IN THE HOME. 133
little fat, and no fried things, and the variety not very great.
A child, who has plenty of sleep, plenty of good air, plenty of
play out of doors, will always be ready for a hearty meal of bread
or mush and milk, baked potatoes, mutton or rice-pudding.
Don't fancy every tir/.e a babe cries that it is hungry ; perhaps
its discomfort is from surfeit. Don't urge a child to eat, pam-
pering its appclite, and pressing dainties upon it ; and don't
check its appetite for plain, wholesome food. Remember the
child eats to live and to grow, and it needs more food in pro-
portion to its size than a man needs."
"Should children eat between meals?" asked Mary Watkins.
"I should never refuse a child an apple or a slice of plain
bread and butter between meals; for all we know the little one
may really be faint and hungry ; neither should I give a child a
hearty lunch just before dinner or just after breakfast. Children
get a habit of eating at improper times. I have seen children
screaming for toast or meat, just as they got into bed, an hour
after supper. Don't give a child pie, cake, or bread piled with
sugar, honey or molasses between meals. When it asks for
bread, never refuse it."
" Now for the baby's third fashion of spending its time ; for
instance, in staring around," said Helen.
"There is little to say as to that; never let the child sit or lie
with light falling across its eyes, nor gazing at a strong light.
Don't let it have hangings or playthings too near its eyes ; put
whatever it looks at fairly before it, and let it have plenty to look
at. Babies like bright things; make them balls or cushions of
bright-colored worsteds, generally of red, never of green or brown,
lest there be poison in the dye; little cats and rabbits of cotton
flannel, and rag-dolls dressed in gay colors, are things to please
its eye, and cannot hurt it when it knocks them about, or thrusts
them in its mouth. As the child is older, give it books made
of pictures pasted on leaves of muslin, sewed in a strong cover.
134 THE COMPLETE HOME.
Let the room where a child spends its waking hours be bright
and cheerful; let pleasant faces and voices surround it; don't
jerk it or startle it; happiness is a large element in health
fulness."
"Tell me, Cousin Ann," said I, "do y^J carry out through
life your rule of changing all one's garments from day to
night?"
" Yes," replied Cousin Ann ; " I think many a fever, many a
fit of jaundice or biliousness, would be saved if one would
divest themselves at night of all which they wear during the
day. Many wear the same flannel vest night and day ; they
would be far more robust and cheery if the day flannel were
removed, well shaken and hung up wrong side out during the
night, and a night flannel were used, served the same fashion
by day. I have seen people allow children to go to bed in their
stockings, because they say the beds are cold : that plan is ter-
ribly unhealthful, and promotive of sore throats and fevers.
Every child's feet should be well warmed and dried before retir-
ing; a mother should see to that herself, and if from lack of
circulation the feet do not keep warm at night, then heat an old
flannel skirt, or a piece of a blanket, and let the feet be wrapped
up in that. Many a weary hour by sick beds, many tears over
coffins would be saved, if mothers looked more closely after
their children's feet, that they might be warmed when cold, and
have shoes and hose changed when wet."
" Many people would say your idea about night and day flan-
nels demanded too many clothes, and made too large washings,"
suggested Mary Watkins.
" I should reply, that clothes were cheaper than doctors' bills
and washing less onerous work than sick-nursing. Besides, a
set of flannels too thin for further day-use, can be darned and
mended up for night, and as after all the clothing is worn but
twenty-four hours out of a day, I cannot see that washing would
be materially increased."
s/CArjy£ss in the home. 13a
" Do you think people should sleep in winter between sheet?
or blankets?" asked one of Cousin Ann's auditors.
" Between sheets, by all means : they are likely to be changed
each week, and blankets, owing to weight and color, are not
likely to get washed so often. Pounds of insensible perspira
tion, carrying particles of waste matter, flow off from the pores
of our bodies during sleep ; this refuse matter fills the clothes
we wear, and our bedding : thence arises the need of exchange
between night and day clothes, and of ample washing and airing
of our beddfng. Some people make their beds as soon as they
rise. This is a dangerous plan ; not tidy, as they fancy, but
really very dirty. I think one reason why Germans are sc
healthy generally is, that they have such a passion for airing
their beds ; they let them lie airing half the time. However,
I believe an hour each morning, when the night and bed-
clothes are spread well out to air and sunlight, and perhaps twc,
hours on sweeping day, will keep the beds in very good
order."
Cousin Ann began to bustle about, as if she thought that sh&
had talked quite enough. But Miriam cried out : " One word.
Cousin Ann, on exercise and play."
" Take a lesson from the young of the brute creation— from
the calves, colts and lambs. They thrive on air, sunshine and
free gambols. Let your children go out every day, unless per-
haps in heavy rain. You can soon inure them to cold or damp
weather, if they are well protected and do not sit down in the
wet or draughts. Don't fear sun and wind for them : let them
race and climb and jump, and dress them in strong, easy-fitting
clothes, so that they may be untrammelled in the development
of their muscles. Don't force a child to any study before it is
seven years old ; before that time you can make a play of learning
to read, to count, and to draw and cipher a little. In the reading
you provide a pleasant occupation for days of storm or ill health.
136 THE COMPLETE HOME.
Most bright children, with a box of letter-blocks, an alphabet
card and a picture primer, will pick up reading before they are
more than five. Give a child a seat suited to its height, and
with a back ; let its pillow be very low ; don't hurry it as a babe
lo sit, stand or walk before nature urges it to do so : this over-
haste and letting the boneless legs bear the child's weight give
weak backs and crooked limbs. Each night and morning as
you dress the young child, firmly and gently rub and press the
legs straight, doing your part to prevent that ugly curve which
distorts so many weak legs. If you want your child to be vig-
orous in play and exercise, give it an abundance of baths : bathe
it every day, using warm or cold v/ater — never hot, never freez-
ing, but warm or cold as best agrees with your child's constitu-
tion. Don't forget that in infancy and childhood you are start-
ing your child on the voyage of life, which is likely to be long
and prosperous, or short and hapless, according as you give it a
wise start — a sound, healthful, physical training. When you
rear boys, don't be afraid to have them real boys ; know that it is
natural to them to fish, ride, skate, sled, row, hunt; and so let
them do it, in honest company and with wise limitations. Don't
be afraid that your girl will be tomboyish ; if she will coast, and
ride, climb, and skate, and run, so much the better: to exercise
vigorously is neither rude nor immodest; we get hardy, health-
ful girls in the same fashion as hardy, healthy boys, and I had
much rather see little miss at fourteen jumping a fence, climb-
ing a tree, scaling the roof and riding barebacked, while her
cheek knows how to blush at too fixed a gaze, and eyes and
ears are not greedily hunting for compliments, than to see her
simpering and small-talking, playing the immature flirt with
every jacket which comes in sight, her whole soul fixed on the
set of her dress and the doing of her hair."
Cousin Ann had quite excited herself on her favorite theme :
she paused, smiled, wiped her face, laid by her spectacles and
SICKNESS IN THE HOME. 137
her knitting, and stepped into the kitchen to give a careful eye
to the supper. Altogether we had all had a most instructive visit
To my surprise and I must say my gratification I found that
my young friends did not yet think themselves perfectly accora
plished in regard to conserving and procuring family health, and
that they desired yet further information. I received an invita
tion to early tea at Mary's, and repairing thither, I found all the
young circle there. Indeed, the company was a partnership
affair ; Miriam and Helen had both contributed to the tea, and
lent their help in preparing; Helen had brought Hannah to
nurse 'several of the babies out in the garden, in order to leave
the mothers uninterrupted, and Miriam had brought little Ann,
whom she had taken from me, to wait on the table. No sooner
was I seated in the centre of the group, than Miriam, as speaker
for the rest, said :
"Aunt Sophronia, we have been instructed how to keep our
houses healthful ; we have had much advice as to how to keep
our children healthful, and to build up sound bodies for sound
minds to inhabit. But even in healthful houses disease makes
its appearance, and even the most vigorous children sometimes
fall ill. Now, Aunt Sophronia, we shall be poorly off, if we
do not know how to meet disease — how to nurse our sick.
Instruct us."
" My dear Miriam," I said, " it seems to me that to most sen-
sible women sick-nursing comes by instinct. It is an instinct
which falls to the share of some men, and of ijiost women."
" Instinct is very good," said Miriam, " but reason is better '
" I have seen some women perfectly lost and helpless in a
sick-room," remarked Mary.
" I'm afraid I'd be very much in that case ! " cried Helen.
"And you know," added some one else, " that even if we are
so unusually fortunate as to have little or no sickness in our
own families, we should be capable of lending our aid to our
friends and neighbors."
138 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" Indeed," I said, " a woman who cannot wisely do duty in a
sick-room is like a woman who has lost her right hand."
" Begin then, Aunt Sophronia," said Miriam, "at the begin-
ning. Let us see to the sick-room first, then to the nurse, ther
to the patient, then to the medicine and food."
" When you may choose a sick-room," I said, " get one as
large as possible : crowding, closeness and rustling against
things distract a patient. Take this room, as commodious a
one as you can find, and have it thoroughly cleaned : white-
washed walls are better for it than paper-hangings, and a mat-
ting, with rugs, than a carpet. You must place the bed so that
the room can be completely ventilated without a draught pass-
ing over the bed. A fire-place is a rare treat in a sick-room,
ventilating it, removing dampness, and making good cheer ; even
in a summer sick-room a little wood-fire in a fire-place, morning
and evening, would be useful. Dr. Guthrie gives good advice ;
he says that he exposed himself freely to infectious and conta-
gious diseases in his ministerial duties, and never contracted
any illness because he was careful to insist ' on the door being
left open while he was in the room, and always took a position
between the open door and the patient, and not between the
patient and the fire-place.' A nurse cannot keep the door
open, but can and should keep the room well aired, protecting
her patient from a current of air ; and the nurse should be care-
ful and not stand between her patient and the fire "
"What furniture is best for a sick-room/" asked Mary.
" Do not have it crowded ; have nothing that will rattle and
rustle ; have the curtains of some kind of cloth, not shades ;
have as easy a chair as you can for the patient's sitting up, and
with this chair a blanket or quilt, which does not belong to
Ihe bed- furniture, to wrap over the feet and knees of the invalid
while resting in the chair. Have also a footstool or heavy foot-
cushion- this can be easily manufactured from a box padded
SICJCNESS m THE HOME. 139
and covered with carpet ; or two circles of wool patchwork maj
be made, united with a strip of cloth six inches wide, and filled
with hay or chaff. Do not Jet your sick-room be dull : put a
picture or two, and a fancy bracket or something pretty, on the
walls ; have within sight of the bed a stand neatly covered, and
furnished with a book or two, an ornament, a vase of flowers, or
in winter even, of evergreens, hollies, or dried grasses, some-
thing graceful and restful to the eye. I believe in flowers in a
sick-room, if there are not so many of them as to load the air
with their smell, and if at night they are set outside of the window.
Let the bed-clothing be warm enough, perfectly clean, and not
too heavy : blankets are better than cotton quilts. See that the
washstand is provided with water, towels and all things needful,
so that there shall be no annoyance of searching for things,
flurrying about, and asking ' how,' ' where,' ' what! ' Have a
closet-shelf for medicines and all disagreeables of that. kind. If
there is no closet in the room, or in any part of the furniture,
have a box, neatly covered, nailed against the wall, out of the
patient's sight, shade it with a little white curtain, and use it a?
a closet for bottles and spoons. Of all things keep the sick-
room neat, quiet and cheerful. Even patients who, when well,
are careless and noisy, when ill are sensitive to the disturbance
of disorder, and are soothed by neatness and calm."
"I think," said Mary, shutting her eyes, "that I can now see
exactly how a comfortable sick-room should look. Now for
the nurse."
"One who is taking care of the sick," I continued, "should
cultivate self-possession, calmness, quiet cheerfulness, patience.
a gentle, soft voice, a tender hand, and the faculty which many
characterize as being ' handy ' — that is, taking the right thing a.t
the right time — never dropping or knocking over things ; also
a good memory."
" Who can have so many virtues ! " cried Helen.
140 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" Love will unconsciously instil them all ; love, a habit of
striving to do well, and a thoughtful watchfulness over self A
nurse should be neat in person, clean and plain in dress; she
should never wear a dirty gown, nor a gown which rustles, nor
a glaring color, while the more attractive she can make her
appearance, in the way of simple good taste, the better will she
suit the sick-room. She should not be grim and taciturn, neither
a gossip and a chatterbox ; she should not admit too many visi-
tors ; her authority should be unassuming, and assured. Those
who nurse sick children should cultivate the power of telling
pleasantly unexciting stories, and should sing softly to the little
invalids when they desire it. The nurse should study the duty of
'put yourself in his place; ' that is, she should be sympc.tlietic, and
readily excuse fretfulness, crossness, fears, and other sick non-
sense, because these are a part of sickness, and something which,
when ill, she might fall into herself A good nurse must know
how to air a room without chilling her patient; she must be
skilful to make a bed with the invalid in it, if that invalid cannot
be moved ; ingenious in airing bed-clothes thoroughly in a short
time, and without exposing them to dampness; thoughtful to
screen her sleeping patient's eyes from light : to slielter him also
from light while sunning the room ; quick-handed in bathing
and combing, and changing a patient's clothes; very careful to
avoid using damp bedding, ill-aired towels, or getting garments
of the sick one wet while the toilette is proceeding. A nurse
should avoid fretting, bringing bad or exciting news into a sick-
room, heavy prognostications, or complaining of the physician
in charge, and striving to shake the patient's faith in him. A
nurse should know how to sweep a sick-room without raising a
dust, and to dress a fire without making a noise. A matting in
a sick-room can be well, quietly and easily cleaned, by using a
broom with a damp cloth pinned over it; coal can be noiselessly
put on a fire by having each handful or so of coal.'; tied up
SICJC^TESS IN' THE HOME. X41
in paper, or put into little paper-bags ; this is a very valuable
precaution where an invalid is very low, or exceedingly sensitive
to noise."
"And how shall our nurse treat the patient?" asked Helen.
" She must be kind, forbearing, firm : not leaving the patients
the trouble of doing their own thinking, or feeling the respon-
sibility of taking care of themselves. The first thing in the
morning the patient has a right to be made comfortable ; the bed
must be put in order; what bathing is allowed should be done;
the hair smoothed; the room aired. It depends on the patient
whether this is done before giving the morning meal, or a little
food is given first, then the putting in order done, and then the
morning meal. A patient's whims should be studied and grati-
fied where they are not harmful ; harmful whims should be
pleasantly put aside. To some patients one must administer a
little firm reasoning. Medicine should be given neotly and in
as palatable a way as possible, and the patient should not be
irritated by seeini^^ it standing about. All disagreeables should,
as far as possible, be kept out of sight."
"And what about this medicine-taking, and running after a
doctor all the time?" asked Miriam.
"Generally speaking, there is too much of it. Rules of health
are neglected, and then a heavy dose of medicine is expected
to set disorganized nature right. The mother disregards a little
hoarseness, a complaint of sore throat, a slight chill, a degree
of feverishness, and a restless night : the warnings which nature
gives of coming ill. No .change is made in food, no simple
alterative is given, no foot-bath, no external application of
simples ; the disease grows worse, then heavy doses are given :
the doctor is called to rectify somebody's blunders, and thel-e is
a long case of sickness. A mother's eye should be quick to
note the varying health-tokens in her family, while she should
be careful not to be nervous, not to fall into a fright at a child's
10
142 rHE COMPLETE HOME.
sneezing, or sudden pain, or slight feverishness. Some doctoi s
are called day and night to see families where there is nothing
the matter but a child's having too late or too solid a supper, or
having been allowed too hard a frolic. Every woman of good
judgment and of any degree of observation, with a good physi-
cian to fall back upon, one whose style of practice she has care-
fully noted, should be able to treat the simple ailments of her,
family without fuss, excitement or doctor's help. She should
know how to use properly a few simple remedies; she should
understand the value of outward applications, of foot-baths,
poultices ; the virtues of mustard ; the efficacy of external appli-
cations for sore throat; the use of baths, local or general; the
preparation of simple gargles, and she should be able, unalarmed,
to bring to bear on a case of illness her common-sense, and the
result of her past experience and observation. There are many
women who have seen so much of sickness, have read so care-
fully standard works on nursing and medicine, and have observed
so closely the symptoms and developments of ordinary disease,
that they very seldom need in their families any skill except
their own. And these very skilful persons are, I have observed,
those who give the least medicine, and attend most closely to
the laws of health, and the work of prevention. I remember
years ago I had called at Mrs. Burr's one evening when she
was absent. As I sat talking with Mr. Burr, their youngest
child woke with an acute attack of croup. 'John,' cried Mr.
Burr to the servant, "run for Mrs. Burr and the doctor: but get
Mrs. Burr first' •
"I ventured to say: ' Had you not better call the doctor first? '
" ' No,' said he, ' I shall feel twice as safe with Mrs. Burr in the
house. She sends for the doctor now and then, but I pin my
faith to her, and she's never failed me.'
" Sure enough, Mrs. Burr had the child relieved and quite out
of danger before the doctor got in. He looked over at her, with
a laugh :
SICKNESS IN THE HOME. 143
"'O, Mrs. Burr! are you home? Why, then, I might as well
have finished the nap I was taking.'
" Once in the winter I spent with Cousin Ann, little Dick came
home from school one stormy afternoon, looking very ill ; he
wheezed, his face was swollen, he shook as with ague, yet
burned with fever ; he had such a pain in his chest that he was
crying, and was so hoarse that he could hardly speak : in this
state he had walked a mile in the storm, his feet were soaking
wet, and his brother Reed said that Dick had been sick all day.
Really he looked desperately ill. Cousin Ann bid Reed remove
the child's boo*s and outer clothing. She set a tub in front of
the kitchen fire, put therein a tablespoonful of soda, and a liberal
supply of water as hot as Dick could stand. She stripped the
little creature, and gave him a thorough hot bath, put on his
woollen night-gown, wrapped him in a blanket, and laid him on
the lounge, which I wheeled near the fire. She put a hot water
bottle at his feet, laid a plaster of flour and mustard on his
breast, and one of the same about his neck, gave him a mild
dose of physic, gently combed his hair, and laid a cloth wet in
vinegar on his aching head. In twenty minutes from his miser-
able and suffering entrance to his home, Dick, feeling perfectly
safe now that he was in his mother's hands, was lying warmly
wrapped and comfortably pillowed, his whole aching frame
feeling the relief of his hot soda bath. Cousin Ann then quietly
cleared away the soiled clothes, the tub and towels, sat down by
Dick, sewing in hand, and began to sing him a little song.
Before long, his breathing grew easier, and he fell into a deep
sleep. Cousin Ann and I then lifted the lounge into the next
room where it was warm, and he would not be aroused by the
supper-getting. Returning then to the kitchen, she took Reed's
case in hand : up to this time she had made no remark to him.
" ' Reed, when your little brother seemed ill, why did you not
at once bring him home ? If he seemed too sick to walk the
144 THE COMPLETE HOME.
mile, why not have borrowed a conveyance at one of the neigb
bors ' ? Do you not see how cruel and dangerous it was to let
him grow worse, and suffer there all day, and then walk home in
this storm ? It might have sacrificed his life ! '
" ' Well,' said Reed, ' I did not know that he was so very sick
and I did not want to miss my lessons.'
" ' It is wise to be on the safe side,' said his mother ; ' an
ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure ; and our pleasures
and preferences should always give way to another's pain.
Always remember : never trifle with disease!
" In less than a week Dick was as well as ever ; but some peo-
ple in a fright would have put him to bed, and have allowed him
to get worse for two hours, while they were sending into town
for a doctor, instead of using the simple. Common-sense remedies
at hand."
By this tiipe in our talk we had reached the tea hour. After
tea we had a little discussion about the food for sick people.
The substance of our conclusions was as follows : An invalid's
food should be prepared and presented with the utmost neatness.
A sick person is more fastidious than a well person ; he eats
with his eyes as much as with his mouth ; he will take his gruel
out of a china bowl, when he would reject it slovenly presented
in a tin-cup. Do not present a patient too much food at once ;
a large quantity will disgust, where a small amount will tempi
a sickly taste. Let the food be presented attractively, spread a
clean napkin on the tray, and use as nice and as small dishes as
you can, and add, if possible, a spray of flowers ; the capricious
invalid, needing food, yet indifferent to it, will eat what is thus
brought, " because it looks so pretty." If the case is in charge
of a physician, carefully follow his orders in regard to food ; if
you are both nurse and doctor, use your common-sense, and
give food light and easy of digestion, palatable and varied in
quantity and quality as convalescence progresses. Every woman
S/C^JV£SS IN THE HOME. 145
should know how to prepare gruel, beef-tea, mutton-broth, toast,
toast-water, panada, chicken-soup, a bit of broiled fowl or steak,
and the various other dainties and necessities of the sick-room.
When you poach an egg for your invalid do it nicely ; do not
make it hard as a bullet, with edges ragged and streaming, but
turn the white skilfully over the yolk until it is a smooth
oblong, lightly cooked; lift it carefully with your skimmer
until it is well drained ; sprinkle on the centre a little salt and
pepper ; lay it on four or five green leaves, parsley, if you have
them — if not, on two or three celery or carrot leaves ; have ready
a diamond-shaped piece of toast, of an even brown, and carry
up both hot on a white-covered tray : if you have a spray of
honey-suckle, a rose or a cluster of violets to lay between your
two dishes, so much the better.
When you bake an apple for an invalid, don't have it burnt
on one side and burst open on the other; prick the skin and
bake it thoroughly and evenly. Don't send your patient back the
same bit of butter with, perhaps, a knife-mark on it, or the same
spoonful of jelly in a smeared dish : a few dishes more or less
to wash are nothing compared to the invalid's comfort. When
you hear of a nice rice, sago or tapioca pudding for an invalid,
write the recipe in some little note-book dedicated to cookery for '
the sick, and then using such a book you will be able to keep up s,
variety in cooking for your patient, and sick people need variety
more than well people. Don't keep an invalid waiting long fot
a meal, until they are tired, cross, and past their appetite.
Don't bring up the tea or coffee and forget the sugar, or furnish
the pudding and then go to hunt a spoon, and so have the
dish lukewarm when eaten. Consult your patient's tastes, and
don't forget to season nicely when you cook. Be so neat that
the wary patient will have no suspicions of your cookery.
" Once when I was ill," said Helen, " nothing would tempt me
to eat. The doctor was quite worried about it ; but eat I could
146 THE COMPLETE HOME.
not, no matter what was presented. One afternoon Hannah
brought up ' a present from Mrs. Winton.' The present was m
a napkin of rose-colored damask ; I unpinned the • corners, and
there was a little fancy basket, and in the basket a French china
bowl, with something in it snow-white with little flecks of
green, and in the middle of this ' something ' a tiny bouquet
stood up, made of a pale blue hyacinth and a tea-rose ; across
the bowl lay a silver fork, so all was ready for me to taste the
' something.' The lovely pink damask, the dainty basket, the
fragrant flowers, beguiled me to taste what was in the bowl : it was
a delicious salad. After one taste I told Hannah to bring me a
slice of bread, and I made my supper at once of the bread and
~.alad ; my appetite was restored from that time."
"We must have the recipe for that famous salad," cried
Miriam, " and put it in our Sick Cookery Books."
"It is as good for well folks as for the sick," said Helen;
"and you may copy the recipe for that and two other salads out
)f my Household Book whenever you choose."
The young people all agreed that they had learned a good
deal about sick-nursing, and had had a very pleasant visit.
As I found that the recipes, to which Helen referred, would
suggest a fine addition to a tea-table, or to a convalescent's bill
of fare, I shall add them to this discussion of nursing.
Salad Dressing. — Boil an &^^ very hard. Mash the yolk and
chop fine the white. Put in a bowl the mashed yolk, one teaspoon
white sugar, one-half teaspoon salt, one teaspoon mustard, one
tablespoon olive oil, two or three tablespoons vinegar, according
to size of salad; mix well. Stir this dressing well through the
salad ; pile the salad in a mound on a platter ; put the chopped
egg-white over the top; set a wreath of celery leaves around
the edge of the dish ; make a small bouquet of any flowers or
green things for the centre. For a tea-party in spring, a heavy
fiolet wreath for the edge and a violet cluster in the centre is
' S/C/CNESS IN THE HOME. 147
an improvement ; in the fall, little plum tomatoes cut in halves
and laid on the leaves at the edge is a fine addition to the dish.
The Salad. — Peel or scrape six large Irish potatoes. Soak
in salt water for an hour or so ; boil until barely done ; let them
get cold. Chop these potatoes fine; chop several stems of
celery; a little parsley; a circle of onion and a circle of pepper-
pod may be added if desired ; with or without the celery, bleached
turnip-tops chopped fine; mix the potatoes and chopped salad,
also half a small head of fine-chopped lettuce ; stir well into
this the above dressing, and serve as directed. The chopped
potatoes alone thus dressed make a good salad, when other
materials are not procurable ; or use one-half chopped potatoes
and one-half chopped roast beef
A Meat Salad. — Chop beef or mutton very fine. Mix with
above salad dressing. Cut and butter thin rounds of bread ;
spread evenly on these the dressed meat; lay on each a thin
round of lemon, and a leaf of parsley under the edge of the slice
of lemon. Put these meat slices on a platter, and lay a small
bouquet in the centre — a delightful and beautiful tea-dish.
In cooking for the sick take particular care not to scorch or
smoke the food ; avoid all greasiness, and never fry an invalid's
food. Meat for a sick person should be broiled or steamed.
We hear many complaints of tough meat, but there is scarcely
any beef-roast so obdurate as not to prove tender, and well
flavored, if roasted as follows :
Take a stone pot, a round pot of the same size in its whole
height, and without a neck, the top being entirely open: it must
be low enough to stand in the oven. Rinse the meat, remove
any very large bones, and gash a little with a sharp knife ; put
the meat into the pot — if closely crowded, it is all the better ;
sprinkle it well with salt, pepper, and a little ground cloves ;
pour over it a cup of catsup, tomato catsup being the best; put
on a close lid; if the pot has no lid, lay a pie-plate upon it.
148 "^f^E COMPLETE HOME.
and put a brick on the plate to hold it down firmly. Allow no
water in the pot, and no escape of steam while the roasting pro-
gresses. Have an oven as for bread, and roast four or five
hours, according to the size of the piece of meat. Meat thus
cooked will be exceedingly tender and juicy: none of its flavor
will have escaped, and it is equally good used hot or cold, while
for making sandwiches it is unrivalled. That it may be of a
handsome shape when served, it is well, before putting it in the
pot to roast, to coil it into a round, and tie it with a piece of
tape.
I wrote these recipes in Miriam's Household Book ; as I was
returning it to its shelf, a bit of paper fell out. It was written
by her doctor, and Miriam said she had forgotten to copy it,
and must do so at once. As she was nursing one of her chil-
dren, I copied it for her. The paper was upon that great trial
of many : Sleeplessness. Thus : If you are troubled by Sleepless-
ness, do not set yourself to counting, composing, or reciting ; as
a general thing, this will excite the brain to an activity which
will defy sleep; to attain sleep, the mind should be restful. The
cause of Sleeplessness is usually an excited state of the nerves ;
a simple method of calming these is to bathe the head, neck
and arms in cold water, and rub briskly with a towel, imme-
diately before retiring ; this secures action to the skin, and aids
materially in producing a calm, sleepy feeling. ' Nervous excite-
ment, producing wakefulness, is often a product of indigestion;
a remedy for this is: wring out a towel from cold water, fold it,
lay it upon the stomach, and fold a dry towel, or a large piece of
flannel, over it, cross the arms lightly over it, and soon a delight-
ful warmth and glow will send you off to sleep. Another method
of persuading rest when wakeful is: to rise, rub the arms, chest
and feet briskly with a coarse towel or a flesh-brush ; a more
effectual fashion, especially on warm nights, would be to bathe
the arms and soak the wrists in cold water. A small towel, oi
SICKNESS IN THE HOME. 149
a handkerchief, may be wrung out of cold water, and wrapped
on the left wrist, and covered with a dry towel : the fast and
feverish pulse soon calms, and sleep succeeds.
These are all simple, easy suggestions, and I made a note of
them for my own use ; although having a well-aired room, no
light, a mattress and not feathers to sleep on, keeping regular
hours, taking sufficient exercise, and eating a light supper, I am
not often troubled by wakefulness. A habit of wakefulness is
very disastrous, and we should use every effort to guard against
it ; if we find ourselves wakeful at night, we should seek after
the cause, ^id strive to avoid repeating it, not only for comfort's
sake, but ici the sake of the sour.ai.^ss of our minds, the vigoi
of our bodies, and the efficiency of oiir work during the day,
Sleep is one of the good gifts of God :
" So he giveth his beloved «leep.
So he giveth his beloved m deep.
CHAPTER VI.
tpie beauty of the home.
Aunt sophronia tells how to make home attractive.
REMEMBER telling my niece Miriam before her mar-
riage, that good housekeeping builds up the walls of
Home. In the building of houses I have observed that
once the walls are up, some sort of finish is put upon
them : they are painted, papered, calcimined or white-washed.
Then, in furnishing a house, people generally place pictures,
ornaments or brackets upon the walls. So I think that if good
housekeeping builds up the walls of Home, good taste, a thing
closely allied to good housekeeping, gives them the finishing
touch and makes the Home beautiful. In my opinion the Beauty
Df the Home is a very important matter. There are a few
people who pass it by as " nonsense," say they " have no time
for it," and that they must " spend their efforts on what has a
cash value ; " being narrow-minded, or near-sighted, they do not
perceive that Beauty in a home has a very decided cash value.
I say this, first, because if we cultivate Beauty in the Home, we
produce there greater care and better and more cheerful spirits,
consequently better health, and therefore less outlay for sick-
oess, besides having more effective working-force. Again, a
Home, in village or country, where Beauty is created, possesses
a higher market value. A Home where an outlay of care, a
little labor and forethought has created beauty in the shape of
smooth hard walks, neat sodding near the house, a flower
garden, shade trees, rows of fruit trees, grapes, flowering
C150)
THE BEAUTY OF THE HOME. \f^\
cines, a post or two draped in roses and honeysuckles, with a
bird-house a-top, a little arbor or summer house — these things,
created in summer evenings after working hours, in winter
leisure time, in early mornings, noon-rests, or on holidays, lend
an air of refinement to the whok establishment, directly and
indirectly tend toward the good order of the whole, give it a
higher market value and would secure a purchaser more quickly
if it were for sale. In another regard the culture of Beauty in a
Home is of immense value. A growing family will be much
more likely to remain cheerfully in a Beautiful Home, even if
that beauty is extremely simple and inexpensive. A family
who are home-keepers are an inexpensive family. Sons and
daughters do not waste their money at home : they are tempted
into rash outlays when they are in the company of strangers,
hanging about public places and striving to vie with those who
have either no need of saving, or no honest desire to do so.
I hear so much complaint that farmers' sons and daughters
do not want to stay at home — they " hate the farm " — want
other business ; the girls had rather be mantua-makers or store-
clerks, than be at home helping their mothers, making butter,
and raising fruits and vegetables ; the sons want to try their
fortunes in the city ; the parents find themselves, when their
children are old enough to be efficient help, left to hired ser-
vants, who have little care to aid them in making and saving
money, who are no company indoors, and, meanwhile, the
parental heart is burdened with fears and anxieties for the absent
children, and possibly the parental purse is burdened with their
business failures.
I was at tea at Mrs. Winton's the other day, with Mr. and
Mrs. Burr and some others, and Mr. Winton said:
"We shall have constantly recurring 'panics' and 'crashes'
and 'hard times' until our people learn that the tilling of the
soil is the true source of wealth ; that golden corn above the
152 THE COMPLETE HOME.
ground is really of more value to the country than the gold in
the earth ; that the soil of our country has abundance for all hei
children ; it is a mother who never for bread offers a stone.
When the immigrants who come to us shall be agriculturists;
when our emigrants and our nvaving Eastern population seek the
West for farms, and not for gold or silver claims ; when instead of
our rural population crowding to the cities in a mad zeal for spec-
ulation and hasty fortunes, which, in ninety-nine cases out of an
hundred, are fortunes as quickly lost as made ; when every acre
of land in our farming districts is made to produce to its fullest
capacity, and not left lying in marsh, or barren, or scrub for
years, tlien we shall be a solidly wealthy people — these great
financial convulsions and crises which have kept. us in a state of
fever and excitement will be unknown."
" Undoubtedly," said Mr. Burr, " our farming and arable lands
are capable of producing a far greater amount than they do at
present ; diligent cultivation, rotation of crops, and care not to
exhaust the land for the sake of a hasty cash return, would bring
our crops up to a value thus far quite unknown in this country.
Consider what a population the small country of Palestine once
supported : over nine millions of people in an extent of less than
ten thousand square miles — that is, about the size of the State
of New Hampshire. Egypt was the grain-house of the world,
besides supporting over twenty thousand towns and villages, ten
very great cities, of which one was twenty r. .iles in circumfer-
ence. The valley of the Euphrates around Babylon formerly
produced two hundred-fold for seed sown. I believe if land is
well tilled and cropped according to its nature, there is abso-
lutely no limit to its power of production. If the population,
which is now swarming in our cities and towns, fretting in
poverty and idleness, nursing communism and breeding disease,
would pour out as workers inl o the country, filling it so that
swamps must be drained, and d.y wastes irrigated, and hills ter
THE BEAUTY OF THE HOME. J 53
raced for grapes, and that barrens must be cleared offj in behalf
of crops of corn, melons and sweet-potatoes, and the woods
imcst be cleared of underbrush, and set to growing large timber —
then we should find a reign of plenty, and all our present
beggars might be on horseback, at least while they were tilling
their fields and driving their market-wagons."
" Instead of that rush to the country," said I, " the rush is
away from it ; the young folks think they must go to town as
soon as they are grown. Every one wonders why and how
Cousin Ann's three boys have stayed on farms."
" I think," said Mrs. Burr, " that one reason of that restless
haste to leave the farm is owing to a neglect of making the farm
and the farm-house attractive. So many of these homesteads
have" a lonely, desolate look. No trees, no flowers, a neglect of a
little ingenuity in making a pretty porch and fence for the house-
front, an over-carefulness which refuses to open the front rooms
for the use of the family, a neglect of making the bed-rooms
neat and pretty — things get a sameness and shabbiness, and
young eyes pine for something more attractive."
" There is that same error, as far as I can see, in villages and
towns and cities," said Mrs. Winton. "A great many people
pile all the agreeable things which they have into one or two
rooms, which they keep shut up for apocryphal visitors. The
family sitting-room and the bed-rooms are bare and forbidding."
"And then," replied Mrs. Burr, " the young folks go to visit
their neighbors, or out into the streets, and look at the store-
windows, and so try to compensate themselves ; whether they
know what they want or not, all youth craves beauty : it is a
natural desire."
" But what a pity," I said, " that young folks should not find
what they crave in the safety of their own homes ! What an
anchorage for good faith and virtue is the love of an honest,
pure home ! What a stay to a child in all his life, the memory
164 THE COMPLETE HOME.
of a home beautiful, upright and loving ! and by beautiful I do
not mean the beauty which is created by money, in velvet
carpets, rosewood furniture, fine ornaments and pictures. Those
are all very well when they fall to our lot, but the beauty which
I mean can be created anywhere, and out of almost anything,
by simple good taste. I think that care to make the Home
attractive is the secret of the farming tastes of Cousin Ann's
boys. And what a comfort those tastes have been to their
parents! Reed and Fred are on farms beside their father's,
Dick is with his father, and little Jack is not likely to wish to go
away. What anxieties have they all been spared, what tempta-
tions, what losses, by these home tastes ! "
"I was a little boy," said Mr. Burr, "when Reuben and Cousin
Ann, as young married people, moved to that farm. I used to
think it was the barest-looking place on earth. An old broken-
down fence, no paths, no porch, no shade, no garden ; there was
the land, the barns and sheds, a straight wooden house, and some
field fences. They moved there in the fall. Cousin Reuben,
as we all call him now, spent a good deal of that winter in his
wood-lot, cutting and hauling wood, for himself and for sale, and
on top of his loads we schoolboys saw him bringing home all
manner of queer-looking and shaped sticks. The old yard
fence was turned into kindling wood. I remember how that
place changed, not by money outlay, for they had a mortgage to
pay off, but by constant industry and good sense. Cousin Reuben
and Ann worked away at that front yard, and around the house,
every summer evening for years. Those queer sticks grew in
two years into a handsome rustic fence. Reuben built with his
own hands a porch, an arbor for grape vines, and a summer
house ; in the winter evenings he made bird-houses, and poles
for creepers ; Cousin Ann got slips, cuttings and seeds ; to give
her a bit of good shrubbery was to give her a treasure, and
Reuben carried from the field and wood promising young shade
and ornamental trees. Look what a place they have now ! "
THE BEAUTY OF THE HOME. 155
"Yes, I remember. Cousin Ann told me she meant her
children should not grow up in such a desolate place as that
was when she found it ; and she thought they would love and
value it more, if tliey helped to create beauty there. She had
them from their earliest childhood learn to help keep the place
neat, and make improvements in it. They helped her in the
vegetable garden ; they planted and weeded flower borders ; no
old barrel-hoops rotted on the ground there : they were used for
fences to the garden bed, and for frames for vines. The boys made
rustic seats, they learned to turn common things to use, they
made brackets and picture-frames. Every one helped to make
every one's room pretty, and no part of the house was too good
for the family. The parents took a pride in making the house
nice, and the children learned an equal pride in keeping it nice.
I never saw such children to avoid making a litter, and such
care in preserving furniture. They liked to sit in the best room
when there was no company; they enjoyed it for themselves; and,
boys and girls, they would set to work just before going to bed,
or very early in the morning, and sweep, dust and polish it up,
so that the use of it should not increase their mother's work.
Why if those boys undertook to go far from home, they would
be going from a place which they had made, froni what was a
pleasant share and part of their own life-work. They learned
carpentry on rainy days, out in the barn, making stools and
stands, shelves and shutters for their rooms."
"Well," said Mr. Winton, "the whole county knows that they
are a wonderful set of boys."
"They had a wonderful mother, to begin with," said Mrs.
Burr. "And every mother may be just as wonderful, who sets
her common-sense and energy to work for her family — who
trains her children's activity to constructiveness and usefulness,
instead of to riot and mischief What boy will not prize the
home which he helped make, which was free to him in all its
156 THE COMPLETE HOME.
best things, which gave him his interests and occupied his
thoughts ? What boy won't take a pride in making things, when
even his first exploit in making a stool — a stool a little shaky in
the legs, and a little uneven in height — is cordially received
with — ' That is very nice. I have some cloth which will make it
a splendid cover ; I think I would cut that leg about half an
inch shorter, and you had better put a nail in here, and one here.
Then this evening we will cover it in red and black, and you
can have it in your own room.' "
"Yes," said Mr. Burr; "the value of that home, of its attrac-
tiveness and beauty, has been unspeakable to those boys, but it
has also brought its cash return. Even a hired hand could not
be careless in a place so beautifully kept, so cheerful, so pretty
as that was. The beauty of the house, like the gleam of a lamp^
widened out over the whole farm. Where are fences straighter,
walls truer, fields smoother, clumps of trees and single fine trees
left to better advantage? .Where is every bit of rubbish so
gathered up and put to use ? What increased value per acre has
not that farm gained from the beautiful hedges near the front —
hedges planted and trimmed by the boys — from the choice
shrubbery, from the grapes and small fruits, from the shade
before the house, the porches and arbors, the fine flowers, and
that unsurpassed vegetable garden? If Cousin Reuben hinted
at selling he'd get a dozen high offers. But he knows too much
to put that place in market; he will keep it to make Dick and
Jack rich."
It is now two years since Hester married. As she said she
should do, she chose a scholar, a scientific man, often off on long
tours in government service. Hester usually goes with him.
They live at John Rocheford's, and John is perfectly satisfied.
Hester keeps the house. The phrases "wax-work" and "clock-
work," as applied to the niceness and the running order of that
house, do not in my view express its perfection; somehow she
THE BEAUTY OF THE HOME. I57
seems to manage the place even when she is gone. I was sitting
with Hester for an hour the very day after this visit at Mrs.
Winton's, and I happened to tell her of our conversation about
Beauty in a Home.
" What you say about good taste creating beauty from small
resources," said Hester, "is quite true. I remember a case in
point. There was at school with me a young girl whose room
was one of the most beautifully arranged in the building, though,
as she was poor, she had no money to spend on it, and no orna-
ments which cost money. A pot of growing ferns, a wreath of
pressed fall leaves, a basket made of pin:; cones, a bracket curi-
ously fashioned of lichen-covered sticks, a bouquet of dried
grasses, burrs and seed pods of autumn flowers, lent a charm to
the little plain room. Beauty seemed to grow under her fingers;
she had such perfect order, such neatness, so many useful con-
trivances, that her room served as a model for all the rest. She
married a home missionary. I was at her simple wedding, and
helped her pack her trunks. She had very little to take with
her for the furnishing of her home, .yet I felt certain it would be
beautiful. I remember that she had in one of her boxes a large
bundle of fragments of cloth and worsted stuffs, and that she,
rather to my surprise, purchased at an auction some remnants
of paper cambric, chintz and coarse Swiss muslin; they were
very cheap, but I wondered why she chose them. Last summer,
when I went with my husband to the Rocky Mountains, we
passed within ten miles of my friend's Western home, and I took
a day to drive over to see her, being also the bearer of some
gifts from her schoolmates. The house was an unpainted wooden
building, and only one floor had a carpet; but, as I expected,
the little place breathed good taste, and was beautiful. She had
trained vines over doorway and windows: the chintz whicn I
had despised made ruffled lambrequins for the windows, She
laughingly said she had furnished her house with dry goods
11
158 THE COMPLETE HOME.
boxes. Sure enough, two such boxes covered with chintz made
a pair of pretty divans; the bed-rooms had dainty toilette tables
made of other dry goods boxes, draped in the Swiss muslin over
the colored cambric. The bundle of woollen fragments had
turned into mats and footstool covers ; she had converted a bar-
rel into a sewing-chair, and another into a work-table. In truth,
the little four-roomed house was the tasteful home of a lady, and
the little shed kitchen in the rear was so clean, so handily
arranged, that she need never blush to invite any one into it. I
never realized so completely the creative power of good taste.
Her husband had put a pine board for a mantel in their sitting-
room, but she had hidden this and a bracket to match with a
cover of oriental work, which was really elegant, and on these
she had placed the vases and other souvenirs which her school-
mates gave her at parting, and with the fresh wild flowers in the
vases, they lent the room the charm of elegance. I well knew
where she got time for fitting up things : she is one of those who
rest by change of work, and who save the moments that other
people waste." ,
This subject of Beauty in the Home became a favorite theme of
mine, and it happened that we had it pretty thoroughly discussed
once, when Helen, Miriam, Cousin Ann, her daughter Sarah,
and myself, were invited to take tea with Hester. It was ip the
autumn, and Hester had spent the preceding day with Cousin
Ann, and with Sarah had been searching " winter ornaments."
"Did you get holly, juniper and bryony-vine ? " asked Miriam.
" No," said Sarah: " we always leave those for Christmas, but
we got grasses of various kinds, and silk-weed pods, and sticks
covered with lichens, and branches of pine-cones ; if one has a
' quick eye in selecting, you can gather in fall fadeless winter
bouquets which are as beautiful as summer bouquets. I got a
large round of thick green moss, and some squawberry-vines
mingled with it, and a delicate little fern to plant right in the
THE BEAUTY OF THE HOME. 159
centre; with a pine-burr and a couple of striped snail-shells
it has made a lovely ornament for the middle of our dining-
table."
" For my part," said Cousin Ann, " my meals always taste
better for a bouquet, or a moss-plate, or a pot of fern- in the
middle of the table. In summer we use fresh flowers. It does
not take long to gather a few and put them in a little vase or
glass, and it cheers the whole family up to see them. The men
come in hot and tired, and the very look of a pretty table com-
forts them; father and the boys often say just to see the pot of
flowers and the shining white cloth is better than a meal in some
houses."
" Reed's wife," said Sarah, " got that idea from mother, and
she has made a pretty centre-piece for her table — just a common
red earthen flower-pot, a five-cent one, with a thrifty fern in it,
and a round of moss filling the top of the pot around the fern
stem ; then on each side of the pot she put a picture, and the pot
stands in a saucer, so that it will not soil the table ; the pictures
on the pot were two pretty ones from a fruit-can, and when
they were varnished, you have no idea how nicely the thing
looked."
" I tried a bouquet for my tea-table, but it got upset so often,
between the children and the servants, that I gave it up,"
remarked Helen.
"Manage it as I do, then, Helen," said Hester; "our gas-
fixture is just over the centre of the table, and I made a net of
crystal beads; the net just held a goblet which had been broken
from the stem ; that goblet I fill with water and keep my flowers
and vines in that. They set off" the table as well as if they stood
on it."
"I'm glad you mentioned that," said Mary Watkins, "for
though we have no gas we have a hanging light ; my husband
put a hook in the ceiling and hung a lamp by little chains, for
160 THE COMPLETE HOME.
fear Nettie might pull a table lamp over. I shall tie a little
willow basket with a dish in it to that, and have a vine in it ; I
have wanted something of the kind, only I could not keep it out
of Nettie's reach. I do love to see a nice, tasteful table for
meals."
"Well," said Cousin Ann, "if you'll take care to have a clean,
well-ironed cloth, and a bit of something bright for a centre-
piece, and lay the dishes neatly, and have the forks and knives
bright, you will find that such a table is a great sweetener of the
family temper; it makes a very homely meal seem like a feast,
and children can hardly show ill manners before what is so
refining. Don't forget: these little things tell on the children."
"The table-cloths are a deal of trouble," said Mary: "they
get rumpled so very soon."
" It pays in washing and ironing, in soap and time, to put a
little starch in them," said Cousin Ann; "iron them in small
folds, and press them hard; turn the folds back and forth like
the leaves of a book, not over and over, like wrapping a bundle.
As soon as the cloth is shaken, or brushed off with a clean wing
or a table-brush, fold it in the original folds, lay it in a drawer,
or keep a pasteboard box of the right size for the cloth alone,
and on top of the cloth lay a stone of exactly the same size,
or a slab of marble ; if you can't get either, have a little board
with a brick on it ; there's always some way to get along if one
is bent on getting along. Take first-rate care of the table-cloth ,
a tidy cloth is half the meal, to my mind."
"And there's the little matter of trimming dishes," said
Miriam ; " some plain dish, or something cooked over, looks and
tastes so nicely with a little trimming. I never saw such a per-
son as Mrs. Winton for that. If she boils a ham or a leg of
mutton, she trims the bone end with a ruffle of white paper cut
in narrow strips and curled on the scissors; the pepper is put on
io round spots, and either cloves or parsley-leaves are stuck in
THE BEAUTY OF THE HOME. IgJ
here and there ; the thing becomes beautiful. She has a plate
of cold sliced meat, and around the edge of the dish is a wreath
of parsley or celery-leaves, and a few slices of lemon are laid on
the me^t Does she have a dish of stewed meat, a wall of
mashed-potato surrounds the platter, the stew goes inside, and
the whole is trimmed with diamond-shaped bits of carrot and
beet; if she has for dinner a plate of codfish and potatoes
mashed together, they are piled in a mound, furrowed, and
garnished with green leaves and slices of hard-boiled egg.
Hard-boiled eggs get to her table in a bed of green leaves ;
and a plate of sandwiches is topped with a bouquet; she makes
beauty and poetry out of everything."
" Yes," remarked Cousin Ann, " there is no truer economy
than a little good taste ; you can afford to economize if you can
make your cooked-over dishes look handsomer than most
people's first-hand dishes."
" Some people think," I suggested, " that they cannot set a
handsome table unless they are rich enough for French china^
plenty of silver and the finest damask, but some of the best-look ■
ing tables I ever sat it, cost very little money. I'd know our
minister's table anywhere I saw it, by some pretty little napkins
his wife has ; they are laid over the bread, over the cake, over a
plate of sandwiches or buns, and they are the daintiest little
things! She cuts a yard of bird's-eye linen into eight even
pieces, fringes out each piece half an inch deep, overstitches
evenly with red working-cotton to keep it from ravelling further,
and then coral -stitches a border, or works a sheaf of wheat, or
her own initial in the centre with red cotton : she says they last
for years, and they set off her table wonderfully. She is fond of
a centre-piece for her table, and she has a dwarf fern growing in
a large conch shell : it is a very charming thing."
"All the ornamenting that I have tried," said Mary, " is to
have parlor-ivy and some other little vines growing in bottles of
162 THE COMPLETE HOME.
water behind my glasses and pictures, and they succeed very
well : I must accomplish something further."
" Many people," I remarked, " seem to think that we can secure
beauty only by profuse money outlay — that beauty is in the ratio
of expense. On the contrary, beauty is largely independent of
expense. The least handsome parlor that I ever saw was a very
expensive one — not a book or engraving to be seen. Staring,
ill-painted family portraits, which had cost a good price, deformed
the walls. It was early summer, and the garden had plenty of
flowers, but not one was in the parlor ; instead, silver vases of
wax monstrosities and porcelain baskets of wax fruit ; a gaudy
assertion of superabundant dollars and deficient good taste was
the characteristic of the room. Natural objects confer more
beauty on a room than artificial ones : shells, flowers, vines are
far superior for ornament to china figures and card-board
work ; indeed, I consider work on card-board the least beautiful
of any kind of ornament, and I would it were banished, for it
consumes much time, and is very dangerous to the eyesight.
If one knows how to blend and contrast colors, has the good
taste not to banish books from a room, can train a vine of ivy,
make a moss plate, and pile up artistically a handful of shells, or
make a rose-lipped conch the receptacle of a cluster of prim-
roses, violets or hyacinths, they will have beauty in their rooms."
" I am glad," said Mary, " that to procure beauty I am not
to be obliged to make much fancy work, for with my house-
work and sewing, I have little time, and my eyes are not very
strong."
" We seem," said Hester, " to be talking about beauty, and
not about eyes ; but what advantage is beauty unless we have
eyes? So perhaps I shall not interrupt our discourse, if I sug-
gest to Mary how to care for her eyes. First, don't read or
work lying dozvn: it strains the eyes by using them at an unnat-
ural angle ; don't use them on print or work so fine as to make
THE BEAUTY OF THE HOME. jga
rhem feel strained in the use. When they burn, smart or seem
dim, rest them, if it is only for five minutes, by looking at other
things or closing them, and by bathing them in cold water.
Always bathe them freely in cold water, never in hot or warm
water ; don't sleep, sit or work with the light falling full on your
eyes: let it fall over your shoulder upon the book or work;
have your sleeping-room dark, no lamp-light; and grand final
instruction, just before going to bed, bathe your eyes, behind
your ears, the back of your neck and the top of your head, with
cold water, plentifully, and do the same the first thing in the
morning ; thus you reach and strengthen the nerves communi-
cating with the eye, and you will be almost sure, by observing
these rules, to preserve your eyesight, and to strengthen it if it
is feeble."
"I have heard," said Helen, "that it is very good to bathe
the eyes in cold tea."
" If you use black tea, then, as you are sure there is no
poisonous color in it, if you use it cold, the tea being cold and
a gentle astringent may be beneficial; but I never like to try
on my eyes anything but cold water, and plenty of it."
" The cold water bathing night and morning," I said, " if
accompanied by a "hearty rubbing with a coarse towel, is not
only good for the eyes, but is almost a sure preventive of colds
in the head, influenza and catarrh. A person who uses thus
water, of the temperature of the air, summer and winter, is little
likely to take cold. I have even recommended this remedy to
those who seemed suffering with a chronic cold, or a close
succession of bad colds, and they found the cold cured and no
others followed it. The heads and throats of children should
be thus bathed, and well rubbed, night and morning, to prevent
sore throat, croup and kindred troubles. Nothing is more
ineffectual for these disorders than housing up children. Let
them be used to cold water, well wrapped, and then let them
run."
164 THE COMPLETE HOME.
At the tea-table we resumed our conversation on Beauty in
the Home : a theme from which we had drifted to questions of
health. Hester made some remarks which I hked very much.
She said:
" The pursuit of Beauty is not to be esteemed a whim belong-
ing to a delicate rather than a strong brain. It is not a conde
scension of the intellect, not the by-play of vigor, not a trifle or.
the surface of things — it is in man's mind a reflection cast by
the mind of the Creator, who made man in his own image.
Hugh Miller, in his ' Schools and Schoolmasters,' suggests that
wherever man pursues either utility or beauty, he takes a path
where God has gone before him; and even in so small a matter
as painting the panels of a coach, he will find that he has
followed ' nature's geometric signs,' and combined the hues and>
contrasted the' colors, as God, in bird, or flower, or insect,
painted them long before."
We all concluded that we could not do better than follow in
the footsteps of such lofty authority, and cultivate Beauty as
heartily as possible.
In considering the subject of Beauty in the Home, several
points have struck me. First, there can be no real beauty with-
out neatness and order. A stand of plants in fine bloom may
be an object of beauty in a room, but it cannot create beauty
over a dirty or ragged carpet. Good engravings are also con-
ducive to beauty ; but if the husband hangs good pictures on
the walls, and the wife litters the whole room with the threads
and scraps from her sev/ing machine, the pleasing is lost to the
eye in the unpleasing. Parents should make their children full
sharers in the best things of Home ; but at the same time the
children should be taught to prize and maintain the beauty of
their home. Their sports and manufactures, which are rough,
noisy and productive of dirt, should be kept in some place
apart, and they should be encouraged to bring their book.', theii
THE BEAUTY OF THE HOME. jgS
clean, quiet games, their drawing, where their parents and elder
friends are; thus family companionship will be secured, without
provoking that untidiness which is incompatible with beauty.
Second. I should say that true beauty does not belong to
things showy and insubstantial. Some people get cheap, showy
furniture and carpets, thinking that as it is cheap they can
afford more of it; while the truth is that the more of it the
ivorse it looks, and that a few good things are far better than a
good many poor ones. When we must get cheap things
because we have but little money, then let them be very plain :
for nothing is uglier than cheap gilding. If we have plain
things which do not cost much, then the value has been put
into the material and making, and they are likely to last a long
time without failing in appearance ; while if the things are showy
and cheap, the money has gone for paint and gilding, which
will soon tarnish and crack off, the wood will warp, the glue
prove treacherous, and our possessions will be a wreck. A look
of substantial comfort and rest, welcomes you to a room, and
gives the impression of beauty. When you. give up the idea of
costliness and fine display, take comfort for your aim. The
little money which would buy cheap shades, a varnished table,
a narrow, stiff little hair-cloth sofa, will pay ten times as well
in use and beauty, invested in good chintz for a lounge and
chair-cushions, and for lambrequins to the windows, and a good
cloth for a common table ; or have your curtains of white or
pale-hued lawn, and buy lady's cloth for your table-cover, and
embroider the edge in oriental work of some kind. Speaking
of furniture, children should not be allowed to treat it with
disrespect; they will be just as happy in proudly helping to
take care of it, as in destroying it. There is not beaut}' in a
room where children have daubed the floor and table-cover with
paste and ink; where they have stood on the chair-seats and
sofas or lounges, until the covers are rent or faded ; where they
:66 THE COMPLETE HOME.
have kicked the chair-rungs, and table-legs, and base-boards
until they ar'= all dents and scratches. Let them learn not to
stand on upholstery. If they must paint or paste in these rooms,
it is small trouble to teach them to spread a large newspaper
over the table-cover or carpet, where they are at work ; let them
have their own chairs and stools fit for their size, and then the
tired little legs dangling in mid-air will not be tempted to grind
varnish from adjacent furniture.
Third. In pursuit of beauty and ornament, don't crowd :
nothing is more beautiful than breathing room and space to
turn around safely. Walls covered w'Ah frames, brackets, autumn
leaves and the like, look patchy: we must not try to turn our
homes into museums or picture galleries; disgust accompanies
surfeit of the eye as well as of the stomach, and there is an old
story that " enough is as good as a feast," may-be better in its
results.
Fourth. When we seek Beauty for our Home, let us remem-
ber that every human soul has to some degree a capacity for
beauty; that what is the choice life of our own Home, flourishes
well in other Homes. If we love beauty for itself, we shall
desire to disseminate it wherever we go — to widen its refining
reign in the world. We shall consider first, that Beauty I'n our
own homes is not to be confined to our own parlo»- or bed; com,
or to our children's and guests' rooms; our servants showld be
made sharers in it. The kitchen, because it is z kitchen, is not
beyond the influence of Beauty: when we reftcct how really
beautiful some farm kitchens are, we may conc(ade that village
and town kitchens may be made beaufiful in t!ieir degree, even
though they do not open on clover fields in bioqm,on sweet, old-
fashioned gardens, where hollyhocks tower over currant bushes,
and hop vines wave tasselled banners m the breeze. Then
there are our servants' rooms : how often have I heard mistresses
.comolpm that the maids kept their room so untidy! Did t'^«
THE BEAUTY OF THE HOME. 167
mistress try to beautify it? Did she encourage the maid to keep
it nicely? The bed is left unmade? Well, were the bed-clothes
whole and clean, with a decent outside spread, or were they
worn-out rubbish, too bad for any others of the family to use ?
Was there a little curtain to the window, a bit of carpet by the
bed, a stand neatly covered for lamp, Bible, bouquet, or any of
the girl's little treasures ? Were there hooks for the clothes, and
was there any attempt to ornament the walls ? Would the Home
have been poorer for a picture or two, a comb-basket, and a wall-
pocket? If we cultivate Beauty in our Homes, let us do it thor
oughly, and let all share in it.
Again, if we have any new or good ideas of increasing the
Beauty of a Home, let us not be chary of sharing our wisdom
with our friends and neighbors ; let us be glad to help make
other homes beautiful. And when we are visiting the sick and
poor, let us remember that somewhere in their hearts, dormant,
may-be, or benumbed under many rebuffs, is the love of Beauty,
and let us try and revive it, and shed a little of its light on their
paths. It will be to many medicine to mind and body. I recall
a case here in point. I had a protegee, a poor humpbacked
girl, very weakly, confined to her invalid chair in a little bed-
room opening from a larger place occupied by her mother, who
took in washing, and her father, who cobbled shoes. She was a
n'ce girl, and labored painfully at knitting, to help earn her
living. I had helped the poor family get these two rooms, which
were well sunned and capable of being well aired. Helen had
given the invalid a bit of carpet and a white curtain, and Miriam
had bestowed on her some bedding ; we all helped her get work,
and now and then sent her soup, biscuits, a paper, or a book. I
left home for six weeks, and requested Hester to look after Mar- '
garet during my absence. When I went to visit my charge on
my return, I found her whole room brighter, her face brighter,
and her health better by far; she seemed to have a new interesi
in things. Presently she said :
168 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" Do look at my window — isn't it beautiful? Mrs. Nugent
showed me how to fix all those things one day while I was sick,
and now when I feel very badly I have only to look at those
growing things, and I forget my troubles ; you see I did the
work myself, and it has been so lovely to see the change ! "
A glass fruit-jar hung in the centre of the window by a red
cord; in this was a sweet potato, filling the jar with white roots,
and sending down outside delicate vines. On either side hung
by cords a carrot and a turnip turned upside down, hollowed into
little baskets, and filled with water; they had sent out a fine
leafage, and were globes of green. A shallow raisin-box stood
on the window-sill ; it was filled with earth, and here the sick
girl had planted seeds, and set a bulb and a slip or two, herself,
and rejoiced to watch them grow. She had cut common pictures
from the papers and pasted them on the box, and it really looked
very well. Hester had also given her some bits of silk and
merino, and shown her how to make herself a knitting-bag, a
pin-cushion, a pair of wall-pockets in which to keep the various
little things which she needed, and which had hitherto encum-
bered her room.
"Don't I look nice!" she cried, leaning back with a sigh of
satisfaction; "why, I feel almost well, making and enjoying
these things: it is far prettier work than knitting, and Mrs. Nu-
gent says if I become handy at it, perhaps she can find some
shop where they will take a basket of my work to sell."
I took a lesson from that of the power of beauty, of variety
and of new interests, over the sick and poor. But all thzft is
external has its chie/ value as it affects the internal, and the great
value of the cultivation of Beauty in our Homes is that it tends
to soften and refine the man«ers, make the heart innocently busy
and happy, and encourage a Love of Home.
While this subject of Beauty in the Home has been especially
occupying my mind, I have noticed in my visits to my friends
<»
^^
x^
^
THE BEAUTY OI- THE HOME. 169
several simple styles of ornament, which are worthy of attention.
Hester gave her father a fire-screen for a Christmas present ; as
John uses an open grate — the most beautiful and healthful kind
of a fire — this screen was very acceptable to him for use, as well
as for beauty. Hester had procured two large panes of window-
glass, twenty inches by two feet. On one of these she had glued
large pressed ferns, a spray of autumn leaves, some grasses, and
several moths and butterflies, of which she used the wings, and
painted in the bodies ; she arranged these materials on the glass
until the whole represented a lovely bit of forest scenery. She
then cemented the other pane of glass upon this one, so that the
ornaments were between the two, and the cement at the edges
excluded air. She had this double glass fiftnly held in a metal
frame, and fastened to a screw screen-stand. I never saw a more
tasteful object than this with the firelight shining through it.- I
admired it so much that Hester came to my house, and made up
one of the large panes of my sitting-room window, in this same
style, fastening her second sheet of glass over the one in the
window, so I have now an exquisite fragment of fern scenery,
with the sunlight shining through it.
Miriam also invented a method of window trimming for the
sash around her front door, which hitherto had been white glass,
shaded with vestibule lace. She procured for each of the nine
panes around the .door a picture representing an upright piece
of statuary : she cut out this picture, and with very clear gum-
arabic-water glued it with its face to the pane. The next day
with a damp sponge she removed all the paper on the back of
the picture, until only the fine film on which the picture was
stamped remained : this she had been careful not to mar. Again
she let it dry fully, and then painted all the window about the
picture with oil paint (artist's, not house paint) ; she laid this on
evenly and very thin, in a solid color, and when it was dry
varnished the whole with picture varnish, covering both paint
170 THE COMPLETE HOME.
and picture. Each pane was of a single bright color : thus the
lower left-hand pane was orange, the next emerald, the next
scarlet, the first transom pane indigo, the next gray, the next
indigo, and the right-hand panes matched the left : the whole
appearance of the hall was altered by this ornamentation of the
door, and I told her it was a treat to come down her stairs and
look at this pretty imitation of painted glass.
Miriam's window suggested an idea to Mary Watkins for her
sitting-room. Mary presses flowers very beautifully : she glued
some delicate sprays of blue flowers upon one of her windows,
and varnished the window with picture varnish ; the effect was
charming.
Hester has in hef sitting-room a fine aquarium, but she has
time and money for such things. Still I think an aquarium both
beautiful, and, in a house full of children, a useful object to
interest them in natural things. Helen has a row of hyacinths
in glasses, and Miriam, on a common stand covered with
oil-cloth, has a bed of moss and a rockery, in which little rock-
ferns are growing, and where some real snail-shells and some
stuffed birds look very beautiful. Cousin Ann's Sarah gave
me, on my birthday, a wire basket with a dish in it where trail-
ing vines and some tall ferns were growing, and poised on the
handle was a stuffed robin, looking down at a butterfly which
seemed to have just lit on a spray of one of the vines. I do
not know that I ever had an ornament in my parlor which I
admired more. So do art and nature liberally aicJ us in the
creation of Beauty in our Homes.
CHAPTER VII.
INDUSTRY IN THE HOME.
HOW AUNT SOPHRONIA THINKS INDUSTRY BENEFITS THE HOME.
p7| AM fond of reading, and spend several hours each day
)1[ with my books. Helen laughs at my library, and says
"" she does not understand how I can like such old-fash-
ioned books as I have ; perhaps the very reason that
they suit me is that they are old-fashioned. At all events, there
is sound, good sense in the volumes. There is Franklin, for
instance : what a mine of valuable thoughts in his works ! I
was reading in my Franklin only this morning, and I paused
over this passage : " Dost thou love life ? Then do not squander
time, for that is the stuff life is made of." Shortly after, as I sat
with my sewing, the second Miss Black called. She cried out :
"Always busy. Miss Sophronia! Here is your work-basket
full, and I see your book is open on the table. What in the
world do you find to do ? I never find anything."
"Then, my dear," I replied, "you must be living with your
eyes shut, for I never yet saw any one to whom the •\vorld did
not offer plenty to do. When God created Adam, he created
also a business for Adam ; he did not make him a gentleman of
leisure, with the first years of Creation hanging heavily upon
his hands ; and so, ever since, when God sends a reasonable soul
into the world, he sends with it its especial work and round of
duties, which belong to no other soul : believe me, God investi-
gates our doings here, and will make inquiry whether or not we
'^rformed this work which he intends for our doing."
(171)
172 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" You look so seriously at things, Miss Sophronia ; but do
tell me what you find to do. You have your nice house, your
good servant, your income : you might sit with folded hands."
" So I might, but I should hear a voice in my ears : ' What
doest thou here ? ' And by-and-by God would call upon me :
'Give an account of thy stewardship;' and being compelled to
speak the truth, suppose that I must say: 'O, I was in easy cir-
cumstances, and I sat with my hands folded.' But you ask
what I do. I have my housekeeping to look to, my friends to
make comfortable when they visit me, and my sewing to do.
Next I have my social duties : I am at leisure, and the expe-
rience of several tens of years is in my keeping; therefore I feel
an especial call to visit the sick. When a family is down with
measles, or scarlet fever, or some other epidemic, why should
they be neglected, or the mother be over-taxed, when I am at
leisure to help? So, in accidents, I am often sent for; thus my
work among the sick fills up a good many hours. Then there
are aged people who cannot go abroad, and chronic invalids
who get very lonely in their rooms, and feel as if they were for-
gotten : I visit them. The poor are Christ's legacy to all those
of his people who are able to help them, and I have my rounds
among the poor, helping them with gifts, securing work for
them, advising them, getting them into church and Sunday-
school. I have also my church work: having leisure, good
health and a few dollars to spare, I ought to help in the
benevolent schemes of my church, and I do that. But, while
helping others, I must not forget my own ; and my nieces
have young families. I can be a great help to them by taking
home part of their sewing and mending, taking a child home
here for a week if the mother is sick, knitting the little mit-
tens and stockings : these are trifles, but they lighten domestic
cares for busy mothers. Then once a year Christmas comes,
and I want to make presents to my nieces and their servants, to
ikDUS'JRY l.V rilE HOME. " Y7-\
my servan'.s and poor friends. So, my dear Miss Black, 1 find
work for all my time, and I have given you this sketch of it,
because you asked me, and because, as you say you have
nothing 1 5 do, I hoped it might be useful to you in suggesting
lines of work. But, as one of a large family, I should suppose
you would find work in abundance."
"Oh, I don't know," replied Miss Black. " Mother keeps the
house, and then there are the servants to do the work."
" Did you never see your mother over-worked ? Is she not
toiling sometimes until greatly fatigued, or when she has a head-
ache? Pardon me: does not your mother look too old for her
years? Could not her daughters have saved her some of that
extra work which wears her out?"
"Why don't she ask help, then? She never does," cried Miss
Black.
"Some mothers have a false idea of increasing their children's
happiness by not asking them to work ; and then, help freely
offered is better than help demanded, or asked for half a dozen
times, or argued over. I have seen girls scowl at being asked to
help for an hour a mother who had, been toiling cxhaustingly
for eight hours. I have seen other girls who, with quick eye,
sought out every place where they could help, and when finally
bidden by the busy mother to go dress, walk, read or visit,
begged to be allowed some other share of work until they might
both be done together. But, Miss Black, as we are on this
subject, and you have introduced it, do you never see your ser-
vants over-worked ? the kitchen-servant ready to drop with
fatigue, when you might cheer and relieve her by making a
cake, a few pies, a pan of biscuits or setting a table? Could you
not find a time when the other maid, who does up-stairs' work
and sewing, would be saved from really too severe driving, \\
you swept and dusted a room or two, or lent the aid' of you!
needle in the sewing-room ? "
12
174 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" Dear me, it never entered my head," replied the young lady.
" I do as much as my sisters, and we all do nothing. I fix up
little trimmings, fancy collars and cuffs, or such things, now and
then, as I need them. I put the flowers in the parlor, and help
my sister make our bed. I read a book now and then if it is
interesting, and I practise some, and get ready my dress, if I am
going to a party, and I sit and look out of the window, or I take
an afternoon nap: we sit up so late, having evening callers;
and I go shopping, and I walk around the streets, or make a
few calls, and — there, that is all I do."
" But, my dear girl, what of all this is useful to yourself or to
others ? With what of all this is God pleased ? What of all
this is the work which he sent into the world for your doing ? "
"I'm sure I don't know! You quite frighten me asking that."
" Consider it is a question that must meet you some day, as it
is appointed unto all men once to die, and after that comes the
judgment. Reason would say, have an answer ready."
" Frankly, Miss Sophronia, what could girls like myself and
my three sisters do ? What ouglii we to do ? "
" That is asking a stranger a delicate question. But did you
never hear your mother complaining of pressure of work,
worrying over bills for sewing, over the complaints of the
servants ? Now could you not relieve her in these matters ?
F.ach two of you girls share a room ; why not one of you take
entire charge of that room ? sweeping, dusting, bed-making,
mending carpet, towels, bedding — in fact, being responsible for
absolute order there. The other two could then take care one
of the parlor, one of the dining-room, keeping all bright and in
repair. Consider how much better it would be done; how
much more comfort your two servants would have, and how
much longer they would be likely to stay ; thus your mother
would be greatly relieved. Suppose, then, one of you girls
made all the cake, another all the desserts, another took charge
INDUSTRY IN THE HOME. I75
of the Stockings of your father and three brothers, another made
the shirts : you see the two servants, in a family of nine, would
still find work enough ; and you as interested parties would be
economical in the cooking which you did, and your mother,
relieved of a certain share of her mending and making and
supervising, would feel her vigor renewed."
" But we don't know how to do these things ! "
" You ought to know how, and the sooner you learn the
better. Your mother and the maids would teach you gladly."
" But with all that we should be worked to death ! "
" Pray, then, how long do you expect your mother to live ?
But instead of being worked to death, you would all be in
better health, have finer complexions, better spirits and a more
cheerful home — to say nothing of doing your duty to God, your
parents and your fellow-creatures. Did you ever read a saying
of Sydney Smith's? — 'Let every man be occupied, and occu-
pied in the highest employment of which his nature is capable,
and die with the consciousness that he has done his best' "
" No," said Miss Black, " I never did. I am half inclined to
believe you. Miss Sophronia, that we should be happier if we
were more industrious. Sometimes when we have been actually
working for a fair, or a festival, or preparing for a party, we
have really enjoyed ourselves: possibly, it was because we were
busy. Certainly I don't think work could made us less happy
than we are : for you never saw such a listless, bored set as we
are, unless we are putting on our best spirits to entertain a few
gentlemen callers."
"And the poor father, and mother, and brothers — they are
treated to the listlessness and boredom : is that making Home
happy ? "
" I fear not. I never thought I was responsible for making
Home happy ; or that taking hold and doing something was a
means to that end. I'll tell my sisters what you say, and think
't over."
176 THE COMPLETE HOME.
After Miss Black had gone, I sat considering what a sin
parents commit, who do not bring up their children to be
industrious, to feel that every home should be a hive of
industry, that, in one way or another, every member of the
family must contribute their share of labor to home activities.
How little do we think of impressing upon the minds of the
young the fact, that God expects them to do something ! As far
as I can learn from the Scripture, heaven itself seems a place
of joyous activity. I never yet read of a good person who was
not a busy person ; business and happiness seem also com-
mingled in this world ; and activity, useful activity and good
health go hand in hand. Cultivate laziness in a child, and you
cultivate poverty, poor health, unhappiness and crime. What a
fashion of slow suicide is this much talked of " killing our
time!" How are mothers left weary and discouraged, who
have not trained their children to help them heartily and lov-
ingly ! The hand of the diligent maketh rich ; being "not sloth-
ful in business " is one of the main ways of serving the Lord,
who called us to labor. I felt quite stirred up as I considered
this question, and I made up my mind to get what information
on the subject I could, and to talk of it very earnestly with my
nieces and young friends, and urge them to train up their
children in habits of industry and helpfulness — to have their
Homes centres of good activity. While I was thinking thus.
Cousin Ann came in. She had driven in to the village with a
quantity of eggs and butter for the hotel, and she came, as she
often does, to take dinner with me. Of course I did not betray
Miss Black's confidences, nor did I mention Mrs. Black's great
failure in bringing up her children; but I said to Cousin Ann.
when she was comfortably seated and had begun to knit on a
stocking for Helen's Tom :
" Cousin Ann, you are never idle, and your children are just
like you in that."
INDUSTRY IN THE HOME. 177
" Trained them to it," said Cousin Ann.
" I should like to know how you did it. I have had the sub-
ject of industry and indolence in Homes brought before my
mind this morning, and I want to know how you proceeded in
bringing up all your family to be industrious.''
" I made a habit of it, in the first place," said Cousin Ann.
"and then I gave them an object in it; and meantime I studied
the children themselves, so as to direct their industry as far as I
could in a natural bent, and not make labor a bitterness to them.
For instance Fred always took to gardening, while Reed had a
natural love of animals, and Dick has always been a terribly
active child, with big muscles which wanted to be exercised ; a
boy, who, if he couldn't let off his energy in some honest hard
work, would be up to all sorts of mischief, just to get a vent for
his overflowing animal energy. We ought to study children in
giving out their work, and while necessity rules often in distrib-
uting employment, we should follow the natural bent, just as far
as we can. Well, as I was saying, I made industry a habit for
my children. I taught them to wait on themselves, to clear up
litter which they made, to get out and put by their own toys.
You could hardly imagine, Sophronia, how early a young child
can be taught to help. .1 did my own work when Fred, Reed
and Sarah were little — that is, most of the time. I taught them,
first, not to be troublesome to me, and then to help me. The
little things could bring chips or wood from the wood-house,
stick by stick, or feed the chickens, or open and shut doors, and
so on to larger and larger things. To be sure they made mis^
takes, and made more work than they did, in the very effort to
help, and at first I should have saved time and toil doing it all
myself But I remembered that I was working for the future,
that I was moulding the children into such men and women as
they would be, that as I taught them now I should be helped by
them after a while : so I kept steadily on teaching them. They
178 THE COMPLETE HOME.
got bruises in falls, ran splinters into their fingers, burnt their
busy little hands ; but these misadventures taught them careful-
ness, and through it all they got a fixed habit of being helpful
and busy, and of not sitting idle when there was work to be
done, and other people were busy. Of course, you understand
me, Sophronia. I don't mean that now Sarah would not sit down,
or take a book, or go dress herself, because there were dishes to
wash, and the servant was washing them; so long as the girl
knows how and has the time, her own work can be left to her ;
but Sarah feels that she owes to God the right use of her time,
and she would not dare to spend an idle day; she changes work,
and rests in the change ; she is working while she informs her
mind, makes her clothes, and takes her part in the homework
of all kinds."
"You mentioned giving your children a special interest in
work, as well as a fixed habit of doing it," I said.
"Yes, 'in all labor there is profit,' says the Scripture, and I
wanted my children practically to learn that. I said Fred
naturally loved gardening. I set him at it early. I had him
help me in my garden among the vegetables, and I gave him a
sunny strip of border for himself, where he planted vegetables
which he sold on his own account — that is, when we sent a load
of vegetables to market, Fred's lettuces, bunches of onions, or
radishes, or beets, or his heads of cabbage were counted in, and
he got what money they brought. He did not rob us of his
help while he raised these things : he got the time by putting
Industry against idleness. We were as well pleased when he
treated himself to a pair of skates as to a nice book, and he
always gave away a portion of his own. Reed, on the other
hand, hated gardening; he worked in the garden when I bid
him, but it was just as easy to set Reed to tending the fowls, to
making chicken-coops, cleaning the hen-house, putting up roosts,
feeding fowls, pounding fresh bones for them, or feeding the
INDUSTRY IN THE HOME. 17g
calves and watering the horses : he did these things well. So
he was given his especial hen, his sheep, his calf, and he worked
like a hero, to bring them up in the way that they should go ; to
return him profit, they were fed and housed, and cared for with
all his might. He learned the care of stock, and you know he
has a stock-farm now, and many of his brutes are of his own
raising. Sarah early learned to help me in the house, and she
had her little share in the butter. She and Fred both gathered
and sold garden seeds and sweet herbs to the grocer here in
the village, and as she grew older, when by extra industry she
hemmed a set of sheets, or made up half-a-dozen pair of pillow-
cases, she got her pay for them. Not that any of them learned
to claim pay from us : we gave it and they took it as an encour-
agement. As we grew better oiT, Sarah got her allowance, so
that she would know how to use money wisely. Dick was
allowed to use his energies in wood-chopping, in hauling fuel
from the wood-lot, in cleaning walks, in ploughing before and
after school. All the boys were set at helping their father on
the farm as the two girls helped me in-doors. When they pro-
posed new plans, as bee-keeping or sorghum-raising, we let them
try it, and we always kept them in school and gave them all the
books and papers we could. Indeed, Sophronia, I think they
have been as happy a set of children as ever lived, and as indus-
trious too."
" I've no doubt," I replied, " that their happiness rose in a
large degree from their industry, which kept them from moping
and mischief, and gave them the peaceful consciousness of well-
doing, for idleness is misery."
"Some mothers think," resumed Cousin Ann, "that they can
get no help in the house from boys : if they have no daughters
they must work on unaided. I have seen boys sitting in a
kitchen when their mother was bringing fuel, or water, or black-
ing a stove, or when their sisters, tired with washing or baking,
180 THE COMPLETE HOME.
v/ere performing these tasks. The boys had been at work out
of doors perhaps, or, out-of-door work being done, they had
done nothing; if they hung up their caps and put by their boots
it was as much as they thought they could do within doors.
Now I hold that nothing is more really ennobling and improving
to a boy than to learn to do little things to help his mother in
the house. Where servants are kept, his round of household
duties is but a small one, but he should be taught to do all that
he can. Why cannot he learn to set chairs in their places? to
pick up and fill a spilled work-basket ? to hold and amuse a
fretting child? to carry a meal to an invalid? to bathe an aching
head? All these things will not make him 'a Miss Nancy,' but
will tone down his boyish roughness, ameliorate his awkward-
ness, make him thoughtful for others, and so truly manly in
using his strength to aid weakness. I taught my boys to sweep
and dust a room; to scour knives; to blacken a stove; to set 3
tabic ; I had them so trained that they would have scorned t<!
sit by a stove and see their sister or mother filling the stove with
fuel or bringing a bucket of water. I remember once being at
a house where the only son was preparing for the ministry; the
room became chilly; his worship was reading a paper; he
bawled to his sister, who was in the next room getting dinner :
' Mag ! bring a scuttle of coal for this stove ! ' I made up my
mind that that family had not been trained in family industry:
the industry had been all on one side. Once I went to take a
firkin of butter to Mrs. Winton. It was a number of years ago,
and however it happened, she had no girl. It was about eight
in the morning; little Grace was washing the dishes, and one of
her brothers was drying them; the oldest boy had just finished
putting the dining-room in order, and I tell you it was in order.
Nor was he a bit ashamed of it. He said: 'Cousin Ann, see
how well I can do up a room ; this is all my work to-day; now
if you'll wait until I have polished the breakfast-knives, I'll ride
INDUSTRY IN THE HOME. jgl
AS far as school with you;' and Mrs. Winton told me those two
boys got up, made the fire, filled the tea-kettle, and set the
breakfast-table, before she and Grace got down to cook break-
fast. She said they could make their beds, too."
" It didn't hurt them," I said, " for those two Wintons are the
very first young men in this town."
"Hurt them! no," said Cousin Ann: "North Winton will nor
plead a case less eloquently for having been trained to be useful,
and I think the way Robert was brought up to wait oh his
mother will make him a better doctor. In fact, Sophronia, my
rule is, to have a busy household, and give every member a
share of work."
"I'm glad to get your views," I replied, "for I mean to talk
with my young friends about activity and industry in the House-
hold. You don't seem afraid of wearing folks out with work,
Cousin Ann; how is that?"
"I hope you understand me, Sophronia," said Cousin Ann;
" I do not look on work as an end in itself, neither as the highest
human good, and in the word work, as we are now talking, I
include all that is useful to ourselves or others; we are given,
as I take it, by the Lord himself, a certain time to live in the
world, and a certain amount of good, of adding to the sum of
human happiness and worthiness, which we can do in that time.
The good done is the end, and the work is the means to gain
it; we cannot do this good without activity, and, moreover, the
Lord has given us enough to do to fill up all our time. Con-
sidering all this, I do not think that work or activity is other
than man's natural condition, and so it is likely to be a healthful
condition. People do get injured by severe work, but if you
will look into these cases, you will see that the injury-doing
work was not of the Lord's ordering. Persons hurt themselves
by the fierce kind of work they do to hurry up a fortune : to
grasp too soon or too much what is going in the way of money.
182 THE COMPLETE HOME.
Other people wear out of the over-work of pride ; they must have
ornaments, fineries, elaborate dress, or furnishings, to out-do
their neighbors, and they kill themselves for that. Other people
still are working double shares, doing the work which some
idle member of their families has left undone; the conscientious
and busy one becoming the victim of some sluggard's selfishness:
thus the mothers of lazy daughters. Again, I have seen folks
who wore themselves out with the strain of fretting, anxiety,
repining over their work, grinding their minds to pieces with the
irritation of unwillingness or useless worry to do more or better
than they reasonably can. Still other victims of work are those
who work without any system, and so the labor which would
be healthful and moderate becomes a burden, sinking them into
insanity or the grave. Most people who are said to die of over-
work die of misdirected activity, or of neglect of system in their
work. I should say that system is to labor what oil is to ma-
chinery : without it all goes heavily and creaking, and wears out
speedily.
" Bustle, Sophronia, is not industry, as you very well know ;
people flutter and bustle about like a hen raising ducks, and
then complain that their work has killed them, when it was the
fuss that was the killing cause. To go back to where I started :
work is from God, and he has told us how to work, so that in
working we shall be happy and strong and effective. He says
first for each day : ' The night cometh, when no man can work.'
He gave the night for sleep, the evening hours for quiet resting
of body and mind. When folks toil along in the evenings, after
the brutes have gone to rest, somebody is usually to blame :
vanity, somebody's selfishness, the avarice of employers who
will not give living wages for ten daylight hours' toil ; some
check has been offered to God's beneficent plan. So if we don't
want to be killed by work, let us take a fair share of sleep ; and
let us rest, or have some very easy restful occupation for evening
INDUSTRY IN THE HOME. \%'J,
At our house we have for evenings more reading than anything
else ; the children spend some time on their next day's lessons ;
the stocking-darning is evening work, and so, in the season, is
fruit-paring. Sometimes, to be sure, when we are making mince-
meat or sausages, the work runs into the evening, and so in
killing time ; but that is only on distant occasions, and so does
no damage. The next rule for resting which the Lord gives is
a weekly rule : ' Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
Thou shalt do no labor, neither thou, nor thy son, nor thy
daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle,
nor thy stranger within thy gates.' The New Testament shows
that we must on Sabbath ' assemble ourselves together ' for
worship, give the sick due aid, and bestow needed attention on
the brutes, and give ourselves our proper food. Outside of this
we are to rest ; and I promise you, Sophronia, if this were
observed, no elaborate dressing, no big dinners, no , visits, no
amusements, but a complete, quiet, family resting, the church,
the proper books, a nap if one is feeble or weary, and a real rest-
day from sun to sun, there would be no breaking down from
overwork, no farmers' wives in mad-houses."
" But how about the milk, and the butter, and the eggs, Cousin
Ann?" I ventured to ask.
"The eggs can be left until Monday morning from Saturday
evening. The milking must be done for the sake of the animals :
but if milk that needs churning is churned on Saturday night,
the rest, if the dairy is properly aired, cleaned and shaded, can
be left until Monday morning. Don't tell me milk must be
churned or carried to the cheese-factory on Sunday ; it is clear to
my mind that if people were compelled to give to the Lord the
price of all the cheese and butter made on His day, they'd find
means of keeping the milk over Sunday.''
" Very true," I said, " but go on with your views about resting.''
" The Lord gave to the people of Israel several national
84 THE COMPLETE HOME.
holidays each year, requiring old and young, bond and free, to
share them joyously. From this example we should set a due
value on certain fixed holidays, and not ruthlessly run our work
over them, but observe them with our whole families, in some
such way as shall give the most change to the current of our
thoughts and cares. We have New Year's, Washington's Birth-
diy, Easter, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas. As the
reach between Easter and the Fourth, and from that on to
Thanksgiving, is pretty long, I should throw, in those spaces, a
birthday keeping, a picnic day, a festival of some kind, and these
days will be found^ to strengthen family ties, freshen health and
interest in work, and give a new spring of vitality to all our
labors. People who live in this way will not die'of overwork,
Sophronia."
Hester had come in quietly during the conversation. I said
to her :
" Hester, you are always busy, and yet always fresh and
strong. Aside from the care which you take of your health,
how do you manage your work so that you shall not complain
of over-exhaustion ? "
" I find," replied Hester, " that there is great rest in mere
■ -■hange of labor. It is not so much, when one is tired, that one
aeeds to drop everything and lie or sit with folded hands : this
Is sometimes needful ; but there is true and effective rest in
bringing into action an entirely different set of thoughts and of
muscles. Thus, one who is tired with sweeping, scrubbing or
ironing, can rest thoroughly by bathing face and hands, taking
a footstool and a comfortable chair, and taking up some sewing
[f I have tired myself by several days of writing, or of study of
languages, or by the pursuit of aijy one difficult subject, I find
that I rest my mind and body by an entire change of work : by
taking up some study in natural sciences, by taking a few days
for sewing or social duties, or by doing some work in the house,
INDUSTRY IN THE HOME. 185
IVith this in view I arrange that house-cleaning, preserving, or
preparing the clothing for a change of seasons, shall come after
some heavy piece of brain work, when I need the rest of change."
"The Lord teaches us that lesson, I think," said Cousin Ann,
" in the change of seasons itself This change, four times in a
year, necessarily gives us a change in our labors — sov/ing, hay
ing, harvesting, fruit-picking, fall-ploughing, winter work of
repairing utensils and buildings, follow one after the other, and
rest us by the change which they afford. In the house this is
also true."
"The fact is," said Hester, "that more diseases arise from
indolence than from overwork : idleness begets vice, and vice
fosters disease. One reason why, taken as a whole, city and
town girls are feebler than country girls is, that they have less to
do ; they idle about and fix their tastes on luxury and folly and
amusements ; their minds and bodies lose all spring and vigor.
Wasting their lives in this wretched way, girls become extrava-
gant and expensive in their wants, and weak in muscle, nerves
and morals ; young men become foppish, dishonest and intem-
perate. Parents, guardians and teachers should wake up to the
dangers of this idleness, v/hich lies at the root of much mania,
hysteria and crime. This laziness is creating for us in the cities
a generation of paupers and hospital patients ; the good-hearted,
pretty, naturally bright girl becomes the vapid, morbid, chronic
invalid. Not an invalid by dispensation of Providence, but the
invalid of her own making; and a hardy and more courageous
race will take the place of these pining or vicious beings. I
feel awake on this subject because I have studied it carefully
ktely, while preparing an article upon it for press."
" You could not choose a better or more useful theme," said
Cousin Ann. " But I declare, Sophronia, it is almost three
o'clock ! I often say I must keep away from your house, for no
sooner do I get here, than you start me off on some subject
186 THE COMPLETE HOME.
which I am interested in, and then, as I have to-day, I spend th&
whole morning doing — "
" Don't you dare to say ' nothing,' Cousin Ann, for you said
yourself, that one was always working well when doing any-
thing for the benefit of others, and to-day you have been very
greatly benefiting me."
Since this day's conversations, I have made myself quite h.
missionary in behalf of Household Industry. The more I think
of the subject the more important does it appear to me. It has
been well said that "It is what is saved, not what is made,,'
which constitutes national as well as individual wealth." Every
one will allow that labor is a source of wealth ; but one does
not so quickly see how the individual labors of each member of
a family will create that saving, which results in comfortable
circumstances, if not in affluence. But look at this a moment:
a daughter in a family is brought up in habits of industry and
not in idleness ; industry establishes her own health, and her
aid keeps her mother from being worked into a fit of sickness,
or a state of confirmed ill-health : what a saving is here at once
in the mere matters of medicines, nursing and doctor's bills !
In a family of industrious daughters, skilled in the use of the
needle, how much longer do clothes last, than where nobody
has energy to repair, or make over, or neatly mend, and clothes
fall to pieces to be replaced by new ones ! The delicate taste,
the interested, thoughtful industry of the family, knowing each
one's needs, will go twice as far as the hired labor of the seam-
stress. And here I feel like going off on the word seamstress,
to protest against the starvation-wages paid to seamstresses by
the clothing-warehouse owners; and I would entreat ladies
not to try to save, or to escape care by purchasing ready-made
dresses and undergarments, every one of which may be at the
price of blood — as was to David the water of the well ol
Bethlehem, when he would not drink. No, my dear sisters, if
INDUSTRY IN THE HOME. 187
you need to hire your clothes made, or if you prefer it, or can
afford it, have the seamstress in the house; there give her a
warm, sunny sewing-room ; if she stays at night, give her a nice
bed-chamber, give her three good meals a day, and don't
require her to sew on in the evening, just because she is on
hand, and will do it rather than lose your patronage.
Don't grind the faces of the poor, my dear wom^. Fortune
was represented formerly with a wheel, and time has a way of
bringing its revenges. Who can tell whether you, or your
child, or grandchild may be toiling for bread at a needle's
point? In families where all are reasonably and cheerfully busy,
there is not felt this passion for driving some one ; as Cousin
Ann said : " The over-work of the one is usually the satisfaction
offered for the laziness of several." A thrifty country lady once
told me her method of getting her sewing done for a large fam-
ily : she was not very well-to-do, and to save money was a
necessity to her. She found in the city a seamstress, who, with
hard labor for nine months in the year, barely managed to keep
the wolf from the door, while she wore herself out. This
woman was engaged by the farmer's wife for the three warm
months. The wages were low, but she had first-rate country
living, change of air, a fresh, pleasant room, kind society, her
evenings and Sabbaths to herself It was a blessed rest, and
renewed her strength and courage for the year. She went home
laden with gifts of butter, eggs, dried fruit, meat — a stock to
help her little housekeeping on for a long while to come.-
I am glad that Mary Watkins is bringing her little girl up in
the same industrious way in which she was herself trained. I
was there the other day, and the little thing, seated in her small
rocking-chair by her mother's side, was sewing carpet-rags:
she is scarcely five ; and this, and a little hemming on coarse
towels, is her first essay at sewing. Mary's boy, who is about
three and a half, was shelling seed-peas, and I was amused at
188 THE COMPLETE HOME.
the way Mary had taken to keep him from making a litter with
the work. She had set him in a washtub, and he shelled the
peas into the tub where he was. On one side his tub stood a
large basket with the dried pea-pods, and the empty husks he
put into a basket on the other side. Mary said that each of the
children had thus a half hour's work in the afternoon, an* in the
morning tli^y each had half an hour with their lessons. Besides
this, while the breakfast was being cleared away, Jimmy brought
in three baskets of chips and small wood, and Nettie wiped the
spoons and tea-cups for her mother. Mary said that the chil-
dren were much better natured, enjoyed their play better, and
were more careful and less destructive for this little responsibil-
ity of having something to do ; and she added, with pride, that
it was quite surprising how handy and careful Nettie was. She
was likely to prove an excellent little housewife, and Jimmy
was very fond of being useful also.
Helen seems less inclined to instruct her children in being
useful. She pleads that she has no time to teach them ; that she
has no patience to attend to their lessons ; that Belle will pick up
sewing some time, she supposes ; that it is much easier to do
things herself than worry with children's work, and that in her
house about one person's time is needed to repair the mischief
of Master Tom.
"Ah, Helen!" I cried, " the idle child is the mischievous child;
k would take far less time and patience to teach Tom useful
work than to let him turn his energies on mischief"
" But what on earth can Tom do ? " asked Helen.
" Hannah is kind ; let him go to the kitchen, and string beans
and shell peas ; let him learn to rub the knives ; let him be
charged with sweeping the back yard each day; let him black
his father's shoes and his own."
"Goodness!" said Helen, " he would black himself and the
kitchen floor a deal more than the shoes ! "
INDUSTRY IN THE HOME. Igg
" Helen, many a city youngster of his age makes his own
Kvui^ by boot-blacking. Let him take the boots to the shed,
tie a kitchen-apron around his neck, and let Hannah show him
how, once or twice, and be a judge when his work is properly
finished. Anything is better than rampant, destructive idleness.
Get him a few tools and some wood, and let him make flower-
frames and little stools or boxes : find some use for his manu-
factures. Then do not give way to indolence, and neglect
teaching him to read, write and cipher. Happy the child whose
mother is his first teacher! As for Belle, Helen, don't dream
she will grow into industry without being taught it. You have
complained heartily of your over-indulgent grandmother, who
did not teach you to sew, to keep house, to systematize your
work : you suffer from that fatal neglect every day of youf
life; and yet you dare to pass such a legacy on to youi
daughter. Consider that she may live to be a wife and mother,
and that as you train her, you make or mar a future House-
hold, and become a good angel or an •evil genius to your
descendants."
"But, aunt," argued Helen, "some folks grow into these
things without ever being taught. Look at Hester: she taught
herself to keep house after she had grown up!"
" Hester happens to be a genius, and a person of uncommon
cotftcientiousness, Helen," I replied; "she will not neglect any
work, agreeable or otherwise, which it falls to her lot to do.
The rule is, however, that we do not learn useful things by
htuition, but we must be taught them. When one assumes a
mother's responsibilities one owes it to her children to arm
them against want and helplessness, by teaching them to be self-
reliant and industrious. You remember it was among the laws
of the Jews that a father should have his son circumcised, teach
him the law and teach him a trade ; even the wealthiest taught
their sons a trade to secure them against possible want. Thus
13
190 THE COMPLETE HOME.
Paul made tents. While the son must be taught some business
of life, there is one business which should always be taught a
daughter — the business of housekeeping, in all its departments.
That sensible people, the Germans, do not neglect, as do we,
this training in housekeeping; the wealthiest and the highest in
rank take a pride in practically knowing all about it. This is
not to be learned in a few theoretical lessons; it can be well
acquired only by giving children from their earliest years their
share of home work."
It is hard to persuade Helen to do even a plain duty of
this kind, because she is so ignorant of work herself, and
naturally so indolent. I should think her losses, vexations,
trials and mortifications from having as a girl been habit-
uated to indolence, and so knowing nothing of her duties as
head of a household, would stir her up to have Belle well
taught. Mark and Miriam had far less cash capital to begin
life on than Frank and Helen, but the industry and good
judgment of Mark Have been so seconded by Miriam's skill,
taste, economy and industry at home, that I find they are
not only laying up more money than Frank, but are living
much more handsomely. There, too, were Reuben and Cousin
Ann : all they had to set out with was a run-down and heavily-
mortgaged farm, but by the united eftbrt and industry and
economy of the whole family, now they own the finest farrn in
the county; the two elder sons own a farm on each side their
parents; Sarah, who is next year to be married to young
Winton, will be very handsomely portioned; they have plenty
for hospitality; they are liberal in giving; it should have
been written on their doorway: 'Seest thou a man diligent in
business, he shall stand before kings.' Yes, my idea of a family
is a family of cheerful, useful activity; a hive of honey-bees;
not one or two workers — a tired father, a worn-out mother, an
enslaved servant or two — and all the rest drones.
INDUSTRY IN THE HOME. ' 191
What a spectacle is this Household at Work ! The mother
amply aided; all things in order; work done beautifully and
systematically; intelligence reigning; time is here for books and
for art, and for beauty, and social life, because all have labored
willingly; it is not alone the mother's hands which toiled, while
daughters lay in bed, but all these are virtuous women whosft
price is above ruDici>.
CHAPTER VIII.
LITERATURE IN THE HOVR
AUNT SOPHRONIA's IDEAS OF BOOKS AND READING.
[ T has long been my opinion that one of the chief ways of
making a home happy, thriving and useful in its in-
fluence, is to supply it well with books and papers.
Haying carefully observed and contrasted homes well
furnished with reading matter, and homes where literature is
unknown, I find that intelligence, family affection, thrift, economy,
business habits, and joyous home-loving mark the homes with
books ; and bickering, wastefulness, general ignorance and idle
pleasure-seeking, characterize the others. A home without books
argues at once a lack of educative influences ; it reduces its
members to find the entertainment and interest, which they will
inevitably seek, away from home in silly gossip, frequently
resulting in mischief, in games which are often the beginning of
quarrelling and cheating, in rudeness and thriftlessness, all far
more expensive than a large library of books. Such a Home
without reading is also shut off from a stream of new and useful
information constantly supplied by daily and weekly papers. It
is not merely that these papers contain the current affairs of the
day, the news of church, and of politics, and foreign affairs, and
the market reports — all valuable, and without which a man can
hardly be a reasonable citizen or a decent manager of his own
business — but these papers contain valuable information on
subjects of health, of farm-work, of fruit-culture, of household-
work, cooking, cleaning, the care of animals ; any one item of
(192)
LITERATURE IN THE HOME. 193
which might prove on occasion worth the year's price of a paper.
Cousin Reuben takes a number of newspapers. He remarked
to me once, that if he had started on his farm without any
knowledge or experience of work, or of arranging his house so
as to keep it in a sound, healthful condition, he might yet by a
diligent study of his papers, applying to them his own judgment,
have learned how to manage all his affairs in a satisfactory
manner. He added : " I've paid out hundreds of dollars in my
time for my newspapers, for I am not such a sneak as to try and
steal my information from the editors. I pay in advance, and if
I've paid a few hundreds out, I've taken a good many hundreds
in by the use of them. My boys never had to hang around a
store, or a grog-shop, or a bar-room to learn what was going on
in the world; consequently they never learned to drink grog
nor to waste their time. Many is the hint we've got in, stock-
raising, in fruit and vegetable culture, and many is the poor
bargain we've been saved from making, by reading a good,
respectable, law-upholding, honest-dealing paper. We took care
as to the quality of our papers. We took our church papers,
too, and then we knew what was being done by the church, and
where we'd better give when we had a little to spare ; and our
minister didn't have to talk himself hoarse explaining things
which it was our business to know ; we enjoyed the sermons
more, and felt ourselves stirred up and more a part of the church
for reading all about it ; and the children had Sunday reading,
and did not find the Sabbath a weariness."
When I go into Mrs. Winton's of an evening, I usually find
the family reading. They have the magazines of the month,
the new books on the table. If Mr. Winton and the two sons
are free from business cares in the evenings, there is no
wondering what to do : they know where will be a comfortable
room, a good light, quiet, beauty of surroundings, and occupa.
tion for' the mind ; the family-room is a scene of comfort, of
194 "^HE COMPLETE HOME.
promise. How can these young folks help being honorable and
useful ? They are daily filling their minds with things beautiful,
true, practical ; they have no waste hours for Satan to fill with
mischief, no vacant brains to be provoked to evil deeds.
I was at Cousin Ann's son's farm one day, and Reed was
walking about with me showing his territories; and, indeed,
they were so well kept that they were a treat to see. The
cattle all looked like prize cattle. He had names for them all ;
and one handsome young heifer he called " Books," and a big
sheep " IVIaga," which he informed me was " short for maga-
zines," and a family of black Spanish hens ran to the call of
" Papers ! " I asked what in the world it all meant. He told
me that when he married, his mother gave him a pair of black
Spanish fowls, and told him to let their produce keep him in
papers. He accordingly called them " papers " for fun, and he
found that the eggs and chickens would supply him hand-
somely with papers. When the supply exceeded the demand
he would lay the surplus up to begin a fund for providing his
children with reading. His wife had proposed that the heifer
should be dedicated to the cause of a library ; so he, after sub-
tracting the cost of the animal's keep, meant to use her pro-
duce in buying books. The sheep had been a pet lamb given
to his wife by her sister, and she, having paid her board, secured
' them a magazine or so.
" Well, well, Reed ! " I cried ; " that is a pretty sharp idea,
and worthy of your mother's son."
" Why, Aunt Sophronia," replied Reed, " we were brought
up on books, and we could not live without them. I expect to
make a decent fortune here, but I got my first notions of the
value and care of stock from books and papers. I noticed all
that I found on that theme :" it interested me ; I carried out
many suggestions and found them valuable. We boys never
-wanted to run off in the evenings : we got in hungry and tired ;
LITERATURE IN THE HOME. 195
we found all neat, a good meal, a comfortable room, with a
light on a table where our books were. We made ourselves
tidy, had our supper, and saw no attraction in village corners,
or in smoky saloons : for here was room, and company, a good
story, a book of travels, books which our parents bought us
with much self-denial, books which we bprrowed, books from
the school library, books bought out of our own earnings. I
remember we boys clubbed our savings one fall, and bought
' Kane's Arctic Expedition ' for winter reading. We had out
our maps ; we all read the book, parents and all ; we talked of
it at the table; every cold snap made it more vivid to us; we
got out our geographies ; we borrowed all we could get on the
subject of the North Seas. What paltry tavern would have
tempted us in comparison with those Northern wonders?
Whichever one knew the most about it was to own the book ;
but we all knew it so thoroughly that father could not decide
between us, and we gave it to mother for her birthday. But
what odds, all that was our mother's was ours ! "
"I remember," I said, "you children never destroyed your
books. And what scrap-books you used to make ! "
" Yes, indeed, we were taught to respect a book. Father told
us marvels of times before printing and of costly books. We
were trained to take care even of our toy books, to hand them
down for the happiness of our juniors; and as for the scrap-
books, mother thought children ought to grow up with books
to take naturally to loving them, so we cut out sheets of old
muslin, and pasted pictures and letters on them, indestructible
books for the babies — why my little year-old has one of them
now ! "
Well, that as I consider it is the secret of Cousin Ann's suc-
cess. She always began at the beginning, and faithfully built
up from that. She always felt that she was training her chil-
dren for ^& future, and that it did make a deal of difference what
they did when they were little.
196 THE COMPLETE HOME.
This is emphatically an Age of Books. Children will see a
deal of them as they go on in life. If you do not teach them to
choose and love good books, they will skim over bad ones just
enough to get poisoned by them. I think children should be
taught to love books. First, by always seeing them around
them, and by owning them from their earliest years. Second,
by being taught to respect them and take good care of them :
a little child should not be permitted to destroy books. For
very little children, indestructible cloth books, bought or home-
made, are the best thing that they can have. Third, they
should be taught to love books and use them, by giving them
books which they can enjoy — child's books, toy books, so thej
are pure and genial in matter and manner. We should sympa
thize with the child's love of the impossible, of the marvellous,
the amusing. " Fairy Tales," and " Mother Goose," the dear
old toy books of " Dame Crumb," and " Mother Hubbard," and
" Jack, the Giant-Killer," and " Red Riding Hood," are a part
of the blissful inheritance of childhood.
With what tender love does Hugh Miller in his " Schools and
Schoolmasters " speak of his first library, kept in a " nine-inch
square birch-bark box." Here he had "Aladdin ; or. The Won-
derful Lamp," " Sinbad, the Sailor," "Jack and the Bean-Stalk,"
" Beauty and the Beast." " And by these I passed on, without
being conscious of break or line of division, to books on which
the learned are content to write commentaries and dissertations,
but which I found to be quite as nice children's books as any
others." So Dickens adds his testimony in his " Recollections
of My Christmas-Tree : " " Jack Beanstalk — how noble, with his
sword of sharpness and his shoes of swiftness! Little Red
Riding Hood comes to me one Christmas-Eve to give me infor-
mation of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling Wolf
which ate her Grandmother! She was my first-love. Hushl
Nov not Robin Hood, not Valentine, not the Yellow Dwarf: I
LITERATURE IN THE HOME. 197
have passed him and all Mother Bunch's wonders without men-
tion; but an Eastern King, with glittering scimitar and turban.
It is the setting in of the bright 'Arabian Nights.' Oh, now all
common things become uncommon and enchanted to me! "
Children cannot always be reading what we are pleased to
call useful books. They have their place, but they are a part, and
not the whole. And how do we know that these crude and
embryonic books do not have their own great use and fitness,
assimilating with the child's crude and embryonic powers?
Children should have Sabbath books. The Bible should have its
stories pointed out for their reading. Give the young child the
Bible : he stumbles on the tenth chapter of Genesis, invaluable
to Science ; upon a Psalm which, to the old tried heart, is as
water from Bethlehem's Well, or on marvellous Hebrews, or
knotty Romans, or the genealogical chapters in Chronicles, and
he says in his heart that it is a terribly dull, hard book; and
how can you expect him to like it? How can you, indeed?
Why did you not give him that marvel tale of Samson, or that
sweet romance of Ruth, or the wonder-book of Jonah on the
sea, or the thrilling episodes in the life of Daniel, or the pathetic
history of Joseph, or, best of all, the story of a Babe in a
manger? He had a right to know what God put there/or him;
to read of the dead girl raised to life, and the young man
Kitting upon his bier, or the prodigal who came to himself
There is no child who will not hungrily take to " Pilgrims'
Progress." Buy a handsome copy, with plenty of pictures of
Pilgrim armed, of the giants, of great Apollyon " straddling quite
over the way," of lions, of the four boys, of Captain Greatheart
slaying robbers. Keep this glorious book for Sundays, and
instead of a fretting after " to-morrow," and a restlessness and
riot, the child will wish two Sundays came in a week. So there
is the story of the Holy War to captivate the heart of old or
voimg. Plenty of good Sunday reading can and should be
198 THE COMPLETE HOME.
found ; stories of missionary heroism, tales of Huguenot, Covft
nanter and Waldensian, lives well told of the champions of Chris-
tendom, of Luther, full of force and fire, of Knox, unknown to
fear, of zealous Calvin and tender Melancthon. Plenty is there
of attractive and worthy, without being reduced to buy the
moral dish-water trash, about good boys who stole apples, oi
maidens who wind off yards of moral sentiments, and end by
making a splendid marriage.
As the children grow older the toy-books yield to histories,
travels, explorations, and the fairy tales of science. Give them
books on insects, on birds, on flowers, on shells, and they will
learn to keep their eyes open, and compare what they see with
what they read. This reminds me of Helen's little Tom. She
sent him to school to keep him out of mischief, and he learned
to read. He might possibly have fallen into a ruinous line of
dime novels and flash papers, had not Hester made up her mind
that Tom had a taste for natural sciences. To her father's
private horror, she took Tom home with her for a week, and
mtroduced him to the museum, and then as he wanted a museum,
and said his three younger sisters tore up all his things, Hester
presented him with a mite of a room behind her laundry, where
he was to put up shelves and make a museum. Mr. Nugent
took Tom out on some of his long tramps, made in connection
with his scientific writing, and Tom astounded his father with a
demand for " money to buy books about bugs and things."
Frank, glad to have the child interested, gave him the money to
lay out under Hester's supervision, and I really believe the
youngster's newly acquired fondness for natural science will be
the making of him. We all of us save for him any interesting
fact or anecdote connected with the theme which he is pursuing.
How many boys there are who could be brought off the streets,
and out of demoralizing society and vicious readings by having
their minds turned to some subject of interest, having books
LITERATURE IN THE HOME. I99
suited to some taste which they develop, and finding that their
own interests and ideas are worthy of the attention of grown
people !
This last winter we had in our village a Literary Society, com-
posed of young and old from the village and county round.
The Wintons, the Burrs, my three nieces, Cousin Ann's two
married sons and their wives, Sarah, Mary Watkins and her
husband, and others. It was very enjoyable; we read; we talked
on subjects started by our reading; we purchased a few volumes
in partnership ; we took a magazine ; we had essays on important
themes. One of these was by Hester, on the subject of —
WHAT TO READ.
Of all the influences about us in the present age, perhaps none is so
largely educative as that of reading : the press even distances the pul-
pit in its control over the minds of men ; the paper and the pamphlet
go where the pastor and preacher cannot find their way. At every
street corner, and a dozen times along every block of houses, the
written word appears to the eye. The child from its cradle is sur-
rounded with some kind of literature. Our education, whether we
will or not, goes on with all the growing years, and is in them chiefly
remitted to ourselves. And we shall find when all the years are tol-d,
that nothing has so moulded and fashioned our inner lives — so made
us what in the end we shall be — as reading.
Read we must and will ; it is the passion of the present age. And
here come up certain questions: What to read? What not to read?
When to read? How to read? "Why, we all know that!" say
Thomas and Bertha. Dearly beloved, I doubt it ; it is also even to
be doubted whether your respected parents have considered it a grand
part of their duty to give you careful instruction on these points.
"Read, Thomas, or you will be considered a fool," says father.
"Bertha, why rt'^ you read such trash?" says mother. Or, when'
Thomas and Bertha are fourteen or fifteen, the parents take the matter
in hand, and begin to form the young people's taste. Alas ! they have
seen and read books now for years, and their taste is pretty well
formed, or deformed, already.
What to read ? We say nothing now of the Inspired Book — but
answer : Let the first reading be of History ; this lays in the mind a
solid foundation of thinking, judging, and comparing; history belongs
200 THE COMPLETE HOME.
to the domain of the true, and as truth is fundamental to all that ia
good and worthy of possessing, history should be read, not merely
until the mind is in possession of certain facts, but until it has gained
a bent for sound reading. A young child, given historic reading from
its first acquaintance with books, will always love that reading, and
develop a literary taste : those whose taste has been vitiated so that
they " dislike history," can restore the natural taste for the true by a
faithful course of twelve months' historic reading.
Next after history, you should read Biography. You have read of
great events, and mighty world-changes : read now of their actors.
Happy the child to whom somewise parent has given "Plutarch's
Lives!" Read the lives of heroes, literati, philosophers, philan-
thropists, those masters of the world, who have made history by the
out-living of their individualities.
And now when you read of the vicissitudes of the world, and of
the inhabitants of the world, you need to know much of the world
itself. Its zones and its productions, its tempests, its harvests, its
convulsions, its sterility, have done much to make or mar the fortunes
of its children. Read travels. Oh, glorious possibilities opened to us
in books of travel ! We follow Kan,e into Northern seas ; we rush
with Irving along the untrodden West ; we plunge with Livingstone
into tne heart of Africa ; we march through grim Kamtschatka ; we
luxuriate in fair islands of the Southern Main. China opens to us its
immense domain, and its singular promise. India reveals worlds of
mystery. Along the sands of Arabia, and in stony deserts, we follow
where once moved a pillar of cloud and flame. Tell me, are you so
depraved in taste as not to enjoy travels ?
Twin to this line of reading stands the literature of exploration.
The earth no longer hides her dead cities: Pompeii and Nineveh,
Karnak and Babylon, Mycenje and Heliopolis ; Sicily and Syria and
Etruria give up the story of the past. Believe me, it is more interest-
ing than Mrs. Southworth or the "Ladies' Journal of Fashion!"
And now, lest all this solid reading make you plodding, and your
mental motion cumbersome, sit at the feet of the world's earliest and
sweetest teachers, the poets. Do not try at first Chaucer, Spenser, or
Milton : to understand them well, to take them to your heart, you
must have read the traditionary lore of Persia and Arabia, and Italy
and Greece, the fairy tales of Saxon lands. Read Tennyson, and
Longfellow, and Bryant and Jean Ingelow, and Whittier and Words-
worth — and — but time would fail to tell of Campbell and Coleridge
and Scott, and many more — and after these you can rise to the sub-
limer heights of Shakespeare and Milton, and the elder two.
LITERATURE IN THE HOME. 201
Thus, by easy and blissful steps, you will find your mind fitted for
Rie serene plains of critical thought, where dwell the greater essp.yists
' — and you can read Lamb and Addison and Macaulay, and many
more who will fascinate you by the harmony of their speech, the just-
ness, quaintness, and beauty of their thought. Now the mind is well
in training, and it enters lovely avenues open on every side, the walks
of the world of science, and reads of the wonders of the flower,' the
treasures of the sea, and the stories of the stones, and the marvels of
insect life, the romance of the birds of the air.
But in all this where is the story, the novel, the delight of modern
yuuth? Youth should stand on the threshold of manhood and
womanhood, having read something of each of these many things,
before the novel is reached. And now, at last, when history has
given you truth as a basis of judgment, when biography has instructed
you in human nature, and travels have taught you in scenery, and
poetry has moulded you in sentiment, and criticism has guided you
in discernment, now you are at last able to reject the bad and
choose the good, you will find your book your Mentor, not your
Circe ; take then the hand of the masters in the novel, and enter
the charmed circle of romance. Read few novels by fewer authors,
ivnd read these often. Don't make friends with the whole throng of
light literature specimens ; take the books of the great brains, the
criterions of novel-writing; take the novels that are prose epics —
the kind that in your unread childhood you would have dashed down
as dry ! Why not mention the magazines and the weekly journals ?
Simply because these genii of our firesides include in themselves, in
their best varieties, all the departments of reading that we have
described.
But hark you : there is one Book which is alone a library in
itself. He who has not read and re-read the English Bible knows
nothing of English literature. There is history, there lie biography,
and travels, and philosophy, and poetry, and depths of science, and
sweetest romances of youth and love and adventure, that have the
added glory of being true. This Bible is a standard of pure taste ;
it is a measure and model of the English tongue ; more than any-
thing else that has been written it permeates all literature ; if we
fail to read it, to study it, to possess it — then fairest similes, and
choicest allusions, and aptest quotations in poet and essayist and
novelist and historian fall unapprehended upon our stupid brains.
And I mention this to you simply as an intellectual point, without
referring to the fact that here flow, as in a blessed fountain, the
Mfe- currents of the soul.
202 THE COMPLETE HOME.
We were all greatly pleased with this little essay, and we
began at once to discuss what copies we possessed of such
books as we had been recommended to read, or how far we had
already pursued the line of reading indicated. We had oui
meeting that evening out at Fred's farm-house, and Fred sug-
gested that Hester had scarcely dwelt as she might on the need
of reading in the line of our business or work. Fred thought
that much of the reading of each person who has a business
should be about that business. He must read other things for
rest, recreation, or general information ; but he must read mainly
in the line of his own duties. A lawyer should read law, histories
of famous cases, the eloquent speeches and pleas of famous
counsellors and pleaders, the biographies of the leaders of his
profession. So the physician, and the minister, and the artist
must read in their own line ; so the merchant should read of
commerce, manufactures, of leading merchants, and learn by
their failure and success. The farmer must read books on
farming, on soils, on fowls, domestic animals, horticulture.
Fred thought he had made or saved hundreds of dollars by
b.uying books on these subjects, subscribing for magazines or
journals, and taking and reading the daily and weekly papers.
He showed us four scrap-books, begun when he was a boy — one
marked Grains, another Fruit, another Flowers and Vegetables,
and the last Fowls. In these, each subject was alphabetically
divided, and in each division he put down items cut from maga-
zines or papers on that subject. He said that they were inval-
uable to him, and also a great help to his farm-hands, who read
them and availed themselves of the hints therein contained. " I
don't follow all I read," said Fred ; " I use my judgment and
experience ; nor would I like a fool decry ' book-farming,' because
now-a-days all that is worth knowing has got into print, and he
who does anything worth the doing is following, whether he
knows it or not, what is contained somewhere in a book."
LITERATURE IN THE HOME. 203
Among those younger members of the society who took an
especial interest in what Hester had asserted to be proper read
ing were Mrs. Black's two younger children, Thomas and his
sister Belinda. They said they had never heard anything of the
kind before ; that the reading advised was not at all what they
had pursued, and they meant to make an entire change. Their
frank interest pleased Hester, and she invited them to come and
see her library, and she also offered to help them make out a
book-list. Her husband, Dr. Nugent, said privately to hei that
they quite as much needed an Index Expurgatcrius, and that
she should expound to them what not to read. Whether i' was
because of this hint, or of our young friends' innumerable ques-
tions, I cannot tell ; but Hester did write them a letter on What
Not to Read, and they were much pleased with it and brought
it for me to see. It ran thus :
Dear Thomas and Bei^nda:
It was my examination of your book-shelves, my glance at the
volumes in your hands last evening, my look at the centre-table where
your favorite works lie, that impelled me to write to you about whal
not to read. The press, dear children, has, like other good things,
been largely subsidized by the devil. One tells 'you to read poetry,
and then there are poets, as Byron and Swineburn, whom you should
not read ; and Burns, for part of whose works you will be better, for
part worse. Some novels are our teachers, some our ' destroyers ;
history is commended to you, and some histories are written in the
interests of superstition, infidelity, or vice. What shall you do?
Let us have a few rules for our guidance, that we may not gather
poisons, nor flowers and fruit whereof worms have eaten out the
heart.
Doubtless we never forget : we may think that we forget, but, as in
the palimpsest, the successive writings are only overlaid : they remain
and may start into clearness. The mind is a phonograph which shall
keep and echo the impressions of the past. Books form in us habits
of thought which shall live forever with us. Then if oar reading is
to terminate on the useless or the dangerous, it will be a thousand
pities that we ever learned to read.
To begin, then : never read that which, instead of adding to^ takes
204 THE COMPLETE HOME.
from your mental or spiritual strength. Do not let your reading be
a succession of examples in subtraction, but in addition to your
inner life. Never read a book that robs you of earnestness, nor of
that high quality of reverence, without which there can be no truly
elevated character. Never read anything which in one whit robs you
oi purity, for it is only the pure in heart who shall see God, Never
read what you are ashamed to be seen reading ; the instinct to hidt
is your heart's own sentence of condemnation. But even what is
suitable to read at one time is unsuitable at another. Thus you are at
school, and you are pursuing daily a certain line of studies. There-
fore, my children, when you refresh your minds by reading, you should
read in the line of your studies. Let us suppose that you are old
enough, and well cultivated enough to read Thackeray, or George
Elliot, or William Black ; yet if you read these in term time, they
fascinate and distract your mind from your scholarly duties. Leave,
therefore, these books for vacation, and during the school months
read history, travels, biography, science. Let the poetry and the
romance go until the holiday.
Do not on Sabbath read those secular books that may be lawful on
other days. Read on the holy day those works which shall help you
in the holy life. Don't beguile yourself, Belinda, with a religious
viovel, a piece of namby-pamby stuff, which shall not only bring you
no nigher heaven on Sunday, but shall unfit you to study logic on
Monday. No moral dish-water for you, my children ! Consider also
that the morning finds us with the impressions of the night before.
So do not let us close with reluctance at midnight on Saturday some
entrancing book that we would not read on Sabbath; its image will
be projected on our minds during many of the sacred hours, fore-
stalling other and higher impressions. Be heedful also never to read
v/hat is popularly called "stuff" or poor writing, even though it may
have no evil inculcations, or possibly may aim at a certain moral
bearing. There is plenty of good writing, standard writing, to be
found for the asking, and a production of low literary character
weakens the mind. Do not, like " Silas Wegg " and " Mr. Venus,'
indulge in "floating your powerful minds on tea." Fix it firmly in
your brains that the Bible is the measure of excellence ; that the
Creator of the mind produced a book exactly suited for the nurture
Df the mind. And, therefore, carefully eschew every work that
openly or covertly depreciates the Scriptures ; whether it cavils at the
inspirations, or the statements, or the doctrines of the Bible, when-
ever // cavils do you condemn and drop it. Some works cry " Hail,
LITERATURE IN THE HOME. 205
Master ! " on the first page, give a Judas-kiss on tlie second, and on
the third you see the shadow of the Roman officers looming behind.
Keep your eyes open to danger; don't be lured on hidden rocks by
sirens' songs. The easy faith of youth says : " a book? then a good."
Not always; it may be, in its " Sunday-best" green, blue or gold, a
garb of light; but look warily: if there is a cloven foot under tb<-
blue, or a tail peeping out behind, drop it.
Don't read from curiosity what good people have condemned.
Did you say, Thomas, that you had heard the book was not good,
but you wanted to read for yourself, and see if it were bad, and how
it was bad? This is not a brave judgment trying all things; this is
curiosity and a mean love of evil. Better trust these other people who
condemn ; they were made before you were. I do not know that you
are so eager to,try if arsenic and vitriol are dangerous, and how they
are dangerous. We show our best judgment, my children, by taking
some things on trust. The world is wide, and we cannot investigate
everything ; a caterpillar on a grape-leaf can investigate the whole of
his domain, but the eagle cannot try every field of air. And lastly
don't read everything you see, in an insane desire to be called a great
reader; be rather a thorough, careful reader. Don't read anything
just because you "happened to pick it up," but read what there is a
reasonable prospect of finding worth reading.
Your Friend, Hester Nugent.
At our next meeting of the Literary Society, which at this
time was held at Helen's, an interesting discussion arose as to
when to read. It happened to be started by the Blacks, who had
usually been silent members of the band. Mrs. Winton is sec-
retary, and in reading the report of the last meeting she gave a
brief resume of Hester's essay. This, when the evening was
open for discussions, led to the following appeal to Hester, from,
the youngest Miss Black :
" You have given me," says Belinda, with a little pout, " such
an enormous amount of reading to do, and now I should just
like to know when I am ever to accomplish it. My day has only
twenty-four hours in it, and half of them are night."
" Exactly, my Belinda ; I was on the very point of telling you
When to Read." said Hester, smiling. " Make a habit of read
14
206 THE COMPLETE HOME.
ing, and read whenever you can. Count that day lost when some
moments have not been snatched for reading; and you will
find this snatching for moments a greater thing than it seems at
first sight. After any period of years, if you look back, you will
find that much of your most valuable reading has been done at
desultory moments, when you might have done nothing at all.
Let me be practical : you go to call upon a friend ; you find that
she will see you ' in a few minutes.' Don't waste that few min-
utes — they may grow to ten — in looking at your gloves or
poking your parasol-top into the carpet, but take a book. All
parlors should have books in them, and light enough by at least
one window to see to read them. A bookless parlor is a howl-
ing wilderness ; books — standard books — are more important in
furnishing a parlor than card-baskets, vases and knick-knacks of
all sorts. Take up a book while you wait, and spend your time
in reading. Perhaps your book is a blue-and-gold Tennyson;
and in that waiting space you have laid up a jewel in memory's
treasures.
"' I hold it truth with him who sings
To one sweet harp of divers tones.
That men may rise on stepping stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
" ' But who can so forecast the years,
Or find in grief a joy to match.
Or reach a hand through time to catch
The far-off interest of tears ? '
Or possibly, some one has left 'Trench's Study of Words'
within reach, and you can set your brain at work upon the far-
reaching proposition, that ' language is fossil history.' "
Here Hester paused, feeling that she was occupying too much
time, but there was a unanimous cry for her to proceed with the
discussion of this question. It was held by Mrs. Burr that it
was the very theme belonging to the evening, and likely to be
the most useful. And as Hester was still reluctant, it was
cnoved, seconded and voted that fifteen minutes were to be spent
LITERATURE IN THE HOME. 207
in hearing Mrs. Nugent explain When to Read. As she could
no longer decline with a good grace, Hester proceeded, still
addressing herself to Belinda Black.
"Again suppose, Belinda, that you are ready to go out walk,
ing, and somebody keeps you waiting. Now, if you have the
habit of reading, instead of drumming on the window, and char
acterizing 'somebody' as 'horrid,' you look for that friend,
that ' other self,' of all spare moments, a book ; and if by chance
it is a volume of Jean Ingelow, for poets come most easily to
hand in odd hours, and you read one of that sweet singer's
dainty bits of still-life painting — of brown butterflies wavering
over beds of golden-rod, of dappled shadows flitting over daisy-
broidered meads, of flushes of purple heather on a sunny rise,
then you go out to walk with eyes awakened to beauty, and
heart in harmony with nature, alert to catch the loveliness of
flower-set waysides, of lichen-spotted rocks, of vines rioting over
gray fences. If perchance you might have indulged in folly or
gossip, now you, ' in the love of Nature, hold communion with
her visible forms.' Have this habit of reading, and you will not
suffer your mind to be engrossed with trifles. If reading
becomes a second nature to you, a thing without which you can-
not live, you will not permit your time to be so taken up bead-
ing jackets, or braiding cloaks, or embroidering handkerchiefs —
things which in ten years will be forgotten or remembered only
as ridiculous — that you have no time for gathering into your
own life the garnered treasures of those intellectual kings, who
have been ruling it in the world of thought since time began.
More than any other, this habit of reading can make us happy
and independent, and it goes far in saving us from being swept
away in a round of folly, which we name ' fashionable life.' "
" But, dear Belinda, do not consider that you have done your
whole duty as a reading person, when you pick up a book in
5pare moments. You must systematize your work and you/
208 ' THE COMPLETE HOME.
pleasures, so that you shall have solid hours for reading. Some
books, they are the weighty and valuable ones generally, will
not bear to be read in hasty snatches: you must devote to theii
perusal uninterrupted seasons. Morning hours are golden hours
for reading; the brain is fresh from sleep; the body is rested;
here let me say to you, my dear girl, that that day is ill spent
when the morning does not have some quiet space for reading,
your Bible, and for prayer; this sanctifies the day; it puts our
hours at interest with God, and then he makes them bring forth
with usury. Try by system in all your arrangements to get a
bright morning hour or two for reading. Evening is another
excellent opportunity; our work is done; nothing lies before us
but to seek our rest ; hurry and excitement are over for the
time being; with good print and a good light, here is a happy
space for reading. Be careful, then, that you do not make
engagements for every evening in the week ; keep one or two
for reading ; and here I would suggest that Saturday evening is
an especial time to use in the study of works bearing on the
Bible; jvork on the Sabbath-school lesson; read books or short
articles that explain it; let 'Biblical Geography' or 'Antiquities,'
'Josephus,' 'Rawlinson's Illustrations of the Old Testament,'
form your library for Saturday night.
" Try these rules for a year, Bertha, and no one will be as
surprised as yourself at the amount of reading v?hich you wil)
have been able to do, and no one will be so greatly benefited."
We were all well pleased with these observations.
Miriam said : " I have always found that m every day there
are more minutes , for reading than at first thought we should
expect. During the first two years of my housekeeping, I
snatched many minutes for reading while I was cooking my
dinner, I kept a book on the kitchen shelf, and 1 had a little
rocking-chair by the window, and could comfortably read -many
pages in time, which otherwise would have gone by idly. One
LITERATURE IN THE HOME. 209
ot' my neighbors greatly condemned this practice; she said I
would have under-doile beef, and watery potatoes, and burned
soup, if I allowed books in the kitchen, but her prophecy never
proved true. I asked her if she never baked a loaf of bread,
made a pot of soup, and ironed a shirt all at the same time. She
admitted that she did-, but said that was not a parallel case. I
could not keep dinner and books in mind, as well as ironing
and dinner. But I knew I could."
I was in hopes when we started our Literary Society that it
would have a good effect upon us all ; that it would destroy
gossip and slander, by giving us useful and popular subjects of
conversation ; that it would encourage studiousness and love of
reading in the young; substitute improving for frivolous pleas-
ures, and animate our young mothers to instruct their own
minds, ana so become more valuable teachers for their children,
more companionable wives, and more intelligent hostesses. I
have not been disappointed in my expectations ; I find an interest
awakening in sound, standard literature, a desire to improve
time, and a new contempt for vapid or flashy reading. Helen
js waking up very much to the need and advantage of reading.
She invited Hester and myself to spend an afternoon with her,
and she and Hester had some improving conversation as to How
,0 Read. I shall set down the principal points which Hester
;nade on this subject
Helen said : " I have been trying, Hester, to put into practice
what you suggested about snatching time for reading. I feel
myself slipping behind the age, knowing little of current topics
or new discoveries: a dull entertainer for my husband, and un-
able to answer a tenth part of my children's questions. So I
am resolved to read more, and with my household cares I must
do it by snatches. Now how shall I tuni these odd moments
for reading to good account ? I read, and it does not profit me
weiy much: I forget I read, and then what I read runs out of
210 THE COMPLETE HOME.
my mind like water out of a sieve. What am I to do? How
shall I read?"
"Helen, my dear," said Hester, "you are an admirable pupil;
you hear, and obey, and develop new problems for yourself.
Let me give you two or three short rules concerning how to
read. Merely to hold a book and assort in your mind certain
letters is not reading.
" First : read with fixed attention. If you are only reading for
five minutes, be capable for that five minutes of being completely
absorbed in what you peruse. If you are reading while you are
waiting for dinner, do not read wondering ' why that bell don't
ring,' or whether the roast will be beef or lamb. If you are
reading, because you have a habit of reading and carry a book
in your pocket, at your dressmaker's, while you are waiting for
her to fit your next gown, don't read, let us say, Irving, on the
' Royal Poet of Scotland,' and muse with half your mind whether
the dressmaker will cut your train long enough, your sleeves
tight enough, and your basque a proper shape. Read while you
read; let whatever your mind applies itself to be seized with so
firm a grasp that thenceforth it is a part of itself. School your-
self in this : all good habits are the result of persistent discipline.
Let us say that you read for ten minutes, in ' Rawlinson's Man-
ual,' on the subject of Phoenicia. You close the book; you
have no realizing sense of those old Phoenicians; they are to
you hardly a name. Open again your book; apply yourself
again for ten minutes to those same pages, and if you must
renew that process for ten consecutive days, be resolute enough
to continue it; and when at last those fathers of ancient mariners,
with their line of seaboard cities, the busy trade of Zidon, the
splendid merchant-kings of Tyre, the glory of Carthage hum-
ming with its industries, are yours, an inalienable mental prop-
erty, you will have learned how to conquer inattention, you will
have mastered your own mind, you will have acquired one
method of ruling your spirit.
LITERATURE IN THE HOME. 211
" To read is not merely to run the eye over certain combina-
tions of the alphabet : to read is to take a book and be so attent
upon it that it becomes your own mental property. You can
analyze it, reason upon it, add to it from other sources, make it
part of yourself
" Learn all you can about the authors whose books you read:
this will give you a vital interest in your books, and help them to
become your friends. Read with sympathy. Throw yourself
into the age and race of which you read, make the past present^
and the distant near ; become, for the time being, part of what
you are reading. Do not take up the ' Canterbury Tales ' and
read it with the pervading sense of a modern rocking-chair, an
anthracite fire, a new dress with knife-pleatings on the upper
ikirt, and the near approach of a modern dinner. But let the
opening of the book be as the chariots of Amminadab, carrying
you back to England's brawling transition age, Becket's tomb a
real shrine, the journey thither a giant undertaking and beset
with real dangers; hear that burly miller drunk and piping; see
the pale scholar, with his Lollard faith, peep under the hood of
the pretty prioress, a flirt in holy orders ; laugh with the coarse,
vain, good-natured wife of Both ; behold the Taberd Inn, its sign
a knight's wrought cloak, its table deal-boards laid on trestles,
its guest-room the great kitchen, with a fire roaring up the
chimney, and the joint roasting before it on the spit.
" If you read of Italy, let go your hold on bustling, modern
America with its practicalities, and drift away to Tuscan olive
slopes and purple vineyards, hills veiled in a blue haze, silver-
threaded Arno sliding seaward, and the great, blue Mediterra-
nean embracing all. Read with sympathy, and you will read
well. If a work is not worth the trouble of studying sympa
thetically its age, its race, its author and its subject-matter, then
it is not worth the trouble of reading.
•' Have also a habit of turning over in your mind and review-
212 THE COMPLETE HOME.
ing your mental treasures. You come upon some striking
thought in Macaulay, and you recall how Froude, or Burton,
or Bancroft, or Motley, illustrated the Same thought, or referred
to the same period. From what fountain-head did the poet
draw this draught of elixir? Take the trouble to compare, to
criticise, to generalize ; feel when you are reading anything
that you are your own steward, and that you will call yourself
to account some day for these precious things that you are
putting in trust.
" Don't be discouraged, Helen, if you forget, and if you can-
not comprehend, and if you mingle things which do not belong
together. If I am not mistaken, you learned to sew by picking
out and ' doing over' many a long seam. Oh, that doing over!
How vexatious it was ! But it was the parent of all those
beautiful dexterously set stitches, which now make you a pattern
seamstress. And so, child, go over your reading. Time is not
lost if you go over and over again the same thing, if it is a thing
worth the going over, and if you are acquiring good mental
habits, which shall hereafter make one reading enough."
These various suggestions as to how to read were called forth
one after another by Helen's inquiries and remarks ; but as
they furnish, as a whole, a good set of rules for reading in a
manner to improve, I have set them solidly together.
The more I consider the subject, the more am I struck with
the important part which books play in our lives.
I was reading lately a -work by Hugh Miller, and I was
especially impressed by his remark, that he had found among
his fellow-workmen that few men who knew how to read
became criminals or paupers as compared with the men who did
not know how to read ; while he could recall almost no instance
in which a man, who was fond of good reading, became either a
criminal or a pauper. This is a very strong testimony to the
morally preservative power of reading, and should encourage
LITERATURE IN THE HOME. 213
parents to provide their children Hberally with proper, useful
and entertaining books, even if to do this they must work
harder, or give them plainer clothes. I have long made a
practice of choosing books for my holiday and birthday gifts
to my little friends. How much they are to be preferred to
noisy toys ! Their effect upon the child is better, they are
more comfortable in the household, and a well-taught child will
keep them to add to the happiness of its younger brothers and
sisters.
The moulding influence of books upon our minds is illus-
trated by some remarks yf Dr. Guthrie's about the Book of
Proverbs. In speaking of education among the Scotch in his
childhood, he remarks:
"Having learned our letters and some small syllables, we
were at once passed into the Book of Proverbs. In crfden time
this was the universal custom in all the common schools in
Scotland: a custom that should never have been abandoned.
That book is without a rival for beginners, containing quite a
repertory of monosyllables, and pure Saxon-English undefiled.
. . While learning the Art of Reading by the Book of Proverbs,
Vve had our minds stored with the highest moral truths, and by
f r.ge advices applicable to all ages and departments in life ; the
mind while it was supple received a bent in a direction largely
favorable to future well-doing and success. The patience,
prudence, forethought and economy which used to characterize
Scotchmen — giving occasion to the saying, 'a canny Scot' — by
which they were able so often to rise in the world, and distance
competitors in the race of life, were, to a large extent, due to their
being thus ingrained in youth and childhood with the practical
wisdom enshrined in the Book of Proverbs."
The high testimony thus given to the permanently moulding
and impressing effect of the study of this inspired Book of
Proverbs could in a measure be borne to all good books, In
214 THE COMPLETE HOME.
them we come in contact with good deeds, good men and noble
thoughts; we are taught to study understandingly the works
of God ; good moves on in them before us to perfect consum-
mation, and evil is portrayed in its course to shame, loss and
sorrow; we learn to choose the good, and eschew the evil.
I have heard the morality and thrift of the Icelanders attributed
in a large measure to their love of books. Each family owns a
few volumes which are read and re-read, and passed from hand
to hand. They are a reading people. Their long, cold winters
afford almost unbroken time for cultivation of their minds, and
the result is a simple, studious, laborious, contented people. In
travelling in this country, I have noticed that those working-
people of our foreign population, especially among miners who
are given to books and study, live better, have better houses,
clothes and position in society, than those who spend their
leisure time in gossip or amusements. The Welsh have nearly
all of them a taste for reading, and a shelf of books in their own
houses. The young people are trained to read in their leisure
hours, and to take part in their yearly Eisteddfodds, or Literary
Exhibitions ; and along with this taste for books you find the
Welsh miner well dressed, gentlemanly in his manners, pos-
sessor of bank-stock, and owner of his Home.
I picked up, this morning, a " Life of Seneca," and noted this
remark of his, concerning the education of children : " I would
prove to you what eager impulses our little scholars would have
toward all that is good, if any one would lead them on." What
is a better Leader in a good way than a good book ? The child
reads in silence : the eye conveys information to us even more
impressively than the ear. The child reads his book again and
again ; the story or the lesson is upon the page, unchangeable
in its form, to be referred to, reasoned upon, until it becomes a
part of the mind itself I was conversing the other day with
Mrs. Winton on the subject of choosing books for our families
She remarked:
LITERATURE IN THE HOME. 215
" The little Aphis upon a leaf fills itself and grows like that on
which it feeds : so the mind, especially the young mind, fastens
upon its books, and they become part and parcel of itself Now-
a-days man might be described as a ' reading animal.' Our chil ■
dren are born into a world full of printed matter : sooner or later
they are bound to read. If we do not attract the child toward
books by giving him those that are interesting, if we do not form
his taste for the pure and good in literature, he will, by-and-by,
be wheedled by strangers into reading dime novels and flash
papers, and what they call in England ' penny dreadfuls.' We
must inculcate sound doctrine concerning reading; we must
follow up this teaching by watching carefully over our children's
reading : it is a subject worthy our diligent investigation. A
child's temptations are many and greater than we in oiir middle-
aged assurance realize. Satan is prompt enough to sow evil
reading, illustrated with startling pictures, to beguile the mind
and corrupt the taste. We must also remember the homely
saying that ' an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,'
and that a full cup cannot be filled fuller. From our children's
first Primers we must set ourselves to create in them a sound
and healthful taste that would loathe all poisons of the mind.
So, before long, as Plato tells us, the child ' praises and rejoices
over the good, and receives it into his soul, and becomes also
noble and good. He will justly blame and hate the bad now in
the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the. reason
of the thing; and when reason comes, he will recognize and
salute virtue as a friend with whom his education has long made
him acquainted.' "
Mrs. Burr, who was sitting with us, remarked :
"At this day it is easy to provide reading matter of a good
kind for our families. Books and magazines are abundant and
very cheap. Postage on printed matter is low, and publishers
will generally send their books by mail, post-paid. Expressage
216 THE COMPLETE HOME.
is carried in most parts of the country at a reasonable rate;
bookstores are established in all our towns and large villages,
while the extended publication of subscription-books now brings
numbers of our most important and valuable works to every
man's door. A very little self-denial in laying up a fund to pur-
chase such of these books as will be improving and attractive
to the whole family-circle, and useful to each one's especial
business, would be the means of furnishing the Home with varied
and useful reading, assuring its good taste and refinement,
promoting its comfort and its economies, making its older mem-
bers at once wise and genial, its juniors intelligent and contented,
its servants capable and respectable. A Home without books
is like a garden without flowers, like a forest without birds or
sunshine, like a house without furniture. Out of bookless homes
go the majority of the criminals, paupers, vagrants, maniacs and
chronic invalids, because the Home well supplied with books
has inmates whose leisure is well occupied, and not idle time for
Satan to fill with mischief; their minds are well stored, and not
left open to preying fancies to drive them mad, or to evil entice-
ments to make them wicked. They are people who know what
to do to keep themselves well or to cure themselves when ill ;
people who have learned how to practise economies to save
their money, and activities to earn more of it ; people who have
learned, from the records of the wide observation of many
intelligent writers, the consequences of things, the results of
diverse courses of conduct, and so do not dash heedlessly on
to ruin, but find guide-posts to point them on their way to
success in the Books in their Homes."
CHAPTER IX.
ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME.
/ViJNT SOPHRONIA's VIEWS OF PRESENCE OF MIND AND COURAGE
' N looking over the volumes of my yearly journals, I find
frequent mention made of accidents that have occurred
in the neighborhood, and among my acquaintance, and
of the way in which these have been met. These
■accidents are forever happening, generally as the result of care-
lessness or ignorance, but sometimes owing to circumstances
over which no one has control, and for which no one is to blame.
There is no family but may in any hour, either as a whole or in
one of its members, be brought into deadly peril. It is then a
serious question : are we cultivating in ourselves a frame of mind
v/hich shall enable us to meet these mischances and conquer
them? This power over accidents which renders us victors in
imminent dangers is called Presence of Mind. The phrase is
suggestive : it denotes a mind at home in all its powers — wits
which are not off, as people say, " wool-gathering," but which
are ready to act promptly ; a mind which does not greet danger
as some people wake up, dazed and stupid, and taking a long
while to know where they are, or what they are about. When,
a person lacks Presence of Mind, the appearance of danger, of
need, puts part of their minds to flight. They might but now
have been reasonable beings with all their faculties alert, but on
the appearance of trial, reason, courage, hope, skill, and quick
ness of thought fly from them, terror takes the reins and drives
like Phaeton in the chariot of the sun, overturning all things
(217)
218 THE COMPLETE HOME.
Of this excellent quality, Presence of Mind, Dr. John Brown, of
Edinburgh, speaks thus : " Men have done some signal feat ol
presence of mind, and if asked how they did it, they do no*
know — they just did it. It was in fact done and then thought
of, not thought of and then done : in which case it would never
have been done at all. It is one of the highest powers of the
mind thus to act. It is done by an acquired instinct!' Here it
is not intended that in performing feats of Presence of Mind one
does not think, for these feats are the product of the most just
and logical thinking, which grasps at once an entire situation;
but the thinking is done with electric speed, so swiftly that one
is unconscious of its process. To act with Presence of Mind in
danger, requires in the first place courage, because v/ithout that,
fear will paralyze our thinking and acting ; there must be no'
parleying with fear. In the next place a soundly trained reason
is required ; we must have accustomed ourselves to act logically
and with foresight ; hope, faith, and self-forgetfulness are also ele-
ments in Presence of Mind ; in fact all that is good in the mind
seems to be present and in active operation, and all that is evil
is held in abeyance. These good powers act so instantaneously
and so perfectly that they seem rather the exhibition, for the
instant, of an unerring instinct; but, as Dr. Brown says, it is an
" acquired instinct :" the product of mental training, of rigid self-
control, of a proper cultivation of our powers. Now it is true
that some people seem gifted with more natural Presence of
Mind than others ; that is, those high faculties which make up
presence of mind are in them naturally of more active operation ;
thus they have naturally more courage and greater calmness
and less fear and excitement ; they are more reasonable and less
emotional. But because a person does not originally possess a
good degree of Presence of Mind is no reason why he should
not acquire it. People do not argu? that because they were born
poor they must always be poor; but rather, that, not havinp
ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME. 219
inherited a fortune, they must with more industry set to work to
earn one. Every one should face the fact that he is morally
bound to have, and exhibit when needed, Presence of Mind;
because it may often happen that on the possession by him of
this quality, the life, or limb, or fortune of himself or his
neighbor may depend. A person of a responsible age, who sees
that he is wanting in a quality so valuable, should take shame
for the want, and then resolve to possess what he lacks; then
by cultivating courage, self-control and reasonable thought, by
resolutely repressing in emergencies, great or small, all excite-
ment and frenzy, he will become capable of acting wisely in any
difficulty.
I find a very false notion abroad, that, of course, men should
have presence of mind, and that without it they are cowards and
fit subjects of ridicule; but that it is vastly pretty for young ladies
to fall into a faint or a spasm of hysterics, or a state of insane
terror as soon as an occasion arises which demands a reason-
able exercise of their faculties. Young ladies make a virtue of
screaming at a spider; "having a chill at seeing a toad;" going
frantic at the sight of a wound, or of blood; boasting how
frightened they were at some trifle, and as soon as there is
some great emergency, when they should act, they become
helpless.
Mothers should feel it a very important part of the training
of their children to make them calm and reasonable in emer-
gencies, and helpful in accidents ; even young children can show
great presence of mind, and if this quality is to be seated firmly
in the mind, it should be cultivated from childhood. I remem-
ier when Mrs. Black's two youngest children were quite small
I called there, and it happened that a beetle was discovered
crawling on Belinda's apron; Mrs. Black screamed and made
ineffectual dashes at " the horrid bug," and Belinda howled like
a Comanche. I put the beetle out of the wmdow.
220 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" Dear Belinda is so sensitive," said Mrs. Black, proceeding to
pet her daughter ; " she is frantic at sight of a bug."
" I should prefer," I said, " to have her sensible, if sensitiveness
is to develop in that style. Is Tom also afraid of bugs?"
" Why, no : he's a boy" said Mrs. Black.
" But I cannot see if a bug is dangerous that it should show
my respect to his sex; if it is poisonous, it would poison him."
"Oh, it isn't poisonous, but — it looks so," said Mrs. Black.
" Well, has not Tom as good an eye for looks as his sister ?
If the bug is such a gorgon's head as to throw all beholders into
spasms, Tom should succumb, as well as Belinda. Excuse me,
Mrs. Black, I think the trouble is just here, that Belinda has
found out that you expect her to shriek at a ' bug,' and that you
regard it a genteel and praiseworthy act in her, quite becoming
an embryo lady; but Tom knows his boy-mates would laugh at
him soundly for such folly, and so shows common-sense. As
to the bug, it is not ugly at all : a beetle is beautiful." I saw
the beetle crawling on the window-ledge and took it in. "See
this shell ; the wing-covering is polished more highly than the
finest rosewood, and is of the exact aiir color which is now all
the rage; see how daintily these black spots are arranged upon
it; Belinda, look at its bright eyes; and this pair of curved claws
in' front of its mouth serve to seize and hold its food; pray, child,
what would you do without hands to hold your bread and but-
ter ? Look at its feet, with little prickly points to hold fast and
climb by; and see here, under these brown, shining shell wings
are a pair of flying wings, fine, delicate red silk, stretched on
tiny folding frames, as your fan on its sticks, or your parasol on
its wires. You could easily hurt it, if you were so cruel, but it
could not possibly hurt you. Now, touch its smooth back; now
put it out of doors."
Indeed, Belinda had become quite interested in the beetle,
and she has never feared one since ; but her training had culti-
ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME. 221
vated frantic screaming at all creatures of the kind, and this
came out quite to her mother's mortification soon after.
There was a wedding at our church, by far the most splendid
wedding ever in our town. We were all invited, and Mrs.
Black in all her glory occupied a front seat, with little Belinda,
flounced and ribboned wonderfully. In the very midst of the
ceremony, Belinda espied a caterpillar crawling up her dress-
waist. Instead of picking it off, or asking her mother to do so,
she gave vent to unearthly yells, which startled every one in the
church, and stopped for the time the marriage ceremony. Mrs.
Black, in high terror, turned to see what ailed Belinda; plucked
off the intruder, and placed her hand over the youngster's
mouth. All in vain; if it became a daintily-dressed little lady
to howl at caterpillars, Miss Belinda meant to howl thoroughly;
she kicked and shrieked, and was carried out of the church
purple in the face, and her mother'was too much overcome by
excitement and mortification to return to the wedding party,
while the whole town was full of condemnations of "that
dread<Ml child." Why dreadful ? She was acting as she had been
trained to act.
Who could expect a child behaving in this way at seven to
display at thirteen the Presence of Mind of a little girl I saw
near Niagara ? She had been left in charge of the opening to the
natural curiosity called the Devil's Hole. On the counter were
a few jars of candy; she had with her a child of two and a half;
the rear door of the shop opened upon a wide table-rock which
overhung the river, boiling perhaps a hundred feet below, over
its stony bed, in prodigious rapids. While the girl was receiving
the fees of a party about to descend the ladders at the right of
the rock, the little child escaped by the back-door. The party
gone, the young nurse saw the child running toward the verge
oi the rock; to call, or to pursue, would ensure its destruction;
she grasped a jar of candy, and shouting "candy!" poured it?
15
222 "^HE COMPLETE HOME.
contents out upon the rock. The child looked back; not six
feet from destruction it paused; could not resist the lavished
sweets, and came skipping back to share them ! Here was
a fine instance of Presence of Mind : the self-control which
repressed the dangerous call or pursuit; the reason which seized
the temptation strongest to the fugitive, which in a flash argued
:iut the dangers and the probabilities of the case, and acted on
the instant, when to delay would have been death.
Cousin Ann has always been careful to cultivate Presence of
Mind in her children. Once when Fred was small I was there,
and the door of the kitchen stove falling open, the coals rolled
out upon the floor and began to burn. Fred, about three years
old, began to scream. " Hush ! " said Cousin Ann, calmly ;
" put the fire out, and scream afterwards!' She put a little pail
of water into his hand, and made him pour it over the fire, and
then gather the quenched coals on a shovel and put them in the
hearth.
" It is true," she said, " that the floor is a little more burned
than if I had left Fred to shriek and had poured on the water
myself; but I have taught him how to put out a fire, and that
in emergencies it is better to act than to cry!'
I replied : " The course you took is better for many reasons,
as I have noticed that, in families where Presence of Mind is
cultivated, accidents are few: for the calm, reasonable courage
which can meet an accident wisely, is the quality which will
usually prevent their occurring."
Cousin Ann and myself were going from her house into town
one day walking, when, as we passed a neighbor's farm-house,
a woman rushed out, crying, " Murder ! Murder ! he's dying."
Cousin Ann dashed in, and I followed her. On a chair, just
within the door, sat a fine young man ; an axe lay beside him ;
the floor was covered with blood which spouted from his leg
just below the knee. He had drawn up his trowser-ieg over
ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME. 223
the knee, but nothing else had been done, and his face was
growing white as his life-blood poured away. On the instant
Cousin Ann snatched from the mother's waist her apron with
wide tape-strings, tore off a string, and proceeded to draw it
round the leg about an inch above the wound.
" Bring me a little stick, Sophronia! " she cried; and twisting
this under the tied tape, she turned it around so as to increase
the pressure and check the flow of blood.
In a moment or two the bleeding had stopped. The mother,
who had had presence of mind to do nothing but talk, wanted
to talk loudly.
" He was cutting wood ! He struck himself! Oh, me ! I
thought he was dead ! "
"Be quiet," said Cousin Ann, with authority. "Bathe his
face with vinegar and water: he is faint. Sophronia, find a
fresh egg at the barn and whip it up with a little sugar : he
needs something to strengthen him."
MeanwhiJe, she removed his shoe and stocking; bathed away
the blood; helped the mother draw the injured man's rocking-
chair away from the sight of the stained floor , arranged his
wounded leg safely ; quietly told a boy, who was passing, to
send a doctor from the village to dress the wound; bade the
woman set her room in order ; gave the young man the egg ;
and having in these few moments saved his life and restored
him to comfort, she sat by him fanning him, while he slept from
exhaustion, until the doctor arrived. Had the poor mother
been left to her own device of screaming "murder," her son
would have been murdered indeed.
When I first hired Martha, she seemed so reserved and
"dour," as the Scotch say, and had such a blunt style of
speaking, that I hardly wanted to keep her. An accident
happened one day which showed me her worth. Our next-
door neighbor dashed to our kitchen, crying: "My Harry's in
the well ! "
224 THE COMPLETH: HOME.
"Arrah! and are you laving him there?" cried Martha,
darting out of the kitchen with me after her. The well was
between the two yards. " Saze the handle, miss," cried Martha
to me, letting herself over into the well and catching the rope,
I caught the windlass, and cried to the mother to hold it with
me. Martha, with great Presence of Mind, aided her descent
by the side of the well, so that her weight might not come fully
upon my arms. Reaching the water she caught the child as he
came to the surface for the last time. " Fasten the windlass,
miss!" shouted Martha; "and drop me the end of a clothes-line
to send him up by." In fact, her promptitude saved the child's
life. He came up insensible, but we brought him to after a
while.
I remember a rule which I have heard Mrs. Winton give her
children : a paraphrase of some of Mentor's advice to Telemaque.
" Be very much afraid of danger when you are out of it ; when
you are in it be fearless ; never give up." She was always very
careful to teach her children to meet accidents with calm
judgment. I happened to be there one day when her second
little son nearly cut off the top of his thumb with a hay-cutter.
Mrs. Winton joined the dissevered thumb, which held only by
a narrow bit of skin, and held it exactly and firmly in place.
She held the child on her lap, keeping the wound joined and
clasped by her hand so that he could not move it. She said,
calmly, " My dear, screaming will not cure your thumb, but
keeping quiet may save it. The doctor will be here in a few
moments and sew this thumb together, and with care it may be
as good as ever. Come now, courage ; you do not want a dis-
figured hand." The child took heart, carried himself bravely;
and his thumb healed with hardly a scar.
Mrs. Winton's Presence of Mind was of much service to
-Miriam's little Dora. Mrs. Winton and I entered the house
one day to find all in confusion : Dora had scalded her little arm
ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME. 225
sadly with steam, from the wrist to the elbow, and was almost in
convulsions with pain. The accident had just happened. Mrs.
Winton looked hastily to see that the skin was not broken ; ran
into the kitchen, where everything was always in order and
handy; and in an instant mixed half a cup of flour and the
same amount of table-salt into a thick paste with cold water.
Miriam has a wall-pocket for string; another for paper. Mrs.
Winton from the latter took a paper-bag, tore it open, spread
on the paste, and running back to the sitting-room bound the
plaster over the whole arm and hand, tied it on with string,
wrapped over it her pocket-handkerchief, and bound over that a
napkin. In three minutes Dora's cries were calmed. She began
to catch her breath softly, and look about for the cause of her
late agony. Exhausted as she was with pain and terror, she
was evidently becoming relieved. Mrs. Winton took her on
her lap; held the burned arm extended, with a little upward
inclination to keep the blood from pressing into it. She
bathed her face with bay-water, and began to sing her a little
song. In ten minutes Dora was out of pain, and in five more
she was asleep.
" Where did you learn such a magical remedy?" I asked.
" I invented it from two old ones," she said. " I have had
flour and water highly recommended for burns, and also wet
salt : both are of some use. I burned my own hand badly ont
day, and concluded to unite the two remedies. I find the flour-
and-salt paste, laid on plentifully, not so thin as to run, and not
so thick as to dry quickly, always effectual where the skin is
unbroken : it relieves pain in two or three minutes ; cures pain
entirely in ten. The paste is always most useful spread on
brown paper. When Dora wakes, put on a fresh paste, expos-
ing the arm to the air as little as possible ; at bed-time, change
the paste again: keep her arm extended and slightly raised.
To-morrow morning, wrap it in linen, wrung out of sweet
226 THE COMPLETE HOME.
or castor-oil, and you will have no further trouble with the
burn."
I suppose that there is no more general cause of accidents
than fire. Accidents by fire have become more numerous since
the introduction of coal-oil for lighting — not that the oil is dan-
gerous if properly used, but it is constantly so improperly used.
Servants and housewives too are continually using it for lighting
fires : pouring a little on the kindling to make a quick blaze.
The flame darts up into the can, and there is an explosion. I
have even heard of a person sprinkling powder from a keg upon
a slow fire to expedite it : it is needless to say that the fire, leap-
ing, followed the rash hand back to the keg to the destruction
of reckless person and room also. Helen's Hannah had this
terrible habit of using kerosene. Helen used to say that she
expected every morning to hear a shriek, and see Hannah run-
ning about the house all on fire. She got her lesson, however,
in an easier fashion. Helen's Tom was ill, and I went to the
kitchen to make gruel. Hannah, in her zeal to quicken the
cooking, took a bottle wherein was a little kerosene, and
sprinkled it on the fire. Not knowing what she was doing, I
turned just in time to see the flame dart back into the bottle.
Hannah flung it from her, thus sprinkling herself with the flam-
ing oil. Fortunately, there were but a few drops in the bottle.
I caught up a bucket, which stood full of water, and dashed it
over Hannah, and then catching her by the shoulders pressed
her upon the floor on her face, and wrapped the kitchen carpet
over her ; she was spared other harm than the loss of her apron
and her dress-sleeves. The unlucky bottle, breaking on the
hearth, consumed the rest of the small quantity of oil without
damage. Hannah has been judicious in her use of kerosene
ever since. A fruitful cause of lamp explosions is the use of
lamps in which the oil has burned very low ; or, people do not
trim the wicks properly, and red-hot snuff falls from them;
ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME. 227
others screw a lamp-top on poorly, allowing room for the air to
sweep in if the lamp is moved. If lamps are filled too full, or
until they run over, there is great danger of an explosion : ncr
should they ever be filled by lamp or fire-light, or near a stove.
No housewife should retire for the night until she has looked
after the state of the fires in the house, made sure that no wood
or cloth is in a position where it may fall on a stove or fire, and
has seen to it that there is a supply of water on hand in the
pails. One should not go to bed with pitchers and buckets
empty, for no one can know what dangers may call for water
before daybreak. The old saw, " an ounce of prevention is
worth a pound of cure," should be written in every kitchen.
How many fires have originated from the insane practice of
preparing kindling for the morning, and leaving it over-night on
the top of the kitchen-stove, where fire is yet burning when the
family retire ! the wood breaks into a flame, falls apart, rolls on
the floor ; the dry pine boards are soon in a blaze, and the family
are presently homeless. Another frequent cause of burned
houses is the leaving a frame of clothes beside the kitchen-stove
at night to finish drying or airing ; some yielding of the floor,
puflT of wind, the running against the frame of cat, dog*or rat,
topples it over, and in a few minutes the burning garments are
scattering destruction. Millions of dollars' worth of property
have been destroyed by carelessness in taking up and disposing
of ashes. Ashes should always be removed in the morning
before the fire is lit : this should be an invariable rule ; the ashes
are then cold and safe. Ashes should never be put in a barn,
wood-shed, beside a fence, or by any wooden buildings. Wood-
ashes will retain a central heat, and communicate fire long after
they are supposed to be quite extinct. It is good economy to
dig a square ash-pit, build a brick wall four feet high about it,
and cover it with a sloping roof; if the under-side of the roof-
boards are covered with refuse tin, or with a thick wash of salt
228 THE COMPLETE HOME.
and lime, so much the better ; if this ash-house is twenty feet
from any building, safety in this direction is secured. If the
place for the ashes is so far from the house, or in so exposed a
situation that it is difficult or dangerous for a person to go to it
in cold or stormy weather, or for a person suffering from a cold,
then there is a constant temptation to leave ashes about in
wooden pails or tubs, or to wait until late in the day to remove
them from the stove or to throw them out in heaps near the
house, whence hot cinders could be blown to the buildings. I
have myself known of the ruin of one hundred thousand dollars'
worth of property from various fires occasioned by hot ashes,
and I dare say if the statistics of fires referable to this cause
alone should be obtained, the result would be appalling. In the
country the farmer wants the ashes for his ground ; the house-
wife needs them for lye : such an ash-house as has just been
mentioned could be made by any farmer and his lads in spare
hours, and would secure them from the dangerous ash-barrel
which may be the ruin of his whole fortune. My servant
Martha's sister lost a snug little house and nearly all that it con-
tained by taking ashes from her stove at noon, which should
have been removed before breakfast, and adding to this the
taking them in a wooden pail. An hour after she found the
pail on fire, fallen apart, its blazing staves scattered around her
kitchen and on the rag-carpet. Instead of closing doors and
windows, dragging up the carpet, and fighting the fire with a
bucket of water, she fled screaming from the place, leaving the
door wide-open, which fanned the flame beyond control. People
whose carelessness allows a house to catch fire are generally
those who have no presence of mind to use proper means to
extinguish it. That was a wise law of stout old Peter Stuy-
vesant. Governor of New York in the Dutch times, which fined
every man who allowed his premises to take fire, and then he
expended the fine for buckets, hooks, ladders and other means
of putting out fires.
ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME. 229
Speaking of fires I am reminded of people's carelessness in
the use of matches. They leave matches in closets near chim-
neys, or in places exposed to a strong sun-heat, so that they may
be ignited by what is called spontaneous combustion. Matches
are left on shelves, in paper-boxes, where mice can get among
them ; they are dropped around the floor, and swept into dusty
cracks and corners ; a burnt match with a red-hot end is dropped
into a wood-box, or on a floor covered with matting. People
carry matches about in their pockets, and leave them hanging up
iri a dusty coat, and then wonder why fires are so frequent
When we think of the millions of dollars yearly lost in fires, we
must be sure that there is inexcusable carelessness somewhere.
A great fire like that in Chicago or Boston astounds us, but
yearly quite as much property is lost in isolated fires. Scattered
over all the country one sees the blackened ruins of what were
handsome or comfortable farm-houses and fine barns. The
phrase, " loss covered by insurance," seems to deceive people ;
" loss transferred by insurance " would be a truer term, for the
loss is a loss, and the dollars burned up are dollars gone, lost
entirely out of the general purse. The contributions of the
many on insurance policies have saved the one loser from ruin,
/he loss is spread out more widely, and so is less felt by a single
individual ; but it is a real loss of property just as much as when
one reads " no insurance."
Nothing is more alarming than an outbreak of fire ; almost no
accident seems so calculated to " turn one's head," as people say ;
consequently the damages of fire are greater, because people
fail in fighting it properly at its beginning. Air should be shut
out from the burning place as much as possible ; if it is too late
for individuals to fight the monster with buckets of water, then
shut the fire in closely, and begin to remove furniture until hose
can be brought. The most coolly systematic meeting of a fire
'ihat I ever knew was the case of a widow near our village.
230 THE COMPLETE HOME.
She returned from church one afternoon with her three grown
daughters and a ten-year-old boy, and found her house on fire ,
the fire being in the kitchen, and under such headway, that theii
efforts would be impotent to check it. Mrs. G. saw this at a
glance ; she bid the boy run back the mile to the village and
call the fire company ; in a moment closed the kitchen shutters
and laid a rug against each closed door to shut off all air. One
daughter then set herself to rescue the goods in the sitting-room
next the kitchen ; the mother and the two other girls took each
a bed-room. They did not waste a second : each taking a sheet
from the bed, emptied the bureau-drawers and the closets into it,
tied the corners tightly and flung it from the window ; the other
sheet was in like fashion tied about the bedding and flung out;
next the carpet was pulled up, the curtains wrapped in it, and
these went out the window. Two of the girls then ran out of
doors, dragged these rescued goods to a place where thr wit <\
blew to and not from the fire, and piling them up spread a carpet
over them. Two and two they then carried out ( heir trunks ;
and while the three girls began on the furniture, the mother, v/ho
had emptied the room over the kitchen, deluged i1 well with all
the water she could bring. They left, so promptly that it
seemed done by instinct, things which were of small value, or
readily broken ; they threw nothing which would break out of
a window, and carried down-stairs no- soft bundle which could
be thrown out. When help came, the house was pretty wel?
emptied ; and was finally saved with the loss of the kitchen, th<
scorching of the room above it, and the burning of the wash
shed. Mrs. G. told me that they would have saved all theii
goods in complete order, even if the house had been lost. It is
the part of prudence always, except in severe freezing weather,
to have plenty of water in every bed-room ; and if there is a
bath-room, one or two buckets of water should be always
standing there ready for use. I find in my journals a deal
ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME. 231
about acci^jnts by fires; but fire is not the only cause Gf
accidents by any means.
In a house full of children how many accidents are occasioned
by falls ! Helen says it seems as if some of her half-dozen were
tumbling off chairs or down-stairs continually ; children should
not be encouraged to make much ado over small matters, but
falls where the head or back receives a heavy blow are apt to
be dangerous; the head should in such a case be plentifully
bathed in cold water ; a few drops of ammonia in water should
be administered, heat or friction applied to the hands and feet,
and the child should not be allowed to sleep within two or three
hours ; its attention should be awakened, and drowsiness kept
off by all possible means; if nausea follows a fall, a physicia,n
should be at once sent for.
Indeed, the accidents which befall children are innumerable.
I find record how Master Tom undertook to pound up glass
with a stone and was nearly frantic from a bit which got into
his eye.- The case was desperate; Tom, roaring lustily, wanted
to shut his eye and rub it with his fist, thus making bad worse ;
moreover, not having been trained to obey, we could do nothing
with him. I was obliged to tie his arms down with a towel ;
then Hannah held him firmly back over my lap ; I drew the eye
open, lifting the upper lid, and Helen, by my directions, syringed
it thoroughly; I then concluded the most of the glass must be
out; I slipped three flaxseeds under the lid, tied the eye up with
a napkin wet in cold water, put Tom in bed in a dark room, and
sat by him telling him stories until he fell asleep; his eye was
bloodshot and needed a shade for a few days, but received no
permanent injury. Another of Tom's accidents was when Hester
uiid I had him up in the mountains with us. There was no
doctor within ten miles. Tom, who is a tease, teased a dog and
had his thumb severely bitten. It was in hot weather, and visions
of hydrophobia flashed upon us as soon as he screamed. Hester
232 THE COMPLETE HOME.
seized his hand and made a swift, sharp cut above the bite in the
fleshy part of the lower joint of the thumb, holding his hand
firmly downwards; she then washed the wounds thoroughly
in water pretty strong with ammonia, and made him take some
ammonia water; after this she gave him a hot soda-water bath,
f
administered a good dose of magnesia, and put Tom to bed,'
keeping the cloths on his hand wet with ammonia water. Her
patient complained bitterly of this heroic treatment, but Hester
told him that any treatment was better than hydrophobia: that
if there was poison in his system there must be help to throw it
off, and among other good results she hoped her doctoring
would produce a carefulness about teasing dogs. I do not
know how dangerous Tom's bite might have been, but he
never suffered any other ill effects from it than Hester's style
of cure.
I have always found ammonia very excellent for bites and
stings, and of late years I have used, with very good effect, cos-
moline for the bites of spiders and poisonous insects.
While Hester and I were at the mountains at this time we
had another patient; a young lad who was working on a barn
roof had a sunstroke. All was confusion ; some declared that
he was dead; others shouted for brandy; we had him laid in the
shade and poured very cold spring water over his head and
wrists; I pounded some ice, folded it in a long towel, and, the
men raising the patient, I placed it under his spine and the
back of his neck; Hester rejected the proffer of brandy, admin-
istering instead ammonia water, and bathing his face and neck
in iced bay-water; she also had the men rub his feet vigorously;
under this treatment our patient recovered very speedily.
I remember that was a very hot summer, and one day I saw
an instance of Mrs. Burr's readiness in meeting danger. I was
sitting with her in the sewing-room up-stairs, and her servant
was ironing in the kitchen; Mrs. Burr glanced from the window,
ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME. 233
then sprang like a flash to the entry above the kitchen stairs and
cried: "Mary! shut that outside door!" Her voice was loud
and peremptory.
Mary began : "Why, ma'am — "
" Shut that door ! " repeated Mrs. Burr, in a tone that admitted
no disobedience, and the door slammed shut.
"Are the other doors shut ? Shut the window."
Down came the window, and then Mary's voice: "Why,
ma'am, it's that burning hot — "
" I dare say," said Mrs. Burr ; " and there's a mad dog in the
yard," and she went down to assure herself about the doors.
In a few minutes more we heard two shots, and the dog lay
dead. The open kitchen door was in his direct track, and of
this Mrs. Burr thought as she saw him turn towards her gate ;
her quickness in ordering it shut by Mary, who was standing
beside it, perhaps saved the maid's life.
"Oh," said Mary, overcome, " what a mercy I shut it when I
did ! "
" Hereafter," replied Mrs. Burr, " promptly do as you are told,
and make your objections afterwards."
I have observed that those who are remarkable for Presence
of Mind, for courage in danger, are very little likely to be injured
in the efforts which they make for themselves and others ; their
fearlessness, which in a large measure arises from unselfishness,
their calm bravery and good judgment, teach them to do the
right thing in the right way; so that, for instance, while a person
who goes wild wjth terror at sight of some one in flames is
often burned with them, the possessor of Presence of Mind will
save both parties with but small injury. So I once saw a slender
young woman stop a frightened horse, soothe him, tie him
securely, and relieve two ladies in the buggy, who, while they
might have controlled the animal if they had controlled them-
.selves, were only by their shrieks adding to the difficulty. She
234 THE COMPLETE HOME.
who came to the rescue might very properly have pleaded her
health as an excuse for doing nothing, but knowing what was
to be done, and calmly fearless, she prevented a serious accident,
and that with entire safety to herself I think many women
positively make a virtue of being nervous about horses ; they
will leap from a carriage where a horse is curveting or frightened,
and in the leap get serious damage, when by keeping quiet no
harm would have ensued ; or, they will snatch at the reins,
grasp a driver's hands, scream in a manner to increase a horse's
panic, and so occasion a disaster which quiet might have hin-
dered.
Miriam several times showed great presence of mind in trying
circumstances, as I remember. As she opened her front-door
entering her home one afternoon, her little boy met her, his
gingham apron all in flames. Without a word she threw him
on his face, and began rolling him rapidly on the hall-floor, until
reaching for a rug lying by a door, she wrapped that around "
him, and presently extinguished the fire. At another time she
was buying shoes in a shop, when a sound of choking was
heard from the next room. The woman who waited on her
looked about, and cried: " My baby's dying ! " Miriam sprang
with her into the next room, and saw a child of a year old on
the floor strangling. She caught the little thing up under her
left arm, holding its head partly downwards, and pressed two
fingers of her right hand firmly downward and backward in
the hollow of the throat: this forced the lower part of the throat
to close, and instantly the cause of the chol-yng, a copper cent,
which the little one had got about half way down its throat,
came up. This pressing on the outside of the throat at the
hollow, making the pressure dov/nward and backward, is much
better, in case of a child strangling upon any half-swallowed sub-
stance, than the ordinary fashion of thrusting the finger into the
mouth, which usually crowds the obstruction farther down.
ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME. 235
Too much care cannot be exercised in keeping away from
young children marbles, bits of money, thimbles or other such
substances, wherewith they might choke themselves. Astound-
ing as the statement may seem, I once saw in a grave-yard the
graves of five infants of one mother, all of whom had come to
their death by choking with a thimble. Perhaps I misjudged
that unhappy mother — whose losses finally made her insane—-
and she had not been careless in this unhappy series of disasters,
but I thought of the verse in Proverbs: "Though thou bray
a fool in a mortar with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness
depart from him." It is dangerous also to give a child paper to
play with, because it is apt to fill its mouth with paper, and
presently to choke on the wet lump. Too much care cannot
be exercised over the things given to a young child to amuse it.
An acquaintance of mine carelessly handed a child a piece of
green worsted cloth. After some time she saw that the babe's
mouth was discolored from sucking this rag ; in fact, the child
was poisoned with the dye, and after a two months' illness
narrowly escaped with its life. Speaking of poison, reminds me
that we should keep on hand some simple antidote. The
whites of raw eggs, also mustard and water, are often useful
where poison has been swallowed. When I was spending a
winter with my half-sister in New York, her daughter-in-law
rushed into the kitchen, crying that she was poisoned. She
had carelessly mistaken a poison given her for a bath, and used
it internally. My sister was baking sponge cake, and had by
her a plate of whites of eggs, which she was about to beat. She
promptly administered these, and saved the young woman's life.
Of late I have been urging upon my young friends the
importance of training their children in habits of self-control, in
the exercise of Presence of Mind, that they may act resolutely
and bravely in emergencies, and meet accidents with calmness.
It is not worth while to wait for some great crisis to occur to
236 THE COMPLETE HOME.
give this training : begin it in little things. When anything is
dropped or broken, let the damage be repaired promptly and
properly: thus one is accustomed to think reasonably and
judiciously. The screaming and excitement over small mis-
adventures, which begin often as a mere affectation, end in a
real incapacity for rendering effective service in time of need.
I have noticed that those who exaggerate in their views and
accounts of things, by accustoming their imagination to super-
sede their judgment, end in becoming timid, nervous and help-
less in a crisis. There is no greater folly than to educate
children into cowardice. Parents do this by showing cowardice
themselves, by allowing their children to be terrified with
foolish tales, or made the victims of cruel jokes, or frightened to
render them obedient. Train them to look reasonably at all
things, to see that in every danger or difficulty there is some-
thing that can be done, if it is only to keep calm and wait; and
let them learn that the real point of danger is when the mind
has lost the mastery of itself, when reason has given the reins to
fear or to imagination. How many evils are intensified, or real
dangers brought out of imaginary dangers, by this wicked
excitement! A lady in our village was ill, when her nurse
rushed in, crying, " Harry's drowned ! he fell in the creek ! "
The unfortunate mother was thrown into a congestive chill, and
in a few hours was dead; while her child, who had been
pulled out of the water as quickly as he fell in, had no harm but
a wetting. If the child had been drowned, the news should not
have been so hastily carried to the sick mother ; while if he had
seemed drowned, and had really been near to death, vigorous
efforts, as rubbing, wrapping in hot blankets, and the other
known remedies, might have resuscitated him.
I have heard people argue that they were not to blame for
lacking Presence of Mind, and so failing to furnish a proper
conduct in cases of accidents. They say that the courage,
ACCIDENTS IN THE HOME. 237
reason, decision, firmness, which compose Presence of Mind, are
gifts of God, not to be created by human effort, and he who
lacks them is rather to be pitied than blamed. Now, I reply,
that all people, who are not idiots or insane» have in them the
germs of all these qualities ; these are implanted in their minds
by God; and whether weak or strong in their inception, they are
capable of increase by cultivation, and they will dwindle if they
are not fostered ; therefore, he who lacks these powers is guilty
in the lack, masmuch as he has not made the best of himself,
has not developed the good that was in him, and by so failing,
has really developed fear, feebleness and idle excitement.
Some people, especially those of delicate constitutions, are
victims of nervous tremors and terrors ; they tremble and grow-
faint at a cry of pain, at sight of blood, at the sound of a fall ;
only by painful efforts can they school themselves to conquer
these predispositions. They who out of these natural dis-
abilities develop courage, and helpfulness, and calm self-
control should be crowned as true heroes. Every effort toward
this attainment of Presence of Mind they will find worth the
making in the good they do, the evil they avoid doing, and the
satisfaction of conscience. Every effort will, in its very painful-
ness, lift them nearer to rigid self-control. "The angel of
martyrdom is brother to the angel of victory."
16
CHAPTER X.
RELIGION IN THE HOME.
WHAT AUr>T SOPHRONIA HAS TO SAY OF FAMILY PIETV.
[NE Sabbath evening in June, I was sitting on my front
piazza,' reading, when a neighbor of mine, with his two
httle boys, returning from a walk, passed me. The
youngest child called to me for some roses that grew in
my yard, and I bid him help himself The three then came in
aivl sat down near me on the steps. After a little general con-
versation, I said to my neighbor:
" Mr. Carr, you have a promising family of boys growing up
around you, and I am sorry to see that you do not take them to
church, and bring them up in the ways of piety."
" Why, Miss Sophronia," said Mr. Carr, " I don't believe m
religion!"
" Is it possible!" I replied. " But you are always esteemed as
a very industrious, honest, generous, law-abiding man."
"Certainly," said Mr. Carr; "I hoLd to morals, but not to
religion. I believe in abiding by the laws."
" Suppose you were in a country where stealing was not con-
trary to law, would you steal ? "
" Why, no ; I have a principle against stealing."
"As you abide by the laws, and do not believe in religion, I
suppose you adhere to the statute-book, and not to the Bible."
" That's about it."
" Did you never consider that these morals in which you
believe are originally laid down in the Bible as a part of re-
(238)
RELIGION IN THE HOME. 239
ligion, that our statute-books are modelled on the Bible laws,
prohibiting what it prohibits, and for the most part following its
penalties ? Countries which have no Bible, no Christian relig-
ion, have no pure code of morals, no righteous statute laws. If
you will cast over in your mind the present state of the coun-
tries in the world, Christian and unchristian, if you will run over
in your thoughts the history of the world, you will see that
morality and justice have spread among nations just in propor-
tion as Bible-light has spread. It is a mere matter of facts and
statistics, not of theory. Contrast Germany and Turkey, Eng-
land and India.'HoUand and Siam, the United States arid Africa.
Then draw the lines a little closer, and look at those countries
where the Bible has been free in the vulgar tongue and where it
has been hidden, and contrast the intelligence, the purity of
rtiorals, the statistics of education, the number of murders, the
proportion of lawful marriages, the character of truthfulness.
Take the same country with a free Bible and freedom of wor-
ship, and without — Italy, for instance, in these two cases — and
jiee when was the march of improvement, the increase in wealth,
power, unity and credit among other nations."
I knew my neighbor was a reading man, and that he boasted
of a good historic library.
He pondered a while, hesitating. " Yes,'' he said, " it does
seem that morals and religion, civilization and freedom in wor-
ship, the Bible and good laws, go hand in hand. But, Miss
Sophronia, we might look at religion as an education, which
states need to bring them up to a point of development where
they can look out for themselves, as a lad needs schooling, and
then quits school."
" But the mind is either going forward or backward ; it cannot
stand still : if it does not advance, it will retrograde. Suppose
on leaving school the boy never looks at a printed word, never
writes a word, lets drop the acquirements which he has made,
240 THE COMPLETE HOME.
what will become of him ? — he will brutalize. If the state in all
its individuals cuts loose from religion after it has risen by
religion, then anarchy will follow. If states rise by God's law,
they stand by it. You say you hold to morals, but do not
adhere to the Bible. The morals to which you cling are a part
of the Bible. Let us take the Moral Law. Here are the first
two Commandments about worshipping God, and not worship-
ping images : what do you do with them ? "
" Nothing. That's religion, and I just let it alone."
" Take the next — against profanity."
"Well, Miss Sophronia, swearing is useless and vulgar; it is
a mark of blackguards, common to men drunk, and men lying,
and men in a passion. It is also forbidden by the laws of some
states. I'm against swearing, as a matter of decency and good
order."
" Try the fourth — about keeping the Sabbath."
" Well, now, Miss Sophronia, I think every man should keep
it as he pleases. If I take a walk, I don't hurt my leighbors by-
doing it. If men prefer recreation to church, why let them have
recreation. Why cannot Sunday be left like any other day in
the week, and let those who want to go to church on it go ? "
" If Sabbath is left like any other day in the week, then oui
business places must be full of traffic, buildings must be going
up, boats and cars must be running, the farmer who prefers to
work can keep his hands haying, harvesting or ploughing, all
places of amusement must be open, peddlers crying their wares,
organ-men grinding, auctions going on, factories working.
Consider in such a case that all men who are employes must
lose their Sabbath or their situations ; they may have a con-
science about the matter, and desire to keep the Sabbath holy,
but they cannot, unless they throw up their business, and stand
open to beggary. All people who have leisure, and desire to go
to church, would find their services invaded by noise : they would
RELIGION IN THE HOME. 241
f)e deprived, against their wills, of the calm and rest which Sab-
bath intends. You, who demand a Sabbath for recreation, for
amusement for hard workers, say open the Zoological Gardens
and museums. If these, why not the shows, theatres and beer-
gardens ? If these can be allowed to make money, why cannot
the stores, the markets, the factories be open ? If these are all
open, then that working-class, which in your demand were rep-
resented as exhausted by six days' work, and needing recreation,
will be required to work seven days (or lose their bread), and
they will see neither rest nor recreation. Again, parents who
cherish the Sabbath as a day of holy resting desire to bring
their children up so to regard it ; but if the barriers which sur»
round the Sabbath are cast down, and the day is made exactl)?'
like other days, there will be no quiet at home in which to
instruct, the children. As they, pass along the streets to church
they see examples which their parents believe to be pernicious ;
their very church service is invaded with din ; the individual
right of the parent to train up his child in accordance with his
own conscience is interfered with. You abhor swearing : sup-
pose it were legal for a man to stand by the hour at your gate,
and fill the ears of your boys with profanity? "
" I don't go so far as you think I do about the Sabbath," said
Mr. Carr. "I don't hold that any one should be allowed to
disturb his neighbor. Parson can't make me go to church, and
I ought not to claim a right to disturb parson's Sunday. As to
the Sunday shows and excursions, I don't want you to think I'd
go or take my children."
" Why not ? You don't think them wrong, surely ? "
" No, not in themselves, but in the way they are conducted.
If you notice in the papers, they generally end in a row : there
is always a lot of noise, drinking and swearing; and, as the
result of the confusion, often an accident. I always look for a
blow-up of some sort when I hear of a big Sunday excursion."
242 THE COMPLETE ffVME.
" Do you have that feeling about large school, church or
trades' excursions on other days of the week ? "
" Oh, no. I sometimes go to them with my boys."
"Consider, then, Mr. Carr, that you instinctively admit that
the people who clamor for and indulge in the breaking of the
Fourth Commandment are the noisy, dangerous, law-breaking
class ; while the observers of the command are the law-abiding,
orderly, respectable people : does not that speak pretty well for
the command, and for the virtue of keeping it intact ? "
" Now see here. Miss Sophronia," said Mr. Carr, with a fine
appearance of liberality, " I'll take that command in as a part of
morals : there's as much morals as religion in it, and I hold to
morals."
I made no remark about the connection of morals and religion,
but passed on to the next command :
" What do you think of the Fifth : ' Honor thy father and thy
mother — ? ' "
" That's morals, sound morals, and the voice of Nature."
" But without the enlightening influence of the Bible, it seems
to me that this voice of Nature often dies away, not only in
solitary individuals, but in whole nations, and those most widely
removed in race and situation.. In India, Alaska, and the distant
islands, I find that parents make a practice of murdering their
children, and children in turn make a practice of murdering
their sick or aged parents, casting them out to the sea, to star-
vation, or to wild animals. I never yet heard of a Christian
man, or eveii of one nominally a professor and respecter of
religion, who knocked down his mother, or refused to support
his aged parents, or • to care for his sick father ; while despisers
■of religion are often arraigned for these crimes. If you dissever
religion from this law, you will soon find it disregarded. Also
you will note that nations ignorant of the Bible lack that general
respect for the parental tie, this enforcing of the mutual righ*^
RELIGION TN THE HOME. 243
of parents and children, known to Christian laws. Take the next
command : ' Thou shalt not kill.' Consider statistics : are murders
more or less common in Christian lands than in others ? "
" Oh, there are not an hundreth part so many, in the so-called
Christian lands," said Mr. Carr.
" The so-called Christian lands',' I said, " are lands where the
divinity of Christ is generally recognized, where God is acknowl-
edged, where his Book of Laws is known, and where there are
enough religious people to give a tone to public opinion. In
these lands you say there are not one per cent, of the murders
in other lands ; it seems to me then that in that admission there
is a small showing of morals where there is no religion. I
might question v, where Biblical religion is unknown, morals in
•any true sen3e arc not also unknown. If that is so, in holding
as you say to mcrals, and not to religion, you hold to one thing,
rejecting another with which it is inseparably connected : you
admit the tree and deny its root. Take the statistics of nom-
inally Christian countries : what proportion is there between the
decrease f"f murders and the general diffusion of the Bible ? "
"It is a fact too well known to question," said Mr. Carr,
"that as Bible religion increases among a people, murder
decreases." •
I was not ready to take advantage of this admission, so I said :
" Well, nov/, what do you think of polygamy and of divorce ? "
" I abhor them from my soul," said Mr. Carr, " as the ruin of
the family tie, and of family life ; and "ihcrefore root of de-
struction to the state. States, Miss Sophronia, begin in families:
where the family is weak or impure, the state will be weak and
impure. There are no two more ruinous, outrageous and dan-
gerous doctrines at the present day than those of Polygamy and
Free Love."
" Oh, indeed," said I ; " and did you ever hear these upheld
by any upholder of the religion of Jessus Christ ? Have aot the
244 I'^E. COMPLETE HOME
Mormon Polygamists got a Bible of their own ? and are not the
advocates of Free Love howling their loudest against the
Christian religion and the word of God? If you hold the
Family Life dear as your own soul, who inaugurated that life
but the God whom you ignore? If you consider the sanctity
of the family indispensable to your own happiness and to the
stability of the state, where is its bulwark but in the word
of God? where is its defence but in laws which take their
rise from that word? Lands where there are no Bibles are
lands of polygamy and divorce, and of no marriage relations.
You will find Turkey, and India, and Siam, and other heathen
lands, full of Harems; you may look to lands of Bibles for
virtuous mothers and wife-loving husbands. Take again the
relation between a general knowledge of the Bible and the
personal virtue of the citizens : you must admit from known
figures that they are in direct proportion. Just in proportion
as a land is a" land of religion, it is a land of Homes. The
Home is founded by God, built up by his worship, garrisoned
by Biblical religion. Show me a Free Lovist, or a Polygamist,
who takes the Bible for his guide, and Jesus Christ for his
Lord."
" Really, I don't suppose that there is such a one."
"Then, do you not see, that in rejecting God and his religion,
you reject the foundation and assurance of Home ? "
" But, Miss Sophronia, I do not reject or ignore God. I
regard him as the fountain of morals. I suppose that there is
a God who made everything, who maintains everything, and
hcis a general rule over everything. I cannot see any other
reasonable explanation of things."
" Then, in your view, there is a Being, who holds the general
relations of a King, a Ruler, a Father. Where is there a king
who has no laws for his kingdom, expects no service, loyalty or
recognition from his subjects, and has no order, no appoint-
RELIGION IN THE HOME. 245
inents, no state in his household ? Only a truly great and
reasonable Being could create, maintain and rule as you admit.
But such a Being must necessarily have formulated some laws
for his kingdom; must make some demands in behalf of his
own honor; he could not foster ignorance, ingratitude and
anarchy in his subjects. The Bible instructs us how we may
serve this Being in a method agreeable to his will. Such a
Being must have been as reasonable as earthly sovereigns, and
have perpetuated some code of laws and directions for his
dominions. Among all the books which claim to be Divine
and the formulation of such directions, only the Bible, as
judged by its effects among men in promoting their happiness,
virtue and well-being, is worthy of our credence, that approves
its origin by being able to secure its end. Biblical religion is
the serving and esteeming God in a manner agreeable to his
expressed will. Now if you accept the God and reject religion,
you admit yourself a rebel and virtually an anarchist, at once.
Mow would such a proceeding work in our civil relations ? "
" Why, Miss Sophronia," said Mr. Carr, " you are drawing
Lhe lines pretty tight."
" Mr. Carr, did you not say that the state begins in the
Family, and that as the Family is the state will be ? "
" Yes, I did, Miss Sophronia ; and that I stand to."
"And did you not also admit, from knowledge of statistics,
that those states are stronger, purer, more thriving and hon-
ored, better every way, where there is Christianity and the
Bible ? "
" Well, yes ; that's a fact, toe "
" Then, where is the point where the family, not needing in
itself religion or the Bible, must begin to receive them for the
good of the state? If the state is built up by the diffusion of
religious light, is it not that that light is held in the families
of the citizens ? You cannot imagine a state where the families
246 THE COMPLETE HOME.
rejected religion, avowing, as a state, a religion and maintaining
itself on Biblical authority. This advantage of Biblical Re-
ligion in the state is a thing of the Homes. In these homes
public opinion is manufactured, and legislators are nourished,
and an executive is trained up. If you reject religion for your
Home, you must, as far as you are able to do so, reject it for
your state, and if you think the state needs it and thrives by it,
then you should, out of loyalty, if from no other reason, cultivate
it in your Home. You said the state is ruined in the ruin of the
Family.' If 'Religion is good for the state, it is good for the
Family. Did it ever occur to you, that just as an increase of
Biblical religiousness in the state decreases vice, murders,
thefts, so an increase of religious opinion in the Family will
decrease the chance of any of its members being murderers, oT
thieves, or rioters ? All the criminals were somebody's sons
and came out of Families, and if the parents had maintained
Family Piety, by your own statistical statement, they would
have reduced by ninety-nine per cent, the likelihood of theii
children being criminals. You ought to cultivate Family
Religion for the mere sake of making it highly improbable that
any of your promising children should ever be criminals; for^
as you have yourself admitted, morals and religion seem to be
inseparable."
" Upon my word, it does look that way," said Mr. Carr, with
an anxious glance to his boys who were rolling on the grass.
" I heard that when you lived in the next county, you had
served as a juror more than any man in the county."
" So I had. It became a real burden to me. I tell you, Miss
Sophronia, it is hard to sit as a juror when a man is up for
murder, or likely to get twenty years in the penitentiary."
" Well, Mr. Carr, in those trials, for all kinds of crimes, which
you attended, were the accused persons men who were esteemed
religious, professed Bible piety, or advocated the Bible as a rul-'
of living?"
RELIGION IN THE HOME. 247
"Upon my word, ma'am, I can't remember one that was.
Now that never occurred to me before.''
" This, then, is another reason for maintaining rehgion in your
family ; out of religious families the criminal dock is not filled
Were you not for five years overseer of the poor? "
*' Yes, I was. I'm glad I'm out of that business."
" Will you tell me whether you found, among your paupers
generally, members of Christian churches, readers of the Bible,
regular attendants on divine worship — what are called religious
people ? "
• " Bless my life, no ! They were usually a hard set. They were
many of them drunkards, or had always been incorrigibly
lazy and dirty ; or had trained up roughly a lot of rowdy, ill-
behaved children, who would not or could not help the old
folks. I only remember one really Christian pauper. She was
a good old woman, but she was not long in the almshouse : the
parson's wife got after her, and took her away for the church to
keep."
"Another argument for cultivating religion in your family.
Christian households do not furnish the paupers ; if they are not
rich, they are not beggars. David says : ' I have never seen the
righteous forsaken, or his seed begging bread.' Remember that,
my neighbor, in behalf of your children and grandchildren.
But you mentioned the unfilial conduct of these paupers' children.
When you admit God as a universal Father, and so your Father,
and yet give him no filial reverence, are you not setting your
children a poor example of father-loving and honoring ? God
says :' If I be a Father where is mine honor, and if I be a
Master where is my fear ? ' Now only one question more. You
know this county well. Setting aside a few rich and notorious
men, who have gained wealth by speculations and extortions, and
wild, unjustifiable means, are not the well-to-do men, the tidy
fortunes, the comfortable little properties, made by diligence,
248 THE COMPLETE HOME.
honesty and economy, in the hands of the religious people?
Those who are Hving from hand to mouth, who are in rags and
d2bt, and on the verge of pauperism in every slack time, are the
men who ignore religion, reject the Bible, despise the Sabbath.
The steady church-goers, the decent, religious men, are the self
sustaining, honest, free-from-debt men: is it not so?"
" Well, yes, Miss Sophronia, I'll admit that, for it is so."
" Then this is another reason for your maintaining, in your
family, religion and Bible rules ; for these are in the way of thrift,
of competence, of honesty, of independence, of really and
righteously getting on in the world : is this not so ? Don't you
owe your children Family Piety ? Does not their future honor
and success demand it of you ? As an example to your children,
should you not maintain religion at Home ? As a citizen, do
you not owe such an upholding of religion to the good of the
state ? "
Mr. Carr rose. " Perhaps, Miss Sophronia, if I had not kept
pretty clear of the parsons, and of the Bible, I might have had
some of these things set out in this light before. I shall study
this matter up, I can tell you, and see where it comes out."
So saying he called his boys, and said " good-evening."
What is more important in a Family than Religion ? The
security, the perpetuity of the Home, demands it. If the Home
is not to be invaded by crimes, by the anguish of children
departing into ways of vice — if it is not to breed dishonesty,
unthriftand pauperism — it should be garrisoned by Family Faith,
by Piety. If I were not a religious person, but merely a carefuL
common-sense observer of affairs and a student of statistics, I
should hold this opinion. *
When my nieces Miriam and Helen had been married ten
years I desired to mark the time by a Family Gathering. I
invited the relations for a dinner, but the dinner was to be at
three o'clock, and I requested my three nieces. Cousin Ann's
RELIGION IN THE HOME. 249
Sara, -who had married young Winton, Mary Watkins, and two
or three more, to come about half-past ten, so as to spend the
day with me.
" Do you remember," said Hester, when we were all quietly
seated together, " the conversation which you had with Miriam
and Helen, before they were married, about the Building of a
Home ? You thought I was not particularly interested, but I
treasured it all, and I do not know of any instruction which has
done me more good. Have you not something further to say
on the same subject?"
" My dear girls," I replied, " to-day I feel inclined to con-
verse with you on a theme even more important, namely,
the Building of a Home for Eternity; the projecting of the
home which you rear on earth into the future world ; the raising
of those hornes which you are framing here below into homes
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. It cannot be that
a structure so sacred, so divine in its origin, so glorious in its
possibilities, as a Home, finds 'its be-all and its end-all here.'
I told you long ago that the foundation of a Home, its corner-
stone, must be laid in sound religious principle ; how can we
better employ part of this day of reunion than in discussing how
to carry out this religious principle in the every-day life of the
Home? The Home is the cradle and nursery where human
immortals begin a life which shall last forever ; therefore, in the
Home, preparations should be made for that immortal life. I
wish you would suggest to me some reasons for especially culti-
vating Religion in the Family."
" If it is true," said Mary Watkins, " as we all believe it to be,
that Religion is the highest concern of man, then we should
cultivate it in our families, as the best thing in which we can
interest our children ; also becaiAe our homes are worthy of the
noblest that can be brought into them, and because early im-
pressions and home impressions are usually more strong and
250 THE COMPLETE HOME.
lasting than any others ; while, as we owe our children the very
best that we can do for them, we should not, while trying
to prepare them for this earthly life, which may end at any
moment, fail to prepare them for the life which shall never end."
" If religion, or true piety, is the pervading spirit of the
Home," remarked Miriam, " then we are relieved of a gnawing
anxiety for the eternal future of our loved ones; I can imagine
nothing more painful than for a wife to feel that the husband
whom she loves may at any moment be hurried unprepared into
eternity, or for a mother to see her children growing up un-
godly: to feel that after she has left this world they may be
living wicked lives, and dying impenitent. Family piety is
strong and calm in a confident expectation of the reunion of
dear ones in the eternal world ; thus it takes away the keenfest
sting of death, and gives us courage in the hour of separation."
" We cannot for an instant think," said Hester, "that the soul
going out of this world is lessened in any of its powers; that
which is highest in it, its love, must be rather intensified. How
grand, then, to think of family ties strengthened and perpetuated
in a world of glory ! Family piety, purifying and elevating the
family relation here, gives the earnest of an eternal reunion of
the family in a world where nothing can offend. Husbands
and wives are unwiUing to be parted long in this world ; mothers
are loath to have their children leave them; how great an
incentive have we to the cultivation of family piety, giving us
cissurance of a family forever united, and forever happy 1 "
" Piety is the finest inheritance which parents can bestow
upon their children," said Sara. " True, grace is the gift of
God, yet he has promised to bestow it upon the children of his
children, to many generations; he takes the whole family of his
followers into covenant; we |Jo not find in the gospels one
instance where Christ refused the plea of a parent for a child.
We may strive to lay up fortunes for our children, and ma;?
RELIGION IN- THE HOME. 251
fail in doing so, or left, they may be a temptation and a curse ;
we may strive to educate them well, and they may not have
ability to receive a thorough education, or means may be lack-
ing, or, acquired, it may be misused; but if we strive for the
salvation of our children, if we consecrate them to God, and
train them up in accordance with that consecration, we are sure
of reward."
"Sara," I said, "your parents, with a large family, a large
farm, and often insufficient help, could plead little time for
religious duties, if any one could ever make such a plea. Now
will you tell us something of their method of religious training,
for to them, as to the Elect Lady, it could be written: ' I rejoiced
when I found of thy children walking in the truth.' "
" Well," said Sara, " we never sat down to the table without a
blessing being asked; always as soon as the breakfast was ended,
chairs were drawn back from the table, and father took the Bible
for prayers; no hurry of work interfered with family worship ;
all being together, servants and children, when breakfast was
ended, no one need be waited for, or be absent. Father never
made very long prayers, but he saw to it that we were attentive;
he was apt to ask some question while he was reading, which
we must be alert to answer ; this kept us from dreaming during
prayer-time. As soon as tea was over -we had evening prayers,
a little shorter perhaps than in the morning; so, you see, even
as babies in arms, we were present at worship, and never knew
what it was to be without it. We were always taken to church,
even as very little children ; the habit formed of quiet at prayers
helped us to be quiet there ; from being in church and keeping
quiet, we soon learned to hear and understand something that
'vas said or done ; at home father asked us for the text, ques-
tioned us of what we could remember, and himself explained
and repeated something that had been said. He never allowed
any sharp or unkind criticisms of the preacher; even when not
252 THE COMPLETE HOME.
especially pleased himself, he would not permit any carping.
He used to say: ' Don't quarrel with the di^h in which you get
the bread of life,' and he frequently quoted the passage : ' Touch
not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.' I know
once our hired man said : ' That was a mighty poor sermon to-
day,' and father retorted : ' Poor or not, Thomas, if you'll live
lip to it this week, you'll make an astonishing improvement on
your past'
" We were required to be orderly on the Sabbath, and to read
only Sabbath books ; but we were well supplied with these, and
could read them on the porch, or in a tree, in the barn or gar-
den, as we liked, if we would not get into a frolic or foolish talk.
We had always to learn some verses from the Bible on Sunday,
and read a chapter, and repeat its substance, and after tea,
mother always instructed us from the Bible for an hour, and
, then we read a few chapters, verse about, while father explained
them to us. We were encouraged to amuse ourselves asking
each other hard questions, capping verses, making or decipher-
ing scriptural enigmas, all of which increased our acquaintance
with the Bible. When we did anything wrong, Bible authority
was appealed to, to condemn it; if we proposed any course
which our parents did not approve, they based their disapproval .
on the Scriptures : they squared their own conduct on the Bible,
and we saw clearly that they only wished us to walk in the way
where they went themselves, and that in pressing piety upon us,
they offered thus that which themselves thought most worth the
having. They considered us as children of God, because them-
selves were God's children, and they required us to walk worthy
of that calling before we had in our own right made any public
profession thereof. Our mother, no matter how tired or hurried
she might be, always took us to bed, until we were eight years
old, heard us say our prayers reverently, and repeated to us a
verse of Scripture. When we were old enough to go to bed by
RELIGION IN THE HOME. 253
ourselves, as we kissed mother good-night, she almost always
said : ' Do not neglect your prayers, and think while you pray/
We were always carefully kept from irreligious companions, and
from books which were in any way hostile to piety, and we were
taught to reverence good people because they were loved of
God. In fact, our Home Life was a Religious Life: piety was as
natural to our home as its food or its labors ; we grew into it,
because we were trained in it, just as the trees in the orchard
grow into good fruit-bearing, because they had been planted,
grafted, pruned, cultivated, cared for, all with a view to good
fruit-bearing. I never heard any one question the quality of the
fruit, because it was a product of this cultivating, and had not
developed itself without any help or attention."
" Indeed, Sara," said Helen, " I am much obliged to you for
such a plain, simple statement of your mother's religious training
of her family; it makes things seem clearer and easier to me."
" We may also," said Hester, " learn or take warning by the
converse. I visited once in a family where the parents were
church-members, but living among worldly people, and more
and more in a worldly way, they retained very few or no prac-
tices of piety. They never had a blessing at table, never family
prayer; they went to church or not, just as it happened. The
mother sent the nurse to take the children to bed, so that they
hardly heard of saying their prayers. If their mother on Sun-
day bestirred herself to tell them a Bible story, or that God^
made them, or that Adam was the first man, it was as much
religious instruction as ever they got. If the parents went to
church, the children were left at home, for their mother said it
was too much trouble to get them ready, and their father said
they distracted him by being uneasy : besides their parents con-
sidered going to Sunday-school — which they did irregularly —
was quite religion enough for a Sunday ; therefore, if the parents
were in the family pew, between them, where their children
should have been, stretched a vacuum, which God abhors."
254 TtJE COMPLETE HOME.
" I'm afraid," said Helen, " that some of my training has been
like that, though I trust not quite so deplorable. However, I
resolve to do better ; indeed, I have often so resolved, but when
I get the children about me on Sunday to give them a little
instruction, they are so restless, and make such insane answers,
that as often as anything I end by getting provoked. Imagine
Phil, after I have taught him this two years that God made him,
when I asked the question, replying, gravely, ' I guess the Presi-
dent ; ' or insi-sting upon stopping all instruction while he, during
the story of The Fall, investigated why Adam and Eve, shut out
at the gate, ' did not climb over the fence,' or why Adam called
a beast such a name as a Kangaroo : I said, in despair, that he
did not call it a Kangaroo ; then says Phil, " That ain't its name,
and I shall always call it a liopper; ' and then off go Tom and
Phil on a dispute whether the term hopper is not pre-empted by
a grasshopper, and thus ends my talk. Hester, you ought to
have them ; you know how to deal with children, and really
I don't."
We none of us could help laughing at poor Helen's discomfi-
tare, and really, as to her children, I think with Hannah that they
are the " most masterful mischiefs that ever were born." I told
Hester one day that " the children seemed to have all the decis-
ion which their mother lacked." She said that was because
'their mother had never shown any decision in her government,
and so had encouraged insubordination.
" However," said Helen, " I did not intend, by the narration
of my difficulties, to interrupt our conversation on Religion in
.the Family, for it is a question which I am sure I need to hear
discussed. Aunt Sophronia, you have said little as yet on the
subject: give us some plain instruction."
" It seems to me," I said, "that Sara's account of Cousin Ann's
method of cultivating Family Piety covers nearly the whole
.ground, and gives us the picture of a godly home : a home
RELIGION IN THE HOME. 255
which, broken at last here, shall not perish, but shall be trans-
planted to the skies, to grow in greater and greater beauty, as a
central sun of a system around which revolve the stars of other
homes, lit by its light while here below. The fact is, my>chil
dren, that where there is any vital piety in one or both the heads
of a Family, it must make itself felt and prominent in the Home :
the light in the heart shines out first at the hearth. If there is
no Family Religion, there is no religion at all in the Family; the
true Christian is never like Bunyan's Mr. Talkative, ' a saint
abroad and a devil at home;' nor is he pious at church and
for himself, and indifferent to the spiritual concerns of his family;
and not only he must be not indifferent, but actively interested
in their salvation, if he has any true piety, for if religion is any-
thing to a soul, it is the first and best of everything. God
setteth the solitary in families that he may preserve to himself
a righteous seed upon the earth; and if we do not serve God in
our homes, we contravene the Lord's highest purpose in Home-
making, while his tenderest benediction falls on him of whom
he can say, as of his servant of old, I know him that he will
command his children and his household after him. We ought
to esteem it God's choice gift to us that our families may be
numbered in his chosen generation and royal priesthood.
" ' So boasting not that they derive their birth
From loins enthroned and nobles of the earth,
But higher yet their proud pretensions rise.
Children of parents passed into the skies.'
' "I would like especially to urge upon you careful and regular
attendance on the services of your church, both on Sabbath
and also at the weekly meetings. Take your children with you
to the weekly meetings, whatever they are. We form our habits
in youth, so do not let them grow up with a habit of absenting
themselves from the gatherings of God's people. We can find
time tor these things, if we will only endeavor to Ho so. You
25G "^I'tiE COMPLETE nOMi,.
know, Sara, that the Wintons were once for three years in
. Europe. I heard of their course there from others who were
abroad a*: the same time. They carefully arranged their travel-
ling so that on Sabbaths they should be where there was evan-
gelical preaching in English, and there they went twice to
church ; they always managed to find the Wednesday evening
prayer-meeting, and attend it as regularly as at home ; they
spent their Sabbaths just as they did in this country, not 'sight-
seeing,' and then salving over conscience by saying it was
' visiting churches and cathedrals ; ' they went to no places of
amusement which they would have judged it inconsistent to
attend when at home. A lady once said to Mrs. Winton : ' Why
are you so scrupulous here ? We always think we have a right
to a little relaxing of the lines when we are abroad.'
"Mrs. Winton was standing by her dressing-table, and she,
without seeming to notice the remark, held out a case contain-
ing a valuable diamond ring and pin, saying : ' I might have lelt
those at home, I think ? '
" ' By no means,' cried her visitor ; ' they are just as becoming
to you here as there ; they are too valuable to be left behind ;
wear them, to let people know what you are.'
" ' Jewels do not make people,' she replied ; ' I showed you
these as a parable. My religion becomes me as well abroad
as at home ; it was too valuable to be left behind. I will wear
it as best I can, to show what I profess to be.'
"After hearing this story, I did not wonder that foreign travel
had not injured the consistency, the simple common-sense, of
that family."
' You remind me," said Hester, " that some people going
abroad strive to ape foreigners, to seem other than they are,
and to lose, eis far as possible, their nationality. This always
vexes my patriotism. I think this should suggest to us, that
God says that the citizenship of his people is in heaven, and
RELIGION IN THE HOME. 2[)7
that we should, as far as we can below, cultivate the manners
of our true city. Let us rejoice in our birthright, and teach
our children to glory in it."
" I remember," said Mary Watkins, " that our minister in a
sermon on Family Piety said, that we should, in setting up a
new home, begin by whole-heartedly consecrating it to God;
and as children are born into that home, each of them should
also be consecrated to him, so that our desire for, and earnest
expectation of, our child's salvation should be coexistent with
its life, and our training and example should carefully corre-
spond to that desire and hope."
" Yes," said Miriam, " we must be consistent in that training:
not try and rush toward heaven on Sunday, and then run
toward the world all the other days. in the week; half-waj'
doings do not succeed in business nor in housekeeping, ant'
they will not succeed in soul-training."
" This," I said, " is the ideal of a safe and happy home : tha't
it is founded in godliness, vocal with thanksgiving; guarded by
an entreated Prayer- Hearer ; and having children given from
their birth to God, the parents and children are found cheerily
serving the Lord day by day. V/hatever is good for the religious
growth of the parents — Scripture study. Sabbath-keeping, benev-
olence — will be good for the children, and they should be
trained to it; they have a right to have ensured to them the
blessings which God gives his servants, in this life and in the
hfe to come."
" It seems," said Hester, " that Mr. Carr has bought a big
Bible, and every morning reads a chapter to his family; he has
hired a seat in church and attends regularly with all his house-
hold, and has put his boys in the Sunday-school. Some one
told him that they were glad he had become a Christian. He
replied that he made no pretensions to that, but that he had
concluded that a family of children had a right to Relig^ion m
258 THE COMPLETE HOME.
the Home, inasmuch as it was a safeguard against crime and
pauperism, and an encouragement to thrift and respectability;
so he meant to go as far as he could toward securing it for his
boys, just as he tried to make them a tidy patrimony, and pro-
cure for them a good education."
" He has been stealing some of Aunt Sophronia's thunder,''
said Miriam, smiling.
" I trust," I said, " that the truth he reads and hears will be
blessed to him until he really becomes a Christian ; it speaks
well for him that he is doing the best that he knows how to do.
This religion which Mr. Carr thinks will be advantageous for
his home, must be possessed by himself if he would impress it
upon his children. Remember, my dear girls, if you desire to
cultivate piety in your children, you must have yourself some-
thing better than a formal, cold, cautious, time-serving sort of
piety. There are no keener critics than the innocent, observant
eyes and thoughtful hearts of little children ; dare, yes, desire, to
be warm and enthusiastic in your Christianity if you would com-
mend it to your families as a thing worth striving for. Religion
should be shown forth as joyous, free, hearty, hopeful, if it would
enchain the ardent affections of childhood and youth; from
the Christian home let —
" ' The light of love shine over all.'
Rich or poor in its appointments, it should be cheery and
kindly, full of common interests and homely self-sacrifices, and
mutual confidences, and good order. Nowhere else should
things be more honestly what they seem. It is only by
home sentiments that home can be made a place whereto the
hearts of children can be firmly bound; by a happy and affec-
tionate home, children are held from wandering. There is little
hope of religious lives for children who are allowed to find
their pleasures away from their parents' guardianship, haunting
RELIGION IN THE HOME. 259
Strangers' homes, or unknown places of amusement, staying out
in the evenings and coming in late, unchallenged. If children
are to grow up godly, they must have the shelter which God
provided for them — their home. Being out late at night lies at
the beginning of nine-tenths of the courses of ruin which are on
record. Parents should insist on their children being home-
keepers, and then should make happy the home that keeps them.
How often do we hear quoted : 'Eternal vigilance is the price of
liberty?' Eternal vigilance is the price of family piety. The
parent should honorably face the fact, that his position demands
incessant, kindly guardianship of his child; the child's com-
panions should be well known to the parent; the home-training
of these, their morals, manners, mental characteristics, should
be well understood, and their influence over the child carefully
noted. If it is true that a man is known by the company which
he keeps, and that evil communications corrupt good manners,
can a parent be too watchful over the companionships of his
children ? So, also, the parents' vigilance must be extended
over the important matter of the child's reading. A child
should not be left, in its early simplicity and heedlessness, to
choose its own books ; not merely the kind of books should be
regarded, but their especial effects on their young reader, for
what is only a needed stimulus' to one mind might be danger-
ously exciting to another, and what might merely properly
develop the sympathies of one child might make another
morbid. Consider: do you want your child to be like this
book? Is its tone that which you desire in your child's
mind? "
" Oh, me," said Helen, " what a world of work it is to rear a
family! What a burden of responsibility!"
" Consider, my Helen," I replied, " that nothing is a world of
work which is systematically and earnestly carried on, which is
begun at the beginning and regularly proceeded with; and if
■IQO THE COMPLETE HOME.
it were a world of work, a world of work is nothing when we
are training for eternity, when we have souls in keeping."
"And yet," said Mary Watkins, " how very different this
training thus far sketched is from the usual training of children !
If this is the true way to bring children up, then most children
must be merely allowed to come up."
And yet is not this the model of the Family life, as God
designs it ? The Bible is the guide-book, the family code of laws,
and Christ is the desired Model for all, and he stands illuminat-
ing parents and children, and children's children ;
"As the reflection of a light
Between two burnished mirrors gleams.
Or lamps upon a bridge at night.
Stretch on and on before the sight,
Till the long vista endless seems."
"There is another thing which we must not forget," re-
marked Hester : " God sets servants and dependents in the
religious keeping of the Heads of Families. No home can
shut up itself in secret isolation; its circle forever widens;
the servants, the neighbors, the guests, all feel its extending
influence. Religion in the Family sheds its beneficent light
on all the homes near — as Shakespeare says :
" ' How far yon little candle sheds its ray ?
So shines a good deed in a naughty world.' "
"There is one thing more which I wish to suggest," said
Sara. " Children who feel that they are governed in accord-
ance with God's laws, that their parents are in their training
responsible to a higher Power, and looking toward the highest
good, yield the readiest obedience. Children so brought up
are more thoughtful, have more careful consciences, look more
narrowly toward the consequences of their acts. This reverence
for law, as a thing divine, secures them from many of the
crimes of youth."
RELIGION IN THE HOME. 261
Martha came now to tell us our other guests were arriving,
As we rose, Hester quoted from her beloved Plato :
" 'And thus the tale has been told, and may-be for our salva-
tion, if we are obedient to the word spoken. Wherefore, my
counsel is, that we hold fast the heavenly way, and follow
after justice and virtue always, considering that the soul is im-
mortal and able to endure every sort of good and every sort
'>f evil. Thus shall we live, dear to one another and to Heaven,
both while remaining here, and when like conquerors in the
games we receive our reward.' "
CHAPTER XI.
HOSPITALITY IN THE HOME.
fcUNT SOPHRONIA TELLS HOW TO ENTERTAIN FRIENDS ANU
STRANGERS.
iCi|| WAS working in my garden one day among my roses,
J)T| and I was thinking of the very many varieties of this
"" queen of flowers. I did not particularly notice by what
chain of association and subtilely linked thoughts my
mind passed on to the infinite varieties that there are in the
exercise of hospitality, that queen of social virtues. Nearly all
these varieties I have seen exercised, even in this one town and
its surroundings. There is ostentatious hospitality, for instance.
(Dne of our ladies here says, that she would not entertain com-
pany at all, unless she could do it handsomely: having a hand-
some guest-chamber, elegant table-furniture, plenty of servants
and stylish meals. Now, of course, she entertains for the sake
of herself, of gratifying her own vanity ; not for the good of
her guest. I told her so one day. She said : " Of course her
guest had the benefit of all the nice things." That is true. But
still if she had not these splendors, she would refuse a hos-
pitality which her guest might need. There again is spasmodic
hospitality : that is Mrs. Black's variety. She will branch out
once or twice a year into a fine, showy party, which the family
have been tired out preparing for, or for sake of which the
family table has been scrimped for weeks previously. To this
gay entertainment Mrs. Black invites all her friends. For it she
exhausts all her energies ; and during all the rest of the year
(262)
HOSPITALITY IN THE HOME. 263
she never thinks of having a relative visit her, asking a friend
who drops in to stay to tea, inviting two or three acquaintances
for an afternoon, or a friend for the day. But, really, she and
her guests get very little gratification out of this spasmodic
hospitality: it is strained and burdensome. Again there is
nervous hospitality. I don't know a more striking instance of
that than Mrs. Smalley, Mary Watkins' mother. When Mrs.
Smalley is expecting guests, she is in a state of worry and
flutter for fear her house will not look well enough, or will be
less attractive than they expected, or less fine than they are
accustomed to. She does not simply arrange the best she has
in the best way which she knows, and then rest contented : there
is no content about it. She frets herself into a state of excite-
ment over rooms, bedding, table-furniture and food, and as soon
as her guests arrive this accumulated mass of anxieties falls on
them like an avalanche. She escorts them to her spare-room to
lay off their wraps. She discourses :
" I don't know as you'll be able to turn around here, this is
such a little bit of a place. I tell Smalley it isn't fit to invite
any one into. Smalley is so queer. He says : ' Why, if it does
for us it will do for our friends.' But, la, / want to give people
better than I have myself Vve always had to put up with poor
things, but I don't reckon you have. You don't care to wash
your hands? I wish I had nicer towels to offer you. I've
always been laying out to get some of those long, wide,
bordered damask-towels, but I never have. I hope you'll
excuse these. Shall we go down-stairs ? These are such
narrow, dark, crooked stairs I'm afraid you'll break your neck
on them. I tell Smalley we ought never to ask anybody to go
up them ; but, la, Smalley, he says, ' they're all that we've got.'
Now, my sister's front stairs are fit to go on. She has two pair.
But her things are always better than mine. I'm afraid you'li
find this sitting-room close: it's so low-ceiled; and it's too cold
264 THE COMPLETE HOME.
for you, of course. I cannot get this fire to act as it ought,
though I've worked at it all day. Do try this rocking-chair,
though it is a poor thing to offer you, enough to break one's
back; but that sofa is so stiff, and hard, and slippery, not near
so nice as you're used to. I'm sorry I can't make you more
comfortable, it worries me nearly to death."
And so she goes on: she is sure her tea is poor, not first
quality ; she cannot tell what has got into her bread ; the cake
is not half as good as she wanted it to be ; the preserves are not
fit to offer you ; the tongue is too salt ; you will not make out a
meal; she don't expect it when things are so poor; if you stay
all night, do excuse the fact that she has comforts instead of
blankets on the bed ; and the sheets are too coarse to offer you,
but she never can get things as she wants — and so on indefi-
nitely : really in a worry herself, and getting her guests into a
nervous state over her evident anxiety, while, in fact, all that
she has is good, neat and abundant.
What a contrast to this is Cousin Ann's common-sense hospi-
tality ? Cousin Ann always, for her own comfort and the good of
her family, has her house in the best order to which she can
attain : there is neither dust, litter nor rags. As her means have
gradually increased, so she has increased the furnishings and
conveniences of her house : it is none of it too fine to use, and
it is all thoroughly comfortable. She means to entertain her
own family nicely, and takes other people in on the same footing.
A thrifty housekeeper, her larder is never empty, she keeps
jellies and preserves on hood, and her cake-box is replenished
with something nice for a treat ; her table-linen is always hand-
somely done-up, and she has always a bunch of flowers, or a
moss-plate, or a growing fern as a centre-piece for her table
Guests, invited or accidental, are always welcomed heartily, and
Without apology ; they find everything in order ; no one seems
disturbed by their appearance. If Cousin Ann has not on het
HOSPITALITY IN THE HOME. 266
best gown, she is not rendered miserable and apologetic thereby^
for her dress is always clean, and her cap and collar in order,
and a white apron is always near at hand, and she meets friend
or stranger with a plain, quiet dignity, becoming to herself and
reassuring to them. If a surprise party rushes in on Cousin
Ann, it does not demoralize Jaer domestic arrangements, for if
the fires are not lit in spare-room and parlor, they are all laid
and ready to touch off with a matcJi ; people may come to stay
for a day, an evening, or a week : they are made welcome ; the
work moves on in the same order as usual. Cousin Ann does
not make " company ' of them, sitting with them in evident
anxiety to be looking after things elsewhere; but if there is
something for her to do, she ej^cuses herself calmly and attends
to it. She will bring her basket of mending or her pan of apples
to pare into the sitting-room, and chat merrily with her guests
while her fingers are flying. She sets before her friends what
happens to be on hand ; perhaps, if there is time, adding a plate
of biscuits, or a dish of broiled chicken ; makes no excuses, is
satisfied herself and takes it for granted that other people are.
Now, speaking of good kinds of hospitality, there is that kind
exercised by our minister's wife. It is truly the Biblical hospi-
tality, without grudging, shown first to fellow-Christians, then to
the poor, and then to people in general. Just let a colporteur,
an agent for a religious society, a poor minister travelling for
his health, a missionary, come to her house, and the house is
never too full or too poor to entertain him. I have seen her
take in a little old Indian evangelist and treat him like a king.
I told her once that with her young family and the constant
claims made on her time and thoughts, I should suppose this
hospitality would be a heavy tax; but she said that she just
made the guests part of the family and shared with them whaf
she had on hand, and so it did not seem burdensome. Hers is
Christian or unselfish hospitality, and in direct contrast with
266 THE COMPLETE HOME.
chat is the selfish hospitality of our member of Congress. I do
believe that man never invites a guest for a meal, a day or a
week, unless it is some one who will be of use to himself Let
any one come along, who will be of political service, and Mr. K.
opens his house ; nothing is too good ; his servants, his horse and
carriage, all he has are at his feet. His wife, is never too busy
or too feeble to have cake and coffee ready for a half dozen
politicians, or an oyster-supper for members of the bar, or a
county convention ; but when did any poor, sick, or old relation
or widow woman without means, or any little child, get hospi-
tality from him ? He offers what will come back to him in some
way or another : he uses the hospitality which can be reduced
finally to a cash return. When I was spending a winter with
my half-sister, I saw a sample of what you may call excessive
hospitality. She and her husband were both fond of company ;
they had a nice house and a nice income, but they taxed both
to the utmost in their entertaining. The children shared the
social instincts of the parents. The little ones had a fine play-
room, a large back-yard, and plenty of toys'; and they brought
in their little mates by the half dozen to stay all day Saturday,
or all of an afternoon, or to take a meal, or to stay all night.
The older children had their friends by the day, week, or even
month, especially if anything was going on in the city which their
friends in town or country would enjoy seeing. They had theii
charade parties, their tableaux parties, their musical evenings.
The parents gave a party now and then. They opened their
house every other Friday evening for a reception, with simple
refreshments ; their dining-room was a sort of hotel for all their
friends ; whoever was passing at meal-time dropped in ; if there
was a convention, or literary or ecclesiastical gathering of any
kind, they packed their house full of guests. My brother-in-law
would ask business acquaintances, almost strangers even, to
accept his hospitality for a week or so, while relations came for
HOSPITALITY IN THE HOME. 267
SIX months at a time. Even the servants shared the mania:
if the cook's sister, or the chambermaid's cousin, or if the boy's
mother were " out of place for a time, they came to stop for two
or three days, and help do the work : they would not make a bit
of trouble ; " and so the kitchen almost always had a visitor. In
fact, my poor sister was nearly worn to death with her hospital-
ity ; she never had a week's rest to herself, except when she
shut the house, and fled. The excessive hospitality so destroyed
the privacy of their home, and used up their income, that I hes-
itated to go to visit them, felt uncomfortable in staying, and
never went again, though my sister said I had been a real rest
to her, entertaining her company, superintending her children
and sewing, and keeping her closets in order.
I often admire the hospitality exercised at Hester's : it may
truly be called elegant hospitality. There is no show, no excess ;
everything is in order and in quiet, good taste ; nothing seems
to be a trouble. The guests are all persons of refinement:
people of letters, artists, scholars whom it is a treat to meet ; the
conversation is improving ; the talk of these learned and widely-
travelled people seems to widen the sphere of one's own obser-
vation and experience : the very food on the table becomes a
theme of intellectual conversation. The olives and sardines
bring up anecdotes of I-taly, or descriptions of famous paintings ;
a Dutch cheese, like fairy godmother's pumpkin, becomes a
coach, and in it you ride off to Holland, and hear its thrilling
history discussed according to Motley ; a plate of dates entices
some Egyptian traveller to describe to you Pyramids, and to
elaborate the theories of Bunsen, Smyth and Osborne.
Mark and Miriam are also very hospitable, after the style of
Cousin Ann : simplicity, generosity and • a real satisfaction in a
guest's presence mark the'ir method of entertaining. Helen is
fond of company, but company burdens her more, as her house
lacks the thorough order of Miriam's : her children are more
268 "^HE COMPLETE HOME.
unruly, and she is always in arrears with her work, instead of
beforehand with it. She has improved since she began house-
keeping, but she will never reach the happy having a time and
a place for everything.
I think in our village we ought all to know how to entertain
with grace, liberality and simplicity, from the example we have
had in Mrs. Burr and Mrs. Winton. I notice that they do not
give many set entertainments, but they are always ready and glad
to have a friend drop in unceremoniously to tea, or to accept an
unexpected invitation heartily given. They have small, informal
gatherings: a few friends to dinner or tea. Mrs. Burr is so
ready to pick out strangers — young men come to begin business,
or study their profession, or lonely young girls come to teach :
she invites these for an evening to cheer them up, and let them
feel that some one has an interest in them. She notices, too, if
these strangers have uncomfortable boarding-places, or are not
feeling well, and they are asked to her house for a few days, or
for a week. Indeed, I observe that, with the exception of a few
chosen friends, the people whom she asks to stay with her for a
time are those who will receive some good in staying — people in
feeble health, or lonely, or rather poor. That is the way to
exercise hospitality so as to receive a blessing with it.
Considering carefully the subject of hospitality, and observing
how it is exercised, I concluded that we are liable in it to many
errors, and fail, from ignorance, in doing by it all the good we
may to others, or getting all the good we ought for ourselves
I thought it would not harm our good ladies to have the matter
well discussed, and I concluded to call it up at our Sewing
Society. I like to bring up there some useful theme on which
all are likely to have some ideas ; and the discussion improves
ourselves, and keeps out jarring, unkind or foolish talk. Accord-
ingly I managed to introduce the subject of hospitality, and we
talked it over pretty well, getting new views and improving ou;
HOSPITALITY IN THE HOME. '^(j;)
old ones; and then we resolved to lay it before our minister,
when he dropped in about an hour before tea, aitd to see what
he had to say about it. Our minister took to the subject ver)'
kindly, and when he was established in his arm-chair and we
were all quietly busy with our needles, he held forth in some-
thing of this style :
" In the first place, my friends, hospitality is a Christian duty.
It is not of the indifferent things which we can do or not do as
we like, but it is clearly enjoined upon us. We owe its exer-
cise to our fellows, in virtue of our common brotherhood in
Adam, and of our closer brotherhood in Christ. ' Be not for-
getful to entertain strangers ;" Use hospitality without grudging.'
And the law of hospitality is not merely a New Testament
law: the Old Testament recognized the stranger within the
gates as a probable part of the Jewish household. We have not
only * Biblical injunction but Biblical example: Abraham, re-
marking three toil-worn travellers passing his shady oaks at
Mamre, exercised a large hospitality, gave of his best, himself
as a servant waited on his guests, and so entertained the Lord
of Life and citizens of heaven. Rebecca, finding a wayfarer at
the well, invited him and his train to abide at her father's house
and became an ancestress of Christ ; Lot, si|ting in the gate of
Sodom, showed the hospitality learned of Uncle Abraham; the
old man of Gibeah shows kindness to the wayfarers in the street ;
Samuel sets aside the best meat for guests who shall come to
him in the land of Zuph. The priest of Midian, who entertained
Moses, lives forever in the annals of his son-in-law ; the house-
hold of Bethany received everlasting life and glory in enter-
taining the Lord, and short Zaccheus casts a long shadow over
the face of time as he runs to make ready for the prophet of
Galilee. The eSrIy church, as we learn from New Testament
notices and from early tradition, were given to hospitality,
and they had their example from their Master, for when two
18
270 THE COMPLETE HOME.
young men ' said to him, Rabbi, where dwellest thou ? he replied,
Come and seS; and they abode with him that night.' Now ii
hospitahty is a Christian duty, it is incumbent upon all Christians,
and this according to their ability ; for it is demanded of us ac-
cording to what we have, and not according to what we have not.
Christ twice fed a multitude on plain loaves of barley-bread and
some small fishes ; his blessing went with them and they were
enough. We do not read that the blessing altered the variety or
the quality of this plain food; it increased its quantity to meet
need. We shall none of us be likely to offer then a more simple
entertainment than our Lord, but let hearty good-will go with it
and it will be accepted, and we need not repine because our
ability is not greater. The recipients of our duty of hospitality
are indicated to us in the Scripture : servants of our Lord, our
fellow-kinsmen in Christ; and then it is said, ' Ye did it unto me,'
and we may entertain angels unawares. Our kindred, our
friends, have a claim on our hospitality, and especially the poor
who cannot pay it again, but whose account remains to be
settled by the God of the poor at the resurrection of the just.
The hospitality of a home should not have a superfluous mag-
nificence and display which overawes and embarrasses the guest,
making him feel ilL at ease and self-conscious, while the hospi-
tality itself becomes to the entertainer a burden too heavy to be
borne. Our hospitality should be easy, brotherly, ready, and
oiifered in that quiet simplicity which gives best opportunity for
the steady conduct of our ordinary home-life. The oriental says
to his guest, in a flower of speech : ' All that I have is yours ;
this is your house, command these servants, do as you please.'
The Christian host makes no such shallow pretension of
resigning the helm and headship : he intends to make his guest
happy, and to guide his home in its accustdhied .way. The
Scripture makes him responsible in a measure for the conduct
of the stranger within his gates. We should not admit to our
HOSPITALITY IN THE HOME. 271
families those who will not exhibit to our children and servants
a discreet example ; if through any exigency such must come
among us, the heads of the household should exercise their right,
and quietly see that there is no infringement of their religious
life.
" No Christian family should permit a guest to speak lightly
of piety, or to carp at the Scriptures, or to profane God's name
and day. The Christian family has always in its midst one
choice and sacred guest — their Lord — and so they should allow
no other guests to do despite to him. This ground is covered
by the phrase, 'and the stranger within thy gates,' in the Fourth
Commandment. . This quiet, unostentatious, but unflinching
conduct of Home Piety in the presence of guests has often been
made ' an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners.'
The steady light of holiness shining in the Home has led the
stranger within the gates to the same clear shining."
" Well, really," said Mrs. Black, as our minister closed his
discussion, " that's been as good as a sermon. I don't know
but it has been better than a sermon, for it was shorter; we
were all interested in the subject at the very time it was talked
over ; we heard it sitting at our ease, without a draught from a
window, or the loss of our footstool to bother us ; we were not
distracted by anybody's new bonnet. Couldn't you give all
your sermons in that easy, off-hand way, Domine ? "
" If it has been such a good sermon," said Cousin Ann, " the
next question is, 'how much will we profit by it?'"
"I'm afraid it will be like the rest," said Mrs! Black ; "we say
they are very good, and show what we ought to do, but we
don't put them in practice. Indeed, Domine, after so long an
experience you must have got done expecting us to put the
theories in practice?"
" Experience has taught me that there will some seeds grow,
for I constantly see large harvests gathered on all sides ; and so,
if many seeds are lost, many must have thriven."
272 THE COMPLETE HOME.
We were then called out to tea, and the subject of hospitalitj'
was not resumed ; but I am quite sure its examination has done
some of us a deal of good.
As to this exercise of Hospitality, there are several points
which I have settled in my mind. I think no member of the
Family should disturb the home comfort by inviting any guest
especially disagreeable to any other member of the Family. I
think a husband should not give invitations, or desire to enter-
tain guests so freely, as to be a tax on his wife's health, or to
deprive' their children of her care. A wife on the other hand
should not receive so much company that she cannot properly
perform her duties in her home, or that she exceeds her
husband's means. I think that one should never stint, and
starve, and vex a family for a month or so, to launch out into a
showy party : the true hospitality is to share what we have
with a ready heart, that the recipient of the hospitality may not
feel burdened by it. I think it is foolish to furnish a parlor and
shut it up for the reception of occasional guests, considering it
too good for the use of the Family Circle, so that the children
feel awkward in it : our best things should be for our family.
Also, I think it is very foolish to pick out the largest, best,
sunniest room in the house, furnish it so well that we must
pinch other rooms to make that nice, and then keep it for a
guest-chamber, where five or six times in a year a few visitors
go to lay off hats and shawls, and where some guest stays,
perhaps, five or six weeks out of the fifty-two ; all the rest of the
year these best rooms are shut up and virtually wasted. Now,
I think, the b^est bed-room in the house should be the mother's
room, large enough to bring into it a sick child. The mother's
room should be airy and healthful, because on the health of
the parents the stability and comfort of the family depend. This
"mother's room" should be cheerful, so that the children
should like to go there and should have pleasant recollections of
it as a gathering-place. Let it be as well furnished as can be
HOSPITALITY IN THE HOME. 273
afforded, a family head-quarters of good taste, and then, if
desired, stray visitors can be asked there to lay off their cloaks :
for mother's room should always be in good order, as an
example to daughters and servants. Friends who are staying
in the house will enjoy going for an hour to this pleasant room
to chat with their hostess as she sews or rests. I think rooms
that are shut up four-fifths of the time have a forbidding, dead-
and-alive, touch-me-not look, which repels the stranger who is
asked into them.
Another thing as to which I have made up my mind is, that
people, in striving to be hospitable, are not obliged to allow
guests to turn their houses upside down and abuse their hospi-
tality. One would almost think this an unnecessary remark,
but I have seen people upon whom courtesy was thrown away.
I know such an one got into our minister's house once, and that,
too, when the poor lady of the house was ill. Such a man 1
never saw: he would not sleep on a mattress, and insisted on a
feather-bed being borrowed for him ; then he said the bed-room
was too small and that his bed must be put into the study, and so
our poor minister was turned out of his refuge ; he scolded the
maids until they threatened to leave, and he complained of the
noise of the little children in their plays — excellent children
they are ; he insisted on the best parlor-chair, their handsomest
piece of furniture, being carried up into his room ; and he was
angry because he was requested to pay his own washing-bills,
when his income was twice that of our minister. Things got
to such a pass that the minister said he must leave the house, as
his presence was increasing the poor wife's illness. Some of
our church-members came to ask if I'd have him, and I said :
"No; I'd sooner take a lunatic." I am ready to exercise hos-
pitality, but not to utterly unworthy subjects ; if patience ceases
to be a virtue, so does hospitality. However, I think that was
an exceptional case.
274 THE COMPLETE HOME.
When Hester and I were among the mountains, we saw a
little log-house where a genuine hospitality was exercised. It
was on the road to a logging-camp, and the wood-cutters passed
by it on their journeys. Not far from the house was a cool
spring under some trees. The good woman of the house had
put in the shade some benches ; she kept some drinking cups
there, and had had a basin for washing hollowed out of a block
of wood, and she hung near it a good, long towel, which she
changed every day ; and here the workmen, hot, and hungry
and tired, passing by, could stop, rest, wash their faces, eat their
luncheon, and get a cool drink. When we noticed the arrange-
ments which she had made for the comfort of wayfarers, she
said:
"Ah, well, it's little I can do to make the world happier, but
I just thought Fd like a resting-place on this long, steep road,
so I fixed up that, and it's done good to others, and the blessing
of him that was ready to perish has come upon me!"
Hester was telling me lately of the true hospitality shown to
herself and Dr. Nugent when they were travelling in the West.
They were driving by themselves, and stopped at a cabin to try
and get bait for their horses. It was a plain little place, all the
furniture having been hewn out of the forest wood by the set-
tler himself While the horses were eating, the good woman of
the house came and asked Hester to rest by leaving the carriage
and coming into her house. She brought her a cup of rich
milk ; then, unasked, brought a pail of water that she might bathe
her face and hands and dress her hair after the long, hot ride.
In all that she did she showed an unaffected, hearty kindness,
which lent to her acts a grace which would have become any
lady in the land. When she saw that Hester admired some
specimens of minerals and some woodland curiosities, she
insisted on her taking them ; and as inquiries were made about
the flowers in the vicinity, she hurried off to bring some which
HOSPITALITY IN THE HOME. 275
she thought very pretty, and which proved to be very rare and
valuable. Hester was very glad that she had in her portman-
teau a number of articles which she could bestow on her hostess,
and which were gladly accepted when she learned that, as
Hester would find her trunks that evening, they could b^ well
spared.
Mrs. Burr, one winter, set all our town an example of charity
and hospitality akin to that of the good Samaritan. One after-
noon as snow was falling, a young woman, accompanied by a
boy of five, asked leave to rest and dry herself at the kitchen
fire. Mrs. Burr, seeing her enter the yard, went to the kitchen
to inquire into her case, and ordered her a cup of hot tea
Seeing that she looked very feeble, and hearing her painful
cough, the kind lady next insisted on her putting on dry gai-
ments, shoes and hose which she gave her. Mrs. Burr said to
her servant :
" Kitty, if you would give that poor little child a hot bath, I
have a suit of clothes that Ned wore long ago, which you might
put on him."
Kitty agreed with alacrity, and the child, having then a bowl
of bread and milk, felt very comfortable. The poor mother,
however, looked exhausted and feverish. The storm increased.
Mrs. Burr said she could not send so helpless a creature out in
such weather, so Kitty made a fire in a bed-room, gave the
invalid a hot bath and some medicine, and put her to bed.
Twice in the night Mrs. Burr went to visit her patient, and early
in the morning sent for young Doctor Winton. As the woman
grew worse, Mrs. Burr waited on her as if she had been her
sister. After three weeks' illness, the stranger died. She told
Mrs. Burr that she was a destitute widow going to her early
home ; and Mrs. Burr wrote to the minister in the village which
she indicated, asking him to seek out her relatives, and let her
know if they would take the child. The minister replied that
276 THE COMPLETE HOME.
they would do so, if he could be sent to them, but they were
very poor. Mrs. Burr buried the woman decently, and con-
cluded to keep the §by, training him for a house-sei-vant until
he was old enough to learn a trsde. All the village became
interested in the poor stranger, and sent things to her while she
was ill, and helped bury her. Now that was a hospitality such
as Christ recommends, which is shown to the poor, the halt, the
blind, the lame, who can offer no compensation, and so the
return is left to Him.
I think the very poor often set us an example of genuine hos-
pitality — how they divide their narrow meal with a hungry
neighbor; how they share their fire and their shelter with those
who lack. One of the most hospitable women in our town is a
poor washerwoman. I think in winter she always has warming
at her fire some cold little body whose mother is off for a day's
work, or some little chap who has nowhere to go after school,
or some little working-boy who does errands, cuts wood and
cleans side-walks. There is always a place on her stove to boil
the soup or meat of some one who must save firing ; she says,
" it is no trouble to her, for her fire must be kept up." Two or
three poor neighbors would hardly ever get their clothes
washed for want of soap and warm water, only she makes them
welcome to her suds when her washing is done. Indeed, she is
a public benefactor, and with no means of exercising hospi-
tality but a small, bare room and a fire, she yet sets us all an
example of a hearty, thoughtful sharing of that little with those
who need.
One of the most remarkable instances of hospitality which I
ever knew happened thus : I was making a short summer visit
to a second cousin ; she had a very large house, and a good
income. As we sat one Saturday afternoon in the front room,
her husband remarked : " There is Mr. Potter, his wife, his
mother and his three children. They have come off the boat,
HOSPITALITY IN THE HOME. . 277
and are going toward the hotel, but I don't believe he can
afford to pay his way there. Shall I ask them in to stop over
Sunday ? "
"Oh, yes: do," said my cousin, heartily.
The good man then ran out and brought in his guests. My
cousin was only slightly acquainted with Mr. Potter; he knew
that he was a Methodist preacher who had been obliged to
cease preaching on account of a bronchial disorder. That my
cousin belonged to another church made no difference to him :
he felt that all the children of God are one family. He dis-
covered that, with very little money in his pocket, Mr. Potte;/
was looking for something to do ; he thought he had secured a
school, and, suddenly disappointed, he found himself with his
helpless family on his hands, strangers in a strange place. My
cousin kept making him welcome in his home, until their joint
efforts should secure him a place to labor. In fact, the who'/e
family stayed a full year, and another child was born to them
imder this hospitable roof At last Mr. Potter so far recovered
that he was able to secure a small church ; then my cousin said :
" Your family is large : leave your old mother here; I can take
better care of her than you can." So indeed the old lady stayed,
and stayed nine years. My cousin said she never begrudged
the hospitality shown her, for she seemed to bring a blessing to
the house, as the Ark of God to Obed-Edom. I am sure, for
rny part, that the faithful Lord will never forget to settle such
an account as that in the mansions higher up.
After our discussion at the Sewing Society, of hospitality, the
subject was called up one evening at our Literary Circle. There
we sometimes give out a theme, and having distributed strips
of paper, each member writes down a. sentence, either their own
or some quotation, on the subject, and these being read, the
various opinions so elicited are discussed. When Hospitality
was the theme, these are some of the sentences handed in :
278 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" Hospitality is the reception and entertainment of strangers
or guests, without reward." — Webster.
" Hospitality I have found as universal as the face of man "
— Ledyard.
"The derivation of this word is from hospes, a guest; thence
hospital, a place for receiving guests, a refuge for those in need;
formerly freely applied to schools and endowed institutions of
learning : thereafter applied to places for the reception of the
sick or injured. Knights Hospitallers were a chivalric order of
the middle ages, devoted to the succor of pilgrims to the holy
sepulchre, and to the promotion of learning. Their head-
quarters were first at Jerusalem, and then at Malta ; their defence
of Malta against the sultans was one of the most gallant achieve-
ments of history.''
" Hospitality seems to be of the noblest instincts of the heart;
a primitive virtue, most warmly exercised in early and un-
tutored ages. It was especially a virtue of our ancestors, and
seems to be rather dying out, than increasing, in the light of
civilization."
"Hospitality: a charming virtue, perishing gradually under
the inroads of steam-cars and a hotel system."
After reading these, and other sentences, we began to discuss
the question whether the grace of hospitality was decreasing.
The extravagance of the present age, the emulation in the style
of living, and the false shame felf at living plainly, were alleged
as reasons why people now less freely than formerly entertained
guests. The increased means of locomotion, whereby the cor-
rupt classes of the cities passed more freely from place tc place,
rendering people suspicious of strangers, and not willing tc
entertain them,, was another reason offered for a decrease in that
genial hospitality wherewith our forefathers received each be-
lated traveller, and made him welcome to their hearth. Cousin
Ann told us that her pastor, a holy old man, years ago, when
HOSPITALITY IN THE HOME. 273
two nice-looking young men stopped to ask their way, bad;;
them, as it was late, dark and stormy, to remain all night. The)-
came in gladly, were seated at the family table, and spent the
■-vening in the family circle, chatting pleasantly. They knelt
It prayers, when the good man asked for a blessing on the
strangers within his gates. The next day the tempest was
heavier, and the two were invited to tarry ; on the next day they
set out. Three days after that they were arrested as notorious
housebreakers. The minister had in his house and on his table
a good deal of silver, heired by his wife, his quarter's salary
lay in his unlocked desk, but these two Ishmaels of society
found all that belonged to their saintly host sacred in their
eyes.
Mr. Burr said that before the electric telegraph, the steam-car,
and the daily paper, people in the rural districts were so far cut
off from the news of the world that a passing traveller, judge,
schoolmaster, day-laborer or peddler was to the family in lieu
of a post-bag of letters, and a whole file of newspapers; the
information which he brought, seeming to put them into contact
with their fellows, largely repaid all favors, in the shape of bed
and board, bestowed upon him. From the host down to the
smallest child, and to the maid in the kitchen, a guest came as a
benediction.
Hester reverted to yet earlier times, when wheeled convey-
ances were almost unknown ; highways were infested with rob-
bers, and roads were full of ruts two feet deep ; when books were
only in manuscript, or were worth almost their weight in gold ;
then a travelling troubadour, harper, or tale-teller, was as the
commg to the house of a whole library. The family welcomed
him, and gave him of their best, and besought him to remain
long; they learned his tales and songs to beguile the tedium
of their winters ; if any of them could write, they made copies of
his parchments, to keep among their choicest treasures. So
280 THE COMPLETE HOME.
when the early Lollards of Wyckliffe's day began to go about
the country, carrying portions of the Scriptures and of religious
'•orks in written rolls, and preaching the gospel, they were
received with joy; their little books were copied; they were
detained as long as possible to instruct the family and the
retainers, and thus the hospitality which seems indigenous in
England secured the spread not only of learning but of true
religion, and the general awakening of mind and independence,
which finally led to the securing of national liberty. Thus has
English hospitality been largely blessed to England.
Mrs. Winton thought that instead of complaining of the
demands upon our hospitality, we should rejoice in the exercise
of this virtue, and cherish it lest it should become as a "lost;
art" to future generations. That is a very lovely story hov/'
Cowper was entertained for years as a guest, and Dr. WattJi
going for a short visit remained with his host for forty years.
Mrs. Black smartly retorted that it "would be all well enough
if one could be sure of entertaining Cowper or Watts : for her part
she would not mind having the author of ' John Gilpin's Ride'
for a visitor. But, now-a-days, if one exercised promiscuous
hospitality, one might show the most of it to a troop of tramps,
who were thieves and cut-throats, and to entertain whom, even
for a meal, was to encourage idleness and pauperism. She did
not wonder that in the light of so many barn-burnings, and with
the record of so many murders and child-stealings, hospitality to
unknown individuals was falling into a decline and like to die;
for her part she would willingly attend its funeral."
" The question," said our minister, " is, like many questions,
typed by the British Shield in the fable, which had one side of
gold and one of silver, and about the material of which it was
not well to dispute hotly until one had looked at both sides.
There is a use of hospitality which, like mercy, was twice
blessed : blessing him who gives and him who takes. There is
HOSPITALITY IN THE HOME. 281
.ilso an abuse of hospitality, as when one fostered by it itinerant
idleness, rude, ungracious assumption, or received a vicious
guest."
Miriam reminded us of the beautiful picture of hospitality
which Milton draws in the Fifth Book of " Paradise Lost,"
where he represents Eve making ready the entertainment of her
guest, Adam beguiling the day by accounts of the garden-life
since the creation, and both the first pair seated, attentively
listening to the discourse of their guest.
"The relation between a guest and his host," said Mr.
Winton, " has always been considered very sacred. The Home
spreads its aegis of protection over all who come under its roof:
to murder or rob a guest, or a host, has been esteemed the very
extremity of wickedness. The wildest Arab protects him who
aas eaten of his salt ; if one of our Indians offered the calumet
of peace to a stranger and led him into his wigwam, then he
was that stranger's defender until he went forth in peace. The
Levitical law forbid returning to his master a fugitive slave
who had made one's roof his refuge. The most reckless of the
Afghan robbers will protect to the utmost a man who is his
guest, even though he should be willing to waylay and assassi-
iiiite him after he has gone out from under his shelter. I have
never read of any land or tribe where hospitality was unknown,
and truly this grace of the barbarian should shine better and
brio-hter in the civilized man and the Christian. Let us make a
point to cultivate it, especially in our families, so that this virtue,
and the blessings attending on it, may descend to our children's
children, and that Hospitality may revive and not die out in the
nineteenth century."
But I think that one of the very choicest forms of Hospitality
is one that peculiarly belongs to people in the country, or in
small villages. Of late the charitably inclined in cities have
been appealing to those living in rural districts to receive into
282 THE COMPLETE HOME.
their houses, for a little time in the summer, the worn-out, indigent
workers of the city, or poor little city children. Seamstresses,
shop-girls, tradeswomen, exhausted, needing a change of air,
unable to pay for such a luxury, would have minds, bodies and
hearts revived by being accepted as unpretending guests, readj
to take the plainest room, glad to lend a hand in home-work
thankful for a share of the ordinary family meals; city friends
would pay their travelling expenses ; the farm-house would not
find itself encumbered by one or two such visitors — incljcd, the
healthful, peaceful life of the farm would grow more and more
beautiful to country people's view beheld through these admir-
ing, wondering eyes of the honest city poor, who revel in a
dandelion or a daisy, who esteem buttenn 'k the choicest pos-
sible beverage, and a live chicken a thing to gaze at by the
hour. What draughts of joy and health these weazened chil-
dren from crowded, narrow city streets or sunless attics drink in
the glorious country! They may live to be healthful, cour-
ageous men and women by virtue of these tumbles in the hay,
this going after berries, and driving home the cows. Cousin
Ann every summer has a succession of such guests, and the
boys fitted up three little rooms over the tool-house, making
most of the furniture themselves, for the accommodation of three
more of these strangers sent by city clergymen and friends;
while for a month every summer the best spare-room is occu-
pied by some city missionary, to whom costly summer resorts
would be an impossibility. It makes no matter if Reuben and
Ann have not met him before: he and his wife and a child oi
two are welcomed as kinsmen in Christ Here indeed is tru«
Hospitality.
CHAPTER XII.
FRIENDSHIPS IN THE HOME.
ADNl SOPHRONIA's VIEWS OF THE COMPANY WE SHOULD KEEP.
DO not think our village is worse than any others ; but
surely it is not better than others in the matter of keeping
children and young folks off the streets, and in good
comj)any. As I went to Helen's lately, I found Tom
frolicking in the street with a number of little fellows who havo
no advantages of home-training, who fight and use bad words.
I took Tom with me to his own house, and when he was safel3r
playing in his own back-yard, I began to reason with his mother
concerning him. Having mentioned the boys with whom I had
found him playing, I asked : " Now, Helen, does it seem to
3'ou that God has given Tom, in the birth which he has assigned
him, any advantages over these children — any better oppor-
tunities ? "
" Why, of course, he has," said Helen.
" And then, are you not recklessly throwing away for Tom this
birthright, are you not nullifying these privileges, by casting
his lot in with these less fortunate ones, subjecting him to their
temptations, putting him in the way of the evil example which
they find in their homes ? Little Teddy Buck has no yard to
play in, no home but a grog-shop. Society which is better off
does owe Teddy a helping hand, but a child like Tom is not the
proper missionary. Tom will learn evil of Teddy, and Teddy
will get no good from Tom. Tom has been allotted by Provi-
dence a nice yard in which to play, but in permitting him to run the
(283)
284 THE COMPLETE HOME.
streets you put him as far as yoH can in Teddy's place, and sup
jcct him to the transmitted evil influences of the bar-room. Tom
is happy in having a father who would use no profane nor vulgar
language, but you allow him to associate with Jim Green, whose
mouth is full of the vice and blasphemy which he hears from his
father. You would be shocked at having a gambler like James
Wall admitted into your society, but here your own son, ' playing
for keeps ' on the corner, is learning to be what you loathe.
Mike Flannagan is coarse and dirty. Suppose Tom asked him
into your sitting-room ? You would be angry, and yet, as we grow
like our associates, you are allowing Tom to grow like Mike;
Flannagan, and by-and-by, instead of a son to be proud of, and
a companion and protector of his sisters, he will be a foul little
ruffian, fit only to disgrace you."
" Oh, aunt," cried Helen, tears in her eyes, " you are too
severe."
" No, my dear, not a bit. This is plain, hard truth, which other
people would not venture to tell you, but in a few years, if Tom
turns out a reprobate, these same sinfully silent friends would
say : 'Ah, I knew how Tom would turn out : from the way his
mother let him run the streets, what else could she expect?'
Now I tell you in time, so that you may take counsel and
t'scape trouble."
" But, aunt," said Helen, putting herself on the defensive, " we
cannot keep our children always from contact with the world,
nor from the evil that is in it."
" Very true, but God gave them homes and parental care, to be
their shelter, until they are established in virtue, love truth, and
can resist temptation. The child's training is always different
from the man's action, although it served to fit him for it. You
strengthen the child's stomach on milk and on delicate food,
that it may grow capable later of digesting meat ; you expect
your child to walk, and because you expect that, you do not set
FRIENDSHIPS IN THE HOME. 283
a child of a week old to bearing its weight on its boneless, legs,
or you would have not an athlete but a cripple."
Hester had been sitting with Helen, and she added : " Plate
says, 'A young man who is good is apt to be deceived by
V>thers, because he has no pattern of evil in himself: therefore a
judge should be advanced in years, and his youth should have
been innocent, and he should have acquired experience of evil
hte in life by observation.' What is good for forming a just
judge is good for forming any man, and here the demand is for
an innocent youth, segregated from vice, and learning of evil,
not by crime-committing and remorse, but by seeing its effects
upon society in general."
" Oh," said Helen, " I see you are both against me. I only
wish you knew how crazy Tom is after some one to play with,
and how hard it is to keep him within bounds."
" My child ! " I exclaimed, " the very hardness of the task
shows you how needful it is to perform it. If it is hard now, if
Tom is left to the freedom of his own will, by the time he is
fifteen he would be past all control ; and that it i? ' :a does not
lessen your maternal duty. Consider the usefulness of Tom's
life: all the happiness of your later years, the credit of your
family, the well-being of an immortal soul, hang on your per-
formance of duty. Oh, that you might see that duty now as
clearly as you will see it if ever it becomes too late to see and
do."
"Cousin Helen," said Hester, "don't blame Tom for being
^jnd of playmates and company. Man is a social animal ; the
child only shares the nature of his kind. You do not desire
him to be a hermit or a cynic, although that would be
better than a rowdy or a criminal. If he is to sway men or
succeed among them, he must begin by leading the hfe of a
citizen, not of a misanthrope. Doubtless there are mothers who
have seen sons go to the gallows, or the penitentiary, or have
19
iSQ THE COMPLETE HOME.
followed to a premature grave the victim of debauchery, who,
if they had been true to their maternal task, might have seen
their children standing in the highest places of state, or church,
or science, and dying have been followed by the lamentations of
a whole people."
"Why," said Helen, "you speak as if it all rested with
mothers, but some who have had no mothers or have had bad
mothers have done very well."
" We see now and then in nature," said Hester, " unexpected
or abnormal growths, developments which are exceptions to a
usual law, but we expect what conforms to the law. From a
poor stock a better scion may spring ; but rule is, good stock,
good scion, and we do not trust to poor stock for better things.
If I tossed a valuable bulb or root out on that garden-bed it
might take root and thrive, but I should be almost absolutely
certain of its thriving if I carefully planted and cultured i1
according to its kind. Do not, Helen, try to escape the facl
that parents are the architects of their children's future. Socrates
said : 'A golden parent may have a silver son, and a silver
parent a golden son, or perchance the son of a golden or silver
parent may have an admixture of brass or iron.' But all this,
my cousin, will be because there entered gold, or silver, or brass,
or iron, into parental training."
" But," said Helen, " I do try to train up Tom as well as I
know."
" Helen," I said, " consider this reasonably : you try in the
house to make Tom a gentleman ; you check a bawling tone, you
cultivate a polite reply, you reprimand him if he calls names,
and you are pleased if any one notices that his manners are
refined. This you do in the house, half an hour or so ; then he
goes out on the street, he whoops like an Indian, knocks off the
cap of some passing child, squabbles over his marbles, and flings
dust in the face of his opponent, and finally relieves his mind by
FRIENDSHIPS IM THE HOME. 287
yelling at htm that he is " a dumb old blunderbuss ; ' then dodging
from a stone thrown in revenge for the epithet, he stumbles into
old Mrs. Petty, hobbling along to visit her daughter, and almost
throws the dame into the gutter."
" He deserves a good whipping," cried Helen, indignantly.
" But, Helen, he was acting exactly like the company which
you allowed him to be in ; he merely yielded to the temptations
of the position in which you had placed him. In his own yard,
playing with lads of your choice, Tom would have done none
of these things; your letting him run with wild, bad children
destroys your own teaching. Suppose you do teach him the
Commandments : if you let him play with children who, in his
presence, break hourly the third, the fifth, the ninth and the
tenth, the example will be far more potent than the precept.
We are members of a fallen race, Helen, and evil seizes on us
with a far stronger hold than good. Helen, your own conscience
shows you your duty : do not let pride or indolence ruin the soul
of your son."
" But what shall I do ? " cried Helen.
" Why," said Hester,- in her matter-of-fact way, " here is a card ;
now write down on it the names of four or five boys who in your
view are fit playmates for Tom. Then call in Tom : tell him it is
time you made new rules for him ; that hereafter he cannot play
outside of his own yard, unless it is in the yard o{ some one
whom by your permission he is visiting. Tell him these boys
named on the card are the boys )vhom he is to go with, and if
the circle is increased it will be by you. Tell him that you
shall permit no infringement of these laws ; and inasmuch, Helen,
as you are not very forcible in maintaining your rules, I'd
advise you to lay the case before Frank, and have him positively
re-affirm this judgment."
Helen, with a few suggestions from us, wrote her card and
dien sent for Master Tom. As he was coming, she said to
288 THE COMPLETE ffOME.
Hester : " You begin the matter : you know how to <get on with
boys and I don't."
In came Tom.
Said Hester : " Tom, I'm going to take a boy out to Cousin
Ann's to spend the day to-morrow, and I shall pay no regard to
relationship in choosing him. Shall I take you or Mike Flan
nagan ? "
"Take me," spoke up Tom, confidently.
" Why, what better claims have you ?" asked Hester.
" I've — I've got the best clothes," said Tom.
"As for that, I can easily buy Mike as good a suit."
"Oh, come now, Cousin Hester," argued Tom, "you don't
want him round a lady like you. Why, Mike swears awful, and
he uses such grammar you wouldn't know what he was saying;
and he lies — oh, you couldn't believe one word he said to you
all day!"
" Humph, a pretty boy for you to be playing with ! How
long will it take you to grow like him ? If you run with him
much longer, are you likely next year to be any better company
'for a lady' than he is?"
Tom crimsoned and hung his head.
" I'm not like Mike yet,'' he mumbled.
"I did not, think you were acting very kk///^^ him when I
brought you off the street," I remarked.
Then Helen showed him her card, and laid down her new
rules, with more authority than she usually shows. Tom stood
looking perplexed, but Hester went on smoothly as if it were
part of the plan. "And as you will want to have a good time
in your own yard, you . are to have a row of pop-corn of your
own planting all along the back fence ; and the top room of the
wood-shed you can clear out for your boys to have shows, pan-
oramas, and so on, in ; and your father is going to put up some
poles and such things for gymnastics for you, and when hot
FRIENDSHIPS IN THE HOME. 289
weather comes, I intend to lend you my smallest tent to set up
in your yard, for your use, if you will take care of it. But 1
should be sorry to suggest the dreadful things which are likely
to befall you, if you do break rules and run the street."
" Catch me running the street," quoth Tom, " if I can have
BOYS here to play with, and things to pl^ with, and if I know i
daren't."
Off ran Tom to examine the capacities of the top room of the
wood-shed. Said Hester, smiling: "There is sound philosophy
in Tom's remark : 'If I know I daren't.' The human heart was
made to be controlled by law, and it craves law. When I was
at college, our lady principal, like the knight of old, had a hand
of steel in a velvet glove. The velvet glove handled all things
with genial courtesy, but if any one began to slip off into the
ways of error, the steel hand under that velvet glove settled
firmly down on the culprit with the grasp of a vice. To rebel
was bootless : there was that calm, silent authority. One of our
elder girls, who had lived utterly without restraint at home, was
telling us one day how different school rule was from home
rule. One said to her : ' How can you stand such a change,
then ? How does it seem to you ? ' She considered a while,
and replied : ' There is a great satisfaction in feeling safe — that a
law is right, and as long as you abide by it you are easy and
fre't from danger.' "
" There is almost no point, Helen," I said, " in which this
parental or Home authority can be more legitimately exercised
than in regard to thf; friendships of our children. The family is
not a unit, cast alor/e into space : it is one of many Which make
up the grand sum total of the race ; in every department of life
we touch on our fellows ; we were born social animals, and we
will exercise our social instincts, each for himself the centre of
concentric circles, the sacred, inner circle of close friendships,
the next of daily acquaintances, the next of business acquaint-
290 THE COMPLETE HOME.
ances, and the wide, outer circle of an unknown world. The
little child must have friends, but knows nothing how to choose
friends ; his parents must choose for him. Helen, you must sub-
ject the moral character, the natural traits, the home-training,
the manners, the language, the pursuits of your children's com-
panions to the closest scrutiny.''
" Oh, how can I constantly remember so much ! "
" Why, child, you did all this in making out that card. You
chose the minister's little son because he was good and so well
trained ; two little Carr boys because their manners and language
had been so well guarded ; you rejected one boy because he was
so notoriously passionate, and you put the son of the tailoress
on the top of your list because he is known as one of the best
boys in town. Use always the care and judgment you have in
making this list."
On my way home from Helen's I called on Mrs. Black, and
as I sat with her we saw Belinda passing, with Maria Sellers.
Mrs. Black exclaimed : " I do wish Belinda would not go so
much with Maria ; Maria is a bold girl, always running about
the streets, and talking of young men ; her manners are noisy,
and she is very silly.''
" If you do not like the friendship, Mrs. Black," I said, "why
do you not break it off? Mothers have a right to choose the
friends of their daughters. If you do not exercise your right,
and so give Belinda the benefit of your wider experience and
more mature judgment, she is in that respect no better off than
a poor orphan. God gave parents their training in long disap-
pointments, and broken faiths, and looks down unfathomable gulfs
of wickedness, that mighty ruin caused by taking false coin of
friendship for their own sincerity, that they might know how to
shield their children from temptation, or to deliver them when
they are tempted. If you had received a fortune you would
make Belinda a sharer in it, and not turn her out a pauper to beg
FRIENDSHIPS IN THE HOME. 291
from door to door ; and you have received this fortune of expe-
rience, and of seeing the effects of certain causes, and certain
ends from certain beginnings and to know where danger lies,
and yet you disinherit Belinda from that, and let her take her
own chance of being harmed by harmful friends. There is
nothing more important to children than the friendships which
they form, and parents should look to it."
This subject of Home Friendships being in my mind, I went
one day to call at the parsonage, and our minister said : " Miss
Sophronia, suggest to me a text for a sermon: something of
popular interest."
" I cannot si/ggest to you a text," I said, " but I will give you
a subject on which I really wish you would preach, and that, is
Friendships in the Home. I do not think people generally know
how important a part our friendships play in our moral and
spiritual lives. I do not think parents understand their respon-
sibility for the friendships formed by their sons and daughters.
There must be common-sense law, and God's law to govern it.
So let us have your opinions on it."
Our minister replied that he would think about it, and a few
weeks after, he, having announced the theme a week before,
preached on Friendships in the Home, taking for his text:
" Because thou hast joined thyself with Ahaziah, God hath
broken thy works." He enlarged on our Christian duty of
forming suitable friendships for ourselves and our families. He
spoke of the instinct of friendship as indigenous in the heart of
man — a plant of Eden which had not been rooted up by the
tempest of the Fall, but had bloomed in every age. He spoke
of the divine warrant for our friendships ; of Enoch, who walked
with God ; of Moses, who talked with God as a man does with
his friend ; of Abraham, who was known as the friend of God ;
of the tender friendship which bound David and Jonathan; of
Christ loving and choosing the seventy and tJie twelve, and then
292 THE COMPLETE HOME.
the special three, Peter, James and John, for his particular friend*
ship, and of that tender friendship with the household in Beth-
any. God sends his people out two by two', and family by
family, and gives the social tie; and as "iron sharpeneth iron,
so doth the countenance of a man his friend." But over the
exercise of this instinct of friendship God keeps watch: qui
friendships are amenable to law ; there must be reason in the
choice ; the natural instinct rises to the higher level of logical
preference. False friendships distract and torture us ; the friend-
ship of the wicked betrays us into danger, and brings us to judg
ment : there was wrath on Jehoshaphat because he loved them
that hated the Lord. If our friends cannot be bound to be dear
lovers of our other friends, it is yet impossible that, holding that
relation to us, they should be their enemies. So a Christian can-
not choose for a friend the foe of his Lord ; the moral man can-
not choose the immoral ; the law-abiding cannot choose the law-
hater. In fact, one of the chief elements in friendship is sympa-
thy ; and so are we known by the company which we keep, and
are judged to be as our friends are. The friend of one member
of the family is brought into contact with all ; this friend then
should be damaging to none. The parent must not choose a
friend who would be injurious to his child: the husband, a man
whom he cannot introduce to his wife; the mother cannot
choose a foolish-tongued woman who would be a bad example
to her daughter; the brother, a youth unfit for the society of his
sister. Friends can bring into our homes moral poison, or honey
from the hives of Hybla ; there is no law of hospitality which
would bid us open our doors any sooner to the bringer-in of
discord, or unfaith, or vice, than to the housebreaker, the murderer
or the bringer-in of contagious diseases. Keep the sanctuai^
of Home inviolate. Satan knows the power of evil friendships,
and he strives tp destroy innocent youth by evil companionship.
Are you, parents, on your guard against this device of the devil ?
FRIENDSHIPS IN THE HOME. 293
Are you choosing the friends of your children, or are you leav-
ing them in all the reckless confidence, the broad sympathies,
the boundless faith of youth, to fall in with wicked companions
whom the adversary of souls has spread as a net at the head of
every way? Remember that vice is, on the exterior, often allur-
ing. The evil companion seems, at first flush, liberal, witty, well
skilled in all the pretty arts of life and society; unwary youth
seizes upon him as a treasure, this lost one, walking in the hosts
of light.
" Behold, how fair on outside falsehood hath ! "
Young people in their first intercourse with the world have
very singular grounds for choice of friends. A young lad will
find sufficient cause for conferring his friendship if a stranger
has a good suit of clothes, a jolly laugh, or the glory of owning
a gun, a fishing-rod, a dog or a pony. Fathers should not allow
their business so to engross their minds that they have no time
or thought to spend on their sons' friendships ; they are more
likely than mothers to know the ways of the lads in the neigh-
borhood, and they should see to it that their sons do not form
friendships which are likely to nullify any good teaching which
they may get at home,
I was speaking of this to Cousin Ann one day, and she said
that people who live in the country, and have two or three sons
nearly of an age to be companions for each other, hardly know
how well off they are. There is a tendency in the young lads
in the country to flock to the villages to chat at the tavern or
the corner store, but this tendency can be checked by making
the home pleasant, bringing into it plenty of books and papers,
and inviting friends freely, and making it agreeable for them.
The friends of all members of the family ought equally to be
invited : that is a dangerous plan which invites the daughter's
friends, on the plea that young girls are quieter and more easily
pntertained. and refuses to invite the son's friends because thq,-
294 THE COMPLETE HOME.
are " too much trouble." Thus, the boys feel slighted, are
inclined to go abroad to seek more troublesome friends than
they would bring into the house. By having their acquaint-
ances rejected from the home circle, they fall into a habit of
keeping aloof from the society of their homes, say it is too
much trouble to dress to see people, get shy and awkward, and
soon sink to a lower plane of companionship than that to which
they are entitled. Cousin Ann said her children never invited
friends without consulting her, but that on her part she never
begrudged a little trouble in entertaining her children's friends
as freely as her own — in fact, in making them her own ; and she
always tried to increase the circle of their acquaintances by
receiving into it all new-comers whose character would make
them acceptable. •
Mrs. Black, Mrs. Winton and Miriam met at my house on«
afternoon quite by accident, and the subject of forming friend-
ships came up in the course of conversation.
" I'm sure," cried Mrs. Black, " sometimes I wish we'd all
been born hermits, or had been wrecked on a desert island, I
have such trouble with my girls' acquaintances. They get
desperately intimate with some other girl for no reason in life,
perhaps, but that she wears clothes which they admire, or has a
chatty way in society which draws young men about her, or is
a good hand at getting up pic-nics and entertainments. As long
as they are friends there never was such a dear, and as soon as
they quarrel, which they usually do in a little while, there never
was any one so detestable. And one trouble is that half the
friends the girls pick out do not suit Mr. Black's views, and he
frets over the acquaintance."
"Such intimacies as you describe," said I' s. Winton, "do
not seem to me worthy of the name of friendship. They are
mere matters of excitement and sentimentality, and girls who
allow their minds to be occupied with such feelings scarcely
FRIENDSHIPS IN THE HOME. 295
know what true friendship is. Real friendship is based on
respect; on something truly worthy in its object; it is without
flattery, or jealousy, or selfish ends. We may have many
acquaintances, but not so very many friends; and friendship,
which is stable in its nature, sympathizing, improving, is some-
thing to be cultivated as a very choice element in our lives. I
think we do not sufficiently try to teach our young people the
true nature of friendship ; how worthy it is of our best efforts
in its preservation ; that it is not to be promiscuously bestowed
on every new acquaintance who pleases us for an hour. And,
then, we parents should help our children in forming their
friendships; pointing out what is trustworthy and amiable in
the young people who are about them. If Mr. Black does not
approve of these hasty friendships of his daughters, why not
choose such friends as you esteem, point out their good
qualities, invite them to your house, cultivate the friendship
yourself? The impressible nature of the young will soon
respond to these advances, and you will see your children sur-
rounded by safe and improving friends. Those of us who take
pride in cultivating flowers do not allow weeds to grow in our
gardens, eating up the productive power of the soil, and dete-
riorating our favorite plants ; but, too often, we take no pains to
remove from our children those who may dwarf their opinions,
or poison their hearts."
" It is a very difficult task," said Miriam, " to choose proper
friendships even for our young children. Sin is always con-
scious of its shamefulness, and seeks to conceal itself Hypoc-
risy is not a product of middle age merely : it often thrives fully
developed in the heart of children. I think the very worst
acquaintance I ever had, perhaps the worst person I e\-er knew,
was a girl younger than myself— indeed, only eight 5'ears old.
It was before I came to live with Aunt Sophronia; and this
child, belonging to a respected family, always smii^ig. and
296 THE COMPLETE HOME.
pretty, and well dressed, was esteemed a personification of grace
and a pink of propriety, while in truth she was a little bundle of
lies, and disobedience, and badness. Even a little child I dar^
not select to be freely with my child until I know something of
its true character, as shown out of the restraining company of
grown folks."
" Now," said Mrs. Black, " if it is a matter so difficult to aid
the friendships of so young children as yours, what is one to do
when there are three or four grown-up children like mine? It
really seems to me that the more one opposes some new flame
of fancy which they have picked up, the more they are set on it.
They will quarrel soon enough if left to themselves, but set
yourself against the friendship, and it stands like a rock."
" I should say," remarked Mrs. Winton, " that this might be
because your children had not grown up expecting any super-
vision of their friendships, and they resent as an aggression what
you have failed to exercise as a right. I have never had any
such trouble with Grac?. I have taught her not to make sudden
intimacies, but to sift well the character of new acquaintances.
It has always been understood that not only her approval is
needed in the choice of a friend but mine. If I say to her, ' Do
not be very intimate with such an one ; there is only foundation
there for casual acquaintanceship, not for intimacy,' that is enough.
She has learned to esteem her affection as a thing too valuable
to cast away on the unworthy : if she detects the flaw she is
wary. Sometimes, owing to this hypocrisy of which Miriam
has just spoken, we have both been deceived ; but when the true
character is revealed, she slowly and surely but without quar-
relling withdraws herself. When she has been away at school,
if she found those to whom she was especially attracted, I have
been particular to invite them to my house to remain a while, for
I could not think of my young daughter having an especial
vriend who was unknown to me. I wished to apply my wider
FRIENDSHIPS IN THE HOME. 297
experience to the subject, to warn of any dangers ; if there was
something lacking, to try and improve the friend, that she and
Grace might be a mutual benefit."
" I am glad," I said, " that you have touched upon that idea.
Ought we not to lay hold upon this strong bond of friendship
to bring people nearer to goodness ? Do you not think that
many young people who have been without home advantages,
who have had evil influences cast around them, are rescued and
taught to desire and attain better things by having the friend-
ship of happier people conferred on them ? "
" That is undoubtedly true," said Mrs. Winton, " and yet we
must be very careful of setting up our children in their impres-
sible youth as missionaries : they may be swept away by the
stream into which they went down to rescue others. I have,
indeed, for my own children fostered rather close acquaintance,
ships wjiich lacked heart freedom enough to be called friendships
with those who, as I thought, needed their moral and social
aid. But in these cases I was careful to have the intercourse
carried on chiefly in my own presence, that I might so preserve
my own children from harm, and do my share in influencing and
improving the others."
" I think," said Miriam, " that it is not merely positive yicious-
ness which we are to eschew in our children's friends : folly is
also dangerous. How many girls, who might have grown up
simple-minded and self-forgetful, have been made vain and
affected by friends of their own age who were forever talking
about appearances, about compliments, and offering extravagant
adulation! A child who might have grown up attentive to
studies, and reading such books as its parents choose for it,
becomes, under the influence of some silly friend who cannot
write a sentence correctly, and Who devours unlimited novels,
a despiser of solid education, with a mind enervated by stolen
trash. We should not allow our children intimacies with those
298 THE COMPLETE HOME.
who are brought up in a dangerous moral atmosphere. We
may have in our homes strict temperance principles, and we may
inculcate these upon our boy ; but if we allow him an intimacy
at a house where wine is constantly used, with a lad whose
father esteems temperance fanaticism, and who scoffs at pledges
and temperance societies, we destroy our own work in our
child's heart, and give him over to the enemy. So, if we try to
make our children careful respecters of the Sabbath, and allow
for their friends those who make visits, give dinners, read idle
tales, or go out fishing, driving or gunning on the Sabbath day,
we build with one hand, and with the other tear down the moral
strength of our child."
" Well," said Mrs. Black, as the three rose to go, " I wish I
could put some of all these good things into practice in manag-
ing the friendships of my young people, but I suppose, as usual,
I shall end with wishing."
"In that case," returned Mrs. Winton, "you v/ill not rise to
the measure of your maternal rights or duties."
I remember having some talk with Hester on the subject of the
benefit the friendship of a cultivated and well-regulated Family
may be to other people, who have not the advantage of such a
household of their own. I think we ought to take into the
circle of our friendships those who seem lonely in this world ;
God is a God of strangers, and for his sake, and for the sake of
common human sympathy, we should bind to ourselves friend-
less hearts, because they are friendless and need our kindness.
A good home owes it, as an expression of thankfulness for its
own happiness, to try and make up something of the lack that
is in other homes. Hester said she had often known instances
where the children of irreligious, disorderly, uncomfortable
homes, had caught their first flimpse of the beauty, the good-
ness, the sanctity of home, by being admitted to an acquaintance
with some member of such a fortunate family. Led by this
FRIENDSHIP^ IN THE HOME. 299
example, they struggled toward that sweetness and light which
had been thus revealed to them, and had reached a happiness
which their parents never knew. Many a young man has been
rescued from destruction, and won on from good to better, until
he has himself stood as the head of a happy and useful family,
taught how to attain domestic peace and security by seeing the
purity and happiness of some young friends' home.
" In a Christian Home," said Hester, " there is the highest
type of all friendship, for there we not only entertain, but hold
in close bonds of communion earth's grandest Guest — that
home is
" ' Filled forever and forever with the shining light of Him
Who redeemed the world, and sitteth throned between the seraphim.'
Thus every Christian Home becomes a city of God, and upon
it falls the benediction of the seer of old : Peace be within thy
walls, and prosperity within thy palaces; for my brethren and
companions' sake I will now say. Peace be within thee."
Sometimes I invite to my house for supper and for the even-
ing all the young people of the neighborhood: the Burrs, the
Wintons, the young Blacks, Cousin Ann's unmarried children,
all the young people come to me about once a year, and enjoy
themselves very much. All the younger children I invite for
an afternoon in strawberry-time. Lately I had my young people
together, and after a while they began to talk about their friends.
Some said they had but one real close friend outside of their
own families ; others royally laid claim to a dozen or twenty.
They questioned how long friendships were likely to last. Ned
Burr said if they were true friendships, not passing fancies, they
were part of the best things of the heart, and would last forever.
Some said they had known of friendships lasting unbroken
through fifty years of constant intercourse, and I mentioned that
I had once been invited to spend a day where there were three
cultivated and excellent ladies who for over sixty years had
300 THE COMPLETE HOME.
lived near each other, and been together engaged in philan-
thropic work. They were similar in tastes, in sentiments, in
means, and the fortunes of their lives had been singularly alike;
each had been left a widow, with one son, who entered the
ministry. These ladies belonged to the same church ; no jars
or coldness had ever come between them ; their friendship was
a crown and glory to their lives, and to see them together was one
of the most agreeable spectacles which I had ever witnessed. ' I
told my young friends that absence and the cares of life some-
times caused a real friendship to seem to slumber, but at the
call of need, at a demand for sympathy or aid, it rose again and
was renewed in full strength, and so possibly some honest
friendships which have seemed to pass out of our lives are only
slumbering, and will be reawakened in all their vigor in the
world to come ; • our friendships, like our memories, may be
of our imperishable possessions.
Ned Burr, who is fond of argument, maintained that friend-
ship was a higher and nobler feeling than love, and likely to be
more lasting ; love was more likely to be founded in whim, or a
matter of emotions, while friendship must be grounded in knowl-
edge and respect.
" Come, come," said Grace Winton : " you are arguing un-
fairly, for you are comparing real friendship wc^A false love. We
may fancy a friendship as readily as a love, and both, to be true
and lasting, demand to be founded in a knowledge which creates
respect."
This called up the question, What was the ground of friend-
ship? Cousin Ann's Dick remarked that he had not experienced
a friendship for all the people whom he knew pretty well and
deeply respected. Though he venerated President Edwards, and
doated on the poet Longfellow, and regarded Daniel Webster
as one of the shining lights of the universe, yet if he had been
living in the same place with them, and all at the same time, he
FRIENDSHIPS IN THE HOME. 301
could not have expected to count them among his most intimate
friends ! !
Whereupon one held that sympathy and similarity of tastes
made the chief bond of friendship; while another declared that
we preferred our unlikes, and that the first bond of friendship
was to find a person possessing some traits which were lacking
in ourselves. Gentle natures clung around stronger tempera-
ments; a heart brave for any fate, and equal to any emergencies,
finds the less capable taking refuge in its strength ; it is vine to
rock, and not rock to rock. As soon as some one declared
that equality in age was needful to true friendship, then a dozen
were ready vC'ith examples of strong friendship between youth
and age, and we all agreed that these were very beautiful, and
should be zealously cultivated ; they were like the roses growing
on the old gray towers of Alnwick. Some one next started the
question of sex in friendship; have there been stronger friend-
ships between man and man, or woman and woman, or man and
woman ? Ned Burr, who always promptly proclaims his views,
declared that women were rather capable of love, and men of
friendship.
" Ned ! " cried Grace, "you just declared friendship the nobler
emotion of the two.". And immediately the young girls burst
forth with instances of woman's friendship. " It is not true,"
said Grace, " as Tennyson hints in the ' Princess,' that woman's
friendship falls a speedy prey to jealousy and pique, as that
between Ida, Blanche and Psyche. Look at the friendship of
Jael for the Israelites : by it she became heroic. Who will ever
forget the friendship of Catherine Douglass for her queen, when,
to keep out the angry mob, she made of her own white arm a
bar for the door until that arm was broken? Shakespeare,
who best knew human hearts, celebrates the friendship of
Rosalind and Celia; and what does he say of Helena and
Hei-mia ?
20
302 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" ' Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds
Had been incorporate. "
"Yes," said Sara; "and where did friendship have a more
complete expression than in those ' Ladies of LangoUen,' the
Lady Eleanore Butler and Miss Ponsonby? who, forsaking
relatives, fortune and society for each other, with one faithful
servant, retired to a small cottage in Wales, where for fifty years
they lived in unbroken friendship, and were finally buried,
friends and devoted servant, in one grave. Such a friendship
we see between Madame de Stael and Madame Recamier:
these two accomplished women endured for eachrOthcr's sakes
danger and exile ; by each, self was forgotten for her friend ;
courageous in adversity, faithful unto death and beyond death,
they proved true that ' a friend loveth at all times.' "
" That," said Hester, " is a pretty story told us by an old
writer, Thomas Heywood, of a fair maiden named Bona, who
lived in a cloister with a dear friend. This maiden friend lying
near to death. Bona laid herself by her side, and earnestly
prayed God to take her life also ; and, in truth, the two died on
the same day, and were buried in one grave. And Madame
Swetchine is another instance of a woman capable of enter-
taining sincere and lasting friendship; and Lacordaire speaks
thus of her friend, the deaf mute Parisse, in Madame Swet-
chine's funeral sermon : 'As we watched the sad setting of that
beautiful star, I saw her beloved mute following her with her
eyes from the adjoining chamber, the vigilant sentinel of a life
which had been so lavish of itself, and whose life went out with
faithful friendship on the one side, and grateful poverty on the
other.' Madame Swetchine's life was full of friendships."
"To the rescue!" shouted Ned. "They overwhelm us with
instances ! Let us retort in kind. Who has not heard of the
friendship of David for Jonathan, and of Damon and Pythias ?
F^il-ENDSHirS IN THE HOMh. 303
Consider the case of Ulysses and Agamemnon, and CEdipus and
Philoctetes. Who held a staimcher friendship than that of
Walter Raleigh for Philip Sidney, model of a knightly man ? "
" Yes," cried another of the young men ; " and what an
honest friendship united Horace and Maecenas ! The poetic
soul of Dante leaned on Guido Cavalcanti, and seven years of
exile were spent by that greatest of Italians in the house of the
Lord of Ravenna. ' Rare is it,' says Dante, 'for exiles to meet
with friends.' We see, also, Petrarch flying from a world where
almost every chord fell jarringly on his over-sensitive spirit,
and in the shades of Vaucluse finding consolation with his
friend Philip. It is said of Petrarch that 'his friends idolized
him, and welcomed him with tears of joy as if he were an
angel.'"
" I do not remembe- ," said Dick, " of a finer trio of friends
than Coleridge, Wordsworth and Lamb. Chopin, the com-
poser, was a man sickly, ardent, irritable, to whose over-
wrought mind even ordinary life was an intense pain. He was
a man to suffer until he went mad, unless some shield could be
interposed between him and the world. Such a shield he
found in his friend Liszt. For years Liszt sheltered him from
criticism, and business care, and curiosity; soothed him in
death; and finally became his interpreter to the world by
writing his life, showing what, among the jarring discords of
his existence, had been the tender harmonies of his soul.
Milton, neglected by his daughters and unloved by his wife,
bereaved of Cromwell and taunted by the Duke of York, found
consolation in Andrew Marvel — perhaps better fitted than any
man of that day to sympathize with his aspirations, his re-
searches, or his lofty imaginings; while a healthful quaintness
and quietness of spirit kept him fresh and strong. So many
and devoted have been the friendships of men, that fnendship
has been by some asserted to be especially a man's emotion."
304 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" There is a third party to the contest," I said, laughing. " I
will tell you of some remarkable friendships between men and
women. Beyond the natural love of brothers and sisters was
the tie of friendship between Charles and Mary Lamb, and
between the poet Whittier and his youngest sister, of whom he
writes :
" ' But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh;
A loss in all familiar things.'
" The element of a lofty friendship entered into the married
life of Lord and Lady Russel, the Arctic explorer Franklin and
his wife ; also of Roland and his wife. Shah Jehan, who set up
over his beloved wife the Taj, that ' dream in marble,' the won-
der of the world, records in it friendship as well as marital love,
Auguste Comte declares that the finest ideals of friendship are
exhibited between man and woman, but Sydney Smith says
that few of these instances have been shown by Saxons. The
golden-mouthed Chrysostom was cheered by a saintly Olym-
pias, and St. Jerome was helped on his way by Paula. Doubt-
less the gracious Apostle John, was comforted by the friendship
of that godly mother of a godly household, whom he greets as
the Elect Lady. Michael Angelo's genius took higher flights,
inspired by Vittoria Colonna. Dr. Donne devotes his finest
•verses to his friend, Mrs. Herbert, the mother of the quaint,
-sweet poet; by the death-bed of Locke bent his friend. Lady
Mashem ; and Cowper would have been a wrecked man without
ithe friendship of Mrs. Throckmorton, and Lady Austeft, and
Mary Unwin. What a contrast of character met in the friend-
ship of Hannah More and Garrick ! "
" I have arrived at some conclusions," said Dick, who had been
diligently dotting down ideas on a sheet of paper. " Listen.
.Friendship is one of the noblest emotions of the heart; it has
divine warrant and example, and is needful to our proper moral
FRIENDSHIPS IN THE HOME. 305
development. It is capable of elevating us by a worthy object ;
of injuring us by unworthy bestowal. Like love, if entered into
in haste, it may be repented at leisure. Parents should, with
care and sympathy, encourage and direct the friendships of their
children. By friendship, good is brought into a home, and the
good in the home is given a broader circle of influence. Friend-
ship is formed between those like, on behalf of similarity, and
between those who are unlike in very virtue of the difference ;
it has no limits of age, of race or of sex. True friendship is
neither selfish, fickle nor established for self-interest and avarice :
only counterfeit friendship exhibits these qualities. A true
friendship is rooted in respect and in knowledge ; grows sensibly
or insensibly, and is lasting as the soul which feels it. Friend-
ship is the peer, the ' noble brother,' of love. Friendship has
been equally exhibited by both men and women, and has given
equally remarkable exhibitions between man and woman, man
and man, woman and woman."
And so ended our long talk about Friendship.
CHAPTER XIII.
GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME.
WHAT AUNT SOPHRONIA THINKS IS FAMILY COURTESY.
pRACE WINTON came in to see me for a little while
yesterday, and when she left I fell to thinking (5f the
remark made by a famous essayist : "A beautiful form
is better than a beautiful face, and beautiful behavior is
better than a beautiful form : it gives a higher pleasure than
pictures or statues ; it is the finest of the fine arts." Grace is
lovely in face and form, but lovelier still in her manners. Now,
in what does this charm of manner consist? Is it that she
understands and puts in practice certain rules of good-breeding,
which have obtained place by the common consent of society
for many years ? It is something higher than that— rit is what
Dr. Witherspoon explains as " true courtesy, which is real kind-
ness kindly expressed."
I remember when Mary Watkins was a little girl, Mrs. Smal-
ley, her mother, came to me one day, and said : " Miss Sophro-
nia, I want Mary to have good manners, and to know how to
behave herself when she is away from home ; I wish you would
tell rne of some real good book on etiquette."
" If you wish Mary to have really good manners, Mrs. Smal-
ley," I replied, " don't let her see a paper or a book on etiquette
It has been well said, ' The effect of books on etiquette is to
make one think of himself, rather than of others ; while thinking
of others, rather than of self, is the essence of true courtesy.'
If you give Mary a book crowded with rules as to how to
(306)
GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME. 30.7
behave herself, her mind will be so occupied with those rules,
and with wondering how she shall conform to them, or fearing
that she shall fail, that she will indubitably fail in the best cour-
tesies. She will be socially tithing ' mint and anise and cumin,
and forgetting the weightier matters of the law.' Thus, while
wondering if she has made a proper bow, is holding her elbows
properly or has entered the room gracefully, she will forget to
pick up the fan which some elderly lady has let fall, or to reply
properly in simple kindness to some remark addressed to her."
" Well, but how will Mary learn good manners ? "
" Good manners, Mrs. Smalley, are not bred in moments, but
in years. They are not things which can be taken up and laid
down at pleasure. They are not a best gown to wear abroad
and lock up at home.. They are cultivated not out of books,
but in homes and in our every-day life. They must attend us
as our atmosphere wherever we are. If Mary is to have good
manners, they- will only be obtained by putting daily in practice
at home the best that you know or see, by avoiding for her rude,
uncourteous companions, and giving her a proper amount of
siocial life among the truly refined, whom you wish her to be
like. The first and highest law of good manners is, 'Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself; ' and the only 1 eally valuable
book on courtesy is the Bible. An intelligent child, taught
always to be kindly to others, to restrain all that may disturb
others, to cultivate the mind, so as to have in reserve suitable
themes for conversation, and to be able to take a part in dis-
cussing the ordinary topics of the day, with keen intelligence
will note the numberless little acts and politenesses which
make up good manners, and will cultivate them without man-
nerisms or affectations. The first examples and teachers of
good manners should be parents, and the child should consider
its home the first and finest place where it can put in practice
the courtesies of life."
308 THE COMPLETE HOME.
Mrs. Smalley suffered herself to be persuaded not to get
Mary a book on etiquette, which, probably, would have made
her merely affected and self-centred: a sort of puppet, not
spontaneously doing the right thing at the right time, but going
m rotation through the practice of certain half-apprehended
rules, which would not fit one-tenth part of the circumstances
in which she was placed. If we went to live in France, we
would wish to know the French language, so that we could
understand all that was said to us and know how to reply. We
should not wish to trust to learning by heart a phrase-book,
the sentences of which might or might not suit our needs. So
good manners are to be the language of our homes and of our
lives, and not a mere phrase-book etiquette which might or
might not fit our exigencies.
Parents cannot be too particular in training their children
into good manners from their earliest years. If such training
is neglected in childhood, the early want will be patent all
through life. The parent can hardly give the child an inheri-
tance which is more valuable, while in itself it costs nothing.
In the business of life, I know nothing which has a higher pecu-
niary value.
" You paid . hundred dollars too much," said a gentleman to
an insurance agent, who had been settling with a lady for the
damages of a fire. " It was her valuation," said the agent.
" She believed it to be correct, and I could not question it : her
manners were so perfect. It would have been money in my
pocket if I had been dealing with some rude boor."
" Manners makyeth men," wrote Wykham, an ancient author,
and a lapse of years does not make an alteration in this testi-
mony. We hear Emerson rising up to declare : " Give a boy
address and accomplishments, and you give him the mastery of
places and fortunes wherever he goes."
A wealthy gentleman brought into his library a costly sub-
GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME. 309
scription book. " My dear," said his wife, " you already had a
copy of that work." "I knew I did," he repHed; "but the
manners of the lad who sold this were so elegant that it was a
true pleasure to purchase it."
If we wish to mould clay, or plaster of Paris, or metal, into
any shape, we must not wait until it is half-hard before we put it
into the mould, for then it will be full of flaws and roughnesses,
and will not well take the desired form. So if we wish to
mould the heart and mind into good manners, we must not wait
until a child is half-grown before we begin the training. We
must begin with the young child. Greet its waking with a
smile and a loving word, that it may learn to wake up pleasantly.
Teach it to take gently what is offered it, not snatching, and to
return the look and word of thanks. Teach it to share its
treasures, to pity and soothe any one who is sick or sad, to pick
up what is ^dropped by its elders, to lend its toys, to reply
kindly, to say " please," " thank you," and " good-bye " — indeed,
there are hundreds of ways to teach a little one good manners.
I have observed that boys after they reach the mature age of
eight or nine generally have a severe attack of z7/ manners; they
suddenly feel that good manners are girlish, or babyish ; that
they can only be manly if they stamp, bang doors, contradict,
bawl instead of speaking, tease, fight for their own way — and
they call it foppish and dandyfied to avoid these exhibitions.
Just here is the time when maternal patience in training a gentle-
man must not fail ; when it must be thoroughly inculcated on
the boy, that good manners are of the manliest of manly ways ;
that there are a thousand gentle and engaging ways which be-
long to true men, and not to fops or dandies — to smile charm-
ingly, to bow with grace, to be quick and unobtrusive in offering
a service, to use respectful language, to avoid unseemly noise
and haste, is to be gentlemanly — not to possess these graces is
to be a boor. Fraiik, genial, graceful, self-forgetting manners.
310 THE COMPLETE HOME.
will make up for a lack of fortune or beauty, ana their possessor
will be welcome wherever he goes.
Helen has been very particular to train her children to be
polite, and she was greatly tried when Tom reached the crisis
which I have just mentioned, and thought when he laid by knee-
breeches and rocking-horses it was time to dispense with good
manners. He was fond of teasing, and he teased Hannah and
his little sisters and the cat and the baby. I had a talk with
him one day about this. I told him it was a mark of a shallow,
weak, unmanly spirit to find pleasure in giving annoyance. I
taught him what Wordsworth says :
" Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow to tlie meanest thing that feels,"
and then I gave him a little book, where I had him write down
several sentences on the subject, as: "Fair manners are the
mantle of fair minds; " "Civility costs nothing, and buys every-
thing ; " "A true gentleman is recognized by his regard for the
rights and feelings of others, even in matters the most trivial ; '
"A rude man is generally assumed to be a bad man."
" But, Aunt Sophronia," said Tom, " don't you think that
people sometimes act worse than they feel?"
"Yes," I said; "a man's manners may be less gracious than
his heart is true and kindly, but incurably bad manners are the
outcome of a bad, thoughtless, cruel heart. Take notice, Tom,
that the well-feeling man does not try to act worse than he feels :
he tries to act as well as he can. No station in life, no poverty,
no lack of cultivation, can force a person to be ill-mannered.
Some of the most polite and graceful things that have ever
been said, and some of the most truly polite acts that were
ever performed, were by poor, unlettered people, whose acts were
the outcome of generous, sympathetic hearts."
Hester, who was sitting with us, said: "There are many
GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME. 311
grown persons who need to be taken to task, as much as Tom,
for finding their pleasure in hurting other people's feelings. He
calls his way teasing; they call theirs satire; in conversation
they think themselves very smart and bright when they are
ridiculing somebody, turning their remarks into trifling, sneer-
ing at their opinions, or telling some unkindly anecdote, or
trying to bring into notice some unpleasant circumstance. Now
these people, either as writers or talkers, are not half so clever
as they think themselves. It needs only self-conceit and malice
to discover flaws. Talent and generosity are needed to recog-
nize talent and generosity in our companions ; all is discord
to an ear that has no idea of harmonies, but it needs a musical
ear to delight in music. These satirical people are generally
really ignorant, and talk sharply about others to prevent
any searching of their own shallowness; they are cowards,
too; if you notice, they never attack those whom they know
to be keen wits, and able to repay them in their own coin, but
their victims are the timid, the young, the ignorant, the very
ones whom courtesy would urge us to encourage, to entertain
and console. The old duellist, we say, with his order of ' pistols
and coffee for two,' was a coward, but the satirist in society
sinks below the level of the duellist into that of an assassin."
" You have touched upon the subject of good manners in
conversation," said Miriam : " we cannot be too careful to avoid
themes which will be painful to those with whom we converse,
and to avoid these requires thoughtfulness. How ill-mannerly
to discuss deformities before some person who is deformed ; or
to express dislike of foreigners before a foreigner ; or to com-
plain that it is too much trouble to entertain those who are
hard of hearing when such persons are near you ! The truly
kind, thoughtful heart has none of these selfish evils to com-
plain of, and so in conversation, as in action, kindness makes
courtesy."
312 THE COMPLETE HOME.
"A writer so old as Epictetus," said Hester, " gives us some
good rules for proper manners in conversation. He says : ' If you
converse, do not let it be about such vulgar things as dogs,
horses, racing, fighting ; avoid foolish and immoderate laughter,
and vulgar descriptions of entertainments, impurity, display, and
all egotistical remarks."
" I have here," I said, " in one of my favorite old authors, a
few monitions concerning our conversation. ' Clothe not thy
language either with obscurity or affectation ; in the one there
is too much darkness, in the other too much lightness; he that
speaks from the understanding to the understanding does best.
Know when to speak, lest while thou showest wisdom in not
speaking, thou betray thy folly in too long silence. If thou art a
fool, thy silence is wisdom; but if, thou art wise, thy too long
silence is folly. As too many words from a fool's mouth give the
wise no time to speak, so too long a silence in the wise gives the
fool time to speak, and so makes thee responsible for his folly.' "
" We must heed all these monitions with regard to circum-
stances," said Miriam. " We must suit our conversation to those
with whom we are. If they can talk of and enjoy only dis-
cussions of domestic animals, and the common affairs of life,
tht-n we are in politeness bound to indulge them 'n spite of
Epictetus. Why talk of the books and art for which they do
not care? On the other hand we must converse with little
children to teach them to converse : what they say may have
much of foolishness in it, but by conversation we educate them
at last to speak iraprovingly. True politeness in conversation
I think is to try and interest those with whom we converse,
and if it is our part to improve and instruct, we should not
perform this in a burdensome manner. It is dangerous to fall
into a habit of absorbing conversation and talking too much ;
so also we should avoid a listless manner, as if it were hardly
*orth our while to talk with our present company."
GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME. 31 3
"I have seen those," I said, "who prided themselves on
waving good manners, and who yet were in conversation cen-
sorious and gossiping : errors quite as much to be condemned as
the sarcasm of which Hester has been complaining."
" Then," said Hester, " the rule must be to keep the mind
well informed, as a store-house filled with treasures, gather up
what we can upon all subjects, and so we shall be able to suit all
tastes. Then let us cultivate our hearts that they may teach us
instinctively to put ourselves in the place of others, to divine
what will please, pain or benefit, and the heart shall draw out
from the mind, as a wise almoner, the bounties which are needed,
and shall distribute them where they shall most benefit. Good
manners, in conversation as in other things, are a mutual product
of the head and of the heart."
One day Mary Watkins was visiting me, and she said that
the manners of Miriam's children pleased her much, and that
she was desirous of bringing up her children to be attractive in
their ways : how should she do it ?
" The first thing," I said, " will be always to exhibit good
manners in their presence. If we desire to have children or
servants mannerly, we must first of all set them an example.
Doctor Guthrie has some valuable observations on-this point :
he says in Scotland if you ask a laboring man how you shall get
to a place, he is as like as not to roar out, ' Follow your nose ! '
Hester says she fears the Doctor is libelling his countrymen,
for when in Scotland she met with the greatest courtesy every-
where. However that may be, the Doctor says the manners of
the poorer classes are rude and unkindly, and it is because they
have been always rudely and harshly treated by their superiors
in station. He says that when he was in Paris a banker accom-
panied him to find a boarding-house. A servant girl came to
the door, and the banker, taking off his hat and bowing low,
addressed her as ' mademoiselle ' and told his business. The maid
314 THE COMPLETE HOME.
on the other hand was the very pink of courtesy ; and thus he
found it in France : the servants, the children, the poor, all
treated with elegant politeness, and being in return polite.
If we want anything of our children, or our servants, we should
not, merely because we have the authority to command, give
a bold order ; but why not use the gentle ' Please,' ' Will you
do this ? ' ' I should like you to do that,' ' Oblige me with that'
When service is rendered, we are not to take it in silence, curtly,
rudely, because we had a right to the service ; but it is easy to
say, 'Thanks,' or 'I am obliged,' or 'Oh, that is ven^ nicely
done.' These little every-day courtesies are called the small
change of life ; but we should be badly off in trade if we had
no small change, and must always deal with twenty-dollar bills;
while the small change mounts up to the great sum in a lifetime.
If parents have plenty of this small change of politeness on
hand, it will be put in circulation in the family: the children
will pay it out to each other, to servants, to playmates, and with
it family peace and family affection will be largely purchased,.
I have known Miriam's two servants to refuse a place with
larger wages, because they said they had rather live where there
were mannerly children even if pay were less. Cultivate in
your children the pleasant manners of a morning greeting,
saying ' Good-morning ' with a smile and a bow ; such a greet-
ing makes the whole day go more pleasantly. Do not let
the children go to bed without a good-night kiss ; they are
never too old for that. And how do we know but during the
night-watches some one of the family-band may take the long
and solemn journey to the land that lies very far off?
" Let the pleasant greetings, morning and night, to all mem
bers of the family, be a part of family custom ; then your chil-
dren, going out into the world, will carry these gracious home-
manners with them, and use them to teachers, employers and
friends. Teach your children to think for others: to notice
GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME. 315
when one is looking for anything, and to join with alacrity in
the search ; to carry, unasked, a fan to one who is heated, of
draw up an easier chair for one who is tired; to bring the
father's hat or slippers ; to pick up what is dropped. I noticed
Ned Burr the last time that I was there ; his mother came in
from a chilly walk, just in time to take her place at the tea-table.
Ned knew that her feet must be cold ; he said nothing, but went
into the kitchen, took a hot brick from the back of the range,
wrapped it in a paper, and placed it under his mother's feet.
After tea, as he was about going up-stairs, he met their cham-
bermaid, who is rather elderly, carrying a large pitcher of water;
he quietly took it from her hand, and carried it to her room-
door. These are the kind of generous little courtesies which
make life go easily in families, and if they are to be practised,
children must grow into them as a second nature. Cousin Ann
was always very particular in training her boys to show good
manners at Home. She said if they show them there, they will
show them everywhere. Home is the place where true politeness
tells. She never passed by an infraction of good manners in.
little things. She said : ' If they are guilty of some great rude-
ness, they will notice it, blush for it, and amend themselves, but
it is the accumulation of small traits of ill-manners which will
make them truly disagreeable.' The boys were never allowed
to speak to or of any one by a nick-name, unless it was some
kindly, sportive term. They would as soon have thought of being
profane as of calling their father 'boss,' 'governor' or "old man,'
or their mother 'old woman' or the 'missis.' They never
pushed past one to get into a room, slammed a door or shut it
in any one's face, or broke into a sentence while any one was
speaking. They dared not come into a room with caps on,
muddy boots or pantaloons rolled up. If entering a room with
' any one, they stepped aside to let them pass ; they never took
the best chair, the best seat by the light or fire, but offered it to
316 THE COMPLETE HOME.
others. At table they did not reach across to help themselves,
nor pick for the best or largest pieces, nor return again and
again greedily to the favorite dish. When spoken to out-of-
doors, they lifted their hats ; they bowed politely to those whom
they met, and never left the handles, Mr., Mrs., Sir, off persons'
names. They were instructed to show their gentlemanly man-
ners to their mother, their sister and the maids ; to treat age,
weakness, little children, goodness and station with due honor
and sympathetic regard. Their fun at home was easy and
happy, but not boisterous or rowdyish ; they did not shout
when they spoke nor contradict bluntly if any one were wrong.
Yet in training them in all these little things, their mother ^as
genial, while she was firm ; she never forgot or ignored, but a
witty word, a look, a gentle hint served to recall them to duty,
or remind them of a neglect.
I have frequently been pained when I walked abroad to notice
the lack of reverence prevalent among our young people. I
had an occasion for freeing my mind on this subject lately,
and I hold an occasion for speaking clearly your thought is a
thing to be thankful for. It happened on this wise. I met
James Frederick Black as I left my front-door. He asked me :
" What is the grand primary virtue for youth ? "
I replied to him : " Reverence."
I met James Frederick again as I returned to my door, and
he asked me : " In what virtue are young people most lacking ? "
I made answer to him : " In reverence."
Then in the evening James Frederick came to see me as
he frequently does, and -he said : "Aunt Sophronia, it seems to
me that you find the circle of virtues a rather small one."
" Yes," I replied ; " I compass it all with — reverence ; and
what a notable and noble virtue it is ! Look you, James Fred^
erick, it is a virtue that is going out of fashion. Without it,
character is a glittering superstructure, without any strong
GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME. 317
foundation. When I jee a young person who proclaims by
word or act that he has no reverence, I see one who will not
stand a severe test of character.
" This being a fundamental grace, it must be laid early in the
child's heart by the parents, at home. And here many parents
fail. They find a saucy sharpness amusing. God has sur-
rounded the child with the venerable, and yet he is not taught
to venerate. Around him are the hoary heads of age, before
which God has bidden him to rise; and, instead of that, he
tramps in, riding a cane, and roars, 'That's my chair you've got,
grandma!' or he hits old Betty while she is putting on his
stockings. God's ministers are venerable, as ambassadors from
the holy One. The rising youth hear their looks, and manners,
and peculiarities criticised, their sermons carped at, their failings
magnified. Experience is venerable. ' Honor thy father and
thy mother,' is the word, and a smile goes round some giddy
circle when the youth remarks that ' he could put his father up
to a thing or two ! '
"The house of God is venerable, and idle triflers sit there
staring, smiling, whispering, irreverent to the place. The book
of God is venerable, and the flippant jester adorns his tale with
some misapplication of the inspired word ; the breath of doubt
blows across the divine pages, the open unbeliever mocks, the
secret unbeliever cavils, and the soul which should have put
its sandals off stands booted and spurred to wonder at the bush
of flame.
" Pious zeal is to be reverenced, and yet youth dares and is
permitted to ridicule the teacher's earnest plea, or to disregard
the teacher's request, or sit inattentive in the class, while the
heavenward way is being pointed out.
"And here behold this youth who has no reverence. Ignorant
of the ways of life, his parents' law should stay his steps ; but
that law he has not been taught to revere, and he* holds it
21
,il8 THE COMPLETE HOME.
lightly. The commandment of God should be a lamp unto his
foet, but that he did not write reverently on his heart. The
teachings and example of the good should be his guide-posts,
but tho^e he never revered, nor meant to copy.
" What a grace he lacks ! and instead thereof the flippant leer,
the affected contempt, when possibly earth holds nothing more
contemptible than himself There is no dignity in one who
knows no reverence ; honoring nothing, of course they do not
honor themselves. Growing . up all one's days in a reckless
irreverence, it is a strange lesson for them to learn to worship sin-
cerely the Lord their God ; if saved at all, they must be pulled
out of the fire. This irreverence sneers at faith ; it thinks it
foolish to be believing and of a tender conscience ; it is attracted
by the bold and bad. There is a deal to foster this irreverence
at the present day ; many parents seem to have agreed not to'
demand the honor which is their natural right; they do not
train the child to respectfulness, to yielding honor where honor
is due. There is a bad tone in young society, and boys and
girls are allowed to wander out of the safe restraints of home
into this loose-speaking, and thinking, and impudent (they call
it bright and witty) company. The land is flooded with a
literature of sauciness, not to mention here the literature of
open vice. The literature of sauciness always praises the sharp
youth at the expense of legitimate guardians; the old are
treated to light names and ridicule ; decent restrictions are called
•old-fashioned notions;' pertness always succeeds; the heroes
and heroines look for no higher guidance than their own wills.
Fed on such literature as this, youth becomes as weak and
frothy, but possibly not as harmless, as a bottle of root-beer.
Lay it up as a principle, James Frederick, that the less you
respect, the less respectable you are ; the less you honor, the
\ess in you is to be honored. There are those ' whom not to
know argues one's self unknown,' so if you have no reverence in
GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME. 319
a world where there is so much that is noble and venerable,
then there will be something terribly lacking in your own char-
acter. One is weak, and vain and ignorant — there is more hope
of a fool than of him.
" Measure yourself by this rule : ' With what measure you
mete, it shall be measured to you again.' What! nothing grand
and noble to be admired, obeyed, copied ? Ah, the lack is not
without you, but within you! And let me, tell you, this youth
without reverence is to be followed by an unreverenced and dis-
reputable old age ; and more than that, my friend, the capacity
of reverencing something is in us, and if we will not honestly
venerate what is good, we shall next be fawning and doting on
the bad. The youth, who will not be reverential to Paul, will
debase himself presently by quoting Paine! Cultivate with all
your heart this grace of reverence.
"And as you know me to be frank in speaking my mind you
may be the better pleased, James Frederick, when I say to you
that while you are not as reverent as I would that you were,
still you do not entirely lack this virtue : you are more reverent
than many, and I regard it as a token of promise in you, that
you are interested in learning what virtue is, and desire to have
it clearly set before you — while you have the grace to come to
one who is older to be instructed, and not airily to vouchsafe
instructions."
Now, while I notice and deplore this lack of reverence, I am
far from thinking that in these days we have no young people
who properly respect their elders. I would not utter such a
Jeremiad over the age in which I live. I think the reason why
people suppose everything in the world to be worse now than it
was when they were young is, first, that they remember the
world as it looked to them in their young days, and not as it
looked to older people. To the young, all things shine in a
rosj' light; they are satisfied with themselves and with their
320 THE COMPLETE HOME.
companions, and looking back all seems to have been very sat
isfactory. A second reason for this exalting the days of the past
is, that year by year communication between all parts of the
country becomes closer; we know of the manners and doings of
more people ; we hear of all the evil that transpires ; and thus
becoming cognizant of more evil we hastily decide that there is
more evil in proportion to the population than there was for-
merly. Besides all this, I think we are more apt to brood over
what is bad, than to rejoice in what is good : we sigh over fifty
young people who are going astray, and we forget to be glad
over the fifty or a hundred who are doing about as they ought.
If I begin to think that our young folks now are all wrong, I
have only to go to Mrs. Winton's, or Mrs. Burr's, or Cousin
Ann's, or our minister's, or plenty of other places which I could
name, to find families who are all that the most exacting could
demand.
I was so pleased with Cousin Ann's Dick a fortnight ago.
I had stopped to see Cousin Ann for a few minutes in the
morning, and she was seated on the back-porch with a large pan
of potatoes to pare, as it happened that it was a very busy time,
and all the other members of the family were occupied. Cousin
Ann chanced to say, as she took up another Early Rose,
" Really, if there is one kind of work which I particularly dis-
like, it is peeling potatoes!"
Dick was sitting resting on the steps. " Mother, my dear,"
he cried, " there is not the least need of your doing what you
dislike when I am on hand to do it for you ; behold, how beauti.
fully I can pare potatoes!" so jumping up he took possession
of pan, basket, and knife, and began peeling the potatoes as
quickly and evenly as his mother could have done.
I said, with all my heart : " Dick, I had rather see that ready
helping of your mother than to hear that any one had left you
five thousand dollars; I believe it will be of more advantage
to you in every way, for a blessing always follows good sons."
GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME. 321
That cheerful bearing of one another's burdens, that ready
courtesy to each other, has always distinguished Cousin Ann's
family. Her household is always busy, cheerful and healthful.
I think much of their health is derived from their cheery activi-
ties. Every meal there is a sort of festival, and it is a treat to
sit down at their table, no matter how plain the meal is. The
neatness, taste and order with which everything is served makes
it a luxury. I said as much to Cousin Ann several times. She
replied to me one day: " I have always thought, Sophronia, that
a deal of healtn and of family affection depended on our way of
taking our meals ; in a family like ours, where we are all busy
about one thing and another continually, we do not all meet
except at meals, and in the evening. Those are then the times
when we must cultivate our acquaintance with each other. I
try to have the table, as our meeting-place, very attractive to the
eye ; to have it orderly, so that our chat shall not be interrupted
by looking for needful things that are forgotten, or by jumping
up and running about. I like the food good, and well served,
and people tidy to eat it. None of our men folks come to the
table unwashed or unbrushed, sleeves and trowsers rolled up,
and boots just from the barn. In the entry-room, near the sink,
where the brushes and towels are, each one has his own nail
with a coat to wear at meals and a pair of slippers. There is a
whisk-broom for brushing off their clothes, and while it hardly
takes more than five minutes to make the change, it sends them
to the table looking neat, and feeling rested and refreshed. I
think it is needful to health and comfort to avoid coming to the
table over-tired ; one cannot then look or speak cheerfully, nor
digest well. Now, after the work and worries of the field, the
slippers rest the feet; the washing of the hands and face cools
and refreshes; the change of the coat, and the brushing, seem to
give a change to one's feelings, and we all get to table ready to
forget for a little the work that is going on, and to talk about
d22 THE COMPLETE HOME.
anything pleasant which offers. I try and have some subject foi
good conversation, just as much as I try to have good food. If
there is a nice story, a good, kind-tempered joke, some nice
anecdote, I have encouraged the family in keeping it for meal-
i^imes; a good laugh, and a flow of cheerful talk, helps a meal on
wonderfully. I will not have troublesome topics brought up at
meals, nor any disputing ; as far as possible, we avoid talking of
the work ; we take time for our meals ; it don't pay to hurry
one's eating; if you save in every month the time of one work-
ing day, by cutting down the proper time of meals by one-half,
you will in a year be -sure to lose more than those twelve un-
justly-gained working days, by dyspepsia, headaches, fevers,
cholera morbus, or bilious attacks. Give proper time to a
proper and cheerful meal, and the day's work will move on with
as much again of vigor and good judgment. We like to have
friends at meals with us ; we don't consider it a trouble to put
an extra plate and chair, and we ask our guest to partake
of just what we have; a welcome, friendly guest makes our
meal twice as valuable to us ; we are the gainers and not the
givers."
" You have always been very hospitable, Cousin Ann," I said,
" and I think, on the whole, you have by hospitality gained as
much as you have conferred. Your family are accustomed to
good society; their manners are easy and refined, fitting them
for any circumstances in which they may be placed. They
have never needed to run away from home for society; they are
acquainted with all the popular topics of the day; they have
formed their opinions, and their opinions are valued by their
neighbors. They are looked up to as an important part of the
community."
" When there was company," said Cousin Ann, " I did not let
some one of the children run and hide ; I never sent them off,
on the plea that they were not dressed for company, or because
GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME. 328
they were shy and felt awkward. If they had clean hands, faces,
and well-brushed hair and shoes, they were presentable, and I
knew that the shyness would grow with indulgence. Reed was
the most diffident of my children ; he would always have gladly
run to the barn when he sav/ visitors coming, and preferred to
lose a meal rather than come into the presence of guests. I
felt sorry for the child, but knew it would never do to encourage
the feeling ; it would be harder to overcome the older he grew.
However, I made it as easy as I could for him, and when the
dreaded bo\Y and shaking hands were over, he sat by me, and I
helped on his share in the conversation, so after a time he be-
came as social as any of us. Dick, on the other hand, rejoiced
in guests ; his tongue was always ready — too ready ; he wanted
to interrupt older people; to present his views before his elders;
to cut his joke no matter who was cut by it, and he had such a
comical way that he was laughed at and petted by strangers,
and that made him more forward. It was as difficult to repress
Dick to proper limits as it was to bring Reed up to them, ana
both required the care and culture of years. But these things
are all in a lifetime, and such cares belong to our parental posi-
tion, and repay us in the end. As we sow we reap ; he who
sows sparingly reaps sparingly, and he who sows bountifully
reaps bountifully. Many sisters and mothers who have not
thought it worth while to cultivate and develop the awkward,
timid boy, find themselves after a while with no one to go out
with them when they desire an escort, and no one to help them
entertain their guests at home."
While I do not think that the young people are less genial
and kindly in their ways and feelings than they have been in
past generations, I do think that there is a going out of the
dignified grace and scrupulous attention to little things, which
made old-time manners so beautiful. There is too much of off-
hand taking for granted that things are right and agreeable.
324 THE COMPLETE HOME.
When among the crowd of modern youths you see some young
man carefully formed by his mother, on some stately, gracious,
old-fashioned model, he is at once a marked man for his man-
ners and always a favorite. Mrs. Winton's two sons are marked
wherever they go as " distinguished in appearance " simply in
virtue of this scrupulous training. They do not make a bow by
pointing a finger in the direction of the hat-brim and raising
their eye-brows, but the hat is lifted and a bow full of grace is
really made, and this by no means in a stiff, self-conscious way.
They do not take a stranger to a house without asking per-
mission from the lady of the house. They do not dash along
the street and pass by some lady of their acquaintance who is
about to open a gate : they open the gate, hold it open while
she enters, and then close it. They do not meet one in the
street, and amiably confer their company for a walk unasked.
When they see any one leaving a room, they rise and hold
open the door for them. Leaving church, they do not rush to
joke with the young girls, and leave some old lady, or decrepit
gentleman, to hobble down the steps alone, but their best
courtesies are first for the feeble and the old. So many young
men have politeness only for dashy young girls, none for the
elderly, the plain, or the poor. Those Wintons would never
have thought of leaving their mother or sister to go to and
from some evening meeting unescorted, while they ran to offer
their company to some young lady. They attended always first
upon their mother and Grace. Indeed, their care of Grace was
charming. They did not allow some lad to accompany her in
order that they might bestow their attention elsewhere; but as
long as they thought her too young to enter general society,
she never went or came under other care than theirs, and now
they exercise a scrupulous supervision over all the young
gentlemen of her acquaintance : a young man must be marvel-
lously well-behaved to be admitted into Grace Winton's society.
Lately as I was walking along the street I saw North Winton,
GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME. 325
on horseback, looking up at a window and lightly kissing his
hand with a very devoted expression. " Why," I thought,
looking toward the window, " with whom is our North so
enraptured ? " I saw at the window his mother, and it brought
to my mind the pretty little poem of " De Leon's Fledge."
Last winter we had a series of lectures delivered in our vil-
lage. They were all very interesting ^nd instructive, but I
think I liked best one on social culture. It was very plain
and practical. Some of the thoughts were these :
It is in general fondly believed that if hearts and heads are
right, manners will be right also. And yet sometimes, owing to
forgetfulness, unfortunate examples, or other minor causes, per-
sons' manners are less pleasing than their hearts are true and
kindly. Permit, then, a few words on social culture, in two or
three rules which will serve equally well both at home and
abroad. First, Be sincere. It is not needful to good manners
that we use as current* conversation those common fictions
which many deem essential to maintaining a place in good
society. We should not say the thing we do not think, always
remembering that we are not called upon to say all that we
think. Why seem to be very fond of Miss Jenkins, whom we
like the least of all our acquaintances? Why tell Mrs. Jones
that we shall be charmed to visit her, when we really do not
mean to go ? Why urge Miss Smith to come, when we wish her
to keep away? That kindly smile which is due to the human
tie, that placid grace which is due to yourself, will make you
polite to these without resigning sincerity. And here be sure
you do not indulge a hard nature by saying hard things and
calling it honesty! We are bound by the Golden Rule to
be both sincere and gracious. This is the first rule in good
manners,
" To seek that august face of Truth
Whereto are given
The age of heaven,
The beauty of immortal youth."
326 THE COMPLETE HOME.
The second thing is — Be sympathetic. At home and abroad,
no quality will make one so beautiful and so beloved as
sympathy. If we cultivate sympathy, we shall be reverential to
age and tender to childhood. Sympathy is more often the
product of a strong than a weak nature : people who are half
educated and imperfectly cultured make the ignorant, the timid,
and the sensitive feel wretched in their presence, and enjoy
making them feel so ; while the accomplished scholar, the well-
balanced heart, throws over such the aegis of his strong pro-
tection, and first of all succeeds in making them feel comfortable.
Now this sympathy is akin to another fine social quality,
which I cannot too highly commend, and that is, self-fo7-get-
fulness. We cannot be truly sympathetic to others while we are
absorbed in ourselves. VVe cannot even be self-absorbed and
be sincere, for self-centring makes us dishonest to ourselves.
Be self-forgetful. " Seek," says the Apostle, in that best book
on etiquette that has ever been written — the Bible, "not every
man his own, but every man another's good." There is nothing
so graceful as this self-forgetfulness. Egotism is always awk-
ward ; it blunders, or is stiff, or nervous, or affected. Only in
self-forgetting can one be interested either in other people, or in
their subjects of conversation ; and if we are not good listeners,
we fail in one very important way of making ourselves agreeable.
This self-forgetting is a good quality which improves with age.
Whittier paints such a spirit :
" Who lonely, homeless, none the less
Found peace in love's unselfishness,
And welcome wheresoe'er she went.
A calm and gracious element,
Whose presence seemed the sweec income
And womanly atmosphere of home."
Biing self-forgetful, let us also be thoughtful. Of all things,
1 jt us not be of those who rattle on without thinking or knowing
what they are saying. This thoughtlessness is most dangerous
GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME. 327
in society ; it spreads false reports, tells a club-footed man that
mental and physical deformities accompany each other, and a
Frenchman that it hates all things French, and then placidly
remarks that "it didn't think." Not think! One thing is
certain, social culture demands thought. And this opens another
point : that of cultivating thought, if we wish to be agreeable
and useful at home or abroad. We must be able to talk as well
as listen. "It is a fine day. Miss Medora," says Simpkins.
"Ah!" smiles Medora, "I think so." Dear Medora, you have
been thinking the weather is fine these ten years. It is time that,
from thinking you came to know something. It is time by study
and wide reading to make ourselves powers in society. Cultivate
conversational talent. Language has been called the vehicle of
thought ; but there are all kinds of vehicles, from a Lord Mayor'.'?
coach to a wheelbarrow. But don't think brilliant conversation
means a rush of sarcasm. Sarcasm is generally the weapon of
the keen against the weak. Notice those who use it : they sink
below the level of duellists into that of assassins ! Don't indulge
in ungenial words or acts, and trust to your friends to shield
you with — " It is his way." You are bound to have a good way,
. that does not need excusing. What ! am I talking of very little
things ? Social culture is a sum of little things. I trust I did
not mislead you in saying that the manners might be worse than
the heart. Incurably bad manners, manners insincere, unsym-
pathetic, thoughtless or bitter, are the outcome of a bad heart.
Therefore we may put all exhortations on social culture into
one precept, and say: Be Christian, and in proportion as the
gracious mind of the Master abides in you, his disciple, then,
true and gentle, thoughtful of others, forgetful of self, improving
every talent to its utmost, you will always exhibit the very best
of good manners.
These were the leading ideas of the lecture, and I was glad
our young people heard them, and I hope that, young and old,
we shall be apt to put them in practice.
328 THE COMPLETE HOME.
Belinda Black came to spend a day with me, and we had a
good deal of discussion as to what was ladylike and becoming
to a young girl. I impressed it on Belinda, that whatever was
good and becoming should first be used at home; that fine man-
ners were not to be kept for strangers, to go on with our good
bonnet, and be put off with our best gloves; but the grace that
suited a stranger's table suited our own ; the courtesy which
pleased friends abroad would please parents and brothers and
sisters at home. "A woman," I said, " who goes about her house
slipshod and untidy, in a soiled, ragged gown, and only once or
twice a year gets fully fitted up in her best clothes, will be sure
to feel awkward and act awkwardly in those unwonted garments :
so good manners which are not of eveiy-day use will fit us but
illy, and we shall be ungainly in their exercise; people will see
that we have only put them on for show, and it will serve us
right to be thus betrayed. As good manners are welcome in all
places, so they are suitable to all times. Some people need to
be up three or four hours before they can find their cheerful
civility; they are well-mannered from noon until night, and ill-
mannered from rising until noon. Never come down-stairs
cross."
"A great many people do," said Belinda. "I often do; all
things look dull, I feel dull, nothing seems likely to turn out
well, and I can hardly speak, I feel so fretted."
"Then," I said, "you must have been sleeping in too close a
room, or have sat up too late, or eaten too heavy a .= upper; you
should search out the causes of these things and destroy them,
and then these unpleasant effects will cease : your gloomy face
and reluctant words will make all the family dull, and the day
will move heavily. When you feel in this captious or heavy
mood when you rise, try and disperse it: throw up your window,
step about briskly in the fresh air, toss your bed-clothes to air,
wash your head, arms and chest thoroughly in cold water, and
GOOD MANNERS IN THE HOME. 329
rub with a coarse towel; draw and expel deep breaths, so as to
fill your lungs with pure air, and send 'oxygen through your
blood. Then you will feel bright and hopeful, and be able to
speak and act politely when you get into the breakfast-room."
"Well," said Belinda, "I shall remember that. Now tell me
of some of the little things which you think especially rude — the
little things which we are most liable to do."
"One is a habit of singing and humming in the presence of
others. I knew a young woman, very nice and well educated,
too, who, whenever she was not absolutely talking, would go to
humming tunes. If she walked with you, and a silence fell in
the conversation, she would hum, hum, hum, in the most annoy-
ing way. It is pleasant to hear one singing over their work ;
but where two or three are together this humming like a huge
bumble-bee may prove very trj'ing to somebody. There, too, is
that other habit of shrill whistling, indulged in by boys, and
sometimes by girls. I like to hear a boy whistle and sing in the
fields or along the road; but it is very ill-mannered for him to
come whistling into the family room, or to sit whistling shrilly
vt. the group gathered on a piazza. We are ill-mannered
\khen we ignore the fact that in this world we are not monarchs
of all we survey, dwelling in a lodge in some vast wilderness;
but we are each one of many, and we must act so as not to
irench upon the rights and comforts of others. We can law-
fully exercise our own privileges only in a way not to interfere
with our neighbor. It is rude for children to play, race and
s bawl on the street corners in a manner to disturb the people in
all the adjacent houses, and no well-conducted parents, who desire
to have their children become prosperous and honored citizens,
will for an hour permit this. It is very ill-mannerly for a group
of young girls to go ogling, laughing, shouting, loudly talking,
and calling each other's names along the streets. A true girl,
Belinda, one who has a right to the name of lady, does not
330 THE COMPLETE HOME.
desire to call public attention to herself. She must be sought
for. She does not parade herself to general view. She is care-
ful not to act or dress in a manner to make herself remarkable
either for oddity, display, showy colors, or extravagance. Her
dress and her manners are simple and refined. Her good taste
regulates her tones, her words and her actions as well as her
bonnets. She quietly does what she thinks she ought, and has
a large reserve power of intelligence, wit, accomplishment, kind
feeling. She does not show forth at one glance all her posses-
sions, as some people who set all their silver forth on their tables
at once, but .she has an untold inheritance and acquisition of val-
uable things, which will only be discovered by a long acquaint-
ance, when day by day she will surprise you by having a depth
of strength, and culture, and lovingness beyond your previous
discerning. Such a girl is like an inexhaustible gold mine,
while many girls are like the bogus mines, started by some
crafty speculator, who has scattered a little gold and quartz
along the surface.
"Another point where young people often exhibit great ill-
manners is in a restiveness to reproof An older friend rebuke?
them for some awkwardness or rudeness, and instead of accept-
ing the reproof in kindly spirit as meant for their improvement,
or as a thing which can be used for their good, even when
given irritably, they are vexed, and proceed to justify them-
selves, or are forever angry with the reprover. They forget that
open rebuke is better than secret love; that the wounds of a
friend are better than the kisses of an enemy. This restiveness
to reproof I think often hinders elder friends from making to
the young such suggestions as would be of service. I knew a
young girl once, who from carelessness, bad example, and a lack
of watchfulness in her teachers, had fallen into several bad
habits which were ruining her manners. A wise, elderly lady
look her apart, and said to her : ' My dear, you have some rude
GOOD MANNERS IN THE'^ HOME. 331
ways which will much injure you. When spoken to you often
cry, " Hey ! " or " What ! " You often nod or shake your head
by way of answer ; you fail to look at the person who speaks to
you, or to whom you are speaking, and you are too bold in your
manner of expressing a dissenting opinion.'
" Now, the young girl might have been vexed at this reproof,
though kindly given and wisely intended by one competent to
instruct. However, she took it in the kindest spirit. She fell
that if one person saw these flaws, more must see them, and
that it was well to know of them in time to check them. She
thanked the lady, told her that she hoped she would always
suggest to her when she was going wrong, for that hitherto no
one had noticed these errors of manner in a way to correct
them. She desired to be a true lady in her ways, and gladly
laid hold on any means of improvement. As you may fancy, sp
eager and docile a pupil made rapid progress, and she became
soon graceful and thoughtful in her manners."
I have no doubt that Belinda, who is ready to learn, wa-^
benefited by this talk on good manners. It is a theme which I
often pursue with my young friends. Good manners are to a
lad what beauty is to a girl, at once attracting an interested
and kindly feeling ; while to a girl good manners are infinitely
more valuable than fine dress or showy accomplishments.
Chesterfield says that the art of pleasing is the art of rising,
and this is largely true : for some must rise in life in every
generation, and naturally those will rise who are ready to aid
and please others and so become respected and popular. We
will not give our business, our votes, our aid to one who treated
us surlily; we will strive to push him down to make room for
the man of courtesy. And this flower of courtesy, choice
as Arabian Spikenard, should be planted, cultivated and gathered
iii the Home.
CHAPTER XIV.
METHODS OF WORK IN THE HOME,
THE W.\Y AUNT SOPHRONIA THINKS WORK SHOULD BE DONE.
p COUSIN of Doctor Nugent, a surgeon who is in charge
[ 'j of a State Insane Asylum, lately spent several days in our
village, and Hester invited me to meet him at tea.
During the evening the conversation turned on the
causes of insanity.
"What," inquired John Rocheford, "is the chief root of the
madness of your patients ? "
" It would be hard to say," replied the Doctor, " for causes
are so many, and often so nearly equally distributed. We have
many whose mania is hereditary ; as many more, perhaps, who
are victims of alcoholic, opium or nicotine poisoning. Severe
illness has dethroned reason in some, and sudden shocks, losses
in business or family, or deep sorrows, have sent us other unfor-
tunates. I notice that when any one passes, from excitement on
religious subjects, into insanity, the unbelieving make a loud
"outcry over it, insinuating, more or less boldly, that religion is_
in itself dangerous and unsettling to the mind ; ignoring the
fact that victims of 'religious insanity' are those whose natural
tendency is toward madness, which excitement of any kind is
likely to develop ; and that the disturbance of their mind has
been not a true religious idea, but abnormal or moody fancies;
while there is nothing more soothing to the mind than real
piety, and doubtless it yearly preserves their reason to thousands
of minds, which would be thrown off their balance by the
(332)
METHODS OF WORK IN THE HOME. 333
painful circumstances of their lives, were it not for this fountain
of hope and refreshment, this rock of strength."
" How is it about students ? Have you many literary people
among your patients ? " asked Doctor Nugent.
" Less of severe students, perhaps, than of any other class.
The mind occupied with questions of science, or philosophy, or
history, has no time to become introverted, and brood to dis-
traction over its own developments. I have many patients who
are victims of what I am inclined to call paralysis of the reason :
indolent young women most of these, whose minds being unfed
gnaw on themselves and shrivel away."
" How is it about work ? " asked Hester. " Docs hard work
send you many victims ? "
" Work, like religion," said the Doctor, " has been called to
endure many false accusations. I have had more patients sent
to me by idleness than by hard labor — :of these, girls especially.
Boys brought up in the terribly dangerous position of idlers,
social drones, by the very muscular activity of their make find
something to do : they become amateur boxers, boatmen, ball-
players. Society does not profit by these things particularly,
nor will eternity reap much harvest by them ; but at least they
will serve to keep these young fellows out of the mad-house,
where many of their sisters may go. The young girl witb
nothing to do begins to dwell upon herself in nervous intro-
spection ; she becomes hysterical : hysteria makes her an object
of notice and sympathy in the family ; she indulges more and
more her predisposition to it ; it masters her, by degrees passes-
into mania, and she is fit only for an asylum. I have had more
than one or two cases of this kind, where the pains, and what we
may call the social disgrace of madness, would have been
escaped, if the girl had been brought up to sweep and dust, to
make her clothes, to bake the family bread and pastry, to be her
mother's housekeeper, or her father's book-keeper.
22
534 THE COMPLETE HOME.
"As to work, Mrs. Nugent, it is the normal estate of man
since Eden : we may say it is man's natural condition, as Adam
was provided with occupation even in the blessed garden. Now
what is natural can be borne : God did not establish us in a lot
in life of which lot the natural tendency is madness. Work,
lawful work, does not dethrone reason : it strengthens both brain
and body. Over-work and under-rest do send many patients to
us ; but man must blame no one but himself when he destroys
the proportion which God ordained between our time and our
labor, our working and our resting. Suppose I hire a man to do
a week's work, and I give him food for the week ; inspired by
avarice he sells the food, and works fasting , before the week is
out he drops exhausted and soon dies, when it was open to him
to use both work and food, and reach the end of the week a
sounder man than when he begun it. If I hire a man to move
some iron, and to save time, as he calls it, he piles it all in a big
barrel and, lifting it at once, incurably injures himself, who is to
blame for all the crippled years, when he might have been
hale and tougher from his work ?
"A man goes to work in a field in midsummer : at noon he is
warned to take one or two hours of rest, to cool himself, to eat,
and then resting again, go moderately at his work for an hour,
increasing his toil with the cooling day; instead, he presses on
m madder and madder haste, taking no noon rest, but panting on
I in the hottest sun, with some vague idea of getting done earlier in
I the day, as people do who work themselves to premature death,
striving in haste to accumulate a fortune for their age, an age
.which they never reach. So the man whom I am imagining,
over-hurries his task, and dies of sunstroke before the evening
ifalls The trouble is not that people must work — not even that
m the sweat of their brow they must win their bread — but that
;they set themselves tasks which neither God nor man required
.of them ; they sequestrate for their absurd ends the hours God
METHODS OF WORK IN THE HOME. 335
gave for rest; they deprive themselves of food, or, what is much
the same, of time to digest their food — they die, or go mad. The
trouble is not work, but over-work."
"But," said Hester, "are there not some mothers of large
families, say, or wives of farmers with lartje dairies and too little
help, who are forced to over-work?"
"There may be some such," said the Doctor, "but now we
are coming down to a still finer point, and I tell you that over-
work generally means, ignorance of right methods of work. You
may quietly ascend the stairs of a tower a hundred feet high ;
you reach there but little fatigued ; you seat yourself; look at
the scenery — rest — return ; you are none the worse for the climb ;
but start at the bottom and run with all your might up those
stairs; stand purple and panting in the wind on top ; turn and
run down — if you can — and very likely you will soon drop dead,
or die of a congestion, or lie all the rest of your life the in-
valid victim of your folly. You go over the same space in
either case ; you lift yourself but the hundred feet either way
you do it, but the result depends on how you doit. I doubt if
there is one case in five hundred of so-called victims of over-
work where the evil has not arisen rather from the way of doing
the work than from the amount of it. People do not know how
to divide between the needful and the needless ; they forget how
minutes of rest lessen the total of the day's fatigue ; how little
needless motions, liftings, frettings, increase it. I have had vic-
tims of over-work brought to me ; mothers whose large families
needed their presence ; whose daughters' lives would be blighted
by the story of the crazy mother; these women would have been
saved by having each day one hour's rest in rocking-chair or on
a lounge, and fifteen minutes each day with an entertaining or
soothing book, and fifteen minutes for a short walk. Why did
they not have this hour and a half? They could not: they spent
it at the sewing-machine, putting six-pin tucks in the frills of
336 THE COMPLETK HOME.
pillow-shams; sixteen narrow tucks intrieir daughters' petticoats,
edged ruffles on the little girl's aprons ; frills on the baby's
frock ; puffs, tucks and inserting in best night-gowns. And here
is the result : the baby has no mother to put on its frilled frocks;
the little girl in her ruffled apron gets cuffed by a stranger; the
eldest daughter, whose tucked petticoats wore out the mother's
powers, and robbed her of rest, is a girl marked ' as perhaps
inheriting insanity;' the fancy pillow-shams and night-gowns
are stolen by the kitchen maid and torn by the laundress ; the
whole catastrophe was caused by a lack of common-sense ; a
forgetting the evident fact that the human machine, like other
machines, cannot stand perpetual motion ; that it must be rested,
repaired, and oiled; that mothers are worth more than tucks
and ruffles; that a long, hearty, good-bestowing hfe is better
than a little out-doing of the neighbors in the matter of dress
and furnishings. I heard, by accident, good, sound sense on
this point, in this wise : a gentleman, fearing for his wife's state
of mind, sent for me, and, unknown to the wife, we were in the
study, adjoining her sitting-room, when a lady friend came to
see her. Thinking the conversation would afford me good
opportunity of judging of his wife's mental condition, I signed
to her husband to keep silence, and, sure enough, in a short
time the poor mother confided to her friend the fear that she
was going crazy. The guest was known to fame as a poet, and
I did not expect the burst ol hard common-sense which followed.
The door was ajar, and I saw her with keen eye measure her
hostess' malady, and the style of tonic needed.
" ' Go crazy ! ' she cried ; • don't you dare to do it ; you would
luin these five little girls; what prospects have the daughters
of an insane mother? There is not the least danger of any
insanity for you, if you will every day ride out for an hour, lie
down for an hour, and read for an hour; air, rest, and ne-w
interests are ■^V'aX.you need.'
METHODS OP WORK IN THE HOME. 337
"'But I have no time; you don't begin to know the time our
Bewing takes ; why I spend two or three hours each day at the
machine.'
" ' I'll engage to get you a young woman to do the sewing that
J^ou do for two dollars a week.'
" ' Yes, but tliat costs money, and I feel that I ought to lay up
all I can for our children.'
'"Look at the matter practically: call in your arithmetic. If
you die of over-work, a housekeeper will cost five dollars a
week ; if you go to an asylum, consider the expense : the seam-
stress would be cheaper. If you kill yourself by under-resting,
you drive your husband to a second marriage, and three or fouf
litrie half-brothers would materially reduce your daughters' por-
tions. The rest and the seamstress by whom you get it ars
cheap in comparison with any other alternative. Mothers are
not to be bought in a market at five dollars a head.'
" These sharp remarks were a revelation. The lady agreed to
the seamstress, and to her friend's prescription of the three
hours ; and beginning the use of her remedy at once, the two
went off to walk. I said to the husband : ' This case is in good
hands ; these three hours daily, spent as arranged now, will save
your wife ; ' and they did."
" Yet there are many cases," said Hester, " where three hours
could not possibly be saved by the mother of a family, and
where it would be also impossible to hire a seamstress."
" That is true," said the Doctor ; " but three hours each day
may not always be needed. It was the last ounce, you know,
which broke the camel's back, not the last hundred-weight.
What I contend for is, that people generally do not know the
priceless value of their physical and mental health, until they
have squandered it ; nor do they realize that a little saving in
care and labor, a little rest, a little change, would prevent their
being mentally or physically ruined. An easy-chair, an occa
338 THE COMPLETE HOME.
sional quiet hour, a day's visit, a pleasant book, the being re-
lieved from some petty, oft-recurring task, may save a brain or
a heart just on the point of exhaustion. I think all over-
worked women, if they examined their tasks, feeling that there
must be a saving made, and that saving must be in their own
favor for their own recruiting, would be surprised at the result
of their scrutiny. Why, I have seen thin, haggard, worn-out
women, who were perishing for rest and recreation, instead of
taking that needed rest which would spare them to their fami-
lies, actually sitting for two or three hours each day darning
into fine, fancy patterns the quilting of a bed-spread! This
fanciful quilting would not make the quilt warmer nor make it
wear better, but it would make it fine. A million times better
spend that time in the garden raising flower-seeds, or in the
yard raising chicks to sell, and buy counterpanes, if they could
not be had without such management. I have seen women sit-
ting up late at night knitting lace for their parlor curtains, or
ornamenting children's clothes, when the hours thus stolen from
rest would soon send them under the church-yard sod, where
neither lace nor ornaments would benefit them. I have seen so
many of these foolish sacrifices that I feel hotly on the subject.
This ignorance is a Moloch destroying hundreds of our house-
wives.''
" Some one," said John Rocheford, " ought to write a book
on the subject, and tell women how to do what they must do,
so that it shall be most easily done; and how to discern
between the needful and the needless, that they may spare
themselves for better things, and live out their rightful days."
" The book," said Hester, " would be well enough, if people
would read it or heed it, but it is very hard to bring folks to
give up rooted and perhaps inherited notions. We do not
take much warning of our own mortality in seeing others die,
nor of our own weakness in seeing others break down : we think
METHODS OF WORK IN THE HOME. 339
wc feel the springs of life stronger in us. We strain and bend
the bow until it snaps, and then leave others to repeat for them-
selves- our folly."
"I have often wondered," said John Rocheford, "at the dif-
ferent ways in which women do their work ; at, indeed, the very
different ways in which work can be done, making or saving
toil and fatigue. I remember once I was out with a party of
gentlemen on a survey, and we happened on a rainy summer
week ; the first evening we took refuge in a farm-house. As we
were wet, and . there was no stove up but in the large, neat
kitchen, we were seated near that to dry ourselves, while the
housewife got supper. Wishing to give us something hot, she
made flannel or griddle-cakes. By the time the cakes were
mixed she had a bowl, a couple of saucers, a fork, spoon and
pan in use, and her baking-table pretty well covered with sifted
flour; her griddle then being greased, she brought her pan of
cake-batter, and with a large spoon dipped some upon the
griddle ; despite her care, some drops fell on stove and hearth ;
every time she greased the griddle she went to and from her
table with the greaser, and then to and from the table with her
pan of batter ; in the meantime she darted hurriedly around lay-
ing the tea-table, a cup, a plate, a knife at a time, between whiles
of putting on and turning and removing her cakes. She was
nearly an hour in preparing her supper, and an hour in clearing
it away, for some flecks of batter had fallen on floor, stove and
table ; she had soiled a good many dishes ; her table was to
scrub ; her stove to rub up, and before all was in its accustomed
order the good woman was hot and exhausted.
" The next evening our fate was almost exactly similar ; an-
other tidy kitchen sheltered us from the rain, and its "mistress
baked cakes for our supper. First she went to the china-closet
with a tray, and putting the tea-dishes on it, in but two journeys
to the closet her table was nicely set. Then with her tray she
340 THE COMPLETE HOME.
visited her store-closet, and brought to the table at one trip
butter, bread, cream, preserves, cold meat, and so on. That care
being off her mind, she put her griddle on the stove and opened
the draught. Next she went to her store-closet for material for
her cakes. She mixed the cakes in a large pitcher, with a
strong egg-beater. First she put into the pitcher the buttermilk
and soda; then she beat the eggs on a plate and turned them
in; then put in the flour, salt, and other ingredients; when the
batter was ready the baking-table was unsoiled, and only a
saucer and an egg-beater lay on it for washing. She set open
the oven-door, and stood within it two plates for her cakes, and
the dish with her greaser ; then she rubbed the griddle well with
salt, and so only greased it about one-fifth as much as the other
housewife, saving smoke and trouble. She poured the cakes
upon the griddle from the nose of the pitcher, so saving all drip-
ping, and between whiles she set the pitcher on the hearth, so
that she had no journeys to and from the table; in fact, she never
left the stove while she baked, but stepping back a little from
the heat she chatted with us, and in half an hour from the time
when she began to get supper she had the meal all on the table
in an orderly room, and when supper was ended she cleared it
away in half an hour. There was no stove to polish; no table
to scrub ; no spots on the floor were to be wiped up, and the
work ended, she resumed her white apron and sat down on the
porch in her rocking-chair, evidently knowing how to rest, as
well as how to work."
" That's it; that's it," said the Doctor; " the thing is to know
how to do it. Mothers should not be content to teach theii
daughters" housework, but how to do it in the quickest, nicest
way ; not merely instructing in the ingredients that form a pound-
cake, but how to use the fewest utensils, and the least time and
irouble in compounding it ; some women, and delicate women
top. have a fear of seeming lazy in work. Whose business is if
METHODS OF WORK IN THE HOME. 341
how they seem if the work is properly done, and their own health
and comfort are cared for? Are health and comfort things of
small account ? We have societies for prevention of cruelty to
animals and to children : I wish we had a society for preventing
housewives and house-mothers from being cruel to themselves.
They think it ' looks foolish ' to lie down in daytime ; it ' looks
lazy' to sit while they pare vegetables, or mix cake, or wipe
dishes, or polish knives ; it ' looks extravagant ' to cover their
working-tables with oil-cloths, and to use plenty of hiats and
rugs, and ammonia, or borax, or soda for cleaning, instead of
driving all their own failing vitality into scrubbing-brushes.
And by these false ideas of ' looks ' — I wish the word had never
been heard of — they reduce themselves to invalids who must lie
down all the time, or the over-active life ends in premature
death, or the extravagance runs into doctors' and druggists' and
asylum bills. How illogical we humans are! as I look at my
patients, I often think we are all a little mad!"
"You impress me," said Doctor Nugent, "with the enormity
of an evil which I never before realized. The book which Mr.
t
Rocheford suggests should be written, and Aunt Sophronia,
who knows how to do all kinds of housework in the very best
manner, must write it."
" Thank you," I replied; " I am quite too old to turn authoress,
but I feel the great importance of what has been said, and I am
resolved in my little sphere, here in the village and the country
around, to try more and more to impress on my young friends
the need of taking care of themselves ; of having a little reserve
strength laid up for emergencies, and not every day over-drawing
our account on vitality. As has been said, the trouble lies in
ignorance, not in labor. It is not that there is too much in the
world to be done, but that we do not know how to do it ; we
make our work less by having a right way of performing it
Method is the time and strength-saver, and reason is to be applied
to baking, boiling and dish-washing."
342 THE COMPLETE HOME.
How much and how often have I thought of that evening's
conversation ! What important themes it touched, and themes
so often under-estimated ! We do not live in a lazy age ; it is
an age of activity, and yet of poorly distributed activity often-
times, where a few members of a family are striving to do the
work of all, and fathers and mothers, or conscientious eldei
daughters, are doing the share of work lawfully belonging to
indolent and over-indulged juniors : the one party getting toe
much and the other too little rest. I notice that these active
people, when they are really over-worked and worn-out, attribute
their weariness to any cause but the right one ; they will not
face the fact that they are over-wrought and need repose, that
the nerves kept at their best tension for too long a time must be
relaxed by amusements like little children's. I remember once
hearing some one ask a famous authoress how she managed ta
execute such a prodigious amount of work ; and she replied
' Merely by knowing how at proper times to rest and to play,'
and a friend of hers told me that she believed this was the
secret, for she had seen her when tired drop into a state of such
perfect quiescence that she seemed rather like a piece of restful
Statuary than like a living organism ; and that out in the woods,
in the mountains, by the sea, or by some mountain stream, she
could entertain herself with all the abandon of a child.
One of the most famous of the superintendents of our Stata
Lunatic Asylums says : " We all know that a steam-engine,
calculated to do a certain amount of work in a day, will wear
out very rapidly if forced to do double that work. And as thft
human body is composed of a varietj'- of the most delicately
constructed organs, each designed to perform a certain amount
and character of work within certain limits, and in a specified
time, so every effort to compel these organs to do more work
in a given time than they were designed by their Constructor to
do, will speedily derange their action and give rise to disease."
METHODS OF WORK IN THE HOME. 343
And Still there comes that cry, especially from house-mothers,
that there is a certain amount of work that they must do, and it is
an amount which is wearing them out. The question is first to
sift the work. to the really needful and the fairly required, and
then to know how to do in the very best time-and-labor-saving
methods that which remains. For instance, when it comes to
this closest question of labor-saving, when only one pair of
woman's hands are ready to do a family's work, and that
woman must have resting time, let her cut off scrupulously all
labor that is for mere ornament, in dress and furnishings ; let
there be plain hems now ; by-and-by these little girls will have
grown up, and . these boys will be old enough to help more, to
bring in less mud, and to wear out less clothes, and then you
can have fancy quilts, and toilettes, and pillow-shams, and aprons,
and underclothes. Only try now to spare the mother to train
up her children in helpfi|ilness, kindness, courtesy, home-loving,
and it will seem after all but a little whilp until the problem has
solved itself; and to-day's little hinderers will be to-morrow's
little helpers, and you can have <vhat you now crave of pretty
things, and are now by your common-sense denied. Again,
*hese over-taxed housewives forget that there is rest to be gained
in many ways : First, by change of work. Don't stand at the
ironing-board until you are ready to drop, but go out on the
porch, or into the sitting-room and peel the potatoes and turnipp.
Again, there is rest in exercise : you have sewed, and nursed
baby, and washed dishes, and have not looked out-of-doors this
long while ; go out-of-doors, walk about your garden, or go to
see your neighbor, or take a friendly look at the cov/s in the
pasture, or at the poultry in the yard. But there is a fatigue
that is not to be healed by change of work nor by walking : it
needs perfect quiet. Don't always fancy that you can rest by
changing or by out-of-door exercise. When you feel languid
and weak, unattracted by out-of-doo's, ind when to move eyes
344 THE COMPLETE HOME.
or hands seems as hard as to move feet, be wise in time : go and
rest. Smooth your hair, rinse your face and hands, take off
your shoes, he down on your bed or on a lounge in a shaded
room, or rechne in a big chair, and shut your eyes and your
ears, and be resolved to rest. Do this even if it deprives the
family of their dessert at dinner, or their warm biscuits for
supper, or their cake for over Sunday ; it will be much better for
them to lack these things for a few times than to go to your
funeral, or endure a six months' reign of Biddy in the kitchen.
Even if, as I can hardly believe possible, some uncomprehending
masculine grumbles at the lack of his wonted luxuries, never
mind : people often do not understand what is for their real good
Some women wear out their vitality in doing work not fairly
required of them. They, by a foolish yielding to unjust en-
croachments, not only shorten their own lives, but aggravate
the selfishness or ignorance and future remorse of others.
Thus, while there is a husband and a farm-hand or two, even a
son, possibly, the housewife may be left to get her own wood,
tD cut or pick up her own kindling, or be expected to carry a
Ijnch to workers in the field — this, too, when she has a family
to wash, iron, cook, bake, scrub and nurse for. To submit to
such demands is absurd. The ones who make them, do not
realize what they are asking; to set the matter plainly before
them, and positively refuse to go beyond a decent limit, would
bring all things right. There is a deal of difference between
firmness and quarrelling.
Another thing that is to be considered in regard to ovei-
working and under-resting is, that as all clocks need winding,
so all human brains and bodies need to be wound up by sleep-
ing. No one ever gained a permanent advantage by depriving
himself of needed sleep. Regular and abundant sleep at night
is needful to maintain the health of all ages and conditions.
Sleep before midnight is more refreshing than after. No one
METHODS OF WORK IN THE HOME. 345
who is active in brain or body during his waking hours will get
too much sleep. Let him sleep all he can. Don't steal sleep
hours for doing little extra things which had better not be done
at all. Get to bed regularly at an early hour, and do not rise
earlier than you need merely to be called an early riser, a great
worker, and to boast of having half your work done before your
neighbors were up.
Some people not only fail to give their exhausted energies
sleeping time in which to recuperate, but they fail to give them
plenty of easily digested food on which to recuperate. They
get too tired to eat, or they go to their meals over-exhausted,
and as soon as they have swallowed a little food, for which they
did not half care, they ^'ump up from the table and go to work
again. The stomach cannot assimilate the food ; the veins are
not filled with good blood ; they have no vitality to distribute to
nerves and muscles, and flesh grows flabby and pale ; the nerves
twitch and tremble; the muscles do not half work ; the whole
frame is dropping to pieces for want of what God has offered to
it and foolish humanity has neglected — food and sleep!
I was discoursing somewhat in this fashion one day very
energetically to my three nieces, with Mary Watkins, and Sara,
and Grace Winton, who had come to tea with me.
" Still," said Mary Watkins, " granted that we rest as we can,
sleep and eat as best we may, cut off" the superfluous, reject the
bringing of wood and drawing of water — yet, after all, we find a
deal of work which we must do, work enough to make us very
tired; especially with two or three or more little children on
hand, poor maid or none, and churning, pickling, preserving
lard-rendering, house-work, daily and weekly cleaning, mend-
ing and making, we stand a fair chance of being over-worked
and under-rested, do the best we may."
"Unless we know some very superior methods," said Hester.
" Just what I positively insist on having Aunt Sophronia tell
us," said Miriam.
346 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" Before I say anything else," I remarked, " I must impress
it on you that mind and body are so closely connected, that
mind can tire body out by carrying burdens even if they are
only imaginary. We wear out minds and bodies by enumer-
ating to ourselves our future toils. To-day we are ironing ; and
if as we iron we forecast how hard it will be in the fall to put
up twenty jars of pickles and jellies, and as many more of
preserves, and how very hard the fall-cleaning will be, and how
weary the work at killing-time will seem, why, then, taking
trouble in advance of need, and paying heavy interest for it,
we exhaust ourselves. Listen to what John Newton says :
' We can easily manage if we will only take each day the
burden appointed for it. But the burden will be too heavy for
us if we add to it the weight of to-morrow before we are called
to bear it.' "
" That suits me," said Helen, " for that is one way in which I
am always tiring myself Counting, for instance, in my mind
how many clothes the children will require to have made in a
year."
"Now," said Miriam, "we have laid up in our minds that
good counsel, and the theory of not forecasting trouble. And
now we must come to the practical part. There is work to he
done: now how to do it; what' method shall make the burden
light? how shall we gather the rose of duty done without
tearing ourselves on its thorns ? "
" I do not see," I said, " but you had better, if you have any
especial work in your minds, come to the point about that at
once, and we will all make the best suggestions that we can.
That will at least be fully practical."
"All right," spoke up Helen. " I've put a new oil-cloth on
my two big halls. The last one wore out too quickly by hili]
and took so long to scrub that I dreaded having the chamber-
maid get at it. She spent all the morning on it."
METHODS OF WORK IN THE HOME. 347
"No scrubbing," I said, "if you want a nice oil-cloth, and one
to last a long while. Let it be swept with a soft broom ; then
on sweeping-day, after the dusting is done, tie up your broom in
a bag of old flannel, and dry-wipe the oil-cloth : it can be done
in a few minutes, and will make it look clean and bright.
Treated in this way, it will be long before the cloth needs any
washing ; if it gets a spot on it, wipe it off in warm skim-milk.
When it must be washed, mix a little borax and hard soap in
part of a pail of warm water ; rub it well with this, but use no
brush; have ready half a pail of warm water and skimmed milk,
and wipe oiif the oil-cloth with this and a flannel ; set open the
doors, and let it air-dry. Wash it as little as possible ; when,
after two years or so of use, it begins to look dim and wear a
little, have it well washed and dried, and varnish it thoroughly :
you will have to keep the hall unused for two or three days
while the varnish hardens. Cared for in this way a good oil-
cloth will last for years."
My auditors had all been taking notes in their pocket-note-
books. When they had finished, Mary Watkins said :
" That is very satisfactory ; now tell me something. This
morning I spent more than an hour, and nearly scrubbed off
the ends of my fingers in cleaning off" some rust from my best
knives, which had been put by for two or three months. Now,
I want to know first, how I could have prevented the rusting ?
second, how to clean it off" well and easily ? and third, how to
clean my knives?"
" First, then, the knives were possibly a little damp when put
away, or were in a damp place. Before putting by your knives,
they should have been well rubbed with a bit of newspaper.
Then you should have laid down a piece of paper, and folded
the edge of it over a knife; then another knife, laying them
handle to blade with the paper covering each one. Put up each
half-dozen in a separate paper. Then wrap up these papered
348 '^'^'^ COMPLETE HOME.
knives in a piece of chamois leather or a strip of flannel, and
shut them up in a paste-board box ; put this in an ordinarily
dry place, and your knives vill never rust. Second : how to
clean off rust. Wrap the rusted article in a cloth, soaked in
kerosene oil, and let it be for twenty-four hours ; then scour
with bath-brick; rub with whiting or the old-fashioned rotten-
stone; then rub with sweet oil, and after this, wash in hot
suds; dry well with paper, and put by as just directed. Very
deep spots of red rust can be eradicated by rubbing them with
salt and vinegar. Third : how to clean your knives. Use bath-
brick or a little well-powdered ashes. Have a board for the
purpose, with a box of your cleaning-powder and two large
corks, say an inch and a half in diameter, and two inches high :
use one cork to rub the moistened powder on the knives, being
careful not to bend the blade, but keep it flat to the board ; then
rub with the other cork and dry dust or powder ; after this, rub
the knife well with a scrap of newspaper. Many people ruin
their knife-cleaning b]' wiping on a cloth or towel, which is sure
to leave dampness or a streak of some sort. Two or three times
weekly, spread your knives on a tray in the sun for an hour.
Knives should be washed in clean water, and scoured as soon as
washed — it spoils them to lie wet; also never throw them in
a pan of hot water: that spoils alike handles and temper.
Hold them by their handles while you wash the blades in warm
suds ; then if the handles need water, shake them through warm
water, holding the knives by the blades. Keep knives in a dry
box by themselves. Always have for use in the cooking, lead
or iron spoons and certain forks and knives, which are not used
on the table. Many people use their table-cutlery and spoons
in stirring cooking and in pot-scraping, and consequently never
have anything- nice for the table."
" Speaking of scraping skillets and saucepans," said Miriam,
' let me tell you that shells, a 1 ir^je clam or muscle shell, are
METHODS OF WORK IN THE HOME. 349
worth ten knives. I have some shells kept in the kitchen
always for this use ; they save time, and make better work of
that part of the cleaning."
" Possibly," said Helen, " you can make some suggestions
about cleaning tins. Every once in a while I find that our tin-
cups, pails and basins look like dull lead ; I say they must be
scoured, and the kitchen-maid spends half a day at it, covering
the table with brick-dust and ashes, getting behind-hand in the
work, and losing her temper."
" This is one of the ways," I said, " in which a litde daily
neglect doubles our ordinary work ; tins need particular care, but
it takes very little time if regularly given. The tins must not be
washed in water where greasy plates or meat-dishes have been.
The common plan is to suds them out after the dishes; wipe
them with a towel, and hang them up ; in a week their bright-
ness is lost. Tins must be washed in strong, hot suds, where no
other dishes have been put; rub them hard in the suds; then
shake them out; dash a little scalding water, with a cup, on them
and turn them to drain in a warm place. As soon as they
are dry, take half a newspaper, and rub them vigorously outside
and in : they will shine like new. About once a week, set them
in the sun for an hour after they are rubbed with paper. Sedu-
lously treated in this way, weeks or months may pass without
their needing an especial scouring. When more than this
cleaning which I have indicated is needed, take a flannel well
sprinkled with dry whiting, and rub them hard with that, and
finish off with paper. Paper is one of the best materials for
cleaning that we can have in the house. Knives and tins
rubbed with it preserve their brightness ; if the stove is polished
twice a week, and rubbed hard with paper on the other days,
with ordinary care it will always look clean and bright. Paper
is better than a cloth for rubbing windows and looking-glasses
and table-glass "
23
350 ^-^^-^ COMPLETE HOME.
"As we are on the subject of cleaning," said Sara, " I might
remark that people give themselves a deal of needless trouble
about taking care of their silver. The silver is washed in water
with other dishes, is washed perhaps in water that is half cold ;
then it lies for ten or fifteen minutes before it is wiped ; and is
wiped possibly on a damp towel. This usage keeps it always
dim in its color, and it needs a weekly scouring with whiting :
in this Way it is nearly rubbed to pieces. The proper way to
wash silver is, to wash it by itself in scalding hot suds in which
nothing else has been washed; if the silver is much soiled, hold
the forks, spoons and so forth by the handles, and pour a stream
of clear, hot water over the soiled parts to free them ; then put
the silver into the clean suds ; rub it well with a sponge fastened
to a stick ; drain it out, and without rinsing, wipe it very vigor-
ously on a clean towel: it will shine as if newly polished. Once
a week after the suds, drop the silver into a pan of hot water
pretty strong of ammonia; wash it well in this; wipe, and then
rub with paper. The silver will need no scouring, no silver-
soap or whiting cleaning for a six months ; will look better, and
liist longer."
" Thanks," said Mary Watkins ; " that will save me some
trouble. Now, .how shall one wash iron-pots, saucepans and
griddles quickly and easily? They are heavy, and take a deal
■of time, and are very hard on one's hands."
" It is well," I said, " to use a wooden-tub, large enough to
manage them in; have plenty of hot water, and a small, thick
scrubbing-brush with a high handle. Keep on hand some
strong sal-soda water or some fine ashes; dip the brush into
either of these, and scrub the pot inside and out. The brush
protects your hands, and cleans twice as well and quickly as a
cloth ; rinse in hot water, and dry on the stove. Of course
before putting into the tub, the inside should be scraped, if any-
thing is adhering; and they should be rinsed, and the water
METHODS OF WORK IN THE HOME. Zh\
thrown out. The practice of washing pots and pans in soiled
dish water, wiping them with a wrung-out dish-cloth, and hang-
ing them up all black and shiny within is dirty and unhealthful.
Clean iron has a gray look."
" Nothing saves labor so much," said Sara, " as thoroughness
and doing things in the right way. It is much less trouble to
scour pans and pots and griddles well, than it is to half wash
them ; if they are not well washed, they will burn, and the next
thing cooked in them is likely to stick, and cause increased
labor. Some people spend three times as much time as they
should on clearing off tables and washing dishes. Mother
taught us very carefully how to do those things, and I never saw
any house where both tasks were performed more speedily and
neatly. Some people pick up their dishes, and carry them off
promiscuously to sink or kitchen-table — knives,- silver, glass,
unscraped plates, cold meats, set down together, just as it hap-
pens : cups, platters, plates, tumblers, knives, spoons, go into the
dish-pan as they are picked up ; the confusion embarrasses the
work, and a long time is required to get it very poorly done.
We were taught, as soon as the meal was over, to put away
bread, meat, butter, milk — all the eatables which were left — in
their proper places, and on proper dishes. Next the salts were
refilled, the caster was wiped, and these were removed. Then
the knives were gathered into a tray, the forks and spoons into
a deep dish, and they were carried off; then the cups and
saucers were drained, piled up together, carried to the sink, or
wherever they were to be washed, and set in order there. Next
the glass-ware was drained and removed ; then the plates and
sauce-dishes were scraped and piled up. The refuse was at once
carried off; the cloth shaken and folded into its box : then all our
work was at the sink. We did not make ourselves work by spar-
ing hot water : first, the glass-ware was washed, wiped and put
away ; then the silver was well rubbed in clean, hot suds, pol-
352 THE COMPLETE HOME.
ished with the clean towel kept for it, and put by. The knives
were washed after the silver; were at once scoured, and laid,
when rubbed with paper, in the sunshine. A fresh pan of dish-
water and a pan of hot rinsing-water were provided, and cups
and saucers were invariably washed first; next followed the
sauce-plates and vegetable-dishes ; then the plates, and then the
meat-platters — if needful, we changed the dish-suds when we
came to plates and platters. The dishes were rinsed through
the clear water, and put to drain, and when all were washed, we
began at those which had drained the longest, wiped them and
put them in their places. The tins were washed alone, and
then the cooking utensils in clean suds. Next, the dish-cloths
and towels were washed in clean water, and laid in the sun, or
hung up on a little frame behind the stove. The dish-pans and
sink were well cleaned, the table wiped ; and really it seems as
if we did' the work nicely in the time which I have used in
describing its order."
" Dear, dear," said Helen ; " if I could get Hannah to use
such order^ our kitchen work would be lessened by one-half"
" Write it out fairly, and hang it up over the kitchen-table,"
said Miriam. " I did that, and my servant improved wondet-
fully. I told her to try it thoroughly for a month, and if it did
not save her time and work she could try some other way.
She tried the plan of exact order, and prized the advantage too
highly to relapse into carelessness."
" I think," said Sara, " that our Grace must tell us how to
sweep a room. She makes a fine art of that bit of work."
"Why, no," laughed Grace, "I only sweep and dust in a
natural and proper way as any one does."
" Indeed," I replied, " there are dozens of different ways of
dusting and sweeping, and some of them will be good and some
very bad. Let us hear yours. Sweeping and dusting are a
li'ge part of our housework, and can be a heavy tax on time
and strength."
METHODS OF WORK IN ThE HOME. 355
"' Well, then," said Grace, " I begin by opening as many
windows as the weather will permit. Next, I dust all chairs,
stocls and small furniture, and set them out in an entry or in
the next room. Then I remove all books and small ornaments,
dusting them as I do so, and generally putting them on some
light stand which has been carried out. Then, I shake the
'table covers and take them away, shake the curtain folds and
pin 1 aem up, and with a feather-duster brush loose dust from
mani ;ls and heavy furniture. Next, I look after cob-webs, and
with 1 short hand broom I brush out the dust from the corners
and idges of the carpet. If there is large furniture, as bed,
bure lu, piano or sofa, left in the room, I cover those pieces with
covej-s kept for the purpose, or with sheets. I pick up all large
scraps, as of paper or cloth, all straws, broom-wisps or long
threads, for you may sweep a carpet half to pieces trying to get
these up with a broom. After this, I sweep from the sides
toward the centre of the room : if you sweep toward a door, or
the side of the room, there are cracks, and angles, and seams in
which the dust lodges. After the dust is all swept together I
use the hand-broom to collect it upon the dust-pan. Before
sweeping I dip my broom in a pail of thin warm suds, and then
beat out all the water from it : this is good to keep the broom
froin wearing, good to keep the dust from rising, and good to
brighten the carpet. If a carpet is very dusty, so that the
broom becomes dirty during the sweeping, it is well to wash it
out when the room is half done ; but a room properly cleansed
every week does not become so dirty. When the sweeping is
finished I dust all the wood-work with a feather-brush or a
wing. Then I wipe the window-sills and around the door-
handles with a sponge squeezed out of ammonia water. I dust
the pictures with a feather-brush; rub the windows with a
newspaper, sometimes damping it in ammonia water; then I
shake out the curtains; remove the covers from the standing
3o4 THE COMPLETE HOME.
furniture and dust it; sometimes I take a very light broom
tied into a cotton bag, and with it lightly wipe off the wall-
paper ; then I bring back the furniture and ornaments which were
carried out. With such a cleaning once a week, a room only
needs a little setting in order each morning to keep it nice ; the
curtains, carpets and furniture last at their best for a long while.
If furniture is left in the room and uncovered while sweeping is
going on, it gets loaded with dust; in wiping this off, much is
rubbed into the furniture, giving it a dull, grimy look, and it
soon fades. It is not any more trouble to clean things and set
them into an adjacent room, than it is to keep moving them out
of your way and then having a thick coat of dust to wipe off.
If our carpets get stained or spotted, we wash the spots carefully
with a flannel and ammonia water. You can make a carpet
look very bright and fresh in winter by sprinkling it well with
new-fallen snow and sweeping it rapidly, only there must be no
fire in the room to melt the snow. To sweep the carpets now
and then with coarse salt is very good to brighten them and
destroy insects. But the best cleaner and freshener is a pail of
ammonia water, wiping the carpet well with this and a flannel,
and leaving the windows open to air and dry it for an hour ;
rugs and mats are much rejuvenated by such a rubbing. It is
also a good plan to save tea-leaves, and with them, not too
moist, to sweep dark or green carpets occasionally ; they are
not good for light carpets."
" You know," said Hester, " what Irving says of the good
Dutch housewives of ancient New York, that they kept a parlor
apparently sacred to nothing but a weekly ceremony of clean-
ing. Weddings, christenings and funerals were permitted to
take place in this beloved apartment, but for the rest it stood
closed, except for its owner's weekly visit with broom and
duster. I am no advocate of shut-up rooms. I think all parts
of our house should be open for the comfort and pleasure of the
METHODS OF WORK IN THE HOME. 355
family. Still there are rooms which are used comparatively-
little, and for these we should not be enslaved by the Dutch
housewife's idea of a weekly cleaning. They may not need to
■ be cleaned so often, and we should not, as a mere form, encum-
ber ourselves with needless tasks. If rooms, that are not in
regular use, gre sunned and aired and looked after each week,
it is enough to give them a thorough cleaning when they need
it. We must control our house-work, and not allow it to con-
trol us. The less is made for the greater."
" I am glad you mentioned that," said Miriam, " for I have
often seen people needlessly fatiguing themselves to perform
work done to suit a rule, and not to fill a need."
"Washing," said Mary Watkins, "is a great burden, and often
a family bugbear; let us hear if there is any way to lighten that
burden. Sara, what was your mother's wisdom about washing-
day? She will be a prime authority."
Just as Sara was about to reply, Cousin Ann herself entered,
a;id was at once requested to give us the fruits of her experience.
She said that she had lately given some advice on this subject
to her daughters-in-law, and she would repeat the substance of
it to us. " If possible, have only one washing-day in a week ;
have one every week, for if clothes lie long soiled they are harder
to wash, and wear out faster. Have, if possible, the washing-
day early in the week. Remember that washing is very hard
work ; more young women break down their strength with wash-
ing than with any other toil : therefore, go at it reasonably. As
it is such hard work, be sure, in the first place, and do not undet..
take too much other work on washing-day ; have, then, as little
extra work to do as possible. Don't churn and bake, and clean
and wash all on one day. For this reason I should say if the
young housewife does her work alone, she had much better
wash on Tuesday than on Monday. You see, often over Sun-
day the pies and the bread come short, and will not hold out
356 THE COMPLETE HO MB:.
until Tuesday, and there is nothing on hand for dinner, and if
no churning was done on Sunday there is churning for Monday,
and all these duties are too much for one woman, especially
when we consider that on Mondays the house needs a little
extra setting in order, and generally there is a baby or small
child to need attention. If the house-mother bakes, roasts,
churns, nurses baby, and washes, she gets exhausted ; her vital-
ity is sapped; she is laying the foundation of disease and inviting
premature death. How many such over-working mothers tell
you that the baby is 'always cross on Monday! ' No wonder;
not only must care be hastily bestowed, but the over-heated,
tired, worried, excited mother sits down to nurse the babe, and
he draws poison and not health from her fevered veins ; the child
sleeps poorly, and cries loudly; his nerves and veins are sharing
the maternal unrest ; he is wakeful all night to help wear out
his mother, and half the week passes before the natural tone of
the outraged little system is restored.
" Now suppose on Monday the young house-mother makes
tidy her house; sees that bread is prepared to last at least until
Thursday; churns, gets pies or some dessert ready for next day,
and roasts or boils a piece of meat also for wash-day dinner; then
in the evening, if there is a press of milk, it will be better to
churn again, so as not to start washing-day at the churn. Then
when the babe is in bed the mother prepares the clothes for the
wash. The white clothes are divided, coarse and fine ; get ready
for each lot a tub half-full of pretty warm water, with a large
tablespoonful of soft-soap and a teaspoon of borax, or half a
teaspoonful of sal-soda powder, stirred in it. Into this put the
clothes to soak, pressing each piece well into the water ; if any
pieces are very much soiled, as, for instance, socks, or working
shirts, put them in a pail alone. In the morning take a pounder,
not a large, heavy, old-fashioned affair, but one about twice as
large as a potatoe-masher, and pound your fine clothes a little;
METHODS OF WORK IN THE HOME. 357
then wring each piece out into your washing-tub of hot suds ;
you will be surprised to see that half the dirt is already out of
your clothes, and the other half yields very easily to a little
rubbing. The advantage gained in time and hard work by this
soaking of the clothes is an additional reason for having the
washing done on Tuesday. Clothes should not be boiled much,
as it yellows and rots the fibre ; often they will look as well for
being put in a tub and having boiling water poured over them,
lying in it until it' cools, instead of being boiled in a tin boiler.
After the boiling, the clothes should pass through warm, clear
water before being put into a light-bluing water, as unless all
soap-suds is taken out of them before the blue, they will have a
dull, yellowish look. Clothes should be turned in the washing,
and should be hung up wrong-side-out. If young women would
only remember not to mix other work with washing; if they
would not hurry too much to be "smart about getting done;' if
they would lighten the task by soaking the clothes, and by using
a clothes-wringer, if they could possibly get one, and if especially
they would remember that haste makes waste, and instead of
straining their chests and ruining their backs by lifting whole
tubs of water, or boilers of clothes, or by carrying to the line a
basket heaped with wet clothes, when by lifting water by pailsful,
and by carrying part of their clothes only at once, they could
spare the dangerous strain, we should have fewer broken-down
women."
Martha came to call us to tea.
"Oh," cried Helen, "do wait one minute until I ask Cousin
Ann how to iron lace-curtains : mine must be done up."
"You do not iron them at all," said Cousin Ann; "have
ready some long strips of wood — like quilting-frames — as long
as your curtains. Wind them with cloth, and lay them on
chairs in the sun ; stretch the curtain and pin it to these frames,
pulling every scallop and curve even; be careful to take new
pins that will not rust."
358 T^HE COM! LETE HOME.
"Thank you; and now just one word : why did my red break
fast-cloth and napkins fade sooner than Miriam's?"
" Because, first, too much soap was rubbed on them ; and
second, they were dried in the sun : colored things should be
dried in the shade."
After tea. Cousin Ann was again assailed by her young friends
with questions, but secured her release by promising them
certain new recipes. These I obtained from Miriam's book, al
follows :
The Uses of a Pan of Bread Sponge. — i. Take one pint of
the sponge, add one tablespoon sugar, one tablespoon meltj"
butter, one egg, and set it to rise for biscuits.
2. Take another pint of the sponge, one cup of molasse.s.
three tablespoons sour milk or cream, one-half teaspoon each ot
soda and cream of tartar, two eggs, one nutmeg, and set it to
rise for doughnuts.
3. Knead the rest of the sponge as for bread.
4. When the dough for the bread is light, cut off a piece tn^
size of a small bowl. Make up the rest into loaves.
5. Take the piece of reserved dough and cut it up fine in a
pan, add one cup brown sugar, one tablespoon of cinnamon, one
cup raisins or currants, one-half cup sour milk, one spoon soda,
two or three eggs well beaten, mix these into a smooth paste,
and steam four hours in a buttered dish, and' you have a
delicious pudding.
Scrapel. — The head, knees, or part of the neck of a pig; an
amount of beef from the neck or knuckle about equal in weight
to the pork. Let these boil together all day. When the meat
has boiled into ft igments, carefully sift out all the bones, chof
very fine, add salt, pepper and sweet herbs to taste. Let there be
water enough to receive about half as much corn-meal as there
is of meat. Set the pot back on the fire, and stir in the corn-
meal until it is as thick as hasty-pudding, which will be solid
METHODS OF WORK IN THE HOME. 359
when cold. This is a delicious breakfast dtsh cut in slices and
fried. As it is very much thicker with meat than the ordinary
scrapel, it will last good in a cold place for some time. In
winter it can be kept four or five weeks. The meat must be
carefully cleaned, and well skimmed while boiling.
Pressed Meat. — This a delightful relish for tea or luncheon.
Take of veal, lamb, or beef, or mutton, the knuckle-pieces, with
very little fat upon them. Put into cold water and let them
boil for a number of hours until the meat is reduced to small
bits. Skim out the bones, and chop the meat very fine ; season
to taste. This should have been boiled down to such consist-
ency that when cold it will be a solid jelly, which will slice like
head-cheese. This is very delicate in the spring made of veal
and chicken ; an old fowl, if not too fat, is better for it than a
young one. In cold weather it will keep perfectly good ten
days.
A Dressing for Cold Sliced Meat. — One-half cup vinegar, one
teaspoon salt, one teaspoon sugar, one tablespoon mustard, one
tablespoon olive oil ; mix well.
Cake Cream. — Slice stale cake and put in a pudding-dish in
layers with preserves or with stewed raisins. Pour over this
half a cup of sweet cream well sugared, cover the top with a'
layer of cake, and spread on this a frosting as for cake ; put in
the oven for a few minutes. Serve cold.
Frosted Fruit. — Take peaches, berries, currants, or any summei
fruit, and stir well through it frosting, prepared as for cake, of
whites of eggs and powdered sugar ; spread it on a platter and
set it on ice until sent to the table.
Cranberry Cake. — Put in layers, first cranberry jelly strained
and smooth, then slices of stale white cake, then custard made
of the yolks of eggs, then cake, then cranberry, then cake, then
a frosting made of the whites of the eggs. Serve cold with cream.
CHAPTER XV.
THE UNITY OF THE HOME.
WHAT VJNT SOPHRONIA THINKS OF FAMILY ACCORD^ DISCORD
AND CONCORD.
WISH it were written over the entrance of every Home,
"A house divided against itself cannot stand." If the
Home is to be durable and prosperous, there must be
unity between its members. A true Home is not a
boarding-house where people come and go, are glad or sorry,
prosperous or unfortunate, just as it happens, for themselves
alone, without affecting the other members of the household.
The units, which make up the home, in a great measure stand or
fall together : the prosperity of one is the prosperity of all ; the
disgrace of one is the disgrace of all. I have seen homes
where it was assumed by the husband that his business was
• entirely his own business, that his wife or children were entitled
to know nothing about it ; he might reach profit or loss, con-
tract or pay debts, and it was no concern of his wife or children.
The wife, proceeding in the same fashion, spent or saved as she
liked in her dress, housekeeping and in rearing her children.
The children made their own plans, friends, engagements, bar-
gains. The servants were sedulously kept apart from any
family interests, were fixedly shown that they were hirelings
with certain work to do for certain wages, and oftentimes the
work was shirked or slighted, and sometimes the wages were
long unpaid. Such a household is a rope of sand: the least
touch of disaster breaks it asunder; its parts fly far from
i360)
THE UNITY OF THE HOME. Sfi]
each other to meet no more. The son errs and is bidden never
to cross again the parental door; the daughter, in whom httle
personal, interest has been taken, contracts a marriage which her
parents disapprove, and is ignored; the sisters and brothers drift
to different cities and neglect to correspond : they grow in time
to forget each other's faces ; the parents are left alone in. a love-
less age. Here has been a Home but in seeming ; it was but
the false shadow of the real Home; there is nothing in this
gathering of diverse tastes and aims to project itself into the
future world as having in itself the deathless germ of immor-
iality.
When by two young people a household is established, it
should be clearly understood from the start that there is a com-
munity of interest ; that what concerns one concerns all ; that
secrecies are disastrous. The man who keeps all his business
relations, and prospects, and undertakings, to himself, not only,
by keeping his wife a stranger to his business, loses a coun-
sellor whose natural keenness of wit would be sharpened by
personal interest in his success, a counsellor whose oneness of
aim with his would be unquestionable, because not only she
loves him well, but with him she must stand or fall, but he
risks having one in his own home ignoranily working against
him. If the wife is in darkness as to her husband's affairs, she
may, by a too cautious saving, cause his business prcsperitjr
and stability to be undervalued ; or by a too lavish expenditure,,
when he is in straits, she embarrasses him ; or, unconscious of
the pressure of his cares, she additionally burdens him with
3mall anxieties or duties which she. would, if better informed
assume herself The wife who concludes that the health,
morals, dispositions and doings of the fanfiily are no concern of
the husband and father, and so leaves him uninformed of what
is going on, deprives herself of aid, of the advice of one whose
out look is quite as wide and whose real interest is as deep as
362 THE COMFLETE HOME.
her own, and suddenly the poor father is overwhelmed by some
physical or moral domestic catastrophe of which he was entirely
unwarned. People go on in families each in a divided and
separate way, heedless that what God has bound together in the
Home, man cannot really put asunder, try as he may; and
.suddenly in some great shock of disaster he experiences what
is thus described by a recent French writer: " Then this poor
wretch knew in all its wide extent the sentiment of family
responsibility, of that solidarity which causes esteem or reproach
to descend from father to son, or rise from child to parent."
Where children are allowed to understand and take an interest
in family affairs, where they feel that they have their partnership
in the household, then they will be early enlisted as helpers ;
their judgment will be strengthened and developed; a proper
reticence will be educated into them. It is children, who by
secrecy are constantly stimulated to pry into secrets, who become
tattlers; the child who is taken into honest confidence is not the
blatant gossip to publish home affairs, but is the staunch home
co-worker. I remember in that charming prose epic of the
French Telemaque, the young hero states that he learned to
keep his own counsel, and never betray another's confidence, by
having made known to him in his early childhood the cares and
embarrassments of his mother Penelope. By knowing the dangers
v/ith which his home was environed he became thoughtful, brave
and judicious. Parents excuse themselves from taking their
children as interested partners in home affairs on the plea that
they will betray confidence accidentally, or in the fervor of
friendship. Pleading this, they deprive their children of train
ing in trustworthiness, and drive them to fervid friendships with
strangers by refusing the children their own confidence. An-
other plea is that these affairs do not concern the child. This
we cannot see: the child in its physical and mental conditions
must be concerned by all that affects the prosperity of the family
THE UNITY OF THE HOME. £63
its shelter, dress, food, position, means of education, concern it
just as nearly as any one. Suppose the parents explain frankly
to their sons and daughters business entanglements which
distress them: at once their sympathies are enlisted in retrench'
ments ; they submit cheerfully to privations at which they might
grumble if they did not understand the needs be : the sons earlier
jee the value of developing their energies and improving their
opportunities that they may be their father's efficient helpers.
What young people, if told by their parents that while freely and
cheerfully accorded the means of education, yet those means
were obtained by a struggle, and must be made to bring their
best and speediest return, so that younger ones could have their
share of advantages, would not be by far more diligent and
zealous students ? Some people say that it is unkind to make
young folk sharers in anxieties and responsibilities ; but this may
be God's very way for training them for usefulness; if he sends
the cares and anxieties into the family, it probably is his way;
we deprive our children of what may be to them a fountain
of strength, a reservoir of power, a ladder to ultimate success.
The Scripture says. Blessed is the man who has borne the yoke
in his youth.
Another point to be considered in this community of interests
in a family is, that where knowledge of all business interests is
confined to one — say to the father of the family — he may sud-
denly die, and the wife and children be utterly at a loss to know
how their affairs stand, what they should do, or what plans are
half carried out for them to fulfil. If, on the contrary, the father
has instructed his wife and children as to his business and his
plans for the future, they, instead of being at the mercy of
strangers, perhaps of sharpers, can arrange for themselves on
the basis of a complete understandmg of their resources and
prospects; the sons are not helpless idlers, but understand ho^s
to carry out their father's views.
364 THE COMPLETE HOME.
So also if a mother has made her daughters her companions
arid true yoke-fellows in the household, they know her plans,
and her methods, and if she is laid aside by disease or taken
away by death, they know how to hold the helm and fulfil her
intentions.
The world is full of this dangerous division of interests in
the family. Men sedulously conceal their prospects or losses;
their wives go on in ways that once were safe, unconscious that
now these ways lie along the crumbling edge of ruin; all falls
m some terrible bankruptcy, and people cry : " Woman's extrav-
agance !" where they should cry: "Man's dangerous secrecy!"
God in the beginning proposed, as it was not meet for man to
be alone, to make a helpmeet for him. If men would only be
ready to make their wives helpmeets by confiding to them their
Dusiness, consulting them, expecting to work together with them
for private and public interests, then not only would fast living
be far less common, but the lives of women would be less
anxious, less frivolous and more useful, and commercial dis-
asters would be far less common. Two are better than one,
says the Scripture, but can two walk together unless they be
agreed? Who more likely to be Argus-eyed to business
dangers, who more likely to be resolute and courageous, than
the woman who knows not only her own comfort and happiness
to be at stake, but her husband's honor, and perhaps life, and
her children's future?
"Ah," said a great criminal recentlji, "all my affairs would
have gone on better, and this terrible denouement would never
have occurred, if I had told my wife and children all my en-
ianglements ; they v/ould have saved me from myself I could
not have become a criminal with their honest eyes fixed upon
tne.
I found lately this paragraph in a paper :
" It is very common to hear the remark made of a young man
THE UNITY OF THE HOME.. 365
that he is so industrious and so economical that he is sure to be
thrifty and prosperous. And this may be very true of him so
long as he remains single. But what will his habitual prudence
avail him against the careless waste and extravagance of an
uncalculating, unthinking wife ? He might as well be doomed
to spend his strength and life in attempting to catch water in a
sieve. The effort would be hardly less certainly in vain. Habits
of economy, the ways to turn everything in the household affairs
to the best account — these are among the things which every
mother should teach her daughters. Without such instructions,
those who are poor will never become rich, while those who are
now rich may become poor."
Now this is all very true, but if during five or ten years the
young man desires his wife to maintain a certain style of living,
and then his income narrowing, does not explain matters to her,
and ask her to retrench, who is to blame for the too lavish
expenditure? Wives are as ready to save as husbands to gain,
if they only are allowed as clearly to understand a " needs be."
To my mind this concealment in domestic life is criminal. The
marriage partnership is as sacred as any partnership ; but what
kind of business fealty would it be, to take a partner, and con-
ceal from him a mass of bad debts, rsky speculations and dan-
gerous entanglements? "With all my worldly goods I thee
endow," says the groom, in the marriage-service. Now, if these
worldly goods are- at present nothing at all but a figure of
speech, and he and she so understand it, and bravely expect to
create the goods by their joint industry, well and good ; but it
is not well and good, when the worldly goods are expressed by
a series of debts of which the bride has been told nothing, while
she must feel their burden. Unhappy the new-made house-
hold which starts having, as' the French say, " its debts for its
savings."
Probably no right-minded woman ever without indignation
24
366 THE COMPLETE HOME.
read in " Stepping Heavenward " the atrocious conduct of the
Doctor, who amiably introduces into his family two perpetual
inmates, without ever consulting his wife ; assumes debts for
her to help carry ; and when she has staggered on year after
year, burdened thereby, forgets to tell her that they are paid
until six months after the happy event! One would say that
such a man was very far from the divine idea of the hom.e,
and making very poor progress in the Heavenward Way. Sup-
pose a wife had thus invited guests, assumed debts, and forgot-
ten to state when the scrimping and toihng to carry the burden
might end ? But is not this a partnership of equal interests ?
Shall not these two stand or fall together? Is not the loss or
prosperity of one the loss or prosperity of both ?
But I am far from thinking that these selfish deceits and with-
holdings are all on the masculine side of the question. I once
knew a young man who was engaged to a girl who had ten
thousand dollars. She, in apparently the frankest manner,
agreed that he should make arrangements to invest this in a
particular way for their mutual advantage, and as soon as they
were married the money was to be forthcoming. The trustful
■youth accordingly entered into business engagements which he
.could not cancel. The marriage over, the bride's uncle paid her
;the ten thousand : but before one penny of it could be used as
^proposed, seven thousand dollars were called for to pay the lady's
debts — debts of foolish extravagance, for lace, jewelry, flowers,
"Confections, mantua-makers and similar demands ; thus the poor
■husband, miserably entangled by his business arrangements
struggled in debt for ten years, until his health was nearly
■ ruined, and his youth was quite lost. I remember that a year
or two ago, Miriam and I spent a week in the city at the board-
ing-house of an old acquaintance. Entering her room one
.day, and seeing a large number of parcels on the bed, Miriam
•said :
THE UNITY OF THE HOME. 367
"Oh, Mrs. Graham, you have been out shopping?"
" No," said Mrs. Graham, " those belong to Mrs. Lester,
•fhey are to lie here until Mr. Lester has gone out ; you know
ladies do not always care to have their husbands know every
little thing that they may purchase."
Miriam looked confounded ; a flush of indignation rose over
her face. " No," she said, clearly, " I do not know any such
thing! I am sure I should not stoop to conceal anything
which I bought or did; and if I thought my husband would
in the least question the propriety of a purchase, I would not
make it." ,
" Oh, well," said our hostess, a little embarrassed, " you and
Mr. Rogers are different from the most of people."
" Indeed, I hope not in this particular," said Miriam.
It is true that I have not myself had the experience of
married life, but I have studied married life closely in many
homes, and I think I have good grounds for certain opinions
which I have formed concerning it. The reference just made to
a popular book, and to the Doctor bringing home two perrnanent
members for the family, calls to m.y mind one point where unity
in homes is often disastrously lacking : I mean in reference to
relations by marriage. Why are certain women another woman's
natural enemies, merely because the words " in-law " are added
to the terms sister and mother? I have heard enough of the
remark that one marries a man or a woman, but not their family.
Now marriage is not an example in subtraction but in addition.
It is not to destroy past ties and natural affections, but to add
Tew ties and new affections. That a man takes a wife is not a
reason for dissevering 'him from the sister who is of his own
blood, who was his childhood's companion, pet or mentor.
Marriage is not a Lethe in which are to be lost the memory of
childhood, gratitude for past favors, and the fifth commandment
True, the Bible does say that a man is to leave father and
368 THE COMPLETE HOME.^
mother and cleave to his wife, though in this age it is usually
the wife who is required to do the leaving, often not seeing hei
early home and friends for a decade. The husband and wife are
declared to be one flesh ; but the making of the new tie does
not sunder the old : it is not that, loving one more, we are to
] jv; others less. The very fact that husband and wife become
oni flesh should serve to draw them in tender and forbearing
unity to the close kin of the one to whom they are so near.
We must learn to put ourselves in other people's places. As
we measure to others shall inevitably be measured to us. Time
is a singularly exact avenger — the trup avenger of blood, ever
with fleet foot and uplifted arm following the evil-doer with hi.s
exactions, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life. Think then,
mother, so jealous, so easily offended, so hardly to be won by
your mother-in-law, this babe on your knee shall take a wife, and
how would yoii like to be viewed as a mother-in-law ? Would
you have your cares, your toils, your long devotion ignored ?
We have no right to expect the families into which we marry to
be so much better than our own that they have no faults. The
days are gone by when the sons of God wedded with the daugh-
ters of men. Doubtless there will be more points of difference
between us and them than between us and our own families ; but
to be unlike ourselves is not necessarily a crime. I think there
is less common-sense showed about relatives by marriage than
about any other subject. A mother-in-law is astounded at
seeing imperfections in her son's wife. Pray, are her own
daughters perfect, or is her son an angel ? If not, the new
daughter would be poorly placed among them if she were
perfect ; and — there is nothing more efficacious in curing imper-
fections — than good example ! The sisters must not be jealous
because their brother holds his bride dearer than themselves,
for they expect when they marry to love husband better than
brother ; nor must the wife desire her husband to love his sisters
THE UNITY OF THE HOME. 339
less than before, for when her own toddling boy and girl are
grown, will she desire the love-bands between them to be rudely
broken? Why must a young man be instructed that his
mother-in-law is his natural enemy ? If she loves his wife, and
is solicitous for her welfare, she loves and guards what is his
dearest treasure, and thus has a claim to his gratitude, as in that
wife's well-being is freighted the happiness of his home. If
there are some of her ways which are not pleasing to him, very
likely that account is squared without any effort of his own by
some of his ways being unpleasant to her. Has she not loved
and nourished the being dearest to him ? If the daughter is
charming, does she not probably owe it to her mother ? Must
not that be a praiseworthy woman who has raised up for him so
good a wife? If he is a true husband, does he not owe his wife's
filial love some sympathy ? Why must a wife's mother and a
husband's mother be foes ? Are not their interests centred in
one household ? Has not each made a sacrifice for the other's
child ? Will there not be a line of grandchildren in whom they
will be mutually interested?
I have seen households where the mother was carping at the
father's relatives and the father was condemning the mother's
kindred, stirring up in the breasts of the children distrust and
hatred of those who were equally their kin ; forgetting that these
to whom they made the children hostile were those whom God
had bound to them by blood ; that their strife would introduce
an element of lovelessness into their own homes ; that they were
weakening the bonds that tied their own children each to each.
I never yet knew a case where, by coldness, quarrelling, censo-
riousness, the parents lessened their children's love for relatives
on either or both sides of the house, that the evil did not
rebound by having the children grow up loveless between them-
selves, jealous, captious, assigning evil intentions to trifling acts,
and ending by drifting widely apart. The old Arab proverb
S70 THE COMPLETE HOME.
says, " Curses, like chickens, go home to roost," and the cursa
of family dissensions never fails to get home to roost. Parents
should think of this when they are carping at every little oddity
and folly in their relations by marriage, so their children will
carp at and vex each other. Suppose, my good young woman,'
that your mother-in-law finds some fault with your style of doing
things. Perhaps you are to blame in having withdrawn confi-
dence from her, and riot explained why you did thus ; or, as she
has twice as long experience as you, possibly her way is better
than yours, so you will do well to try it ; or, granted that she is
fretful and exacting, behold the root of the same in her passion-
ate mother-loving of your husband. Did you forget that the tie
between him and her is just as close as between you and the
babe you are nursing at your breast, and even stronger, because
it has bad years in which it was annealed in love and care and
service? You, busy young head of a family, are angry, because
your wife's mother criticised your business or family doings?
What impelled her, but desire for your family prosperity and
happiness, and the future fortune of your children?
It is dangerous and disadvantageous, people say, for families
to live together : let each household be alone. Doubtless the
rule is good, but Providence sometimes interferes with it. It
would be well if every man could provide for his own, and if all
ate the bread which they earned ; but many cannot do this, and
tht poor we have always with us, and by this alteration of the
normal order of earning and providing, we may exercise the
grace of Christian charity. Thus, when it is needful in God's
providential arrangings for us, that families should live together
—that the part of one family should find refuge in another — this
may be a means of developing new graces in ourselves and
our children. Therefore, people should not complain, and look
on it as a great evil, that aged, poor, infirm or homeless relatives
must be received into their families ; but rather feel thankful
THE UNITY OF THE HOME. 37 J
that they may repay past debts of love and tenderness. The
Apostle John doubtless received into his house, as a great
blessing and favor, the mother of our Lord; and Christ himself
just as surely sends now his servants as inmates of other homes,
as then he sent Mary to John. What should be more grateful
to the feelings of every true heart than to be able to establish
in one's home, and wait upon with affection and respect, an
aged parent? What finer opportunity could offer of teaching
to children filial piety, respect for the aged, self-control and
unselfishness, besides laying up a store of regard and attention
to be enjoyed in our own old age, for as we sow we shall reap.
I remember a very pretty fragment on this subject which runs
thus:
" Our mother, who now lies in death before us, was a stranger
to me, as are all of these her descendants. All I know of her
is what her son has told me to-day : that she was brought to this
town from afar, sixty-nine years ago, a happy bride; that here she
has passed most of her life, toiling, as only mothers ever have
strength to toil, until she has reared a large family of sons and
daughters; that she left her home here, clad in the weeds of
widowhood, to dwell among her children, till health and strength
left her. God forbid that conscience should accuse any of you
of ingratitude or murmuring on account of the care she has been
to you of late. When you go back to your homes, be careful
of your example before your own children; for the fruit of your
own doing you will surely reap from them when you yourselves
totter on the brink of the grave. I entreat you as a friend, as
one who has himself entered the evening of life, that you may
never say in the presence of your families nor of heaven: 'Our
mother has outlived her usefulness; she was a burden to us.'
Never, never ! A mother can never live so long as that ! No ;
when she can no longer labor for her children, nor yet care for
herself, she can fall like a precious weight on their bosoms, and
372 TBE COMPLETE HOME.
call forth by her helplessness all the noble, generous feelings o1
their hearts."
There are no more beautiful and more richly repaying les-
sons to be taught our children than those contained in the
Scripture : to rise up before the aged, and to honor the face of
old men, and to see in the hoary head a crown of glory. Lif.
with all its burdens and its bitterness lies behind the old, and
vve should make their age a time of peace. There is but a
short space left them wherein we can show gratitude, tender-
ness, and that sympathy for infirmity which becomes all of us
v.'ho are moving on toward like age and infirmity.
Mrs. Winton's aged and paralyzed mother lived with her for
several years — indeed, until her death. Being quite helpless
Mrs. Winton fed her. One day while she was thus giving her
her dmner I was there, and being a little tired and nervous, Mrs,
Winton spilled some of tne beef-tea. I said to her, with a
smile : How much more skilfully she fed you when you wers
little ! " Mrs. Winton has since told me that those words never
left her; that during wakeful nights, and days of ceaseless
watching, during the feeding, bathing and dressing needful,
came to her the constant thought, " How skilfully and tenderly
she did this for you when you were little!" She prized and
taught her children to prize this opportunity of ministering, not
only to a revered and beloved parent, but to a saint of God on
the verge of paradise.
I have often heard people speak as if where there was a
mingling of households, and of diverse elements in a family,
there must be discord and jarring. This is a dangerous feeling,
for where we expect discord we are likely to have discord. 1
was myself a member of a large family. My mother, a
widow with children, married a widower with children ; children
were also born to this second marriage; my mother's mothei
and my step-->father's sister also belonged to the family circle ; but
THE UNITV OF THE HOME. 373
in all this large assemblage of different elements there was no
discord nor jarring. We were taught to seek for the virtues
and not the failings of those about us; to be grateful for favors,
and ready to grant them; to put ourselves in other people's
places; to respect other people's rights; to feel honored by
opportunities of waiting on the old and helpless. I am sure I
hardly knew whether the full brothers and sisters, or the half
sisters, or those who were such only in name, had the higher
share in my regard; and this experience has shown me that
family unity can be attained anywhere and in any circum-
stances, if people will only unselfishly resolve to have it.
A dear friend of mine, when almost in middle life, married a
widower with a family of half-grown children, with whom the
first wife's mother was living. The family not only recognized
thc'ii' father's right to choose a wife for himself, but were
rejoicod that his happiness was to be added to in the choice of
a lady, in age, education, position and piety, so well fitted tc
grace his home. The wedding over, the children with simple
sincerity welcomed the bride to a mother's place in their hearts
and home, and the aged grandmother folded her in her arms
as a true daughter. The record of the years of this family life
was thus told by the second mother : " No own children could
ever have been dearer or more loving to a parent than these
were to me, and it was a true blessing from heaven to live in
the house with that dear old lady. It seemed when she died
that I could not live without her.''
From such instances we see that unity does not rise from
nearness of relationship, nor from smallness of families, but from
d right direction of the heart. As quarrelsome families as I
ever saw were small families, where none but parents and one
set of children lived. If parents show partiality among theii
children — if they always give up to the one who makes the
loudest noise or tells the most angry tales — if they do not cul-
374 THE COMPLETE HOMh.
tivate strict justice and loving-kindness am//'/^ their children—
if the mother is always showing up the fiults of the father's
relations, and the father devotes himself to complaining of the
mother's relatives, while the kindred on both sides strive to
make the children their partisans, no matter how small the
family may be, it will be large enough for disunion; as says the
Scripture, they will be divided two against three, and three
against two.
I think the three classes of relations most abused have been
mothers-in-law, maiden aunts and step-mothers. If all maiden
aunts fared as well as I have, they would have very little of
which to complain, for I have yet to receive an unpleasant act,
word or look from my large family of relations. Often because
a person is a maiden aunt she is therefore supposed to be. a
legitimate subject of sneers or censure, whereas her position
ought to make her a public benefactor. If she bestows advice,
she is old-fashioned, too particular and censorious. If she gives
no advice, but drifts with the present current of affairs, then she
is foolish, giddy, trying to be girlish. Whittier describes the
maiden aunt as she might and should be anywhere, and as I
have no doubt she always would be if properly received :
" Who lonely, homeless, none the less
Found peace in love's unselfishness.
And welcomed whcresoe'er she went.
A calm and gracious element,
Whose presence seemed the sweet income
And womanly atmosphere of home."
However, maiden aunts are generally independent. If they
have no private means they are -able to take care of themselves,
and, if needful, they can make their own place in the world
With the step-mother it is different; once married, she must
abide in the state wherein she tinds herself, even though a
meddle.some neighborhood excite against her the children's
hearts which she desires to win, and though relatives on botl-
THE UNITY OF THE HOME. 375
sides of the house league against her, as if in virtue of her
arduous position she were the common enemy. Probably,
there are very foolish, weak, harsh or indifferent step-mothers,
because there are foolish, weak, harsh and indifferent own
mothers. If there is a selfish or silly streak in the nature, -it is
likely to come out either in the own mother or the step-mother,
but not as I can see more in one than in the other. The own
mother may feel more passion of love, the step-mother m.ore
the grave bonds of duty, but whether the spring is the one
emotion or the other, the result is an honest seeking of the
best good of the family.
It is taken as a popular statement of fact, usually given in a
martyr-like tone, " Well, you know, there is a great difference
between own mothers and step-mothers." Yes, I do know that
there is, and sometimes the difference is in favor of the step-
mother. I have seen a good many step-mothers, and I never
yet saw one who was not doing the very best that was possible
for her husband and his family. The person of all that I knew
who talked the loudest against step-mothers, and the miseries
which she had suffered from one, when pressed to the point,
could lay no fault to the unhappy woman's charge, except that
she had married her father. I said to her: "Well, if that was a
crime, your own mother was guilty of the same. To hear you
arraign step-mothers one would think you had been cruelly used,
but that is impossible, since you were eighteen years old and
largely and powerfully made, before you had any step-mother.
I fancy, if one heard her side of the story, we should learn
something of the painful prejudice which exists in the minds
of step-daughters." How absurd this family quarrelling is!
How cruel to greet a woman's entrance to a new home with a
bitter feeling, and acting as if her position were usurped and her
nuptials only Jialf legal !
A cousin of mine, a good girl too, was deeply aggrieved that
376 THE COMPLETE HOME.
Iier father took a second wife — a lady suitable to him in every
way. I said to her : " Rhoda, you expected to be married, youi
brother is in California, your father is of a long-lived race : why
■■hould the poor man face his age alone?"
Rhoda could give no suitable reason for her pique, but she
■would speak of the new wife as " my father's companion," until,
my patience was exhausted, and I spoke out : " If you don't
choose to say ' mother,' no one will complain, though in declin-
ing the word you lack a very attractive grace ; but I am quite
tired of ' my father's companion', as if she were a hired servant,
or living in illegal bonds. She is your father's wife as much
as your own mother was, and you insult all three, father, mother,
and step-mother, by this ridiculous phrase."
Rhoda did not use the objectionable term any more, but she
gradually stopped corresponding with me. I suppose she did
not like my speaking my thoughts so clearly, but it is a great
comfort frankly to free one's mind.
How often have I seen step-mothers who were the very mak-
ing of their families, bringing the children morally, mentally and
socially to something better than had ever been expected for
them. And this is heroic, when we consider against what
difficulties and prejudices they have often to struggle. The
restrictions and reproofs which would be cited as a mark of an
own mother's judiciousness are called tyranny in a step-mother.
I visited once the children of an early friend and schoolmate.
This lady, dying suddenly, left a large family, which at the end
of a year passed into the hands of a step-mother. Some six or
eight years after this marriage I visited the family. The excel-
lent judgment, principle and management of this second mother
left nothing to be desired. Her life had been one of devotion
to her step-children, which found itself well repaid in their
remarkable advancement in life. And yet, surrounded by
friends, luxuries and gratifications purchased by the step-
THE UNITY OF THE HOME. 377
■ nother's money and abilities, one of the daughters said to me,
'.v'ith a sigh: "And yet, of course, there is so much to put up
with, for you know a step-mother is different from an owl
mother."
"Yes," I repHed, "and sometimes the difference is in the
feivcr of the step-mother. Your own mother was a charming
person, of high family and much genius. However, she married
far too young — before her education was completed, and she was
always a martyr to ill health. Her inexperience and feebleness
of constitution, together with an unusually yielding disposition,
rendered her quite unable to exercise that decision, that activity
and ability which your father's business entanglements and
large family demanded. She could not have done for this family
what her successor has done. I know that your step-mother's
achievements for you have surpassed your own mother's best
dreams, and that she herself would have asked nothing better
than to see you in the hands of such a wise, kind and capable
guardian."
I wish the public would come to see that this prejudice
against step-mothers is weak, foolish and unfounded, unworthy
of an age of Christian common-sense. People should stand or
fall, be condemned or praised, on their own proved merits or
demerits, not upon the strength of a name.
I have talked a great deal with my nieces on the need of
Unity in the Home. Disunion in families is a sort of lineal
inheritance; it runs down from gt..eration to generation, like
the chin of the house of Hapsburg. We should try to make
our homes calm and united, that Unity may bless the homes
of our descendants to the third and fourth generation. How
shall this Unity be encouraged ? By example ; by precept; by
practice. Children should see that their parents show this
lovingness and forbearance to each other, and to their relatives,
in very virtue of the tie of relationship. They should be taught
373 THE COMPLETE HOME.
that the tie of brother or sister gives a claim upon their patiencs,
and kindpess, and not liberty to be captious and exacting. Verj'
small children can be taught to be tender and loving in their
ways to each other, and to recognize the claim of little brother
or sister. Children should not be allowed to quarrel, to strike,
or tattle. Very little children often show their fallen disposi
tions, ;^nd will tell tales, or even make up tales to get anothei
child into trouble. People sometimes think a child will have
sense to defend itself from a false accusation, but this is not
always the case; some children think slowly, are easily alarmed,
and have a certain reticence in rebutting charges, so that often
the loudest and seemingly most innocent complainant is the real
culprit in a household. It is dangerous for parents to be taking
sides between their children, for thus doing they leave thorns
of injustice to rankle, and thus weaken the bonds of love. The
danger of allowing children to go on quarrelling, and squabble
out their difficulties, is still greater: for the longer that they
quarrel the frailer become the love ties between them. The best
way is to condemn the quarrel as a thing evil in itself; to exalt
the beauty of self-sacrifice and forgiveness, and to change the
current of the combatants' thoughts and feelings by some new
occupation or some pleasure.
I was at Miriam's once when her three children seemed in a
very uncomfortable frame of mind, and in a loud dispute and
accusation ran to their mother.
"Dear me," said Miriam, "you all seem to be right, and all
to be wrong, and you certainly are very hot and tired, and have
played too long. Run, put away your hats and wash your faces,
and come and see what a nice thing I have for each of you."
In their wonder over the " nice thing " the squabble ended.
they returned in peace, and Miriam gave Dora three fine sugar-
plums to distribute. These eaten amicably, she said : " Now
you must go to work ; " and set Dora to hemming a towel, Bob
THE UNITY OF THE HOME. 379
to ripping an old waist, and little Harold to cleaning up the shoe
closet. We heard no more of the fray which, in charges of
" names," " stories," " faces " and " blows," had seemed likely to
be a serious affair.
" So, " I said, laughing, to Miriam, " they get candy for quar-
relling!"
" .(Anything is better than a long quarrel, temptation to false
statements, and probable injustice in settlement. They seldom
quarrel, for it always stops the play for the time being, though I
try to stop it as agreeably as possible."
Cousin Ann has always been particular to foster affection in
her family. She was talking to me of this lately, and she said :
"There is nothing which more promotes unity in the family
than the keeping of little family festivals. I always kept all the
birthdays. We looked forward to the birthday keeping. The
children prepared their little gifts; I made the birthday cake,
which the hero of the occasion cut and distributed. Sometimes
we kept the festival at home, sometimes we went on a picnic or
a trip to town. The one whose birthday it was chose, and the
choice must be for a treat in which all the family could share.
We sometimes invited strangers, and sometimes kept the festival
by ourselves, for I did not-wish my children to feel that they
could not be happy within the circle of their own family. But
we recognized the social instinct as a part of our nature con-
ferred by God for wise ends, and we did not cry out against a
desire for other companions and friends than those of our own
fireside as if it were a crime. Now that my three elder children
are married and away from home, we keep their birthdays still
as a family-gathering, and they come home with their house-
holds; as they are settled near me. If they were far away I
should send them gifts and greetings, for I never want the ties
between us to weaken so long as we all shall live. As we kept
the children's birthdays, so Reuben's and mine were kept ; and
580 THE COMPLETE HOME.
every such occasion, with its good-will, good wishes and little
offerings, served to draw us closer to each other. We also
kept the yearly holidays together, in a way to please all. Christ-
mas was looked forward to. The children saved their money,
and taxed their inventive powers, and their industry, in the
preparation of gifts. We often gave them presents — as a set of
books, a game or a puzzle — which belonged to all, so that
common rights and common property should exercise their
honesty and self-sacrifice. Thanksgiving was another festival
especially a Home festival, when we thanked God for gracious-
ness to us as a household, for blessings on household labors, and
for increasing our common store. We taught our children to
have an interest in each other's preferences, and if they had
rivalries that they should be generous ones, and without
jealousy. If one child enjoyed flowers and gardening, all were
interested in procuring seeds, bulbs, roots, or new information
in horticulture. Where another was fond of fowls or stock, all
were alert to hear of or obtain fresh varieties. Thus the very
diversities of tastes in the family were incentives to kind acts
and bonds of new affection. I have heard people say that their
children were so unlike in tastes and dispositions, that the}'
could not expect them to be companionable to each other; but 1
found that, ruled by love, these differences of taste and opinion
only increased their mutual happiness in each other, giving
\ freshness to their intercourse, and a breadth to their thoughts."
" Yes," said Hester, who was sitting with us ; " Jean Ingelow
has put that thought into very beautiful verse, thus :
" 'As heaven's high twins, whereof in Tyrian blue,
The one revolveth : through his course immense
Might love his brother of the damask hue.
For like and difference,
" ' For different pathways evermore decreed,
To intersect, but not to interfere ;
For common goal, two aspects and one spcei.
One centre, and one yesir ;
THE UNITY OF THE HOME. SgJ
" ' For deep affinities, for drawings strong,
That by iheir nature each must needs exert ;
For loved alliance, and for union long
That stands before desert.' "
" I remember that," said Cousin Ann ; " it is very beautiful,
I think in that same poem is the Hne : ' For human love makes
aliens near of kin.' If human love can do that for aliens, what
can it not do for those of our own blood ? The ties of blood
are, we say, of nature ; but use and cultivation must make
them strong, or they shall drop asunder like burned tow. It
rests with parents to make their children true yoke-fellows and
friends, staunch to each other's interests, dearest friends and best
helpers in adversity ; or whether, in youth left to slip farther and
farther apart, knowing no mutual interests, sympathies, affections,
they shall in time drift from the home, like dead leaves from
the tree in Autumn, never to know or care more for each other.
Ho'v much better the home where each child indissolubly held
in loving affiliation shall, like the shoots of the banyan, but
reach out to take fresh root, and growing each in its place,
increase the strength and stately beauty of the whole."
" The Scripture tells us," I said, " that a brother is born for
adversity, but many parents seem to forget that these family
relationships were provided by God to be comfort, defence and
strength to us in all the days of our lives, and fail in childhood
to weld the bonds of kin."
"Some parents of my acquaintance," said Cousin Ann, "think
that I am very hard on them in holding them responsible for
the characters of their children, and for all that occurs in their
families ; still, I do hold that if there is evil in the house, the
springs of it will be found in some evil of commission or omis-
sion in the parents. The parental error may have its excuse?
and its ameliorations in the fact that their parents before them
erred, and failed to instil right views and set a right example ;
wrong descends from generation to generation, and we cannol
25
382 THE COMPLETE HOME.
too clearly impress on parents' minds the sense of their respon-
sibility. I have noticed that where there has been in one gen-
eration excessive severity, in the next there is likely to be
lawlessness, and likewise the rebound from lawlessness is sever-
ity. In this matter of lack of unity and home affections, the
evil seems not to rebound into sentimentality, or passionate
ioving, but coldly to run on from generation to generation in
its own kind. Some families are remarkable for their strong
affections; others for their indifference to their kindred. Parents
should feel that lovingness, like other good growths, needs to be
cultivated, and it is their duty to take every measure to make it
thrive in the garden of their children's hearts. Visits between
different members of the family should be exchanged ; presents
should be sent ; no matter how busy the life is, correspondence
should be kept up. Some husbands ignore the fact that, when a
right-minded woman marries, she does not forget her own kin-
dred and her father's house, but retains love for her parents,
brothers and sisters, and this love should be respected ; at what-
ever sacrifice, intercourse should be maintained; years should not
be allowed to pass when the wife sees no face that surrounded
her childhood. So, on the other hand, the wife should delight
to invite to her home her husband's parents and brothers and
sisters, making them the friends of her children and cementing
the natural bonds of the family. It is a grand misfortune when,
by uncontrollable circumstances, an individual or a family are
forced to dwell alone, isolated, as some tropic palm transplanted
to a foreign climate. Think how time and distance were unable
to sever the strong ties between pilgrim Abraham and his father's
house ; and after seventy years of absence he sends back to his
native land to secure a wife for his son, confident that his kin-
dred there have not lost their loving interest in him, and will
not say him nay."
Among the other means which Cousin Ann takes to establish
THE UNITY OF THE HOME. 383
the unity of her family is that of keeping the wedding days.
Her children inherit the custom, and each of them celebrates
their own marriage anniversary in his own house, and they all
go back to the homestead to commemorate the beginning of
their family life, in the marriage of Cousin Reuben and Ann
Generally other relations beyond the" immediate family are in^
vited, sometimes more, and sometimes less. There was a large
gathering on the thirtieth anniversary, and all of the immediate
relatives were present, as well as especial friends from the neigh-
borhood, the daughters-in-law's families, the minister ^nd his
family, and relations of Cousin Reuben from a distance. That
farm-house seems elastic in its power of accommodating people.
The children who are at home had improvised rooms for them-
selves in the attic; the servants took possession of the rooms
which in July and August belong to the pensioners from the
city; the whole house was in festal attire. Sara had been at
home for several days helping in the preparations, and Martha
had been there with me, also lending her aid.
It was in June ; the farm was in such order, and showing such
a splendid prospect of crops, that one might have supposed it
especially prepared to contend for a county prize; that the
beautiful acres which framed it on either side belonged to the
two elder sons, did not make the prospect less pleasing; the
large, comfortable, unostentatious farm-house, draped in vines,
surrounded with fine gardens, blooming shrubbery and fragrant
grape-arbors, appeared to have a vitality of its own, and to be
able to rejoice in the joy of this large family, which had grown
up in its shelter, and returned there constantly to give token of
their love and happiness. The six little grandchildren frolicked
around, so evidently to the admiration of the grandparents, that
I asked Cousin Ann, in all seriousness, which was more satis-
factory, the child, or the grandchild ? and she replied that she
" could not tell : both had their advantages."
384 THE COMPLETE HOME.
Friendship, frankness, generosity everywhere abounded. At
sunset many of the young people were in the parlor singing,
while Sara played; the children, in perfect concord, enjoyed
a game; along the garden walks paced white-haired Cousin
Reuben and his whiter-haired elder brother arm-in-arm. Cousi,:
Ann, her sister-in-law, and three nieces were conversing on th<
front piazza; the minister was sitting by me in one of the arbors,
and glancing, well pleased, on the whole picture, he exclaimed:
" Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell
together in unity; like the dew of Hermon, and the dew which
descended on the mountains of Zion, for there the Lord com.
CTianded his blessing, even life forever more"
CHAPTER XVI.
THE USE AND ABUSE OF MONEY IN THE HOME.
AUNT SOPHRONIA TELLS HOW TO CONDUCT DOMESTIC EXPrS-
DITURES.
pa WAS quite amused lately by an argument which I heard
^ between two of Mr. Carr's boys. They were sitting
close by my fence, where a large willow casts its shade
on the side-walk. The subject of their discussion was
money. One of the boys said it was the root of all evil — ^that hi?
Sunday-school lesson had givjn it that bad pre-eminence; he
also supported this position by facts, as that money caused
quarrelling, and bought whiskey. The other boy maintained
that money was a good ; that it bought us all the nice things
which we had ; that people were more respected for possessing
it; that nations who had money were civilized, and had all
manner of improvements, and only barbarians did not possess it
About at this stage of the argument they decided to lay the
case before some, umpire, and looking up they saw me. Ac-
cordingly they came near my window, and the elder boy said
that the " big fellows " in his school had a society, and were
about to debate the question whether money or woman had had
the greater influence over men ; he and his brother on hearing
the question had found that they differed greatly as to the
merits of money.
" I think," I said, " that you have, both of you, right views,
but they are not clearly before your minds. You say, Joe,
that youj lesson declares money to be the root of all evil
(SSd)
386 THE COMPLETE HOME.
There you mistake : it says the Ime of money is the root of all
evil. Money is not to be prized as an end, but as a means : it
is not valuable for what it is, but for what it will procure. We
have no right to love money in itself Misers love money; they
hoard it; it does them nq good; they prevent, in their hoarding,
the good which it might do in circulation; money is not to them
a means of doing or getting good, but it is the end of their
desires. We may also love money unlawfully as a means, when
the end which we desire to obtain by it will be selfish or wrong.
If we crave it to surround ourselves with luxuries, refusing hos-
pitality, charily and help to others, then we love money or its
equivalent, and it is a root of evil to us. The love of money is
the root of all evil, because it tempts men to break all the Com-
mandments : they worship money instead of God, and so break
the first and second Commandments; for money, men have
sworn falsely; have perjured themselves, and so have used in
vain God's holy name. To increase their property, men labor
on the Sabbath; for love of money, people have refused to help
their old or sick parents, to give fair wages to workers, to aid
the poor, and to bestow charities; and in these ways have
broken the fifth Commandment. You boys have doubtless
read and heard of plenty of instances where people have stolen,
lied, murdered, coveted, for love of money, and the love of
money has caused them thus to break those" two great Com-
mandments — to love God and our neighbor — which Christ said
included all the law and the prophets. Thus you understand
that the love of money is the root of all evil. Therefore, we
must not love money, but the good which we may do with it.
"On the other hand, Samuel, you are right in claiming that
money is needful and useful, and that by it immense good is
accomplished. Great geniuses have invented, but moneyed men
have put the inventions into practical, active use. Money has
printed our books, established hospitals, endowed colleges,
USE AND ABUSE OF MONEY IN THE HOME. 337
turned swamps into grand cities, deserts into farms, forest-wilds
into valuable town-lots. Money has sent out missionaries, has
multiplied Bibles, has encouraged discoveries and inventions;
it is a bond between nations, produces commerce, maintains
railroads, pushes on the world in all its civilizations and
advancements. The Bible bids us be diligent in business; says
if ^ man will not work, he shall not eat; promises wealth as a
reward of honest toil ; so money honestly earned, used for good
objects, not engrossing our souls from good things, but used to
promote good, is a good thing to have, and we should receive
it as a gift of God. So you see the good or the evil lies not in
the money itself, which is merely a bit of metal fixed upon as a
medium of exchange, but the good or evil lies in our own
hearts, in our method of using or abusing it."
Now, when the boys had run off, I sat thinking about this
question of money and its influence. What a power it is in the
world ! If in the world at large, then in the home, which is the
world in niniature, and the root of public and national life.
How do people in their homes regard money? What is the
manner of its Use? what the fashion of its Abuse? I said to
myself, money lies behind all our bread, our clothes, our shelter,
our education — every man gets it and spends it; at some
point all his toil means money; at some point all his relaxation
reduces itself to money. I will this very day get out my jour-
nals, wherein I have noted for so many years all that I have
seen and thought of Homes, and I will see how money is
making or marring in domestic life.
Every year money becomes a larger and larger factor in the
problems of human existence. It was once the fashion to
express a lofty disdain of money, to condemn its importance ;
but this disdain exists only in theory. It is idle to quarrel with
{acts, and our contempt of wealth does not extend beyond the
hour when we can get it in possession. While very lofty virtues
388 THE COMPLETE HOME.
have flourished in the midst of destitution, we must not con<
sider that they are the legitimate products of destitution, but
have thriven in spite of it, and shone all the more splendidly
from the unfriendly nature of their surroundings. The pos-
session of money not only opens to a man many new avenues of
doing good, but it closes upon him the door of many tempta-
tions. If we examine even those errors to which money is
supposed to render a man especially liable, we shall find that
they consort equally with a desperate poverty. In proportion
to their numbers, there are more debauched beggars than mil-
lionnaires, more criminals among the very poor than among the
very rich. Extravagance, the living beyond one's means, and
lightly dissipating our money, whether it be more or less,
belongs as much to the poor as to the rich — indeed, no class so
readily squander their earnings as those who have gained them
with very great difficulty. Gluttony and drinking are supposed
to be of the crimes into which the very rich are betrayed, but
even when the proportion of numbers is adjusted carjrally,
there is more indulgence in these faults among the moneyless
than the moneyed. The prayer of Agur covers the case : " Give
me neither poverty nor riches : lest I be full and deny thee ;
lest I be poor and steal." Here each state has its danger, and the
sin of the rich is more likely to be covert, of the poor overt.
The one errs of self-confidence, the other of desperation. What
Agur desired was that safe middle-ground, where happily so
large a proportion of people stand. He who owes nothing, and
has his daily bread, is not poor. Great wealth could put him
in no better position, except in making his cloth a little finer,
and spreading more butter on his bread. To lack a large bank
account is not to be poor, if, on the other hand, there is no
dead weight of debts. As long as courage, activity and knowl-
edge of some useful occupation remain to us, and we owe no
man anything but to love one another, then we are not indigent
USE AND ABUSE OF MONEY IN THE HOME. 389
"Forgive me, poverty!" cries a French writer, "that I con-
founded thee with indigence. To weahh man fastens himself as
one grown upon a rock, but in contented poverty, which is not
neediness, one sits as in a skift", where one may easily cut the
cable and drift away to the better land."
Now I find that as to money in the Home, three writers of
diverse nations give us three precepts which may be well applied.
Cicero tells us, that " Economy is in itself a great revenue."
Joubert, a Frenchman, warns us, that " Debts abridge life."
While Lord Bacon gives us this counsel : " Seek not proud
riches, but such as thou mayst get justly, use soberly, dis-
tribute cheerfully, and leave contentedly: yet have no abstract
or friarly contempt of them."
Now among all its other havings, the Home must have a
money basis. Money must build its shelter; feed, and clothe,
and school its inmates ; provide for their old age ; and as new
members are added to the family, parental foresight discerns
their coming needs, and reaches out for means to supply them.
To provide this money basis of the Home, Providence has
bestowed upon us humans, acquisitiveness, or an ability for
getting. The bestowal of this impulse is beneficent ; for, setting
aside a deal of absurd declaiming on the incompatibility of
wealth and virtue, we face the facts that pauperism prevents a
man fulfilling his duty as a man and a citizen, and in nine cases
out of ten is the child of laziness and twin-brother of crime ;
while though wealth does not create virtue, it is obviously not
inimical to it, and dwells with it very peaceably in the same
nest; and between these two is that safe middle-ground, afford-
ing living room, scope for useful labor, where, as on a plain
removed alike from burning heats and biting cold, the Home
may be happily established. To reach this position of comfort
should be the aim of every family; such a position should be
desired and labored for with a tenacity which never relaxes into
390 THE COMPLETE HOME.
inertia, and with a quiet hopefulness which will keep us froii
being over-anxious about the morrow. In this proper pursuit
of family independence, we must consider the means to employ,
the dangers to avoid, the /rlime of mind in wliich to live.
I tried to impress upon my nieces from the time when they
set up housekeeping for themselyes that saying of Cicero ,
" Economy is in itself a great revenue." I had the sentence
illuminated and framed, and presented it to each of them, as also
to others of my young friends: I desired to create in our village
a feeling that economy was creditable. Now just as there is a
wide difference between poverty, or the state of ujiwealth and
indigence or neediness, so there is a great difference between
economy and penuriousness. Economy builds up the home;
penuriousness saps' its strength. I warned my young friends
that the great danger of beginners is a contempt of littles.
They would see that a saving of a hundred or a thousand
dollars was reasonable, but they do not appreciate the virtue
of saving as many cents. As says the old proverb, " Many a
little makes a mickle," but we elderly people, who have seen the
littles grow to mickles, and have outlived long examples in
compound interest, understand much more clearly than the
)-oung the value of small economies; therefore, while with the
eld:rly these economies are matters of reason and experience,
with the young they must be matters of habit. Young people's:
habits are of course matters of education, and parents should
■ realize that by instructing their children in the practice of econ-
omy, they are laying the foundations of their future fortunes,,
the comfort and stability of their homes, and the fortunes of
their grandchildren. I saw very clearly this difference in habits
of economy between Helen and Miriam as young housewives.
Helen had never been trained to consider her small expendi-
tures; she would lose or spend numerous little sums, and
remark that such a little made no difference — a few shilling.s, oi
USE AND ABUSE OF MONEY IN THE HOME. 39]
cents, or a dollar or two; "it would be all the same in a life-
time."
I replied to her one day, " Indeed, my dear girl, it will not be
all the same in a lifetime. You are but little past twenty; you
haidly look forward to living less than thirty or forty years
longer, and it will be far from all the same in that lifetinje
whether these littles are saved or wasted. Suppose, in littles,
you waste less than one dollar a week, say fifty dollars in a
year : put that out at six per cent, compound interest, and in
forty years you have seven thousand seven hundred dollars,
Now it would make perhaps a deal of difference to you whether
at sixty-two you had that much more to live on or to bequeath.
It might be a deal of good to one of your children to have that
much additional."
Shortly after Mary Watkins was married, Miriam invited a
small company to meet her at tea. The conversation happened
to turn on this question of building up domestic finances ; and
some of the young womefi said to me : "Aunt Sophronia, what
are the rules for getting rich ? "
" Come," I said, "do you suppose the answer to that question
will be short or long, hard- or easy? "
Said Helen, " I should think it would be very long, as there
are millions of ways of getting rich, and people have been
busy for several thousand years in discussing them. It must be
a very hard question to answer, also, inasmuch as most people
find "it so very hard to get rich."
"All that has been said can be boiled down to a very short
and simple answer," I replied; " and all the difficulty in the work
lies in the needful self-sacrifice. The question first is. What do
you mean by getting rich ? Do you wish to know how to lay up
an immense superfluity — to become millionnaires ? Or will you
be content to call honest independence, enough to live upon tr.ste-
fully without fear or favor, enough to keep away the wdlve/
392 THE COMPLETE HOME.
of debt and want, and to send out from your door, on youl
errands, the full-handed angels of benevolence — will you call
that being rich ? "
" I will," said Miriam ; " more would be a useless burden."
" You know," said Helen, laughing, " that it is said that Astor
gets only his ' keep ' out of his wealth, so that all beyond the
keep is really a burden and not a help to him."
" Then as' you will call modest competence, comfortable
assurance, wealth," I replied, " I will give you the rules, which
are few and simple, and easily performed by self-sacrifice.
Work hard ; see and improve all small opportunities ; keep out
of debt and carefully economize. That is the best that all the
wisdom of the world has been able to digest and formulate as
rules for getting rich. The matter is simple and lies in a nut-
shell : have the end definitely before you ; do your own work
toward it and do it honestly, and don't give up until you have
reached your goal ; the same plain, straight, unadorned and yet
passable road is open to all."
" I don't know," said Miriam, " but the seizing of small oppor-
tunities would be the hardest to me, for I do not see things
quickly."
"And I do know," said Helen, "that the 'work hard ' and the
'economize' would be equally difficult to me, for I hate both,
and yet — I want to help Frank get on in the world, and our
children must be provided for."
"The 'keep out of debt' seems the hardest part to me,"*said
Mary Watkins, "for there is a mortgage on our farm, and
we think of buying more land, and that will mean more
mortgage."
'' These same difficulties," I said, " confront the man with ;l
hundred thousand, which he is striving to make a million, and
Betsy Rourke, whose husband earns thirty or forty dollars a
mofith. The result will depend on now we manage the difficul-
USE AND ABUSE OF MONEY IN THE HOME. 393
ties ; the millionnaire may manage so as to get into the peniten-
tiary, the poor-house, or be a pauper on the hands of his friends ;
Betsy Rourke may manage so as to secure a tidy cabin of her
own for her old age ; put all her children in the way of earning
a better living than her own; have never a debt; always a little
laid up for a rainy day, and die respected. Each of you may
manage so as to live under a perpetual fear of being pushed into
ruin by the first touch on you of "sickness, loss, a death in
the family, or by sudden hard times; or you may walk con-
fidently inside of a safe, strong margin wherewith you have
hemmed your affairs."
" Your mention of Betsy Rourke," said Mrs. Winton, " re-
minds me that we who visit a good deal among the poor in this
town, and among the workers in our shops and factories, are
not doing our duty by them in giving them clear, practical in-
structions, and a little encouragement in regard to the manage-
ment of their money affairs. We could do it in a friendly way,
without seeming to intrude on what is no concern of ours. The
poor know nothing of political economy, and very nearly as little
of domestic economy. The most of them in this town manage
little more than to be one day in advance of starvation. They
use up their earnings as they go ; a little extra earnings does not
mean a nest-egg for future savings, a pleasant addition made to
the little balance in bank, but it means a day's pleasure excur^
sion; some bit of finery; a grand dinner. It is harder for them
to be prudent than to be industrious ; they expect to work hard,
but they do not expect to save carefully. They toil laboriously,
and spend the money as recklessly as if it grew in their pockets."
" They think," said Miriam, " that what they can lay by is so
little that it is not worth the trying to accumulate."
"And yet these littles can grow into a handsome reserve. My
mother-in-law had the same cook for thirty-five years. My
father-in-law left this old servant five hundred dollars ; she her-
394 THE COMPLETE HOME.
self saved every week a portion of her wages; she dressed com
fortably; always gave her little contributions at church; helped
some of her poor relations; was thrifty without being mean; ai
the end of the thirty-five ■ years' service she had thirty-five hun-
dred dollars laid up ; at this time she became crippled and retireo
from work, living in modest ease for ten years on what she haa
saved, and finally providing for her burial and giving some littie
legacies to her friends. Her savings had made her independeni
in age, when she might have been a pauper."
"Our working-people," I said, "receive wages which make
them comfortable as long as they are earning them, but owing
to their habit of using up all as fast as they earn it, as soon as a
slack time comes, or an accident happens, or an epidemic is
abroad, they are reduced to straits. They would lay up four or
five dollars a week if they had the chance, but they despise the
little which it is in their power to save."
"But, aunt, it is so little. There is Hannah's brother: he
gets thirty dollars a month, and that is as little as they can
live on."
" If they can live on thirty, by a little management they can
live on twenty-nine. What is one dollar a month saved ? Very
little ; but put out the twelve dollars at interest, and keep on
adding to it at like rate, and in two years he has twenty-six dol-
lars and a half, and it goes on increasing ; in a few years he has
the comfortable, self-respecting feeling of a man with a decent
little balance in bank. It is worth trying."
"There is avast difference," said Mrs. Burr, "between thrift
and avarice or meanness. True, the line between thrift and
greed is so closely drawn that some people overstep it without
being aware. Our little savings should not be made at the
expense of strict honesty, of charity, of sympathy, there aro
things far more useful and important in a home than saving,
We are not to make our small savings, or oi.r great savings, b)
USE AND ABUSE OF MONEY IN THE HOME. 395
grinding the faces of the poor; by depriving ourselves of rest,
and of things needful to our health and for the prolongation
of our lives ; nor by restricting our children of proper grati-
fications and recreations, making the memory of their youth a
bitterness."
"The question seems to be in order," said Miriam, "how are
e to economize? where shall we make our savings, small and
.reat?"
" Here," I said, " is field for self-denial. We must not expect
to set out .in life as lavishly as we should like to end. We can
only do that if some amiable ancestor has endowed us with a
fortune. The sons and daughters leave homes which the exer-
tions and carefulness of parents have built up into a degree of
luxury; mother has her two or three servants; father his horse
and carriage; the house is large; furnishings are handsome; the
summer affords a long vacation. The young folks fancy that
the new home wherein they set up must have all these appoint-
ments. They are not extravagance for the parents, who have
the results of years to fall back upon, but they are extravagance
to the young folks, the results of whose years are yet to come.
They forget that father and mother began in the narrow way;
that they had a small house, and economized as to fires, and
waited a year before they furnished the spare-room ; and mother
did the most of her own work, and father walked to his place of
business, and they went to no costly ent&rtainments; looked at
fine goods through shop windows, and not over counters purse
in- hand. The veteran may rest on his laurels, the tyro must earn
his. If our young people wish with no capital to live like people
who have capital, the result will be debt, disaster, disgrace.
Who can count the homes kept in constant gnawing misery by
living beyond their means ; debt pressing; exposure menacing,
credit slipping away! Life is shortened by extravagant living,
\i we try to build a business on show, by seeming to have wha<
396 THE COMPLETE HOME.
we really do not possess, then we are building our house upon
the sand, and when the rains descend, the winds blow, and the
floods beat, then the Home shall fall into miserable ruin.
"This extravagance in living does not necessarily mean a
coachman in livery ; a bay span ; a box at the opera ; velvet and
point-lace, and a splendid house ; extravagance in living is to be
living beyond our means, be they large or small. If bur means
are equal only to expending nine hundred, and we live up to a
thousand, then we are extravagant, although we hired no cab ;
wore no silk gown ; bought no pine-apples ; kept no nurse-maid,
We were extravagant where another would have been very sav-
ing, because we went beyond our means ; he kept within his.
Extravagance in living stands before our mind's eye a gorgeous
creature : plumed like a bird of paradise ; glittering like a Dam-
ascene blade; splendid if dangerous. Extravagance should
rather appear as a corrupting corpse, a hangman's rope clutched
in its discolored hand ; a ghastly wound across the throat ; a
gibbet behind it, and the pit of perdition yawning in front ; for
this extravagance, equally common to men and women, equally
criminal to both, stands at the back of ninety-nine one-hun ■
dredths of the suicides, defaulters, murderers, forgers, delinquent
guardians and trustees, plunderers of widows and orphans. This
e:xtravagance leers at us over the wrecks of homes and reputa-
tions and brains ; it gibbers at us from the mad-house ; creeps to
the penitentiary cell ; sweeps slowly by in the dishonored bier ;
lies ghastly in the morgue; goes down darkly and rises festering
from the waters in the " unknown drowned.'
"If wives see that their husbands incline to extravagance, they
should hold them back from this brink of ruin with all their
power ; and they should beware of extravagance in their own
persons, for by it many a wife has become a millstone about hei
husband's neck to sink him in a sea of misery."
" You are so earnest that you frighten me," cried Helen.
USE AND ABUSE OF MONEY IN THE ifoME. 397
" I feel that she cannot be too earnest," said Miriam ; "' and I
eschew extravagance with all my heart from this time forth.
But, Aunt Sophronia, one may be extravagant — ^that is, be living,
although but a little, beyond their income — without knowing it :
they may be sinking in a quicksand before they are aware that
they have stepped upon it. How shall we know that, while
striving to be economical, we are not becoming penurious, and
that, trying to be fair, we are not extravagant? "
" In the first place, know your income ; and in the second
place, mark your expenses. In other words keep accounts. As
to avoiding penuriousness, we must remember that over all we
have God holds a first mortgage, and humanity a second. Of
these two mortgages we must pay the interest honestly : they
are our first debts, and when they are fairly attended to, then
we must mark our accounts. We shall have avoided the Scylla
of penuriousness, and we must steer clear of the Charybdis of
extravagance : we shall do this by means of a diligent studjr
of our account-books. Great men have not despised careful
account-keeping; indeed, their carefulness in this particular
was one token of their greatness. Washington and Wellington
were both very particular in account-keeping. We should dare
to look resolutely at the state of our affairs: bankruptcies
oftener arise in a neglect in scrutinizing our accounts than in
any other ons :;ause. England and France have laws obliging
all business people, io keep proper account-books. Every house-
wife should have her account-books. When a servant enters
her employ, she should put down the coming into service and
the rate of wages ; every payment should be scrupulously set
down in the servants' presence as they receive the wages. All
the daily expenditures should be set down; each month the
account should be footed up ; the monthly proportion of rent,
lights, fuel, wages, be added, and the amount compared with the
month's income. If the amount oversteps the income, or so
26
898 THE COMPLETE HOME.
squarely meets it that there is not that needed margin for the
small savings, then revise the account and take warning.
Where needlessly was spent the dollar ? What costly item for
the table can be replaced by one more suitable to our means ?
Where was the useless inciulgence, whicn, denied, would have
brought this account into proper shape ? Where shall our next
saving be Scrupulously made ? Let us discern between the need-
ful and the needless. Can next month be brought to settle the
deficit of this, so that the year shall not tell the story of our folly ?
Let us now take, by a month of self-denial, the consequences
of our carelessness, and we shall arise and do better."
" We must surely keep accounts," said Miriam, " but these
things which you have suggested to us seem rather in the way
of preventing expenditures than of making money I suppose
it is true that we are enriched not so much by what we make as
by what we save ; but let us have at least one rule for gaining."
" I do not know any rule for gaining," said Mrs. Burr, " which
would come before persistency in a course well begun. Do not
become restless, think that you accumulate too slowly, that
some other line of life would be better, and so change your
business. A woman has much influence over her husband's
business. If she constantly finds fault with it, undervalues its
efficiency or respectability, contrasts it unfavorably with others,
she will presently move him to some change which may be
disastrous. I knew a young woman whose husband owned
a nice farm : she began to crave town life ; she did not want to
be a farmer's wife, to bring up her children in the country ;
finally she persuaded him to sell the farm, and set up in the city
as a real estate agent. At that business he has starved along
ever since ; his children are unhealthy and ill-provided ; while the
purchaser of the farm has a nice home and competence. I know
another young woman who took it into her head that her
husband had better study a profession than be a village grocer.
USE AND ABUSE OF MONEY IN THE HOME. 39S
He had a nice trade, but the couple went mad on a false idea of
gentility. He gave up his business, studied medicine, did not
succeed in getting a practice, and has lived from hand to
mouth. We cannot say that change is never advisable : most
rules have exceptions; but the safe rule is to persevere in the
line of life upon which one has entered. Often the safest
business is the slowest. This is particularly true of farming ;
almost no farmers who attend faithfully to their own work and
avoid speculations are ever bankrupts ; but as their gains are
very slow, especially in the beginning years, when they are
making repairs, building, fencing, perhaps paying a mortgage,
they think that they will never do better, and they want a
change."
" One danger in making these changes," said Mrs. Winton,
" is that you throw away the progress made, and the knowledge
acquired in the business already begun : when you change you
go back to the beginning. Having half learned farming does
not put you half through with the grocery business, but if you
go into groceries you must begin at the ABC. One business
does not furnish us the alphabet for others : each has its own."
" That fits our experience," said Cousin Ann ; " for the first
five years that we were on the farm, we could not see that we
had made anything but our keep and improvements: we had
not paid a dollar on the principal of the mortgage. But
though we felt discouraged, we looked at the matter squarely :
we had gained much experience; our buildings were in order;
our fences we're in order ; the land was in far better condition
than when we got it ; our young cattle were beginning to be of
value ; we were in a much better position to go on and make
money than when we began ; and, indeed, from that time our
former work began to tell, and we made money fairly fast.
Father has always warned our boys not to be changeable. He
said to Fred and Reed, when they thought they might find a
400 :r^^ complete home.
more profitable way of using their farms : ' Don't change from
fruit and vegetables to sheep. You have been working at the
fruit and vegetables until you understand them ; no one can
cheat you in them ; your start is made ; you have run for your
jump; your momentum is gained — you lose all that by changing.
Don't try to turn your stock-farm into a sorghum plantation, or
go into beet-sugar or tobacco. That might all do if you
started at it, but you have made your start in another line:
you have raised stock ; studied stock ; arranged your farm for
stock-raising. Don't throw away five years' work; stick to what
you are at.' "
These remarks of Cousin Ann closed the conversation for
that time, but, a few days after, Mary Watkins came to see me-
She said that she had been much struck with the saying,
" Debts shorten life." A debt made a heavy burden to carry,
and toil was harder for such a load. There was a mortgage on
their farm. She wanted some advice as to how she could help
pay it, and whether she had better encourage her husband to
buy more land under a mortgage. She said a scrap of poetry
kept ringing in her head —
"There is no use of talking, Charles, you buy that twenty more,
And we'll go scrimping all our lives, and always be land-poor.
For thirty years we've tugged and toiled, denying half our needs.
And all we have to show for it is tax-receipts and deeds."
" Well, Mary," I replied, " I cannot give you any advice
about the purchase of land, for I do not know how you are
situated, and I do not wish to interfere with your "business ; but
I can give you a little advice as to the dangers to avoid in the
getting of money, which advice may be of use to you. As
debts do abridge life, avoid debts as you would poison or con-
tagion. To do this you must live rigorously within your
means. To live within our income, even if it be only by a six-
pence, is to escape the degradation of neediness. Poverty is
VSh AND ABUSE OF MONEY I^ THE HOME. 401
only relative. If you can keep out of debt, you are relatively
rich : a man with five thousand a year, who gets yearly two
hundred dollars in debt, is relatively poor. When by over-
stepping your income you get into debt, you purchase the worst
evils of poverty — shame and fear. Haliburton says : ' No man
is rich whose expenditures exceed his means, and no man i.;
poor whose incomings exceed his outgoings.' Your first effort
in paying off your mortgage will be to bring all your expenses
within your income, and by all that you bring them within you
can lessen your indebtedness. I should wish to be very sure of
the propriety of getting more land, if I got a new debt with it.
Again, Mary, do not be in haste to be rich. This haste is that
taking thought and care for to-morrow which the Scripture con-
demns. This over-zeal for riches abridges life as much as debt
does. People, in their hurry for increase of money, coin their
very lives and souls. All the goodness and capacity for enjoy-
ment dies out of their lives while they are striving for wealth.
People in this pursuit of money deny themselves the comforts
of life ; they keep their children out of school to avail them-
selves of their labor; they deny them books, newspapers,
society, decent clothes ; they make them feel shame-faced and
mean — all for what? — to roll them up a fortune which they
will not be able to enjoy. They" make their children coarse,
ignorant, greedy, unloving, in order to have more money to
leave them. But what good will this money do without friends,
without the confidence and respect of the community ? In spite
of their money they will see all the prizes of life carried off by
those whose parents were careful to give them those things
which are better than money : /. e., social qualities, education,
good manners, affectionate feelings, general information. In
over-haste to be rich, the energies, and sympathies, and cares of
the parent are withdrawn from his children to the money-
getting. The home devoid of attraction is a jail rather than a
402 THE COMPLETE HOME.
>
' dear nest ' to the children. The intercourse between them and
their parents has been hard, brief and cold; there is nothing
to regret in leaving them. No tender recollections of sunny
hours, of gratified tastes, of mutual enjoyments, bind them to
home; as soon as they can they fly off to strangers and strange
places, lacking that strongest tie to morality, a loving thought
of home. If the children are worth laying up money for, they
are doubly worth cultivating in all that is best in them ; and in
devoting ourselves too intensely to the pursuit of riches, we for-
sake the greater for the less. Don't, in your desire to save and
to earn, descend into meanness. Avoid illiberality to servants, to
children, to the public. As a mere matter of business, liberality
pays well. Meanness hardens the heart, narrows our views,
dries up our social instincts : men naturally hate and antagonize
it. The child, treated illiberally, loses love for the parent. The
servant, illiberally dealt with, loses all zeal in service, has no
encouragement to render that faithfulness and energy which
are beyond all purchase; meanly treated, deprived of even just
gains, he retorts by doing for his master as little as he can.
Neighbors miss the kind, neighborly act ; the church comments
on lack of charity ; the dealer detects the scanty weight, the
poor quality, the narrow bargains ; and as we sow we reap ; we
get back our own coin, and can we complain if it is counterfeit,
or has been clipped? A good deed done in a kindly temper is
never thrown away : the bountiful sowing makes the bountiful
harvest. Says the Scripture : ' The liberal man deviseth liberal
things, and by liberal things he shall stand.' We can provoke
unto love and good works. In the ' Vicar of Wakefield '
Farmer Flamborough grew rich, although he was so honest,
kind and unsuspecting that Mr. Jenkinson was always cheating
him ; while Mr. Jenkinson, shrewd enough, and mean enough
to cheat, fell into poverty and prison. Bunyan tells us in a
little rhyme :
USE AND ABUSE OF MONEY IN THE HOME. 403
"' There was a man and some did count him mad :
The more he cast away, the more he had ; '
and this riddle is thus unravelled :
" ' He who bestows his goods upon the puur.
Shall have as much again, and ten limes more.'
"Again, the wisest of men tells us that: ' There is that maketh
himself rich, yet hath nothing ; there is that withholdeth more
than is meet, and it tendeth to poverty. There is that maketh
himself poor, yet hath great riches.' A hard bargain is a bad
bargain for the proposer ; he may appear to gain, yet he will
eventually lose. Be generous and unselfish in your endeavors
to accumulate property ; if you get it in a mean way, you will
use it in a mean way ; the habit of meanness will be stamped in
your soul, and you will have made money itself your end, and
experience that love of money which is the root of all evil.
Nothing is more unhealthful, more life-shortening, more soul-
cramping, than to be engrossed in money-getting ; the Mammon
worshipper is a mean man. Milton tells us that Mammon him-
self, in heaven, could not look up, so fastened were his eyes on
the golden pavement ! Therefore do not consider accumulation
your chief good. You accumulate in order to strengthen, pre-
serve and improve the Home; therefore don't let your Sccu-
mulating be the destroying of the home. Don't accumulate in
such a fashion that some day you shall wake to find your home
gone ; its hopes perished ; its loves dried in their fountains ; the
children fled in disgust and soul-sickness ; your hopes of heaven
darkened ; God forgotten ; your so-called Home merely a whited
and gilded sepulchre, full of rottenness and dead men's bones.
Carry the vitality, the honor, the joyfulness of your home on
with you in your course of accumulation. The story of King
Midas is a parable which we should all lay to heart. Remem-
ber, Mary, all things are for our immortal part; for mind; for
soul; the life is more than raiment. What is raiment to a corpse?
404 THE COMPLETE HOME.
What is money to him whose soul, body, heart, mind, celestial
crown, have been sacrificed to gain it?"
"Thank you," said Mary, "for what you have said; I think I
was beginning to consider accumulation a chief good, and money
a chief end, instead of merely means to the end of true home
building. I see money is as likely to be Abused as Used in the
home. In the poem which I quoted are two other verses which
I remember:
" ' Our life is short, and full of care : the end is always nigh ;
We seldom half begin to live, before we're doomed to die.
Were I to start my life again, I'd mark each separate day.
And never let a single one pass unenjoyed away.
" ' If there were things to envy, I'd have them now and then,
And have a home that was a home, and not a cage or pen.
I'd sell some land, if it were mine, and fit up well the rest;
I've always thought, and think so yet — small farms, well worked, are best.'"
I fancy Mary persuaded her husband to her view, for the)'
did not buy more land for some time.
The day that brings us into debt is a dark day; that is a light
day — glad as the going out of Egypt — when one gets out of
debt. I was at Cousin Ann's one day, when she read a little bit
of poetry called " No Mortgage on the Farm," from the village
paper. She said she appreciated it from her own experience;
she remembered it was a glad day when Reuben paid off the lasl
dollar of the mortgage, and though years had passed, the joy
was yet fresh in her mind:
" While our hearts are now so joyful, let us, Mary, not forget
To thank the God of heaven for being out of debt ;
For he gave the rain and sunshine, and put strength into my arm.
And lengthened out the days to see. No Mortgage on the Farm ! "
* If any one can tell us what is a right state of mind in regard
.© Money in the Home, I think you can, cousin," I replied, "for
you have had a large family for which to provide ; you have had
your narrow beginnings; your long days of struggle to free
USM AND ABUSE OF MONEY IN THE HOME. 405
yourselves from debt; the constant, daily, arising needs to meet;
and have at last reached a time when means are comfortably
abundant."
" The main thing is," replied Cousin Ann, " to keep in view
that we are getting the money not for itself, but for the good
which it will secure ; therefore we must be on the watch to take
the good as it comes. We may say we are laying up the for-
tunes and securing the happiness of our children, but we must
remember that childhood has its fortunes and its happiness as
well as middle-life. Why deny our children the happiness and
fortune of a few toys, in order that we may add dollars to other
dollars for their future ? The few toys may let in a whole flood
of sunshine on the child's life. How do we know but they will
be all the fortune that we can give it — that the little child may
never grow up to claim its portion of goods — that all our be-
stowal of fortune on it must be limited to a doll, a tin-cart, and
a yard of daisied sod ? We deny the little girl a doll and play-
time, and she prematurely becomes a hard-faced woman who
never had a childhood. I have seen men who begrudged the
time which they said their wives wasted over a stand of flowers ;
rnen who complained that a few pots of geraniums and verbenas
cost too much ; if their wives wanted flowers let them wait until
they were rich, and they should have a garden full, or a hot'
house. But the wife died long before riches came, and flowers
in plenty went into her coffin and upon her grave ; it would have
done her far more good if they- had been put into her livin*»
hands !
''A very little outlay will often procure for some member of
Dur families some gratification of taste, which will be 'richly
repaid in love and happiness. Besides, we sometimes forget that
these small gratifications have a positive effect on health and
spirits, renewing both, and, in very truth, producing a bette
return in money and saving than almost any other outlay. The
406 THE COMPLETE HOME.
little token of thoughtfulness, of kindly remembrance, renews
the courage — reminds one how much there is yet left to live for.
We must know when to spare and when to spend. It is not
well to have all the scrimping and saving done in one series of
years, looking to have all the lavishing done in another decade.
We must save and spend at the same time ; pay as we go, and
^uild up our home in taste, in comfort, in intelligence, in propor-
tion as we are building it up in fortune."
"And when we are speaking of the use of money in the home,
we must not forget," I said, " that while one form of its abuse i.i
in penuriousness, another form of abuse is lavishness. Children
get too much money to spend which they never earned, and of
which they do not know the value. I heard of a man who said
that he just put some money in a drawer, and let his children go
there and help themselves. There would be account-keeping,
saving, good judgment, when all the youngsters had to do was
to get out the money and use it, and no questions asked ! I
have seen a child of ten, going off for a three days' visit, handed
five dollars to buy candy and nuts. A young school-mate of
Miriam's was so liberally supplied with pocket-money that she
really did not know what to do with it. One day she bought a
dollar's worth of candy ; then opening the paper, and finding the
first bit flavored with peppermint, a thing which she disliked,
she tossed the whole parcel into the mud of the street. Another
girl whom I knew, received from home a pair of pretty ornaments
which cost ten dollars ; she wore them a day or two, then pre-
sented one to her room-mate, and the next week lost the other.
Girls thus recklessly given dress and spending money are really
driven into extravagance, and are at last the women whose hus-
bands become bankrupts, defaulters, suicides. Boys who may
lavishly spend money out of the paternal pocket learn to smoke,
drink, play cards, race horses : they apply themselves to no
useful occupation, have no high principles, learn nothing v/hich
USE AND ABUSE OF MONEY IN THE HOME. 407
shall make them self-dependent. Money which comes to young
people so easily, of whose bitter earning they know nothing, of
whose deprivation they know nothing, is a snare and a curse.
Better the chances of the little bootblack earning his dimes, and
respecting them as proceeds of his labor ; better a million times
the farm-boy, whose dollar represents the potatoes he planted
and dug, or the chickens he fed and tended for a six months,
than the boy who gets his twenty or fifty dollars, to spend
unquestioned, and to whom that money is just so much green
paper out of father's pocket.
" Children should be taught to earn money ; to save reasonably
their money; to spend it judiciously; to give out of their own
funds, not merely going to father with the cry, ' Give me a cent
for contribution ! ' and then putting it in the box, and calling it
their own giving : shall we give of that which costs us nothingn?
Children should be taught to take care of their money, not
losing it heedlessly here and there, laying it down and forgetting
where they put it ; so they should be instructed to keep accounts ;
this forms the habit of method and of reasoning in their busi-
ness : the spendthrift boy will be the spendthrift man.
"Another abuse of money in the home is to keep all the money
for that one home and its needs and luxuries, forgetting that
the one home is but a unit among many; that as we are human,
humanity has its claims on us all; that in the civilized state
every man is more or less dependent on his neighbor, and must
do a share for others while he is working for himself There are
human beings without homes ; human beings sunk so in degra-
dation, so steeped in indigence, that knowledge and means
of home-making are out of their reach ; there are in the world
plenty of stray waifs, childless, widowed women, relationless men,
friendless children, hopeless invalids : for these society must make
homes and provide teachers and refuges. One of the abuses of
our money is to gather it all into our own circle, centre it upon
408 THE COMPLETE HOME.
ourselves, desire to surfeit our own appetites, to crowd our
own lives with pleasures, and our own homes with luxuries, and
refusing to distribute as we have opportunity to those who are
in need. A grand use of money in the home is to give us to
taste the blessedness of doing good. The hundred busy hands
which have gathered in the fortune should be ready to com-
municate ; the hundred eyes which have looked for opportunities
®f increasing our store should look wisely abroad, to see what
fields can be watered by it, what waste places sown, what deserts
made to become gardens.
"And here, as said our minister the other day, arises the much
vexed question: ' How much have we a right to use for selves?
What is a rational and proper style of living for a Christian?
And to this it can only be answered that every man is a law to
himself If no one used any luxuries, trade, and manufacture,
and invention would be at once crippled. He who has many
servants, justly treated, wisely governed, before whom he sets a
right example, makes his home a home to many, supports just
so many more of his fellows. More physical luxuries are
needed by some than by others : one man's nature only gets its
development in a great library ; pictures are another man's
natural mind-food ; let him thank God for money to buy them,
and so support artists. The only thing needful is to realize that
in our money we are God's stewards and our brother's keepers.
I^t us feel that in earning, in keeping, in spending our money
we are those who must give account. And so as Bacon warns
US, let us not hasten so to be rich that we cannot get honestly ;
let us not so spend our possessions on ourselves that we cannot
give liberally ; let us not love our means so well that we cannot
spend cheerfully ; let us not spend so recklessly that we begin
to live selfishly and greedily; let us not love money so well
that we will be loath to leave this world because of leaving
our worldly belongings ; and let us profess no scorn of money
USE AND ABUSE OF MONEY IN THE HOME. 409
like that professed by the begging friars, who, be it remarked,
were always especially eager in getting !
"And here I would only add a few monitions which I
impressed on Helen's little Tom.
" If men are to hate debt, boys must hate debt ; let them be
taught not to borrow, and not to beg: -it is training a boy in
pauperism to allow him to hint or boldly ask for money from
guests and relations.
" If the man is to be upright in business, the boy must be
upright. Do not think it is no matter if you neglect to return
your mother's change ; if you take, half by force or by calm
assumption, your little sister's or brother's money. Boys who
3;ct in this way will not be honorable business men.
"-Don't be a boy-miser — hoarding your own money, never
making a present, never giving in charity of your own, always
rager to receive and never ready to give.
"Take a pride in earning money: you will respect money
more, and be more likely to be honest in your dealings, if you
have learned how to earn money for yourself
" Don't make hard bargains with your mates, taking advan-
tage of their need or of their ignorance.
" Don't be lavish, spending to make the other boys stare,
buying things which you do not need merely to show off.
Remember the boy is what the man will be."
CHAPTER XVII.
ATTENTION TO DRESS IN THE HOME.
«
AUNT SOPHRONIA's IDEA OF TASTE AND FITNESS IN DRESS.
;1| ELINDA BLACK came in to see me one autumn monv
ing ; she often drops in, but that day she came espe
cially because she had on a new Fall suit. Whenevei
Belinda has a new gown, she is seized with a mania
for walking through all the streets, and for visiting her friends
until all have had a view of the new apparel. Indeed, she takes
a bland, innocent, unconcealed delight in new clothes, a delighl
which has so much childish simplicity in it that it is mainly
amusing. And yet Belinda is quite old enough to be reasonable;
a great many women never do become reasonable on the subject
of dress. Well, as I said, in came Belinda, and chatted away,
careful that she sat in a good light and in an advantageous
position to display her last dress. I chanced to ask her why
she had not been in her place as one of the sub-teachers in a
class for sewing, which I have for poor children, and she said
that just at that hour she had an engagement with the dress-
maker, and so forgot. " That is it, you see," said Belinda, with
a little laugh, " the dress-maker puts everything else out of my
foolish head ; I suppose I am even worse than other people in
that folly ; but we all think too much about dress," concludes Be-
linda in a judicial tone, while secretly smoothing out a ruffle and
regarding the trimming on her sleeve with great complacency.
" I differ from you, indeed," I replied ; " I conclude the
trouble is that we do not think half enough about our dress."
(410)
ATTENTION TO DRESS IN THE HOME. ^\\
" Oh, Miss Sophronia ! " cried Belinda, " I thought it was a
waste of time and a token of a weak mind to think of dress."
" It depends entirely upon how you think of it, my dear. In
the way of imagination, I grant you, we may think a deal too
much about it; in the way of reason and common-sense,
generally not half enough. As to weak minds only occupying
themselves with this matter, some of the very finest minds have
lent themselves to its consideration. The Bible itself gives us
various rules about it ; great legislators have passed laws concern-
ing it ; physicians have written much on the subject ; and divines
have preached sermons and written books, also, about it."
" Why," says Belinda, opening wide her eyes, " I did not
know that the Bible had anything about dress, unless you mean
about the fig-leaf aprons, or how the Lord made Adam and
Eve coats of skins — Eve must have been very beautiful to stand
such dressing as that without a ribbon or a bit of lace — or
perhaps you mean about the priest's dress as we had it once in
our Sunday-school lesson."
" I meant none of those. I fear you have never read your
Bible through, my child."
" Oh, yes, I have ; straight through, and got five dollars for
it."
" Then, while you were going through it, I fear the five dol-
lars must have been more in your mind than what you were
reading. Read it through again, Belinda ; not for five dollars, but
for the sake of knowing what is in it. However, I will tell you
what it says of dress : Isaiah says, ' Because the daughters of
Zion are haughty, the Lord will take away the bravery of their
tinkling ornaments, and their cauls, and their round tires like
the* moon, the chains, and the bracelets, and the mufflers ; the
bonnets, and the ornaments, and the head-bands, aiid the tabLl i,
and the ear-rings, and the rings, and the nose-jewels ; the
changeable suits of apparel, the mantles, and the wimples, and
412 THE COMPLETE HOME.
c
the crisping-pins ; the glasses, and the fine Hnen, and the hoods,
and the veils.' "
" Why," cried Belinda, much interested, " what a quantity of
things, just such as we have now, it mentions ! I did not dream
that we were so old-fashioned in our ornaments and styles ; only
to think, all these things about twenty-three or four hundred
years ago ! As for the nose-jewels it would be a blessing to lose
them, and the glasses — I suppose it means little glasses to carry
around with them, possibly hanging at their waists, made of
polished metal, but used for looking-glasses — those would be
ugly too, for if one does spend a deal of time looking in the
glass, one does not want all the world to know it, nor wish to
be doing it in public."
"And yet I have seen ladies' fans with little glasses set in the
side, and I have seen their possessors very sedulously gazing
into them— say at church."
■" Why,' cried Belinda, flushing, " I have one of those very
fans ! I never thought of it before, and maybe / sit looking in
it! I'll paste a picture over the glass the minute I go home; I
never before thought how ugly it was. But how very odd ! rings,
veils, head-dresses, bracelets, and tablets, such as we carry to
parties, to put down our partners on ! Who'd have thought it ! "
"Another prophet complains of the women sewing pillows
into the sleeves of their dresses."
" How hideous ! " cried Belinda. " No one would think of
such a fashion now-a-days."
" I should not like to be security as to what folly one would
not think of But as for pillows in the sleeves, I remember very
well a pair of little pillows stuffed with down, which my mother
had, and which she told me were worn in her early married
days, fastened in the upper part of the sleeve, to make the arm?
set out widely. They may come in fashion again."
" I'd never wear them — never," protested Belinda.
ATTENTION TO DRESS IN THE HOME. 413
" I used to hear people say, in looking at the portraits of
Queen Elizabeth, where her majesty's waist and head look as
if rising out of a hogshead-^wherein she is standing, that if
hoops came in fashion again, they would never wear them; and
yet they did, great reed-filled skirts, as big as hogsheads, or
even bigger ; absurd as Queen Elizabeth's."
" I suppose," responded Belinda, meekly, " that there is no
telling what one will do, when a fashion comes in. What is
there more in the Bible about dress ? "
" Paul writes in 2d Timothy : ' that women adorn themselves
in modest apparel, not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearls,
or costly array.' "•
" Why," said Belinda, argumentatively, " one would not want
their hair hanging straight behind their ears like a wild Indian's :
and I can't see what harm there is in gold, or pearls, or costly
dress."
" I do not fancy that Paul v/ould have approved of the wild
Indian style of hair-dressing. You notice he says adorn, which
suggests that he desired neatness and good taste, with a certain
, gravity and simplicity ; and as he suggests good works instead
of the gold or pearls, or costly array, I presume that he meant to
hint that as. there is so much poverty and pain in the world to be
relieved, so much ignorance to be instructed, so many souls
which need a preached gospel, and so much money required, to
feed the hungry, clothe the naked, nurse the sick, and send the
teachers to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,
that the means of a Christian woman might far better be employed
thus in behalf of doing good, and laying up treasure in heaven,
than in procuring gold, pearls, or costly array. As to the hair,
you will see yourself, Belinda, that there is a vast difference
between dragging it negligently into a tumble-down knot, and
puffing it, stuffing it, giving here a friz, there a braid, there a
ringlet, there a plastered curl, there a braid of another style^
27
414 THE COMPLETE HOME.
that excessively ornate method of hair-dressing which is not for
elegant comfort, but is for attracting attention — that attention
not the loving pleasure of our friends, but the insolent stare of
passers on the street."
" Now," said Belinda, uneasily, as she was not v/ithout fault
in this respect, " what do some of those wise, good people — those
divines, for instance — say about dress ? "
I took down one of my " old-fashioned books " and read a
fragment from good Bishop Hall. " In thy apparel avoid pro-
fuseness, singularity, and gaudiness ; let it be decent, and suited
to the quality of thy place and purse. Too much punctuality,
and too much moroseness, are the extremes of pride. Be neither
too early in the fashion, nor too long out of it, nor too precisely
in it. What custom hath civilized hath become decent; until
then it was ridiculous. Where the eye is the jury, the apparel
is the evidence ; the body is the shell of the soul ; apparel is the
husk of the shell, and the husk will often tell you what the
kernel is. Seldom does solid wisdom dwell under fantastic
apparel ; neither will the jester fancy be inured within the
walls of a grave habit. The clown is known by his motley
■scoat.''
"Why, how simple, easy, and full of common-sense, that
-sounds ! " said Belinda. " I wish folks preached like that now-a-
. days : I would learn so much more than I do."
" Would you ? Now tell me, what was our minister's text
.yesterday, and what was his subject?"
" Why — y — y — I don't believe I know. In fact, I was looking
■ most of the time at Grace Winton's new bonnet, and at Mrs.
i Burr's .lovely new tie."
"Then perhaps our minister was giving us just as simple
common-sense as Bishop Hall, and you missed it ; and if you
had been one of Bishop Hall's hearers you might have been
^considering the extent of somebody's farthingale, or the velvet
ATTENTION TO DRESS IN THE HOME. 415
in their mantle. The fault is less in the words of preachers than
in the ears of hearers."
I suppose Belinda concluded that she had had instruction
enough for that morning, so she soon went home. She did not
forget our talk, however, but at the next Sewing Society detailed
much of it to the roomful of young people who were working
together in Mrs. Burr's back parlor ; and just as I had finished
distributing the work to the seniors in the front room, Grace
Winton called me.
"Aunt Sophronia, you are to come and sit with us, and answer
for this new heresy you have been inculcating in Belinda Black.
She says you have absolutely been warning her that she ought
to think more about dress; that we all ought."
I went in with a child's apron which I was making.
" You all think too much about dress in the way of imagina-
tion," I said.
" There, Belinda ! " cried Cousin Ann's younger daughter : " I
was quite sure that you were mistaken."
" For instance," I continued, " you spend hours in considering
how you would look in a new walking-suit, or which of the new
colors is most stylish, and would best suit your complexion.
You spend whole days in trying to arrange a dress for a party —
a dress which shall be just a little prettier than any one else
would have ; you spend all church time wondering how you
would look in somebody's new hat ; you spend on new trinkets,
which you do not need, the money which you ought to give to
the Missionary Society; you spend on over-doing your hair, time
when you ought to be helping your mothers with the mending ;
you stay away from prayer-meeting to embroider you a jacket,
or put another ruffle on a petticoat; you tease your fathers for
more money than they can afford to spend on your winter outfit,
and you coolly let your mother wear her old coat one winter „
more, so that yoii can spend more money on the decorating of
one of your gowns,"
416 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" Oh, now, Aunt Sophronia ! " cried the girls, indignantly.
" Well, I knew a girl once who insisted on having one more
dress in her winter outfit, although she knew that if it were
bought, her mother, instead of buying for herself one new and
handsome dress, would be forced to get a very shabby thing for
her only new gown ; and yet this girl needed the extra dress sc
little, that in packing up her trunk for school, she absolutely
forgot it, and left it hanging in the closet, where it hung until
after Christmas."
" Now, Aunt Sophronia," said Grace Winton, energetically,
" that was as much the mother's fault as the girl's ; no mother
should be so weakly yielding, should so pander to the selfish-
ness of her child ; she should have brought her up better."
" No doubt,' Grace ; however, this girl did not live here in our
town. Let me proceed to observe to you, that you do not think
half enough about your dress — "
" There ! what did I tell you ! " cried Belinda.
" In the way of reason and common-sense. It is our duty to
think about our dress ; to apply some of our very best thoughts
to it. Next to the question of food, that of dress is the most
important of physical questions which can be put to us. On our
proper dressing much of our good health depends ; if we do not
have good health, we cannot have our brains in the best work-
ing order; we shall be also captious, selfish, exacting, fretful,
desponding ; demanding much of others, and able to do little
for them. He who is an invalid, in God's providence, is filling
some niche made for him, and performing some part in creation ;
a part which may in the revealings of the next world shine out
very beautifully ; but those who are invalids in virtue of their
own folly, of their own disregard for plain laws of health, are
leaving undone the work which God meant them to do, and are
adding to the burdens of humanity. If you admit that health is
a matter of high importance, you must admit that the question
ATTENTION TO DRESS IN THE HOME. 41^
of dress, which so much concerns that of health, is also very
important. Therefore we must think about dress as it concerns
health. But we may also see the question of dress lifted out of
the range of the merely physical and put into the domain of
morals. We are bound to think about dress as it concerns hon-
esty — honesty to God and to our neighbor. Another way in
which we are to think about dress is as it concerns charity. Now
if you faithfully debate with yourselves the question of dress as
it has to do with health, honesty, and charity, and you uprightly
carry out the convictions of duty at which you arrive, I think
there will thereafter be no fault to be found with your dress, and
that for thinking about it you will be more attractive in your-
selves, more helpful in your homes, and more useful to the world
at large."
" Shall we begin by disregarding fashions ?" asked Grace.
" That old preacher from whom you read said not," said
Belinda.
" Fashion must be brought to the bar of common-sense, and
must be tried by the laws of health, honesty and charity; if she
has transgressed none of these, in a new device, then she has a
right to promulgate it."
" But I thought dress was a mere matter of good taste,"
observed the eldest Miss Black.
" Good taste will be secured when we meet the requirements
of health, honesty and charity."
" Do you think," asked Miss Black, " that it is a sin to wear
ear-rings?"
" Not a sin," I replied, "if they are paid for. But I do not
think that they a/e in good taste."
"And in what respects not ? "
" First, they are a relic of barbarism, which pierces the flesh
to introduce ornaments. The grossest form of this injury of the
body to ornament it, is in tattooing. Next, the piercing- the ear
4X8 THE COMPLETE HOME.
all around its rim, piercing the nose and the hps to introduce
rings or bars of jewelry — indeed, the fashion described by some
African travellers, of stretching the lips entirely out of shape for
rings and bars of metal, must be more hideous than any
tattooing. Second, if the ear is beautifully made in itself, it is
an ornament to the human head, which will only be marred by
piercing it: the ring will injure its shape or otherwise detract
from its beauty. Third, if the ear is less than perfect in its
shape, then the ring simply attracts attention to its lack of
beauty. If there is any coarseness in the skin, or lack of grace
in contour, then the jewelry makes this more apparent; while
if complexion and outline are perfect, then 'beauty unadorned
is adorned the most ; ' anything violently intruded upon them,
as the cutting of the flesh for the reception of a bauble, takes
away something of their perfections. It is said that the Chapel
of the De Medicean Tombs, in Florence, is more beautiful
than beauty; if that is true in that case, it is in no other."
"Aunt Sophronia," said Grace, "we are always quarrelling
here, in a mild way, about frizzes. Do settle that for us."
" If I settled it for you to-day, you would be all back to your
own opinions to-morrow. However, I am quite ready to give
you my views as to hair-dressing in general. First, then, great
neatness should be observed in regard to the hair. Nature
intended it as an ornament. It is several times mentioned in
the Bible as a rare beauty. All the painters and sculptors have
delighted in portraying it in grace and luxuriance. We should
respect our own personal adornments and appearance, and try
to improve them lawfully. All dyes and articles, to change the
color of the hair, should be avoided as both dangerous and in
bad taste. Nostrums for increasing its growth, restoring it,
and so forth, are generally dangerous, as having in them lead
and other poisons which are bad for the health, and in a variety
of cases have produced skin diseases, paralysis, or disease of
ATTENTION TO DRESS IN THE HOME. 419
the brain : avoid all these restoratives, renewers and invig-
orators of any kind. Use on the hair cold water, plenty of
brushing, and clean it when needful with a little tepid water and
ammonia, rinsing it with tepid water and bay rum, and wiping
and brushing it dry. All very tight or small braiding, all
curling dH irons, or with hot tongs, all crimping it on wires,
bits of tin, hair-pins, or with hot pencils, is very injurious; it
stiiTens the hair, robbing it of its natural gloss and flexibility,
and it burns and splits the ends, preventing further growth.
The snds of the hair should occasionally be trimmed off with
the scissors, and the hair of children should be cut short until
they are ten or eleven years old. After fevers, or cases of.
severe illness, it is well to cut the hair short to produce a fresh
and E.ilken growth. Every person in dressing the hair should
regard the method which will be becoming to their own faces,
whether that method is the fashion or not. The fashion may be
to roll the hair back from the face, but some people with very
high, broad foreheads and prominent eyes, would have their
appearance much injured by this fashion. Now beauty is a gift
of God, and we should be glad to look as well as we can.
A.gain, '4ie fashion may be to bring the hair well down over the
forehead, but with some people the forehead is the prettiest
feature, which it is a pity thus to conceal. So let every one
arrange their hair to suit their own faces. People should
always take time enough to dress the hair neatly ; but I put it
to your common-sense, is it right for a reasonable soul, set by
God in a world full of work, to* stand for hours before a glass
dressing the hair ? What good will the time thus spent be to
them, or to any one else ? I also commend it to your thinking,
how deplorable it is for any woman, old or young, to come
down among her family in the morning, her front-hair twisted
up in colored papers, or over strips of tin, her back-hair
unbrushed, drawn hurriedly into an ungainly bunch, ends
420 THE COMPLETE HOME.
dangling, stray hairs flying, dust lying on the hair, and thus
made hideous, she sits a sort of spectre at the family-table,
spends the morning cv.t iKr work, and by afternoon, or perhaps
at nearly evening, she takes out tins and papers, frizzles and
braids, curls and elaborates for strangers, possible guests, as
she would not do for her own family; and she comes to the
tea-table looking very fine, while at breakfast she was a most
untidy spectacle. Is breakfast so unworthy a meal ? Is the
image to be left for the day in the mind of father, husband or
brother of so little consequence ? And, lastly, as to dressing
the hair — is it right, is it becoming to modest maids, to women
professing religion, to elaborate and tower up their hair, their
own and quantities bought, filling it out with rats and cushions,
folds, puffs, bands, braids, curls, loops, frizzes, to attract the
gaze of people, kin and strangers, promiscuously, to the face ?
Behold the extremes: the woman of the Orient hides her face
under a big veil, as if to be seen were pollution ; the woman of
the Occident draws her hair far from her face, decorates it in a
fashion to attract all eyes, sets her hat as far as possible from her
countenance, and goes out, intent on being stared at."
The girls all laughed, and some of them blushed.
" What have you to say about high-heeled boots — real high,
narrow, French heels ? We are always disputing over them,"
said Belinda.
" They are among the most dangerous things in the world."
" Oh, they're not dangerous when you are used to them.
You can soon walk on them without trippin^j."
" It is when you have got used to them that they are most
dangerous. The human figure was meant to stand erect, well
planted upon its ifeet: whatever throws the body out of this
ordained equipoise disturbs nearly all of its functions. These
high, narrow heels — placed not under the heel, but far forward
ander the foot — destroy the proper position of the spinal column
ATTENTION TO DRESS IN THE HOME. 42I
in walking. With this column you must know that our nerves
are closely connected. To these high and ill-placed heels,
which destroy the balance of the body, may be attributed much
of the prevalent spinal disease, a very large proportion of
the diseases and weakness of the eye, and not a few cases of
Insanity. A famous oculist, one of the most famous in the.
world, when a patient goes to him, instead of first looking at the
eye, says : 'Allow me to see your feet ; ' and if he sees a high-
heel, a narrow, ill-placed heel, he says: 'Go and get a pair of
shoes with low, squarely-set heels put under the heel of your
foot, and then I will examine into your eye trouble, and begin to
prescribe. I can do nothing for eyes where the spine is so
thrown out of place by improper shoes.' The posture of the
figure, forced upon the wearers of these shoes, is ungraceful in
the extreme, and so is the gait. None of the old art masters
ever chiselled or drew such figures as topple above a modern
boot. The poets did not mean this plunging, tottering pace
when they said :
" 'And in her step the goddess was revealed.' "
" These high-heeled boots are generally too tight, among their
other faults," said Mary Watkins. " We laugh at the Chinese
for squeezing their feet, and then we squeeze our own ; and
between putting the foot in a false position for its work,
throwing the weight on the front of the foot, and then cramping
that, I think the, feet of many American women are as badly
treated as those of Chinese women."
" I think," said Sara, " that this propensity of human beings
to pinch and compress some part of their bodies must be a
temptation of the evil one to harm that which is made in God's
image, and which he has pronounced very good. There is a
tribe of Indians which presses the head out of shape; the
Chinese devote their deforming proclivities to the feet;- and
422 THE COMPLETE HOME.
nations Called civilized, especially the English, French and
Americans, crowd and compress the waist. Which is worse ? "
"To compress the waist is .surely worse than to squeeze the
feet," said Mary, " for there we displace and hinder the action of
organs more vital ; we interfere with circulation, digestion and
breathing, destroying possibilities of good blood ; the com-
plexion is ruined, being made rough and broken from watery
blood, or is sallow and bloodless ; the gracefulness of the step is
destroyed by distorting the muscles of the sides and hips ;
people are languid, short-breathed, faint and hysterical, all
because they think they are better artists than God, and know
better how a human figure should look."
" You cannot too strongly decry this practice of compressing
the waist," said Hester. " Physicians condemn it as destructive
of human health, and artists scout it as ruinous to human
beauty. When I was abroad and visited all the famous galleries
of pictures and statuary in France, Italy and Germany, I noticed
how very different the artist's idea of beauty is from that of
the modern mantua-maker and the modern young lady. The
artist draws or sculptures hair lightly waved or gracefully bound
about the head, conforming to its contour, and not soliciting
attention; the figure is erect, the shoulders thrown back, the
head well poised, not thrown forward from the hips at an angle
of thirty degrees, with the chin thrust into the air, as modern
high heels demand ; the waist has its free, natural curves, well
developed, no narrowness, no sudden drawing in like the
hideous body of a wasp, which many women apparently con-
sider a model of beauty. One would think humanity had been
striving to render itself, as far as possible, unlike the ideals of
the old masters."
" It is all very well, Hester, for you to talk," said Miss Black,
" when you have a figure which needs no helping : you and
Grace Winton can afford to let your figures be as they were
made."
ATTENTION TO DRESS IN THE HOME. 423
" Perhaps the whole secret of that is," said Hester, " that
Grace and I have never given our figures any hindering; they
grew as God made _ them, as anybody's might do. I doubt if
there is any one in this room, except Grace and myself, who.
from childhood, never had any tight or compressing article of
dress."
" Now," cried Belinda, " I want to hear what Aunt Sophronia
thinks of trains, long-trained gowns — things I doat on ! "
" I'm sorry that you do," I said, " for I shall condemn your
hobby at once. If trains are ever admissible, they belong to
elderly ladies of somewhat stately figure, who use them for
afternoon wear in their own houses, where there is no dust and
dirt to make them revolting, or for such ladies at evening
parties. The train is, from its weight and from its dragging
upon the back, owing to its resistance as it sweeps over objects,
a very disadvantageous thing for health. It impedes free
motion, and falling about in wet weather in the streets, collects
dampness around the feet and ankles. The train is wasteful and
extravagant ; it is seriously in the way of its wearer and of other
people, while, as it becomes draggled, dirty, wet, and frayed
from wear, it is an object abominable to behold. It Is one of
those styles of dress, like huge hoops, enormous bustles, and
great chignons, designed to attract attention, a thing which no
womanly woman should desire to do. Besides, I think a train
is not modest for street wear. The train is caught up in one
hand ; in so doing, the train and the side of the dress are lifted
often far above the ankles in a way really immodest. If a
person appeared on the streets with a dress as far from the
ground as the dress is frequently lifted by the train-wearer, she
would be liable to insults, possibly to arrest. A dress hanging
easily and gracefully, and clearing the ground in its entire cir-
cumference, is the only reasonable style of walking-dress for a
lady. Such a dress is healthful, clean, does not weight the
42 i THE COMPLETE HOME.
wearer, does not impede the step, nor occupy the hands; the
chest and arms can be freely and naturally carried. The trouble
i"^, that women do not stop to consider what is suitable to its use,
to their own means, and to their own appearance ; but they are
carried away by an idea of fashion, so that women professing
godliness are ruled in so very important a matter as dress by
fashion which knows no godliness, and which may promulgate
styles which were invented by very ungodly women indeed.
But, my dear girls, do you not see that you might question
what I thought of this, that, and the other item of dress, and
my opinion would simply be an opinion ? In a few hours your
preferences or your prejudices would forget my arguments, even
if they had at first commended themselves to you : you would
furnish yourselves with new reasons for your previous course.
What we need, is not to clip at externals, at branches, but to
strike at roots. There must be great underlying principles upon
which to rest; we must, as I told you, argue of our dress on the
grounds of healthfulness, honesty and charity, and when in all
these respects a fashion is unimpeachable, then we are right in
adopting it."
It was now tea-time, and Mrs. Burr came to the back parlor,
saying : " Miss Sophronia, you have abandoned us elders to-day
to fall into scandal, gossip, slander, to quarrel over our minister,
to devour each other : the evil will lie at your door."
I am not afraid," I replied, " for in these respects all of you
ladies are a Committee of the Public Safety."
Shortly after this my nieces were spending an afternoon with
me, and this subject of dress was renewed. I said that it was a
subject which concerned greatly the happiness and well-being
of home. Dress had much to do with health, and health was
one of the most important home questions. Extravagance in
dress had a sad effect on the prosperity of a home ; households
had been ruined in reputation and in fortune by extravagance,
ATTENTION TO DRESS IN THE HOME. 425
ambition and emulation in dress; neatness in dress added much
to the cheerfulness and beauty of home ; a thoughtful avoidance
of over-dress made our neighbors, especially those of narrow
means, more comfortable in church, and in companies or social)
gatherings where we met them. I have known women who]
were confirmed invalids, from a foolish, dangerous style of
dressing. I knew of a mother who lost five of her children
with croup, death constantly shadowing her household ; and this
mother, while in good circumstances, yet applied so little com-
mon-sense to dress, that her delicate children wore no flannels,
and went with bare neck and arms in the winter! Another
mother of my acquaintance lost all her six children with scarlet
fever, losing them two by two in several successive winters ;
these children, elaborately dressed, went around the house and
out walking, with two or three inches of bare blue leg exposed
between the short stocking and the embroidered band at their
knees.
An acquaintance of mine was so mad after extravagant dress
for herself and daughters that, without the knowledge of her
husband, she ran up a debt of two thousand dollars at one store,
for dry goods, and to settle this her husband was obliged to
give up a lot which he had toiled hard to purchase, and which
would within six years have been worth ten thousand dollars to
him. This woman's daughters all married, and the husband of
each one became a bankrupt. Another person whom I have in
my mind was of a saving, industrious turn, with very little idea
of fitness or beauty. She would go about all day with her hair
rough and untidy ; no collar or cuffs, a soiled kitchen apron, or
an ungainly frock, her shoes broken and trodden down at the
heel. Her husband became afraid to invite a friend to go home
with him, being almost certain to find his wife too untidy to be
seen ; her children, as soon as they were grown, experienced the
same shame ; all began to stay away from home to find friends,
426 THE COMPLETE HOME.
and the household was entirely destitute of family comfort or of
home-feeling. Such instances as these should show us that
dress has much to do with the happiness and prosperity of home,
and consequently we should make it a study regarding its
bearing on health, honesty, charity.
"I wish," said Helen, "that you would discuss it practical'\
for my benefit as regards health."
" Dress," I resumed, " is designed for covering, for main-
taining a proper warmth in our bodies, and in so doing to leave
our muscular action free and unimpeded. If we look at the
lower orders of animals, we shall see that the clothing which
grows upon them is altered in its warmth from season to season :
the horse thins out his hair, and the bird his feather-coat in the
hot weather; not an animal has a covering which checks
growth, motion, respiration, circulation. Did God mean man to
be worse off in his clothing than a brute ? He is left to provide
his own clothing, and given facilities for so doing, that this
clothing may scrupulously suit his conditions. We should
change our garments with the changes of season : not fancy that
we can harden ourselves to going all the year round with the
same amount of underclothes. We should reason that a kind
of underclothes which would prevent our feeling sudden changes
in temperature would be suitable to us, so that the falling dew,
a thunder-gust, a cold wind, would not chill us, producing,
possibly, a dangerous congestion. In winter, we should wear
heavy flannels; in autumn and spring, those that are lighter;
in summer, a thin, gauze flannel, but some undergarment of this
kind should be always worn. The feet should be well pro-
tected. Fashion may prescribe thin shoes, but common-sense
says. No : shoes must be thick enough to keep out dampness,
and the chill of cold pavements. The head needs a screen.
Fashion says. Put the bonnet far off from the face, leaving the
top of the head and the ears exposed to the heat, light or cold.
ATTENTION TO DRESS IN THE HOME. 427
Deafness and weak eyes prevail marvellously, and people com-
plain of their misfortunes. Rather, this is their fault, because
they did not regard their dress in its relationship to health.
Clothes should not be too heavy, dragging on back and hips,
and producing spinal and other diseases. They should be
made of fabrics warm enough without being weighty, and there
should not be loaded upon them a mass of trimming, which
wearies the wearer more than to do a day's work. The weight
of the clothes should be borne by the shoulders, which in their
formation are fitted to sustain burdens, and will not be harmed
by a reasonable amount. Our dress should be more plentiful
out-of-doors than in-doors, and when riding than when walking.
The throat should be protected in cold, damp or windy weather.
Some seasons fashion allows a throat to be dressed high, and
other seasons demands that it should be open and exposed to
all inclemency of the temperature. But the throat does not
vary with these changes, and needs as much protection at one
time as at another. In-doors, too, in stormy, penetrating
weather, we should add to our clothes. It is idle to say 'it
looks foolish ' to get an extra wrap on a day when we do not
feel comfortably warm : it looks wise to preserve as far as pos-
sible an even temperature. The fashions for children vary in a
way reckless of infantile life. One while, they wear reasonable
stockings, high over the knees, and dresses up to the throats,
and sleeves down to the wrists, and high boots ; then, with
chests, and legs, and necks well covered, they are comfortable,
and their health is in a large measure secured. At other times,
bare legs, necks and arms are the style, and the little unfor-
tunates shiver into croup and scarlet fever. Dress your chil-
dren warmly and healthfully, no matter what fashion says.
Even in summer do not expose bare necks and arms to evening
air. Also, keep a pair of long, woollen stockings on hand, so
that if a cold comes to them in summer, or they are attacked
428 THE COMPLETE HOME.
with any disease of the stomach, or anything akin to cholera
morbus, the woollen stockings may at once be put on. Dress
should never compress the part of the body it covers : tight
arm-holes, tight boots, tight waists, tight bands and belts are all
njurious. They hinder the free circulation of blood, the action
Df heart, lungs and digestive organs ; cause headaches, dyspepsia,
lung diseases and other complaints. Let any person, who has
worn tight clothing, put on for a week loose but well-supported
clothes, not garments which slip about and feel as if they would
drop off, and as soon as the first discomfort of change is gone,
the relief from pressure will be so marked and delightful as to
assure one of its usefulness. When you intend to buy, or have
made, any article of dress, ask yourself whether it is suitable for
its purpose in covering, whether in lightness and easiness of fit
it will ayoid all compression or dragging of the muscles,
whether it will be warm enough for the season and place where
it is to be worn."
Mary Watkins had not come with my nieces that day, but
she heard from them something of the talk; and as I was
dsiting her within a week or two, she told me she would be
glad to have me give her my views of dress, as it regarded
honesty.
"Our honesty," I said, "concerns our dealings with God and
with our fellow-men. We owe God a part of our substance -,
however little we have, we owe a par': of that little to God.
Among the Hebrews poverty did not exempt from offering
sacrifice; but i'j regulated the value of the sacrifice: the prince
could offer a bullock, the poor woman a young pigeon. We
give according to our ability, but we must give something.
This is a duty; we should also feel it to be a privilege. Thei^-
fore the first proposition concerning dress as it regards honesty
will be, that we must not spend so much in proportion to our
means, on our dress, that we cannot give something to the
ATTE.NTION TO DRESS IN THE HOME. 429
service of God. Honesty to our fellow-creatures in our dress
demands first that we shall not dress better than we can afford,
so that we shall be in debt for our dress. What right have I to
wear a velvet cloak at the expense of the storekeeper for material,
and the dressmaker for making it ? I might as well be a beggar
out-and-out, and go and ask them to give me a coat ; indeed it
would be far more honorable to squarely beg for it, than to obtain
it on false pretences, pretending that I am able to pay for it,
and mean to pay for it, when I cannot. Honesty in our dress
demands that all that we have in material and making should
be paid for promptly, but it requires more than this. If I
am possessed of no capital, and am earning three, five, seven
hundred dollars a year, I have no right to lay out that much
each year. If I spend all that I have, and do not get in debt, I
am not dealing really honestly with the community, for every
hour I am liable to meet with an accident, to fall ill, to become
blind or crippled, and so be a pauper on society, forcing my
fellows to take care of me. Even if through all the ordinary
working years of my life I am a bread-winner, still age is likely
to come; few able-bodied people die in harness, and for age,
honesty to our fellows demands that we should make a pro-
vision. Therefore, we are not regarding scrupulous honesty in
our expenditures when we live up to the limit of our income,
without overstepping it, for we are bound in honesty to con-
stantly prer-erve a margin, to lay up some proper provision,
although it may be a slender one, which will provide for us in
old age, or in incapability from any cause.
" So you see, Mary, you must, when you consider your dress
on the ground of honesty, dress so that you can give something
to God's work, so that you can pay for all that you buy, and
that you shall not dress so well as to prevent your frugally lay-
ing by something for time of need. If people scrupulously
regarded honesty in their dress, they would be removed from
28
430 THE COMPLETE HOME.
this painful emulation in fashion, which makes so many people
miserable. The question with them would be — not what every
one has or does, but, ' What is suitable to my own means and
position ?' People would get on that honorable ground of being
laws unto and judges for themselves. The young clerk in a
store would not feel that she must dress like the banker's wife
who comes to her counter ; the young girl in the safe, sensible
society of the country, whose walks lie through rural roads, or
in quiet village streets, would not feel possessed to get those
flaunting styles which some fashion paper declares to her are
worn on Broadway or Chestnut street. Let her consider that
she is not to appear on those streets ; that she fortunately has
something to do in this world more than to idle, worry and grow
old before her time ; that her father's means are represented
in land and cattle, and not in bank stock, and that it is not
needful for her to spend every cent of her ready money in
dress.
" Now, Mary, these sober, common-sense views of what we
shall wear are not likely to be assumed in a day when we are
grown up ; they should grow up with us. If our women are to
dress healthfully, honestly, charitably, then our girls must be
brought up to have right views of dress, and to think right
thoughts about it. Begin with your children, in precept,
example, and practice. Don't bring up the little girl to value
people for what they have on ; to centre all her little thoughts
upon clothes ; to make dress the staple of her conversation. Let
her think with simplicity about dress, and then she will dress
with simplicity, and simplicity is a thing beautiful in itself, like
clear light. Let your child's dress be so comfortable, so plenti-
ful, so suitable to the time and place and need, so tasteful, and,
urithal, so plain, that it will seem to her a part of herself, a matter
of course, and she will not think of it in fretfulness, or vanity, or
Dver-carefulness, but by the time she has grown up it will have
ATTENTION TO DRESS IN THE HOME. ^\
become a habit with her to apply her reason, her common-sense,
to her dress, and to have it in accordance with the laws of health,
honesty and charity. Mothers little think when they lavish, in
the hearing of their children, praises on people's clothing, admi-
ration on 'children who are so elegantly dressed,' envious wishes
that they could procure thus and so for their children, that they
are training these children to make of dress and fashion an idol,
on the altar of which they may, in saddest truth, offer them-
selves in sacrifice."
Belinda Black had come in to see Mary while we were talk-
ing, and had taken her place beside me. She cried : " Still this
vexed question of dress ; what a worry it is ! Don't you think
it is a pity that there are not some laws to govern it — state laws,
say, and then we would all know just what we could and should
wear, and if we put on a thing, we should not be accused of
extravagance, nor if we left it off, of penuriousness. Suppose,
for instance, the law was that where people had a thousand a
year, they might have such and such things, and where they had
two, five, ten, twenty thousand, such other things. There is
something like that in my Telemaque, where Mentor at Salente
has the citizens divided up in orders, each order to wear such
and such texture and color of clothes. What a saving of
worry ! "
" I told you lately," I said, " that legislators had passed laws
about dress. You have reverted to the ancient idea of sump-
tuary laws, such as were passed by Henry VII., Henry VIII.,
and other sovereigns, ordaining whether a man's coat was to be
taffetas or velvet or woollen ; how many gowns, and of what
material, his wife was to possess ; how many leathern breeches
were lawful to him, and how long might be the toes of his boots,
with other rules relating to his household expenses. Thesi?
laws fitted rather the childhood and youth of the race than its
sober maturity; we cannot make laws to fit the thousand and
432 THE COMPLETE HOME.
one causes and exceptions of our lives, but we can find govern-
ing principles whereby we are bound to try and guide oui
ways."
My next conversation on dress was with Miriam. She said
to me:
"Auiit Sophronia, is not the question of beauty to be largely
considered in regard to dress? Ought we not to cultivatf
beauty in our apparel ? "
" Certainly we ought," I replied. " It is important indeed."
"Then, where in your argument of dress, under the heads of
health, honesty and charity, does beauty find its place ? "
" Under the head of charity I' I replied, promptly ; " we owe it
to charity to be all of us as beautiful and look as beautiful as
we can."
" Let me hear something, then, if you please, of the way in
which you would reason of dress as it regards charity."
" There is no person," I said, " without some ideas of beauty
and fitness. All eyes rest with comfortable approbation on the
neat, graceful and harmonious. They may be pleased without
knowing why, but they are pleased none the less. The little
child's face lights up at sight of the ribbon-knot at its mother's
throat and the flower in her hair. The little boy's first knightly
gallantry awakens in his satisfaction at his little sister, fresh,
clean, smiling, though her tiny gown may be only of the poet's
' sprinkled pink ; ' and in viewing his mother neat and tasteful
in her work, though the hair may have no ornament but its
own shining smoothness, and the gown may be a cheap calico,
if only the colors are in good taste, if fit and fashion are good,
if collar and knot relieve the throat. The husband, weary from
work in field, or office, or store, comes to his home, and sudden
rest falls on him like a mantle, when he sees by a neat hearth
children with smooth heads and clean pinafores, and the wife,
who has not forgotten the pretty wiles of dress wherewith she
ATTENTION TO DRESS IN THE HOME. 433
first pleased his eye. If the lover has a pleasure in seeing^
shining teeth, well-dressed hair, neat hands, a well-shod foot, a
throat tastefully arranged, has the husband necessarily so
deteriorated that he will care for none of these things? We
owe it of dear charity to the taste of our households, that when
we dress in the morning we shall put our clothes on neatly,
and make our persons acceptable to the eye, that when we
come to the table, from whatever work, wc shall come clean and
respectable ; not with sleeves rolled up, gown open at the throat,
and dirty apron. Cousin Ann has always had plenty of Work to
do and often hard work, but she always kept her hair and feet
neat, a clean collar on, and a white apron, and a knot of ribbon
on hand in a table-drawer, to slip on before sitting down at a
meal, or meeting a guest. We owe it to this family charity not
to sit on Sabbath, between services, arrayed in a frayed wrapper
and ragged slippers, on the plea that ' we are tired and nobody
coming : ' we shall be no more tired if we are decent. Indeed,
when very tired, a change of clothes and a bath are very resting ;
and we should always feel that our charity in dress begins at
home, and dress as suitably and tastefully as we can for the
family satisfaction. This is an example that mothers owe to
daughters, and mistresses to maids; a courtesy due to hus-
bands, fathers, sons, brothers. Pursuing this charity of decency
in our dress, we should beware of getting gaudy, tawdry, slazy
goods for clothing — things which will be soon frayed, spotted,
faded, and make us deplorable spectacles as we are ' wearing
them out.' It is better to have few clothes than very many —
few, but enough for all needs ; having many dresses, they
become old-fashioned, and we are encumbered with a quantity
of half-worn things. Let us be careful in keeping our clothes
well repaired, renewing them in style and trimming, so that
they will look decent as long as we wear them. A good, sub-
stantial article can be used respectably as long as it lasts,. and
434 THE COMPLETE HOME.
will pay for making over. Let us consider thai it is a true
charity to gratify good taste, and there are certain almost
universal laws of taste which we can gratify in our dress
without extravagance, or over-devotion of time and labor to
the subject. In buying our clothes we should buy what is
becoming in color, pattern and style. A large woman, or a
very tiny woman, looks absurd in thick, rough, heavy cloths,
which need a tall and moderately slender figure to carry them
well. A little lady looks pretty in delicately sprigged or
spotted lawns and linens, wherein a big lady becomes a dowdy.
A tall woman can wear plaids and flounces : they reduce her
apparent size and become her well, while they give the little
woman the shape of a butter-tub. Short, thick women look ill
in shawls, and stout women should not venture on wearing furs.
A fair woman is lovely in blue, but her dark sister is made ugly
by that beautiful color. A big, red, double-chinned face should
not wear a small, light, airy, delicate hat, even if such hats ' are
all the style : ' for the white lace, the dainty, drooping plume, the
spray of forget-me-nots, or hyacinths, brings broadly into relief
the redness, thickness, or freckles of the skin ; the small hat
makes the big face still more like a sunflower, or a pumpkin
blossom. Let the large face be framed in a hat large enough to
become it, wide or high to suit figure and feature ; and let the
dark, florid face beware of scarlet, pink or blue placed near it ;
so surrounded by what becomes it, the large face is handsome,
matronly, reposeful. Gaudy colors should not be worn in the
street. They are ill taste in spite of fashion. The young lady
can wear brighter and lighter fabrics than the mature matron.
Children should wear small-patterned goods. The prudent
housewife, intent on charity to her husband's resources, will buy
for herself what can possibly be afterwards tastefully used for
her children ; for older girls, what may be made over for their
juniors. A black silk, a good black alpaca, a brown linen
ATTENTION TO DRESS IN THE HOME. 435
«ind a nice merino, are dresses always safe to buy, suitable to
almost any age, to any complexion, and to almost any circum-
stances.
"Another view which we can take of dress as it regards charity
is, that when we go to social gatherings we should consider the
circumstances of the host, and of the company which we are
likely to meet, so that by a superfluous elegance of dress we
shall not make some plainer neighbor feel awkward and ill-
dressed. If you send a child, elaborately decorated in silk,
embroideries and jewelry, to some child's gathering, where the
other little ones are in lawn or linen, you foster pride in your
own child, prevent its hearty play and enjoyment, and provoke
envy in the others. So in our church, we should take care not
to go notably more richly dressed than the other worshippers.
Indeed, for church, I admire quiet, neat, simple dress; forsaking
th,e pomps and vanities, the world, the flesh and the devil, and
appearing in the Lord's courts laden down with the world's
trappings, are hardly consistent. Don't dress a child or young
girl so gorgeously that, when she is grown up, all fashion is
exhausted for her, and she must weep and perplex herself for
more worlds to' conquer. For ornaments use many flowers:
a spray of leaves or flowers is in order anywhere, from the
family breakfast to the evening party. Ribbons of becoming
hue, and fresh and unsoiled, are also suitable everywhere, with
the calico wrapper or the evening silk. Wear little jewelry; a
piling on of gold pins, rings, tinkling bracelets, ponderous chains,
is decidedly barbaric taste. Don't wear a watch to do house-
work. A small bow, a pearl arrow, or other ornament of jet,
pearl or shell, is tasteful in the hair. Neither be lavish in
small ornaments nor despise them, and by taking care of
what you have you will always be able to appear suitably
arrayed. Lastly, never get an article too splendid for the rest
of your wardrobe."
CHAPTER XVIII.
MISTRESS AND MAID IN THE HOME.
AUNT SOPHRONIA'S VIEWS OF OUR DUTIES TO SERVANTS. '
HE more that I consider the affairs of Home, the more
am I impres.sed with the importance of the servant's
position. How much of our home-order, health, econ-
omy, cheerfulness, is dependent upon the domestic! I
think the interest, value and duty of this relation are too seldom
appreciated, its permanency is undervalued. Not only is our
relation to our servants, or our discharge of duty to them, a
matter of irriportance in our own especial households, but it is
of moment to society, to the state. In this relation, as in the
rearing of our children, the Hon.f; reaches beyond itself, and
builds or destroys in other home.s.
If we take a young girl into our house for a servant, and
find her ignorant, careless, untidy, generally the first impulse is
to discharge her, and find better help. But stop a moment.
Do we not owe this girl something — a debt of our common
humanity ? Possibly she is an orphan, and has had no one
interested to instruct her ; or she may have parents and friends
who are ignorant and shiftless, products of the lack of training
of a former generation, and they have known no good habits to
impart to this girl. Suppose we do send her away : who is there
upon whom she has a greater claim, who will take up the task
ihat we reject and make this girl a useful woman ? If no one
does this, what is to be expected ? She will be the dirty and
Wasteful wife of some poor man, confirming him in all his evij
(436)
MISTRESS AND MAID IN THE HOME. 437
habits, and bringing into the world a brood of semi-beggars,
filthy, ragged and unschooled, to be the criminals and paupers
of a generation to come. How much worse is every town for
one such degraded family? They are drunkards, thieves, mur-
derers, incendiaries. What will it not cost the public to look
after them, from the hour when charity accords to their child-
hood cold victuals and cast-off clothes, through years of pau-
perism, tramping, criminal prosecutions, jails, hospitals, the
potter's field? Besides this positive loss, there will be the
negative loss. How much better might not the state have been
for these half-dozen sturdy rascals, if they had grown into
intelligent citizens, law-abiding heads of families, taxpayers, soil-
cultivators, mechanics, inventors ? We who, from indolence or
vexation, fail to take the part of making a young woman what
she should be, if there is in herself any quality to second our
efforts — a quality which we can elicit by persevering, kindly
care — are neither doing our part in the world as good citizens, ■
nor as good Christians.
Again, we often have in our houses girls who are pretty good
worlfcrs, cleanly, pleasant ; they suit us very well, and we keep
them : but while they are in our family they are not ^ it; we do
not interest ourselves in them ; we give them no friendly counsel ;
we do not look forward to their future, and help them to provide
for it; they are lonely in our houses — that tie of home and
friendly interest which every woman craves is lacking to them.
Our daughters, young friends, and relatives, who are in them-
selves better instructed by reading, example, and observation,
we carefully prepare for their future home-life, guard their ac-
quaintanceships, are anxious lest they marry too hastily, or throw
themselves away ; but we do not think of these things for our
maid. So presently, left unwarned and uncounselled, without
confidants or guardians, she marries when there are no savings
wherewith to start a home; when she has no substantial ward
438 THE COMPLETE HOME.
robe; no little store of bedding, and household linen, and
crockerj.-; when she is indeed too young to assume the cares of
married life ; when the one small room which will be her home
is but half-furnished; and so before her will lie a life of poverty,
toil, discouragement, children for whom she cannot provide,
possibly beggary ; and again by our negligence the home, which
might be a blessing and a tower of strength, is never built ; the
town has one less flourishing household, and one more family
perpetually on the verge of ruin; the state just so many less
efficient citizens. The trouble is that we forget in considering
our servants our common womanhood ; they are viewed by us
as chattels, as animated machines to perform for us such and
such offices, and, in regarding them, we forget the human tie,
that God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth;
that in Christ we and our servants may become kin ; that the
believing servant may be received by us as Onesimus by Phile-
• mon — as a brother beloved.
There are differences, it is true — differences in station, in habits
of thought, in associations, in methods of pleasure ; these differ-
ences are neither for our making nor for our abrogating, nor are
they necessarily for discomfort, and regretting on either hand, if
each, as mistres^ and maid, does duty honestly, and cordially
respects the position of the other.
I often hear Mrs. Black using the expression, " Nobody but
the servants," very much as if she would indicate nobody at all.
Now Mrs. Black is not an unkindly woman, but she regards her
servants and speaks of them very much as one would of a horse
or a cow; she seems entirely to forget a common humanity. I
told her once that this struck me painfully; I thought it was un-
just to the servant as an individual, unjust to ourselves who had
the same organs, emotions, manner of birth, human ties, prospect
of death, and possessed immortality; and unjust to God, who
made us all of one blood, and in one image — his image, in fac-v
MISTRESS AND MAID IN THE HOME. 4.39
and the image is His, whether cast in clay more or less lefined,
as a statuette might be a copy of the Venus of the I.ouvre,
whether the statuette were moulded in common clay, in iron-
stone ware, in china, porcelain, or best Sevres.
I said : " Does it make Martha less human, less an individual,
to be respected and sympathized with, that the Lord gave het
to begin with larger hands, stronger muscles, and more simple
tastes and surroundings than mine? so that these largely
developed muscles and narrower tastes, united to her sturdy
honesty and valiant common-sense, have put her for years in
the position of an invaluable maid, to whom I try to be a reason-
able and sympathizing mistress."
" It is easy enough for you to talk that way. Miss Sophronia,"
said Mrs. Black : " everybody knows what a model servant
Martha is; if you had my servants to deal with, you would
change your views, I fancy. Here's Martha — been with you
fifteen years or more, and my girls I get so exasperated with
that I rush into the kitchen and discharge them about once in
six months, and new ones prove no better."
" If I had discharged Martha at the end of six months, she
would not have been here for fifteen years," I said. " She was
not half as valuable to me the first year as now. Six months is
hardly enough to get thoroughly into the ways of a household;
certainly not enough to attain a fixed, vital and affectionate in-
terest in it and all its members. These virtues in a domestic
are matters of natural growth ; they do not spring fully armed
out of her head as Minerva from the head of Jove. Do you not
think some of .ttie defects which irritate you in your servants
might be conquered by your keeping them longer, and educat-
ing them in your ways, and also by your feeling more human
sympathy with them; showing that interest; trying to interest
them in their work and in you ; letting them feel as if they had
a friend in the house ; as if the house was, while they remained
440 THE COMPLETE HOME.
in it, their home? Perhaps they see that you do not expect
them to do very well ; that you ^re on the watch for faults rather
than for virtues. Suppose you treat them with confidence and
consideration; do not blame them hastily; something that ha^
been done wrong — some breakage, or loss, or careless act — may
not be theirs at all, and it will seem hard to them to be regarded
as naturally the ill-doers — the black sheep of the household.
" More or less, we must trust our servants ; they come into
the inner life of the home in such a manner that, by all the
members of the family, they must, in a measure, be trusted ; it
cannot be helped that they shall hear what we say ; see what we
do; understand our circumstances, our losses, our possessions;
suspect many things which perhaps we thought quite out of the
range of their knowledge. Now thus placed, no quality in them
is more valuable than trustworthiness , and there is nothing which
more develops this than to be trusted. If we persist in regard-
ing our servants as spies, gossips and foes, it is likely that they
will continue spies, gossips and foes "to the end of the chapter ;
more than we fancy, we are able to create that in which we be-
lieve. True, believing a servant honest does not always make
them so, and very trustful employers have often been egregiously
deceived; but we never yet made any one better by believing
them to be bad, and good treatment, good example, and good
instruction, will go far toward creating for us good servants,
even out of originally poor materials."
I have always considered Cousin Ann a model in her manage-
ment of her servants. I tell her this sometimes, but she says it
is much easier to have good servants in the country than in the
city. There is less temptation there for them to hurry their
work, so that they may run off They have less intercourse
with companions who may be idle and injurious. When their
work is done, their time is occupied in reasonable occupations,
fts reading, and making and mending their clothes; and this
M/STJiESS AND MAID IN THE HOME. 441
gives thoughtfulness and stability to their character, and puts
them on the road to thrift and thoroughness. This is doubtless
all true. But I have seen excellent servants in the city, and
very poor ones in the country, and I believe in the old adage,
'A good mistress makes a good maid."
I have, when visiting Cousin Ann, and especially when I
passed a winter with her, carefully observed her ways with hei
servants, and I have arrived at certain rules by which she guides
her sway.
First. She intends to respect her servants in their places,
and so she clearly gives them to understand that they must be
respectable. Lying, rudeness, uncleanliness, vulgarity in word
or act, are not respectable, and, therefore, the servant must
eschew all these.
Second. Cousin Ann sets herself the example of what she
would have her servant be. She .never deceives nor equiv-
ocates. She is never rude nor ungracious in her order or her
reproofs. She is exquisitely tidy and orderly. While respecting
others, she means herself to be respected. She has a quiet
dignity, removed alike from familiarity and from haughtiness.
She is calm and kindly.
Third. She makes obedience to her wishes possible. She
does not hurry the servant, so that she cannot get tidily-
through with her work. She does not bid her be cleanly, and
so crowd her with labor that there is no time for her to bathe,
comb her hair, dress neatly, make, wash and mend her clothes,
and set in order her room.
Fourth. She makes her servants feel how important to the
well-being of the whole house their good conduct and good
work may be. She does not hector them with trivial directions,
but she teaches thoroughly and once for all what she wishes
done, and she gives them fundamental rules.
Fifth. She remembers that, like other people, her servants are
442 "^^^ COMPLETE HOME.
imperfect, that human bodies, and minds, and hearts may get
out of order. When they are ill, or even a little ailing, she
bestows rest, freedom from work, nursing and doctoring, as she
would to any other member of the family in proportion to the
needs of the case. She does not ask needless questions. She
awaits confidence rather than demands it, respecting individual
secrets and sorrows. She yields ready sympathy with their
troubles, is not easily offended by accidents or by little nervous-
ness; and when the usually kind-tempered, willing servant
appears in a new character, as flustered, cross, hasty of speech,
she quietly arranges a change of work, a holiday, a little treat
of some kind, to relieve the unknown pain lying at the root of
this exhibition. I remember once when I was there, Cousin
Ann's servant seemed pettish and careless for several days, and
finally spoke very impertinently to her mistress. Some ladies
would have reproached her, told her that she had been put up
with for days, and have then discharged her. Cousin Ann, on
the contrary, said, calmly:
" Harriet, you are quite forgetting yourself You have
seemed to feel worried at something for several days. You do
not usually act in this manner. Possibly, if you told me what
the matter was, I could help you. I should be glad to do so.
It is much better to be helped to do right, than to allow our-
selves to do wrong."
Harriet sat down and burst into a flood of tears. Having
cried for a while she became quieter, and Cousin Ann said,
kindly :
" Well, Harriet, what is it ? "
Then out came the trouble. Harriet had a lover. She had
supposed him to be a decent young man. She had found out
that he drank, and had been off on a wild spree. He wanted to
be taken into favor. " If I give him the cold shoulder," sobbed
Harriet, " he'll go off and marry Mary McMannus. And I da
MISTRESS AND MAID IN THE HOME. 443
care for him, but I'm afraid of drunkards! Didn't my own
lather drink, and break my mother's heart, and chase m.e out in
the snow, until it was well for us that he died i But, oh, what
will 1 do, disappointed as I am ? "
Only a servant girl's little love-story and bitter disappoint-
ment ; possibly some would have passed it by carelessly.
Cousin Ann sat down by her maid and said, in true sym-
pathy : " Harriet, I am very sorry for you, and I will advise you
as I would my daughter. Don't marry a man who drinks. If
he does not love you well enough to reform for the sake of
securing you, he will not love you well enough to be kind, nor
to provide for you, nor for your children. It is hard to be
disappointed in a lover, but much harder to be disappointed in a
husband. How would you repent marrying a drunkard, ii you
found yourself a beggar, perhaps maimed by him in some
drunken row, or saw little children starved, beaten or driven out
into the cold night! Be brave, Harriet, to do what is right!
Now you can be self-supporting, safe and respectable. If you
married a drunkard, nothing would be left you but misery and
regret. Now, Harriet, you are tired and excited with your
trouble and crying: suppose you go to your room and lie down
a while. And on the table in my room there is a little red
book which I will give you, and I wish you would get it as you
go by, and read it through before you make up your mind on
this matter."
This little book, as I learned, was a story of a girl who
married a drunkard.
Cousin Ann's womanly kindness not only saved her a good
servant, for Harriet lived with her for four years after this, but it
saved Harriet to herself Her lover did not reform. She
discarded him. A miserable sot, he is now in jail for arson;
while Harriet has married a very good man who works for
Reed, and has as nice a home and two as pretty children as are
to be seen anywhere.
i4A THE COMPLETE HOME.
A sixth rule with Cousin Ann is to require obedience to hei
orders, and an adherence to her plans and wishes in her house.
She holds the reins and guides her household, and allows no
contravening of her plans. She does not permit negligence to
pass unrebuked, or, finding a thing ill done, do it herself, and so
confirm in her maid the careless habit. When a fault is com-
mitted, she is prompt on the spot to set it right. She does not
wait a week and then cast it up.
These rules of Cousin Ann's I have tried to impress upon my
young friends for their guidance in managing their servants.
I remember, when Miriam first hired a grown servant, she came
to me in a great deal of perplexity. For two years Miriam did
her own work ; then she took little Ann from me, Martha's
niece, who had become a very useful maid, and a year and a
half later she hired a grown girl. She came to consult me,
saying :
"Aunt, I don't want to have trouble with my servants, and this
perpetual changing. How, shall I manage them ? Mrs. Black
has just been warning me that I must not allow any visitors."
"What are you going to hire," I asked — "a machine or a
human being ? "
" Why, a very respectable young woman," said Miriam.
"And where is the respectable young woman," I said, " who
was made without a heart or capacity for friendship ? If she is
a good young woman, she will have friends of some kind to love ;
because p-eople are servants they are not made without parents,
sisters, aunts, or other relatives to care for. They have their
little interests : they want to know how the neighbor's sick baby
is, and what new dresses the cousin, who is to be married, is
making, and if the little nephew looks well in his first trowsers,
and whether the grandmother's rheumatism is better. It is
barbarity to take a young woman into your house to work,
jrourself meanwhile not expecting to be her companion, and
MISTJiESS AND MAW IN THE HOME. 445
then saying to her : ' I do not approve of servants having
friends.' "
" What shall I do ? That does seem cruel, but Mrs. Black
says if I am not careful that my kitchen will be full of visitors,
that the work will be neglected for gossip, that there will be
diseases brought to the children, that the visitors will be
constantly taking meals and carrying off things. You know^
aunt, I do not want to be stingy, but I must economize, and I
cannot allow waste."
" That is all true, my dear, but there is a happy mean in all
things. You expect to give your servant a part of Sunday,
and a part of Thursday afternoon, unless something unforeseen
interferes now and then with this liberty. Thus she will have
twice a week to see her friends. She will have occasional
evenings out. When you engage the girl, tell her strictly and
clearly at what hour you wish her to return on these occasions,
and tell her this hour must not be overstepped. Tell her that
you do not like much company, nor company during working
hours ; but that she is welcome to see her relatives and nice
quiet friends at proper times, if they leave at the hour which you
sei for closing your house, and there are not too many at once, or
those who are noisy. Tell her, also, that you will rely on her
to see only those friends of whom her near relatives and her
conscience will approve. You can then kindly notice how
matters go, and see that your rules are obeyed. Don't establish
unnatural conditions and needless restrictions : they force people
toward deceit and disobedience."
"That calls up another question. Mrs. Smalley visited me
yesterday, and she warned me solemnly not to allow any
'followers:' she said xt^z-s, positively ruinous!'
" What is a follower ? Pray tell me."
" Why, she meant a lover, a young man paying attention to
her, I suppose," said Miriam, laughing.
29
446 THE COMPLETE NOME.
" Mrs. Smalley allowed her own daughter a follower ; is the
servant-maid above or beneath such an adherent ? The servant
girls marry, Miriam, just as frequently as their young mistresses.
Indeed, I think there are fewer unmarried women among the
working classes than among those a little better off The maid
has a heart, the natural affections of a young woman ; she likes
to be admired, to think that there is some one who esteems he:
above all the world. For fear of losing her place and her means
of livelihood, she m?.y agree to have no ' follower,' but she will
have one none the less. Prohibited receiving him in her neat,
warm, well-lighted kitchen, in the protection and respectability
of the household, she will hang over the back-gate, hide in an
area, make an appointment at a street-corner, or at some not
first-class eating-house. A young Lzdy who did this would be
condemned at once and lose her credit ; is it any less dangerous
for the servant-woman to put herself in such a position?
Mistresses who claim to be very particular, perhaps even by thus
being unjustly particular, are often responsible for the ruined life
and character of some servant, whom their womanly sympathy
and guardianship might have saved to be a happy wife and a
good mother. The compliments which your servant appreciates,
the little gifts which she accepts, the amusements to which she
is escorted, are not those which would suit your taste; but so
long as they are decent and honest, we have, underlying all, the
common womanhood, the common sentiments and instincts God
implanted, and those we should recognize and respect in our
1 treatment of her."
"Then I had better allow a follower? " laughed Miriam.
" You can tell your new maid frankly, that you do not think
. it suitable for any young woman to have the calls of a promis-
cuous troop of young men; you should not allow your own
daughter, if she were grown, liberty for anything of this kind;
• neither do you approve of a young man coming every evening.
MISTRESS AND MAW IN THE HOME. 447
or staying late ; if she has any particular friend, approvea. by her
relatives, and of such character as could frankly come to a
gentleman's house, then she can receive him, and you will trust
her to treat you openly and honorably in regard to him. It will
not be hard for Mark to find out something of the real character
of this friend ; if it is vicious, you cannot allow him to come tc
your house; you owe it to yourself and to your maid to forbid
him the premises, and to warn her of her danger in the acquaint-
ance. You are the girl's God-ordained guardian while she is
with you. If her friend is of the right sort, try, by the advice
which you occasionally drop, and by the reading which you put
in her way, to give her a sense of her duty : of the need of thrift
and careful preparation for married life."
"Why," said Miriam, looking very grave, "this hiring a maid
means then a good deal more than simply to get some one tc
wash dishes, bake, iron, sweep and dust."
" Indeed it does," I rejoined ; " it is taking into your family
band another pilgrim bound for eternity; here is another human
soul come into your keeping; not white and unwritten like the
soul of the little child, all open to your inscribing, but much of
false teaching and evil habits, of preconceived notions, of fixed
opinions, may be there to combat your efforts to lead them in
the right way."
"What a responsibility!" cried Miriam; " but give me one or
two plain and simple rules, so that I may feel, resting on them,
that I have some solid ground beneath my feet I want some
starting-point for my new work."
" I give you the same which possibly I have given you in
regard to children — for in many respects our servants come to
us on the plane of children. Have laws like those of the Medes
and Persians — unalterable laws, so that they shall know what to
depend upon ; and have privilegfes like an Englishman's house,
frhich is his inviolate castle. Don't let servants think that you
448 THE COMPLETE HOME.
do not mean the thing which you say, either in your own be-
half or in theirs. When you promise them a favor, keep your
promise; respect their privileges; be cordial in giving them their
holiday afternoons; all work, unrelieved by amusement, makes
any one dull and listless ; it is bad for morals, health, and foi
brains ; uninterrupted work is intolerable : it comes at last to tor
ture us, like that famous dropping of water. I have known i.
maid so heartless, that after two years of service, where she was
kindly treated, she coolly walked off to take her Thursday half-
holiday, asking no questions, making no apologies, and leaving
her mistress bending over the bed of a dying child. That was
one instance of brutality. I have known many instances where
the servant voluntarily and cheerfully changed her afternoon
out, or gave it up entirely because of guests, or sickness, or be-
cause of some work which she saw it would be a pleasure to
her mistress to have out of the way. Where there is kind con-
sideration shown on the one hand, it is usually reciprocated on
the other, and in virtue of her position the mistress must take
the initiative in this interchange of good offices."
It is a cardinal point in the creed of some persons that servants
are a trial and a nuisance, and that it is a great cross to be
obliged to keep them. This is a false idea. To take service is,
and always must be, one of the ways in which a large number
of human beings get their living; other human beings who have
house-room, money, and work, must then take these people in ;
this is one of their duties to the world at large, and one of the
things which the Lord set for them to do, in the way of provid-
ing for their fellows, as he provides for them.
I think the next person with whom I conversed on this sub-
ject was Mary Watkins. She came to me one day saying that
she had made arrangements to take a girl of fifteen from a city
institution, and keep her until she was twenty-one.
Said Mary: " I hope she will be a good girl to me, and I Wcint
MISTHESS AND MAW IN THE HOME. 449
to be a good mistress to her. I should be sorry if she finished
her stay with me without being in every way better for it ; what
main methods shall I take for her improvement? You know I
have very little experience with servants, for hitherto I have
had none but a little ten-year-old from the village, and my
mother did not keep help after I was twelve years old."
"The foundation, Mary," I replied, "of good character and
efficiency in service lies in sound religious principle ; this stim-
ulates zeal, unselfishness, honesty that is above eye-service ; h
furnishes something in the servant to be relied upon. We
should give our servants all the religious help possible. A Bible
should always be furnished for the servant's room ; the work
should be managed so that she can go to church at least once
weekly ; she should always be at family prayers. If you see he)
indulging in unchristian conduct, give a Christian admonition ;
endeavor to furnish good reading for her leisure hours on Sab-
bath ; do not expect the maid to enjoy a volume of sermons, nor
Baxter's 'Saincs' Rest;' the young, robust, and partially edu
cated, do not take to writing of this kind, but they will enjojr
' Pilgrims' Progress,' a religious magazine, a church paper, the
' Tales of the Covenanters ' or of the Waldensians. Show youf
friendly interest in your maid by giving her a decent room.
Don't give a mass of ragged bed-clothes, a poor tick and pillow,
and begrudge a clean sheet and pillow-case each week. Don't
ask her to be neat, and then give her no appliances for hei
toilette, so that she must wash and comb in the kitchen. Put a
bowl, pitcher and comb-case in her room ; a chair ; a stand for
her light and books ; a pincushion ; at least one strip of carpet
by the bed ; put up hooks for her clothes, and do not deny her
the decency of a curtain to the window ; if you can spare her a
little bureau, or a chest of drawers, so much the better, and a
shoe-box. Her room thus tidy and well equipped when she
goes into it, you can impress upon her the need of keeping it a«
460 THE COMPLETE HOME.
nice as any part of the house ; and where there is any neglect,
remark upon it immediately.
" Girls who have a comfortable room furnished thcni generally
appreciate it. I remember a girl coming to iVIrs. Burr and
being sent up to her tidy room, where there was, among other
things, an illuminated text on the wall, and a pot of flowers in
the window. She came straight down before laying off her
bonnet, and said, with tears in her eyes, ' I came to thank you
for such a nice room. It looks just as if you wanted to make
me comfortable and self-respecting, and I shall try to do my
very best for you.'
" Be careful, also, and treat your servant kindly, while you do
not forget or fail in your own position. Don't think because
you have a rigid to command that it is best to be forever
issuing orders; there is no law against your nttcring requests.
Another important point is — not only for the good of the ser-
vants, but of your children — see to it that the children treat
your hired help with courtesy. Teach them to say ' please '
and 'thank you.' See to it that they do not wantonly make
work, and that they heed requests and remonstrances, and dc
not allow them to hinder the girl when she is busy. I have
seen children so shamefully ill-bred, that they would come in
when a girl had just finished a weary scrubbing of a floor, and
tramp about on the wet wood with dirty feet, j ust for the sake of
soiling it, or throw mud on a newly cleaned window, or slop
water over a stove or table, merely to vex the doer of this hard
cleaning work. Do what you car. to lighten work : not in the
way of allowing neglect, for that never really makes anything
easier, but by furnishing any possible appliances to make the
work easier. If you can afford a clothes-wringer, and a box-
line protector for the clothe.s-line, and a drain for suds opening
near the washtubs, have these things to lighten toil. Have
posts set firmly for your clothes-lines, with bars or hooks for
MIStRESS AND MAID IN THE HOME. 451
fastening the line; for what is more vexing or exhausting
than to spend a long time in sun, frost or wind trying to tie up
a line for which no proper provision has been made, or, after ail
one's tedious efforts, to have the clothes tumble down in the
dirt, and all needing to be rinsed over again ?
" Try to set your maid a good example, and give her good
advice in matters personal to herself Teach her how to make,,
mend and cut out clothes : what a blessing and saving this'
knowledge will be in her future home ! Do not set her an
example of untidiness by sending ragged clothes into the wash,
and letting her see yo7i using things that need mending. Let
her realize that you think it a positive duty to darn your
stockings, mend all your clothes neatly, and turn all that you
have to the best use.
" I commended a poor woman once for being a nice house-
keeper, and said : ' You seem to have some witchcraft in making:
things last long.'
" She answered : ' It is all owing to a good example that I had
when living out. My mistress never let anything go to waste.
When the sheets began to wear, they were turned ; as needed,
they were darned and patched; and when large sheets gave
out, they were made over into narrow ones for single beds.
Table-cloths were darned in every little break, and when too
much worn for the table, they were cut into towels and fringed
or hemmed for use over bread, pies, cake and so on, in pantry
and cellar. The pillow-cases were darned neatly where they
cracked ; so were towels ; and old towels were doubled and
sewed into neat wash-cloths. An old crumb-cloth, long darned
and mended, when finally worn out, made us first-rate kitchen-
towels. Nothing was wasted or neglected. As with the house-
linen, so with the family clothes. You should have seen the
neat mending ; the fine darns in stockings and handkerchiefs ;
the rough edges of petticoats turned in and over -sewn; the
462 'J'iJE ^OMl'LETE HOME.
worn edges of collars and cuffs trimmed with a ruffle of lace. 1
learned there that things take a long while to wear out : they go
from use to use for years.'
" Now this woman on very narrow means was rearing a family
of children in decency, and making her little girls as wise and
thrifty as herself. How far had the example of that faithful
housekeeper extended for good ! And, finally, for I am talking
altogether too long, and telling you more than you are likely
to remember, govern your own conduct to your servants by
principle, and they will be influenced by your example to be
well principled in their conduct to you. Nothing is so potent
as good example in securing respect and imitation. Don't lose
your temper; reprove with firmness, calmness and moderation.''
When Sara set up housekeeping, her mother-in-law, Mrs.
Winton, gave her some good counsel about her maids. She
said:
" Let them look for your coming where they work as an
encouragement, because you will help them to see their work
more clearly, and you will be able to suggest good methods for
doing it well and quickly. Let them expect your presence as
an incentive, because you will kindly commend what is good.
The kitchen-maid has been scrubbing, polishing, window-
washing, until she is really tired and uncomfortable. You
come in and remark: 'Ah, it is a pleasure to come into such a
neat kitchen as this.' You happen to go to the tin-closet,
orderly and shining ; you remark : ' This closet is a treat to look
at : it does you great credit.' The girl is saving. She tries out,
clarifies and strains drippings ; saves bread-crumbs for dressing
cutlets or fish ; makes a nice white bone-soup ; takes pains with
your property as if she had .herself paid for it; and you say:
' I am pleased that you are so thrifty : it is useful to me, and will
be very useful to you. The young man who secures such a
wife will be fortunate.' Now these commendations go a great
MISTRESS AND MAID IN THE HOME. 453
ways : they pay for over-weariness. The maid feels rested and
refreshed by a good word, and is stirred to go on to better and
better things. Again, the servant should look for your pres-
ence as a warning against carelessness. Don't go into a kit-
chen, find things going wrong, and, sighing hopelessly, retreat
discouraged. You go into the kitchen and see that after break-
fast the dish-towels were not washed ; the sink has been wiped
out, but is not really clean; there is dust left in the corners;
the hearth is untidy ; the broom stands on the brush and not
on the handle. Speak promptly to the point.
" ' Catherine ! see how you have left your broom ; hang it up
when you are done with it ; but now, before hanging it up, take
it and sweep your kitchen nicely — see the dust left in these
■ corners. I see you have forgotten my rule about washing these
towels ; now I shall put them into this pan, and put hot water
and soft soap on them ; as soon as the kitchen is swept, wash
these towels well and hang them up ; then add some sal-soda to
the suds left and scrub out this sink carefully ; if you rub your
finger on the inside you will see that it is greasy. Never think,
Catherine, that time or strength are saved by carelessness. I
hope I shall not see this neglect again.' Let the servants feel
that your quick eye will note every omission, and that you will
not fear to correct it."
One day, when we were visiting Hester, she said to Mrs.
Winton : " Why are servants so poor and so much complained
of now-a-days ? The race of reliable maids seems dying out.
I have excellent servants, but most people complain."
"The ueason is," replied Mrs. Winton, "First, that of late
young women have grown up in ignorance of housekeeping, and
do not understand how to manage either house or maid : poor
mistresses make poor maids.
"Second. It has become the fashion to complain of the hired
help; mistresses have fallen into a habit of exaggerating faults
454 THE COMPLETE HOME
and making themselves out to be martyrs : little comes whence
little is expected.
" Third. We have fallen into an emulous habit of keeping too
many servants; several maids, none of whom have full occu-
pation, quarrel, neglect their work, assigning it to others, and
realize the proverb that Satan finds mischief for idle hands.
Better to have too few servants than too many ; don't call in extra
help because the neighbors have more maids than you, but
because you absolutely need more help. A friend of mine with a
large family, finding that with four servants her work was nevei
done, and could not get done, instead of hiring a fifth, discharged
one of those which she had, and remarked that then if the work
were not properly done she would try keeping but two servants;
there was no more trouble, the work was done on time, well
done, and no one was overtaxed.
"The fourth reason for our poor servants is, that they are
discharged on small pretexts; one does not try to mend
matters by keeping and teaching them, but by dismissing them.
They half learn the ways of a dozen or a score of families, but
never wholly master those of one. Families go into the country
or to the coast for six months, or four months, and turn off the
help, or some of them, and expect the next fall and winter to
hire others who will look to a similarly short term of service.
Who can expect good help in such circumstances ?
" Fifth. We have poor servants because we hire them too
hastily ; we do not scrutinize their antecedents and characters,
and we are not particular enough to tell them exactly our
rules.
" Sixth. We are often too indolent to have household laws, oi
if we have them to execute them. Our domestic judiciary and
executive are both weak and insufficient. If we would only say
what we mean, and mean what we say, our servants would obejf
better.
^ MISTRESS AND MAW IN THE HOME. \q7^
"The seventh reason for our having poor servants is, that
we do not reaUze the blessing and comfort there is in good
ones; we say we Hke a good cook, a nurse who keeps the
children clean and quiet, a housemaid who dusts thoroughly,
ooaks her brooms once a month in boiling suds, hangs them up
'jvhen she has finished using them, and sweeps with a long, even
stroke, keeping her broom to the floor, and not flinging the
dust into the air; but we mention our liking these good
qualities much as we say we like a horse that does not shy, a
cow that does not kick, a chicken which is fat and tender. We
do not comprehend that this servant may be in sorrow a self-
forgetting sympathizer ; in sickness a devoted nurse ; in losses a
staunch adherent ; that her devotion being deserved may become
as intense as that of our nearest relations, that she may serve
our children with almost maternal self-abnegation."
If there is any one who can appreciate these remarks about
a faithful domestic, I think I should be able to. Martha
ha!s for years been with me, devoted to my interests, regarding
all my joys and sorrows as her own. She takes the greatest
pride in my nieces' children, and is constantly thinking of some
way in which she can benefit them or their mothers. When
Miriam has had sickness in her family, or her servant has been
obliged to be absent for a day, Martha has risen early and
retired late, that she might not only do my work, but bake, or
iron, or cook for Miriam. All that Hannah has of efficiency as
a servant she owes to Martha, who took her in hand, taught her,
instructed her to consider Helen's interests as her own, helped
her, persuaded her to remain in her place and not run from
family to family; and really Hannah is now a very good maid, and
a great blessing to Helei., who could hardly get on withput her.
Martha, besides having good habits, a good heart, an hone.st
conscience and a readiness to learn, has also good brains, and
she invents things for herself; meanwhile, she reads and remem-
466 "^HE COMPLETE HOME. ,
faers. She has culled recipes and hints about housekeeping
from numerous papers and books, and has pasted them in
several scrap-books, which she kept in the kitchen on the shelf
with her Bible, her hymn-book, and perhaps some other book
which she was reading. Seeing her interest in these things, and
anxious to gratify her, I went to Mr. Smalley, and had him
make me four little book-shelves, swung on a stout cord : they
were made of white wood, and stained dark. These I hung up
in the kitchen between the windows, and then I carried in and
placed on them various books which I have on house-work,
cooking and the like — " Mrs. Glasse's Cookery,'' good if old,
"The British Housewife," "Blot's Lectures,'' and a number of
others. Martha was highly gratified by this attention, and I
often find her, when her work is done, poring over these vol-
umes. I have frequently given Martha books — religious books
— a story or two, and once I took a magazine for her for a year
or two. It was not exactly such a magazine as I would have
preferred for myself, but it was simple and varied in contents,
and suited Martha so well that she had the numbers bound.
I have found the good of Martha's brains in various little con-
trivances. One year I thought our well-water was not very
good, and I meant to have a new well dug. I said I must
get meanwhile a filter ; there was none in the village, and before
X could send to town, Martha made a filter. She bought a very
'Urge common red earthen flower-pot, with a hole in the bottom.
She set this in the top of the water-cooler, where it just fitted
when the lid was taken off; she put in the flower-pot, first, a
layer of nice brook-pebbles, then a layer of sand from the brook,
then one of charcoal, broken pretty small : she repeated these
layers until they filled the pot. Then on the pot she set a
water-bucket, with a small augur hole bored in the bottom ; in
the pail she poured the water for filtering: it percolated the
various layers in the flower-pot, entering the cooler pure, as it
MISTRESS AND MAW IN THE HOME. 457
it had passed through the best patent filter. Mary Watkins was
much pleased with this piece of ingenuity. She said : " If I
only had a cooler, I would arrange a filter in that way, for our
well-water is poor."
Martha's ingenuity extended over Mary's case. She said r
" Except for a little trouble in lifting when you want a pitcher
of water, Mrs. Watkins, you can do just as well, if you set the
flower-pot in the neck of a four or six gallon stone-jar ; and if
you pin around that a piece of an old blanket, or several thick-
nesses of crash towel, and keep that wet, the water will be
nearly as cool as ice-water."
Another time I went into the kitchen, and found Martha sur-
veying, with much pleasure, several rhubarb pies and a dish of
green currant sauce. She said, with an air of triumph : "Ah !
I've got the better of the sour things this time!"
" How is that, Martha ? " I asked ; " did you put in extra
sugar ? "
" No, indeed, ma'am ; they've always used too much sugar for
my fancy. No; I'll tell you what I did : I pui the fruit to stew,
and when it was half done I put in each pot-a small, even tea-
spoon of carbonate of soda (baking soda), and that, ma'am,
somehow ate up the sourness of the fruit, so it wasn't mu/;h
Ciiore sour than dried peaches, or black cherries, or blackberries,
and I've saved about half the usual sugar, and I've got a pie that
tastes fairly elegant — indeed it do."
"Why, Martha," I said, "you are quite a chemist."
" La, ma'am, I saw how to do it in a book, and 30 I tried, and
it's turned out quite. beyond my expectations."
"As you have been so saving, you had better carrj' one of
those pies to your sister-in-law for her Sunday dinner, and tell
her of your new way of sparing sugar, and it may help her
in her housekeeping; we should teach all the economy we
leam."
468 THE COMPLETE HOME.
A servant so faithful and thoughtful, one would say, deserves
all the little aids and conveniences that can be given her ; I have
been careful, since Martha, like myself, is growing elderly, to
have a comfortable rocking-chair in the kitchen for her to rest
in; and I have placed her in a room over the kitchen where
there is a drum from the kitchen stove, so that in cold weathei
she will be comfortable. Much of Martha's faithful thought-
fulness, however, comes from the instruction and good treat-
tnent which she has always received from me ; she would say
so herself
As an illustration of the good which one can do to the public
at large by faithfully training their servants, I will mention the
case of three maiden ladies whom I knew in my youth. In
those days we received many Irish emigrants, young girls come
over to seek service — " raw Irish " they were called, and indeed
tbgy were very raw. Wages were then very low; a dollar or a
dollar and a quarter a week was a large price in the towns, and
in the city a dollar fifty and a dollar seventy-five was handsome,
while two dollars was enormous pay. In the small towns wages
sank below a dollar to seventy-five, fifty, forty, even twenty-
five cents for " the raw Irish." In those days dry-goods were
low, and eight yards of calico made a maid a decent frock!
These ladies of whom I speak were admirable housekeepers ;
being in narrow circumstances, they could not aiTord to give the
wages of a skilled servant, besides they felt that they had a duty
to the strangers on our shores, and that one of their modest
ways of doing good might be to take some of these emigrants
and make them useful women. Accordingly, they always took
a new Irish girl; she could not be so ignorant as to damp their
zeal. They taught her personal neatness; saw to it that she
bathed, combed her hair, and cleaned her teeth ; they taught her
to mend her clothes, put in order all that she brought with her,
which was little ; and though they gave but thirty-seven cents
MISTRESS AND MAW IN THE HOME. 459
in wages, they were able, among the three, to provide her many
good garments by teaching her to make over their own laid-by
clothes ; they taught her to fit and make her dresses ; to make a
neat bonnet ; on Christmas she got a good new shawl or coat."
she was taught to read, and, if she had any aptitude, to write ;
she was also taught plain cooking, bread-making, housework,
'aundry work — all of the best variety. No girl left service with
them without knowing how to read, sew, and do general house-
work ; then when a year and a half or two years had put her in
possession of these arts, the good ladies sought among their
friends, who always were eager to get a girl of their training,
and found her a place, where she got a dollar or a dollar ano
a quarter a week, while they took another case of raw help to
develop into industrious, capable womanhood. Doubtless they
had a score of these girls, some staying less time than the others,
all leaving them well equipped for life ; and these servants, in-
stead of being shiftless, vicious, dirty pauper-makers, finally
settled into decent and thrifty homes of their own. Who can
estimate the value of these good ladies to the town in which they
lived, to the state, to humanity at large?
CHAPTER XIX.
HOW TO MAKE HOME HAPPY.
AUNT SOPHRONIA TELLS HOW TO DO IT.
|AMES FREDERICK BLACK is by no means the least
promising of our young men. He has been very inti-
mate with the Winton boys ; our minister thinks a
great deal of him ; he is fond of asking deep and far-
reaching questions, and he tries to improve ; so, in spite of
various disadvantages in Home-training, I think James Fred-
erick will turn out very well. I hope so, I'm sure, not only for
his own sake, but he is paying attention to Cousin Ann's
younger daughter, and I think a great deal of her. Speaking
of the questions which James Frederick likes to ask reminds
me of one that he put to me recently. Mrs. Burr had a very
large gathering at her house celebrating her silver-wedding.
She usually invites a number of friends on each of her wedding
anniversaries, but on this especial occasion almost every one in
our village and in the neighboring country was asked. Of
course there was a good deal of talk about family life, home
duties and so forth. By-and-by James Frederick and one of the
Wintons came to me, and said :
'Aunt Sophronia, you are to tell us how to make Home
happy, and give the means of doing so in one word."
I thought for a minute or two what phrase would cover the
most ground, and said : " Good management."
They went off to a group of young people, apparently to
report my answer, and James Frederick returned, saying,
(460)
HOW TO MAKE HOME HAPPY. 4(J]
"That word would include a great deal, would it not?"
"Certainly," I replied; "the good management must extend
to health, finances, order, the training of children, our sooieu
duties, the making the best of our possessions, so that we shall
secure from them the largest amouiit of comfort. You may
have in your pantry, or on a table, all the component parts of a
pound-cake, but unless thtey are judiciously put together you
will have no cake. So you may have this, that and the other
element of happy home making, but unless they are wisely
brought together and blended you will not have a happy
home."
" Homes where all these elements are so nicely blended,"
said James Frederick, "are so few, that I fear some great,
exceptional, overpowering genius, some Michael Angelo of th<?
Home, is needed for the infinitely varied task."
" No, James Frederick ; it is merely conscientious persever-
ance in little things which is demanded. It has been well said
that 'To do common things perfectly is far better worth our
endeavor than to do uncommon things respectably.' "
About a week after this Martha suggested that Miriam had
desired me to spend the afternoon with her. She artfully con-
trived that I should wear my best gown and head-gear. About
half-past six Martha came after me, saying that a friend wanted
me. I went home and found my house warmed and lighted
from top to bottom, and I caught sight of the dining-table,
drawn to its fullest length, with all my silver displayed, and a
great pyramid of fancy cakes and macaroons, for which Martha
is famous. The Blacks and Hester were in the parlor. I saw
that Martha had joined a surprise-party conspiracy. Presently
other guests came until there were about twenty-five young
people, and James Frederick informed me that they had come
expressly to hear me expound how to make Home happy. No
Pther conversation was to be allowed. The young ladies had
30
462 mE. COMPLETE i:OME.
brought baskets of their best culinary samples, to prove that, as
far as cooking went, they could make home very happy indeed.
In an instant the chairs were drawn around me in a double
circle.
" Begin," cried Dick, autocratically.
" Where shall I begin ? You have taken me so by surprise,
that I begin to feel as if I never so much as heard of the insti-
tution called Home, nor how it could be made happy."
" Give us some hints about buying furniture and putting it in
a house," said James Frederick, saucily, whipping out his note-
book. " I'm going to buy some soon, and I want to know."
Cousin Ann's daughter grew very rosy, and hid behind her
sister, Sara Winton.
" Well," I said, " if a heterogeneous mass of hints will be of
any use to you, you are welcome to them. You give me no
time for better presentation of the subject.
" First, as to providing furniture, be most liberal in providing
conveniences for rooms which you will use most. Do not stint
the kitchen to trick out the parlor : do not deprive yourself of
proper pots and pans of a good, durable carpet for your bed-
room, and a side-table for the dining-room, in order that your
parlor may have a great looking-glass. A housewife -spends
much time in her kitchen : let it be neat, tastefully arranged,
provided with conveniences which shall save disorder. Get
solid, substantial furniture : don't be deceived by pretty sounding
adjectives. It will be no advantage to your dining-table to be
light and elegant: it might break down under your first big
dinner. Neither should chairs be light and elegant: they might
crush like an egg-shell under the first fat man. It is better to
get less furniture, but of a good, firm quality, than a deal of
flimsy stuff Do not get showy carvings and colorings, unless
expanse is of small account to you, and you can change your
■ furr. ishings frequently: black hair-cloth of good quality, spite of
HOW TU MAKE HOME HAPPY. 463
all the revilings cast at it, is far better than a cheap red or
green reps which will soon fade or crack. If you do not
expect to refurnish frequently, avoid getting furniture of odd
forms ; get plain shapes, not with dozens of curious curves : in a
little while the eye wearies of these, the fashion changes, and
they are a source of disgust. Get carpets of solid quality,
subdued tints, small patterns, that are like knov/n things : only a
Turkish carpet can venture to lead the mind into the weary
mazes of a crazy man's dream of things unknown to creation.
Remember and not crowd your house over-full at first : there is
use and pleasure in buying things as a need for them develops :
the eye is refreshed by a new picture on the wall, and a new rug,
ottoman or stand, put just where a lack had seemed to be. For
woods, in a parlor or handsomely furnished bed-room, you are
always safe in getting a good oiled walnut ; for bed-rooms where
you desire to avoid expense, cottage sets of painted bass wood
are neat, pretty and enduring; for a dining-room, oak, and it
pays to get oak chairs seated with maroon leather. . Don't forget
when you are buying a table that it is for use ; that a chair is to
sit in, and so should be comfortable ; that a bureau is for use,
and that its drawers should be strong, with good locks, opening
and shutting easily, and deep. Let there be harmony in your
furniture : don't get one fine and huge article which will stare
all the rest of your simple surroundings out of countenance ; a
fine, carved, tall, marble-topped buffet would look ill-placed in a
small dining-room, with an old-fashioned, leaved table, and thin-
legged, cane-seat chairs. When you are furnishing, from the
beginning, any room, consider harmony : get a carpet, a wall-
paper, and furniture, which harmonize; don't have a wall-
paper in pink flowers, a bright red carpet, and a cottage suite in
light blue. When you add furniture to rooms already partly
fitted out, get what harmonizes with the rest, and supplies a
felt need. When you put your furniture in your rooms, let the
4&i TBE COMPLETE HOME.
rooms mean something ; don't let them have a dreary, soulless
look, as if human emotions had nothing to do with producing
them, and they had been set in shape by machinery. Group
your furniture comfortably; put chairs, stands, books, pictures,
where people would naturally use them. Study artistic effect :
this study increases the beauty of present possessions, and trains
the taste of the family. A gentleman paid his wife a grand
compliment, when, looking into the pretentiously dreary quarters
assigned him as a government officer, he* remarked : 'Well, it
does look frightfully, but it will be all right when my wife
comes ; she could create beauty and a home, out of a fragment
of the Sahara and a half-dozen newspapers.' Finally, don't
crowd your rooms: we all want breathing space."
" Tell us, if you please," said Grace Winton, " some ways in
which we can make articles of furniture for ourselves, if we have
not much money to lay out in our houses?"
" I suppose you all know," I said, " how to make a chair of a
barrel, sawn into shape, and covered with chintz, over stuffing.
So also an hour-glass stand is an article often made of two
round boards, nailed at either end of a stick' two and one-half
feet high, and two and one-half inches in either diameter. Let
your board-top be as large as you wish your stand ; cover first
with old muslin, and then with fancy chintz or muslin ; furnish
the top with a central pin-cushion and a circle of pockets ; and
tie the draping muslin, at the centre of the support, into the
form of an hour-glass. Foot-cushions are pretty, and easily
made of patch-work. You can have a lovely bracket by fasten-
ing to the wall a board of the right size, and putting on it a
cloth cover with a depending edge cut into leaf shapes or trian-
gles, and the whole embroidered with silk in Oriental applique:
the skirts of a worn-out black or blue coat will furnish you this
covering. A dry goods box, some colored cambric and white
Swiss, with ribbon, will make a toilette table. A good lounge
I/OPV TO MAKE HOME HAPPV 466
can be made of a frame, a cushion, stuffed with hay or husks,
evenly tacl<:ed, and the whole nicely covered with chintz, or
indeed with calico. Chintz^ lambrequins are pretty and simple
for windows ; full curtains of buff, white, gray or pink lawn to
suit the general tone of the room are pretty, but not especially
cheap. You can make shades by stretching unbleached muslin
on a frame, rubbing evenly into it melted beeswax and rosin,
and when that is dry, putting on a coat of paint and one of var-
nish. However, the only curtain cheaper than bought shades —
and a pretty curtain it is — is made of fine unbleached, with a
binding of red or blue plain calico,- and a bias of the same an
inch wide, set one inch from the border ; these, frilled at top and
bottom, are very tasteful, cheap and durable. A very good car-
pet for a library or room not to be roughly used can be made in
this way : paste over the floor a thickness of heaviest coarse
brown paper ; when dry, paste (not glue) another layer, and so
on for three, or even four. Cover with a coat of cheap gray ©r
yellow paint. Then all around the edge, paint a heavy inch-
wide line of deep reddish brown ; match that line fifteen inches
farther in if the room is large, ten inches or a foot if of medium
size. Between these lines paint in a solid color to suit yourself
and when dry lay on it, in some other color, arabesques or
leaves. There is your border. Fill the centre in of a solid
color, say deep blue or dark green ; if you choose, you can
paint a central medallion or some corner pieces. When well
hardened, lay on a heavy coat of varnish. This carpe*: must not
be swept or washed, but carefully wiped off with a woollen cloth,
pinned over a broom. Lay mats where the heaviest wear
comes ; and if varnished once a year, or repainted where dam-
aged, it will last for years. Indeed, love and need united will
teach us very many ways of furnishing comfortably our homes
at small expense. Necessity in the Home, as elsewhere, is the
mother of invention."
466 "^^^ COMPLETE HOME.
"And how shall we keep this cosy, tasteful home when wo
get it?" asked Miss Black.
Hester, who sat by me, thinking me a little tired, said: "Let
me preface Aunt Sophronia's remarks, by giving you a quota-
tion from a French author, Sauvestre : ' I hate an aspect of dis-
order, because it indicates either a scorn of details or inaptitude
for interior life. Arranging the objects in the midst of which
we live is establishing between us and them bonds of appropri-
ateness or convenience : it is fixing habits without which man
tends toward the savage state. I should be suspicious of the
good sense and morality of people, to whom disorder costs no
vexation, or who could live at ease in Augean stables. Our
surroundings reflect more or less our interior natures. If tastes
did not betray character, they would be no longer tastes, but
merely instincts.'"
" Hester," said I, " has struck the key-note of my answer to
your last question. We shall preserve and enjoy this happy home
by good order. We must take care of our properties : worn^
out carpets, soiled and ragged table-covers, broken-springed and
dented furniture, windows mended with paper and putty, marred
walls, cracked dishes, give a forlornness to our homes. We
must ourselves be methodical, orderly, careful in our use of
things, and see to it that servants and children are so also.
" I have seen homes which children were permitted to turn
into kingdoms of misrule. I remember one such, very well
furnished to begin with : the children played with everything in
the house ; they played that the chairs were horses, cars, carts ;
these conveyances, to increase the general joy, overturned
occasionally ; as you may fancy, there was hardly a chair in the
house uncracked and undented. They took the family umbrellas
and spread them, for caves and dens of the earth, on the dining-
room floor, in their hilarity rolling over in them, and bending
the wires and ruining the handles. They took all the shawls in
HOW TO MAKE HOME HAPPY. 467
the house, pinning them together to drape the dining-room table
for a wigwam. This topsy-turvy play left neither table, nor
chair, nor rest for the sole of an adult foot. The tranquil
mother never woke up to the need of stopping it, until her
husband, cold, wet or weary, appeared at one door, and the
remonstrating maid at another, vowing that supper was being
ruined because she could get neither table nor chairs,
" If these children chose to play Chinese laundry, they tied
strings all around the bed-room, and pinned thereto every towel
in the house. Their father, come to make his toilette, stands
with face and hands dripping, finding the stand plundered of
napery, and shouts for a towel, losing his temper. The servant,
coming to set things in order, cries ' she never saw such
children,' tears down the lines, and thrusts away the towels
promiscuously : clean ones, half-folded, in the drawers, other
clean ones among the soiled clothes, dirty ones on the stands,
and for days confusion is produced thereby.
" The fashion for sofas then being a long sofa with high arms,
these children had a favorite game of sitting on the arms and
letting themselves roll violently back on the seat. Imagine the
way springs would break and covers wear out in that sport!
They draped themselves in the embroidered piano and table
covers to play charades, and tried gymnastics by jumping up
and down stairs, as hard as they could piound, over the nice
carpet.
"As you may guess, things wore out in this house. The
mother vexedly declared she had not a decent room, and could
not keep a thing in order. The children played snow-bank in
the feather-beds as soon as they were made up, and when beds
were negligently left to air until noon, they trampled the clothes
around, making tents of them. The mother desired money for
various uses : the father, an orderly man, sourly remarked ' that
there was no use of laying out money j nothing was taken care of
468 "^'^^ COMPLETE HOME.
in that house.' The bed-linen, towels and shawls were ruined
by pin holes, the furniture was worn and marred, anything was
good enough for a menagerie or a monkey-house ! Meanwhile
the children were not happiei for this license and disoidei
They missed dainty taste, and nice furnishings, and the repose cl
good management ; especially as they grew older they found
themselves dwarfed, fretted and discouraged by this lack of
order and thrift in their home.
"Contrast such a house as this with Cousin Ann's, wheie
children were taught that all things were to be put to theii
proper uses, and that the children themselves must help take
care of things. I never saw a child there making a horse of a
chair, or playing the coffee-mill was a steam-engine. Cousin
Ann knew that children liked to play horse, and each child had
a pair of knit reins, a broom handle with a famous horse's head
of cloth on it ; and Cousin Reuben sawed, hewed and painted a
grand hobby-horse, with hair ears, tail and mane, and a red
leather bridle — a hobby-horse which served each child in turn,
and has gone to a grandchild.
" The children did not play den, wigwam and cave, in the
house : they had for the house suitable plays and enjoyed them;
but I have often in fine weather seen Cousin Ann, even when
very busy, take time to teach her children how to make, in the
yard, a wigwam of branches, or of old palings, or a tent of some
discarded rug or cloth. If your neat, tasteful furnishing is to
avail you anything in making home happy, you must take cars
of it, for unthrift and disorder are the ruin of homes."
"And what," demanded Belinda, "are some of the small ways
in which, without thinking of it, we destroy home happiness ? "
" One is in lack of courtesy, in failing to use the refinement
and politeness at home which we think suitable abroad. But 1
nave talked to you a deal' on that head. Another error is lack
^punctuality. This is a serious drawback to home happiness,
UOiV TO MAKE HOME HAPPY. 469
Wid is utterly needless. We can be punctual if we make up our
tpinds to it. There should be an exact minute for ringing the
bell for each meal ; an exact minute for setting out for church ;
when we plan to go out, we should set an exact minute for
going, and we should be ready on time; we have no right to
waste other people's time; to rile their tempers; to keep affairs
<rom going smoothly by being behind-hand ; it is as easy to be
five minutes too soon, as five minutes too late ; lack of punc-
tuality is a domestic crime. I do not believe Mrs. Winton ever
kept any one waiting in her life. She exalts the social virtue of
punctuality."
" I don't think," said Grace Winton, " that mother ever did
keep any one waiting ; I thought once that she had kept me for
five minutes, but I found that my watch was wrong. Once she
hired a servant — very good, except that she was unpunctual.
Father said to her: 'My lady, you've got more than your match
in this woman ; if you get her nearer the mark than any time
within an hour, you'll work a miracle.'
" But in a month that woman was punctual to the minute.
The way mother accomplished this change was making a main
object of it. For instance, the time for dinner came ; into the
dining-room walks mother and bids the boy ring the bell.
" ' Oh, ma'am, dinner is not quite ready ! '
" ' I'm truly sorry : it ought to be ; ring the bell : it is time for
that.-
" So the bell rang ; in we all came, and solemnly waited foi
the dinner. Not a word more of reproof; that waiting was as
weighty a reproof as any words.
■' Then in her zeal the woman got the meals ready too soon,
and mother would say : ' Luke ! why is that bell ringing ? it is
ten minutes before the hour.'
" ' Please, ma'am, dinner's on the table.'
" ' Then carry it back to the kitchen ; ring the bell at the
Tiinute, and we will come.'
470 THE COMPLETE HOME.
" She never kept the meal waiting ; if the woman sent word,
'Shall I serve supper? the young gentlemen are not in yet,'
mother responded, ' Set on supper at the minute, and the young
gentlemen can take their chance.'
" Our servants soon rejoice in our household- punctuality, and
it reaches out and pervades the gentlemen's business ; they
know jusi when they shall get to their offices, and they know
just when they should leave. They arrange their work with a
view to this, and find it as easy to be on time as to be irregular,
and it is much better for health."
" Much obliged, Grace," I said ; " we will all try to profit by
that leaf from your mother's housekeeping book. Now I think
of another thing needful in making Home happy. Don't get
excited over small matters. Every one is liable to make mis-
takes,, and \s& should not treat a mistake as a capital crime.
We should not cast a gloom over the whole house because the
sugar-bowl is broken, or the butcher did not bring the beef
The broken bowl may make somebody more careful, and a little
ingenuity can compass a fine omelet folded over some minced
veal or beef, or oysters, while a half pound of cheese, cooked in
cream and crumbed crackers, will be a side-dish, and we shall
have a decent meal after all. There is no use condemning the
terrified maid who has spilled the gravy, as if she had murdered
our best grandfather ; we shall perhaps grow to be unlucky if
we always whine over our ill-luck ; let us clear up our faces and
see where the joke comes in, and mingle a little comedy with
our high tragedy, and our homes will be much the happier
for it."
"Another way to make Home happy, and a very common-
place way it is, is to have enough to eat ! "
" Yes," cried Dick ; " that's what I like — let us hear about
that."
" Give you ten minutes on that, aunt," said Hester, " and then
HOW TO MAKE HOME HAPPY. 471
it will be time for our supper, which Martha, Ann, and .Hannah
are laying out in fine style."
"A family table," I said, " should always be provided with an
ample supply of palatable, nourishing, well-cooked, and well-
served food. The expense of this food must be graduated by
the fulness of the family purse; some people can afford the first
strawberries and green peas ; can eat game and fowl when these
are dear, and can take the best cuts of beef and mutton ; they
are not obliged to be economical in providing for the table.
Other people must study the strictest economy in their family
marketing ; unless one has a hobby — as costly books, rare coins,
jewels or lace — the table is apt to absorb the greater part of the
]iving-money, and our wastings and our savings are alike most
marked in our larder. But while we undertake to economize in
our meals, we must, as an old man was wont to say, do it 'Judg-
matic ally ; ' it is no real saving to buy too little, or unwholesome
food, for what we save in this direction is likely to be taken off
by doctors' and druggists' bills. However, there are very many
cheap articles of food which are quite as nourishing and pala-
table as those which are more expensive ; if we cannot buy sirloin
roast, or the finest porter-house steak, there are on the beef nice
boiling pieces, which sell for about half the price of these choice
cuts, yet are to the full as nutritious when well cooked ; if we
put the boiling-piece into cold water, and let it boil as hard as
it can, uncovered, we shall get little in vigor or flavor for our
money; but if, tightly covered, and well seasoned, it is put into
boiling water, and then kept gently simmering for several hours,
according to its size, you have a piece of meat which is relish-
ing and wholesome the first day ; will be nice when cold, slicea
thinly and covered with salad dressing; will cook over with
vegetables into a fine Irish stew; or minced fine, with seasoning
and potatoes, and poured over toast, will make an excellent
hash. A little parsley, a lemon or two, with rice for curry, or
j72 the complete home.
mashed potatoes and sliced carrots, will afford almost endless
methods of cooking over such a bit of meat, and each time it
^^''ll be agreeable to eye and palate. Samp, hominy, cracked
wheat and cracked oats, are invaluable articles of diet, and are
all cheap and capable of being cooked in many ways. In all
Dur country districts milk is cheap, and is in itself one of our
finest articles of food. If we cannot afford preserves, jellies and
canned fruits, we shall find dried peaches, apples and black-
berries very cheap, and even more healthful.
" In order that at each meal there shall be abundance, variety
and attractiveness, and this within the scope of our means, we
must have foresight in our housekeeping, and be provided in
advance of demand. Some housekeepers never ha\'e anything
ready in advance: they are always on the eve of bankruptcy
in the larder. Now it is not only as cheap, but much cheaper,
to have things made ready in advance of need, and in large
enough quantities. If you keep plenty of bread on hand, you
have the means of making milk or butter-toast, bread-pudding,
or you can steam the bread and set it on the table as nice as
when fresh from the oven ; you can make a well-seasoned
stuffing and re-dress with it, and roast the meat left cold from
yesterday, and, ornamented with parsley and lemons, it is a dish
for a queen. If you provide little jars of jelly and marmalade,
little pots of pickles, have cheese dry ready to grate, and meat
enough for a salad, or a dish of sandwiches, you can set a
luncheon before guest, or member of your family, without con-
fusion or delay. It detracts much from the happiness of home
ro feel that the unexpected appearance or invitation of a friend
will be like a bomb-shell flung into the domestic camp. And
yet when people have never anything ready, and the entrance
of a guest means a mad chase after a Shanghai and a frantic
mixing of biscuits, welcomes can scarcely be of the most
cordial. That mother of a household is a treasure indeed, whg
ffOW TO MAKE HOME HAPPY. 473
is always able to offer a lunch to friend or family, to pack a
delectable basket for a pic-nic on an hour's notice, to prepare, in
hot haste, a tasteful luncheon for a traveller to take on boat or
cars. Speaking of luncheon, you remember somebody says that
Pitt died of not eating luncheon. Where the dinner hour is late
people should not fast from breakfast until dinner. The system
runs out of supplies and begins feeding on itself; the brain
burns up the body ; like the fires of a distressed ship, where fuel
is exhausted, it burns up cargo, and wood-work, and lining to
keep itself going, and, if the craft continues to float, it is a mere
wreck. If we have dinner at four or five o'clock, then we
should not go to bed without supper : for the fast of fourteen or
sixteen hours until breakfast is too great a tax on our vitality,
[f we play tricks on our physique, and like the man famous
among fools, try to make our working beast live on a straw a
day, we shall, like him, find the brute, dying just as the experi-
ment reaches its climax."
"And what shall this luncheon be ? " asked Mary Watkins.
" Chocolate is very nice in cold weather, and lemonade in hot
tveather, if you can afford it. Where rich milk is plenty,
nothing is more delicious than a dish of brown bread and milk,
and a plate of fresh berries. Sandwiches, either of ham, beef or
tongue, are good. A salad is always in place. A delightful
salad can be made of white lettuce, bleached turnip-tops, and
celery finely cut, and wel' -dresser^ with the salad mixture
already recommended to you. A good white soup and stale
bread make a fair lunch also. Cold chicken; biscuit sliced
thin ; plain ' training-day gingerbread ; ' a plate of thin bread
and butter to accompany a plate of sardines laid out whole
and dressed with thin rounds of lemon, or of cucumber-pickle ;
a dish of crackers, and another of mixed figs and raisins — aU
these are good for luncheon. Have little cake or pie for that
I'leal, but plenty of fruit"
474 THE COJIPLETE HOME.
"And what is reasonable for supper, if one dines at four of
five?"
"A glass of milk and some sponge-cake ; a thin slice of bread
and butter, and a baked apple ; a sandwich of grated tongue ; a
sandwich of very thin bread, buttered and seasoned ; and boiled
&^^ sliced very thin and used instead of meat. Perhaps, for
cool weather, the very best supper of all is what we borrow from
the Scotch : a dish of oatmeal porridge, eaten either with new
milk or with butter and sugar. Figs and fresh grapes are always
in order : one can hardly eat too freely of either ; and for most
people a small cup of cream and a slice of brown bread is a
treat fit for the gods."
We were now called out to a supper which was beautiful to
the eye and delectable to the taste, and very joyfully received
by the whole party. I thought my guests would, after supper,
branch out to more general subjects, and consider that they had
had instruction enough for one day. But, no; when we were
again in the parlor the insatiable James Frederick returned to
the charge, saying :
"Aunt Sophronia, you hinted that we should try to be in
order at any time to receive a friend at our table, without bein?
put to extra trouble, or begrudging the entertainment. People
also sometimes want to ask half-a-dozen friends or so to a little
dinner. Give us some hints how to do this in simple good
taste, when there is no one to prepare the feast but the lady ol
the house and an inexperienced Biddy or two. One would
not wish to make much display, nor to be in danger of being
ridiculous."
" Neatness, simplicity and hearty good-will are never ridicu-
lous," I replied; " and we must call these to our dinner-party.
In the case you suggest, I would recommend that as many of
the preparations as possible be made on the preceding day, so
that the hoste-;s will spare herself fatigue and hurry on the day
HOW TO MAKE HOME HAPPY. 475
when she must entertain her guests. Let the table-cloth be
spotlessly white, and ironed to a high polish ; ditto the napkins :
and the cloth and napkins must be ironed in folds to match,
whether straight folds, diamonds, triangles or boxes. Be careful
to stand the table straight, and lay the cloth exactly straight : a
side-table must have a smaller cloth, ironed to match. Have a
centre-piece of flowers, plain or elaborate, to suit your means and
taste ; a pair of clear glass-bowls, filled with lumps of ice, set at
matched distances, are an addition in ornament, and have the
■ advantage, thus used, that when they begin to show their melt-
ing they can be removed with some course, while if the ice is
mingled in the centre-piece, it must stay, and become sloppy.
If the table is very large, a couple of small boats of flowers can
be added where there is room. There should also be a bouquet
on the side-board. On the side-table should be placed the
plates and other dishes requisite for changing the table. Every
dish and every article of glass should be brightly polished;
the silver should shine, and everj'- shining salt-cellar should be
freshly filled and printed in a small stamp. The soup-ladle
should be placed where it is to be used : so with the fish-trowel
and the tablespoons. Accurate table-setting is needful to pre-
vent confusion, and unless the servants are skilful the mistress
of the house had better spread the table herself before she goes
to dress. Where the first course is soup, a square or oblong
piece of stale bread should be laid on the napkin at each plate,
By every plate place two forks, a knife and a spoon : where there
is soup that is first course, and nothing else should be on the
table; but remember to have your caster polished and well
filled. When the soup or other plates are removed, do not let
them be piled together, but that of each diner removed sepa-
rately on a little server. During the serving of the soup the
waitress will stand with a small server at her mistress' left hand
to take the soup to the guests. Have your side-table in order*
476 THE COMPLETE HOME.
a dish of butter neatly stamped and two goblets, with spare
nat'kins with colored borders folded in points, improve its
ap:)earance. When the fish is set on, warm plates must be laid
be'bre each guest — no one wants fish on a cold plate. A boat
of fish sauce and a dish of salad come on with the fish. Most
cooks say, no vegetables with fish ; nothing but an appropriate
sal id; but some people like potatoes with fish, and the best
rule for dinner-giving is to please your guests' taste. Therefore,
you may, if you choose, send potatoes on with fish, dressed in
this wise : pare them evenly, and soak in cold salt water for an
hour ; wipe and slice as thin as paper ; have a sauce-pan of lard
as hot as can be without burning ; drop the slices in, a handful
at a time ; skim out with a skimmer in a couple of minutes, or
as soon as you see that they are done ; sprinkle with fine salt,
and pile on a platter, whereon is a fine napkin laid diamond-wise
with corners turned in : properly cooked, these potatoes will
not grease the napkin. Around the edge of this dish should be
parsley leaves, and lemon-peel chopped fine sprinkled over the
farsley. The broiled fish is improved by slices of lemon laid
wver it. Before removing the fish, carry away the fork and trowel
on a clean plate to the side-table. After the meats come fowls
and vegetables, for which hot plates must be served round. The
table must be finally relieved of all used dishes, of casters, and
unused silver and salt-cellars. If nuts are placed on the table
with dessert, salt-cellars should be passed around to each guest,
as nuts are always unwholesome eating without salt. After this
removal of dishes the table should be brushed with a curved
crumb-brush upon a small tray, or a large plate if you have no
tray. Let there be no haste nor confusion in making the
changes ; let the host and hostess converse easily with their
guests, and show no nervousness ; if any accident occurs, the
!ess said about it the better, and restore tranquillity as soon as
possible Extra napkins and a damask towel, also a wide knife
HO IV TO MAKE HOME HAPPY. 477
and a soup-plate should be in reserve on the back of the side-
table, quickly to repair any spilling of water or gravy. When
you use finger-bowls, they, with their colored damask napkins,
should be set at each plate as soon as the cloth is brushed : it is
well to sprinkle a few drops of cologne or of patchouli upon the
water of each bowl, but never any musk, as that is very, offensive
to some people. If such a misfortune happens as that any dish
is spoiled — as a burned fowl — and cannot be brought to the
table, let the hostess give no hint of the disaster, and make no
apologies. However, if she has given to the last possible min-
ute a wary eye to her kitchen, such disasters are unlikely to
occur. I have said nothing of serving wines ; I only mention it
now to assure you that a dinner can be served in good style and
in perfectly good taste without a drop of wine, or other fermented,
malt or alcoholic liquors used in preparing it or served with it,
and I entreat you all heartily to set yourselves against the
drinking customs of society, and avoid putting on your tables
that which may be the ruin of your own households and a snare
to the soul of your neighbor."
" I'm a temperance man from this out," declared Jamps Fred-
erick.
" I'll give a dinner next week," laughed Sara ; " it looks so
easy!"
"Yes, it looks easy," cried Belinda; "but after all there is a
tremendous amount of work to be done in a well-ordered house-
hold, and how is one ever to do it?"
" I suppose that is where the good management conies in,"
said her elder sister.
" That is it exactly," I said : " good management makes all
this work move easily in its proper order; it takes away the
attrition and drag caused by disorder, people see their way
through each day, and know that for another day's work there
will be another day. Now I cut lately from a newspaper a
31
478 THE COMPLETE HOME.
paragraph by an observing correspondent, and I pasted it in my
scrap-book. Grace,,it is worthy of being well read, and there-
fore you shall read it."
I handed Grace my scrap-book, and she read as follows :
" We see so many farmers working hard from the beginning
of the year to its end, and that year after year, till life ends,
with such small results, that we do wish to impress upon the
community the true principle of economy a farmer's wife once
expressed to us in one word — calculation. We found her a
slender-looking woman, surrounded by a flock of children, and
having the care of a dairy of a dozen cows, with no Bridget to
assist her, and still everything moved on like clock-work. The
children were tidy, the house neat, the cooking nice, and the
butter of gilt-edged quality. We watched her to study the
secret of her economical management. She never seemed to be
in a hurry, certainly never in a fret, but went from one thing to
another as calmly and pleasantly as the butterfly goes from one
^ower to another. We noticed that she had every convenience
for her work. Water flowed constantly in her kitchen and
dairy-room, and her churning was done by dog-power. We
A^ere satisfied, however, that the secret of her efficiency was not
in churns, dogs, water, nor any other conveniences for labor,
and we finally asked, ' How do you accomplish all your work
with such apparent ease ? ' With a toss of her bead and a
pleasant smile she replied, ' By calculation. Before I go to bed
I set my table and make all arrangements for breakfast. Before
I get up in the morning I think over the labors of the day, and
plan everything out, assigning each duty its time, and when
the time comes I attend to the duty — and now the time has
come for me to skim my milk ; so please excuse me.' Upon this
she bowed herself out with the grace of a queen. We could not
help thinking, happy is the farmer that has such a help-meet."
After a little discussion of the theme of good management in
domestic work. Grace said:
ffOW TO MAJTE HOME HAPPY. 479
" H,ow time flies, and there are dozens of things which I
wanted to ask Aunt Sophronia to give us a few suggestions
about. There are so many little ways of adding to the hap
piness of home."
" Yes," said Ned Burr, " and one of my favorite ways i
keeping house-plants. I dote on them. They make a hous
twice as handsome, and there is always something fresh, curiou*
and interesting in them to look at. I mean to have plenty of
them in my house. What say you about them, ladies ? "
" Some people have the knack of keeping them, and have
splendid luck with them," said Miss Black ; " but as sure as I
try to have any, they die of a hundred diseases unknown before,
somebody runs into my stand and knocks it over, or a terrific
freeze reduces them all to black stalks."
" Diseases are often occasioned," replied Ned Burr, " by the
green plant-fly which sucks out their juice, or by worms in the
pot. For the fly, soapsuds or weak tobacco water syringed
over the plants, or washing leaves and stems in ammonia water
with a camel's-hair brush will be a means of riddance ; for
worms in the pot, wet with weak lime water ; the red spider is
a vile plague, but a shower-bath and moist air will settle him.
If your flowers mould or mildew, blow a little sulphur powder
on them through a quill."
" Some plants fall ill," said Sarah, " from too dry air ; a pan
of water should stand on the stove, or a wet towel should be
hung over the register to moisten the air. Sometimes the fee-
bleness of the plant is caused by lack of nourishment : ammonia
water supplies this ; at other times the earth gets packed too
closely in the pot, and no air meets the roots : it is well to stir
the earth lightly with a fork. Each pot should have drainage,
and flowers should not be kept too wet, especially in cold
weather, for it causes them then to frost more easily. We
should remember the ways of nature: leaves and stems are
480 THE COMPLETE HOME.
wet and washed by the summer shower, and often a spaking
rain penetrates even to the lowest roots and ' fills all their veins
with coolness ; ' but the earth is not all the time sodden on the
surface. Plants need fresh air several times a week : if the sun is
shining and the temperature is not too low, open the window
upon them and let them breathe ; give them sun according to
their kind. If they get frost-nipped, set them in a dark place
and shower them daily with cold water, gradually raising their
temperature. When the plant promises to bloom too early, nip
out the flower bud. When a branch or leaf cluster puts out in
an ungainly place, nip it off Sometimes when the plant is
sickly, a close pruning and removing it to another pot will help
it. Pick off dead leaves : do not let them exhaust the plant by
hanging on half-withered. If plants are to add to the happiness
of home, let the home have a share in them : let the children
own some and cultivate them, let them be used to decorate the
table, and to send to the poor or tlie sick. The plants will look
better for all the good they can be made to do. Let each
member of the family have his favorite flowers ; some prefer one
kind, some another. Plants should be on a strong stand that
cannot be readily knocked over, and which is on casters so that
it can be moved occasionally in cleaning the room."
" Speaking of house-plants, and of their care in winter," said
Hester, " reminds me of that long, cold season when the day.
light flies early. If home is to be happy, we must have some
entertainment for these long evenings. Even where the family
are engaged in study, there are some free evenings, and an hou^
or so each evening to spare. A home is not fulfilling its mission
where the family must go abroad to find all their entertainment."
" That is true," I responded ; " and first, one thinks of music
as a family entertainment. Where young people have musical
taste, and . can sing and play together, and are able to have
two or three instruments, as piano, organ, flute, violin or guitar,
J/0 IV TO MAKE HOME HAPPY. 45I
rfiey will pass many hours in innocent happiness, entertainiag
themselves, and pleasing the friends who come in. Another
very charming accomplishment — one, indeed, which has no
superior — is that of reading aloud well.. As some families are
all good musicians, so there are some who are all good readers ;
in either case the faculty should be sedulously cultivated. Some
families are happy in possessing both readers and musicians.
By good reading I do not mean loud, excited, tragical tones —
these often strain and weary the hearer ; but good reading seizes
the spirit of the piece read, understands its heart meaning, and
through the ear translates it to the listener's heart. It gives the
fun, the pathos, the excitement, wonder, logic, or confusion and
quaint turn, which were in the author's mind.
" In good reading there is nothing mechanical. It is not
droning over a certain set of sounds, which mean nothing to the
heart of the reader, and, consequently, not to that of the hearer. .
The reader must be in a certain sympathy with what he reads,
and by some subtle magnetism he will compel the sympathy of
his listener. This is an accomplishment which seems to be
always in place. There are in many households some whose
eyes will not permit them to read much for themselves ; or
there are some who can illy spare time to read. The busy
mother finds herself in a strait betwixt two : she wishes to read
and enjoy the last book, or to take the paper and find out what
is going on in the world ; but she has the family mending to do.
How much more swiftly will her needle fly through rents and
darns when a good reader is filling her ear with sweet sounds
and fascinating descriptions, adding to the ' charm of the poet,
the music of the voice.' By reading, many can be gratified at
once. Little children are generally fascinated by the reading
even of things which they do not understand, and there is no
finer and surer way to develop mind than this. Young people
may be led, by the charm of being read to, to follow such works
482 THE COMPLETE HOME.
as Bancroft, Motley, Macaulay, Rawlinson, and other weighty
writers. The siclc, unless they are very siclt, find the hours of
illness beguiled of their tedium by a good reader. He who
reads well can bring in their full impressiveness to the invalid's
ear some suitable passages of Scripture. Nothing more culti-
vates good taste, intelligence and family affection, than this
accomplishment. Be sure, then, and all learn to read well
aloud."
"And," said Miriam, " next to the art of reading well, let us
set the art of telling a story well. What can make the family
table more genial, than to have some one tell, really well, an
appropriate and not too long story? It persuades the mind
from care, and awakens that jolly laughter which promotes
digestion. No art is more needful to a mother than this of
story-telling. It charms away the pain of a sick child ; dis-
sipates a fit of sulks, or a quarrel, as the sun pwts to flight a
cloud ; while children's minds seize best the moral lesson con-
tained in a short story. We have in the Parables an example of
conveying teaching in a tale."
" I never could tell a story well," said Helen. " I begin,
' Well, once upon a time,' but I come to the end of everything
almost immediately. The middle of my narrative is exactly
like the beginning, and the end is just like the middle, while all
the parts are as near each other as peas in a pod. My story is
just like that horrible thing they used to torment me with when
\ was little :
" ' I'll tell you a story of old Mother Gorey, and now my story's begun i
I'll tell you another, about her brother, and now my story's done.' "
We all laughed at Helen's description of her truly Arabian
powers ; but Hester said, briskly :
"You can tell a story well if you only think you can, Helen.
You have made a very nice little story of your trials in this line.
Forget that it is a story that you are telling ; put out of your
ffOW TO MAKE HOME HAPPY. 485
mind everything but what you are talking about. When you
read, or hear a nice thing, go over it in your mind several times
thinking how best to tell it. Tale-telling is an art worthy of
cultivation. A good story-teller is a good talker, and a good
talker is always welcome. Like a new Curtius, he throws him-
self into the awful chasm which will open in the midst of con-
versations, and so rescues, if not his country, the company."
" If it is lawful to compare small things to great ; as said the
shepherd, talking of great Rome and Mantua," said Ned Burr.
And as it was now quite late my merry guests departed,
declaring that the evening had been as profitable as it had beea
pleasant
CHAPTER XX.
ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HOMES.
|UR last Christmas week proved a very agreeable and
instructive occasion to many in our village. We re-
ceived a great deal of information about the Homes of
Other Days. It happened that at a church sociable,
held about the middle of December, Mr. Winton made some
remarks about Christmas as peculiarly a home festival ; not only
is it the festival which with gifts and games seems especially
dear to children, and most warmly celebrated in homes where
there are young people, but it commemorates the birth of the
Christ Child, the setting up of the family of Joseph and Mary,
the coming near to men of God as a Father, and Christ as an
elder Brother. This led to some talk about the various lands
where Christmas is celebrated, and about the various centuries
in which this holiday has been observed, and so on to talk of
Homes in different ages.
I think it v/as Hester who finally proposed that Christmas
week should by us be dedicated to a set of sociables at various
houses, whereat our host should tell us whatever was possible
of some ancient fashion of home, using whatever illustrations
of picture or relic might be convenient.
" The first of these homes which we discuss," said Mr. Burr,
" must be the patriarchal, and I propose that we hold our first ,
meeting at the parsonage, and our minister shall tell us what he
knows of man's earliest home-life."
" It is probable," said our minister, when we were all seated
(484)
ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HOMES. 485
in his parlor at our first Christmas sociable, " that the domestic
life of Terah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was very much like
that led by the patriarchs before the flood. We must remember,
first, that the very long lives of men in those days would be
likely to advance rapidly art and invention, and we must not
look upon these early fathers of our race as living in a gross or
barbaric state, but surrounded by the simple comforts of life ;
and next we must remember, that while these patriarchs lived
a wandering life in tents, continuing probably much of the
manner of living of the Antediluvians, in Chaldea, and Egypt,
and possibly in other countries, men were- living in cities,
raising great buildings, tombs, palaces and temples ; were going
to war, and devoting themselves to manufactures, and agri-
culture, and all the arts of life. But the tent-life of the
patriarch is our earliest model of the Home. Before the Flood
the children of Seth most likely abode in the territory called
the Land of Eden, and worshipped God before the fiery presence,
or Shekinah, which kept the gate of Eden. After the Flood
we find the patriarchs building an altar for worship and sacrifice
wherever they made a stay of a few months. The chief prop-
erty of the patriarchs consisted of flocks, and herds, and droves
of camels, and asses. The enumeration of Job's wealth gives
us an idea of these possessions of an eastern rich man. These
required a vast number of servants to attend them. ' Servants
born in the house' represent master and dependents clinging
together for generations. If the master were childless, the chief
of his servants was likely to become his heir. The master of
the family was both its king and priest: he administered the
Jaws and offered sacrifices. Chief over the servants stood the
steward, who was to his master a faithful, confidential friend,
as Eliezer to Abraham, given even such business as selecting a
wife for his master's son. The extent of the family retinue may
be guessed from the fact that Abraham could arm three hundred
i86 THE COMPLETE HOME.
men from his own trained servants. Such an immense estab-
lishment moved slowly through a country. The choice of a
resting-place depended on certain natural advantages : a grove
for shade, near lying pasture and water. Finding these, the
tents were pitched, an altar built, a well or two dug, and the
servants, with the different flocks and herds, scattered themselves
in suitable locations at greater or less distance. So Job's flocks
and herds were stationed over a large extent of country, and
Jacob's sons removed with their flocks to a distance of several
days' journey. On the line of march the camels and asses
were laden with the tents and furniture ; the women and
children sometimes rode and sometimes walked, and the pace
suited the needs of the flocks and herds accompanied by their
young."
" It seems," said Mr. Nugent, " that I now get a clear view of
su':h a cavalcade moving slowly through the land ; and now that
they have found a grove like that of oaks at Mamre, how does
their encampment look ? "
" Their tents," said our minister, resuming his theme, " were
of skins, or of cloth of woven hair. The coarse black hair of
the camel made a dark tent, referred to in the expression,
' black as the tents of Kedar.' These tents were supported by
poles. The master and mistress had large ones ; the servants
smaller, according to their position. Often in summer the ser-
vants, especially the flock-tenders, slept in the open air, or in
booths made of branches. The tents are pitched in a circle
generally, and if the camping is for a long period, a light watch-
tower is erected a short distance ofi". The patriarch had a tent
for himself; his wife had her own, where her younger children
remained with her ; a tent was often reserved for the reception
of guests ; the principal women-servants had their tent ; the
grown sons had theirs, and as the sons took wives, new tents
were added to the camp. The large tents were divided by
ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HOMES. 487
curtains into three apartments. The furniture was simple : mats
and rugs, pillows and coverlets, in use at night, were piled up
by day for seats; the camels' furniture also served as seats,
Hand-mills for grinding wheat, bottles of leather, pots and
basins, a portable oven, and flat plates or trays of metal, were
among the principal belongings, with cups, pitchers, and knives.
People generally ate from a large common dish, using their
hands or a cake of bread to dip up their food; hence, fre-
quent washings of the hands."
"And," I asked, " what were the occupations of these fam-
ilies ? "
" Many of the servants, also the sons of the family, led out
the flocks to pasture, and guarded them night and day. The
steward oversaw this work, and morning and evening ' told ' or
counted the flocks. Some members of the family hunted,
bringing in game for food. This was Esau's favorite occupa-
tion. Sometimes the nomades remained long enough in a
locality to raise a crop of grain, or harvest fruit, or gather a
vintage, drying grapes and dates, and making wine. The
women spun and wove the garments for the family and the
curtains of the tents. The men made sandals and camels'
furniture, and dressed skins. When guests came, the master
and mistress showed their hospitality by themselves serving
them, preparing food and so forth, instead of delegating these
offices to servants. Their principal diversions were in music,
having a number of simple instruments, usually accompanied
by the voice ; also the telling of stories and reciting of poems :
these are yet the chief diversions of Oriental lands. Writing
was practised, and astronomy was a favorite study."
"And what about their dress ? " demanded Helen.
"Travelling caravans supplied them with the fine linen of
Egypt, and the dyed stuffs of Phoenicia, and the splendid cloths
of the Assyrians and Chaldeans. The women spun, wove and
488 THE COMPLETE HOME.
sewed. The veil was a customary and often elaborate article.
Jewels, as rings, bracelets, anklets, head-tires and necklaces,
wore purchased from caravans, and much property was invested
in these and in mirrors of polished metal. They also wore
elaborate embroideries. Perfumes were in constant use, and
much time was occupied in preparing them. The staff, the seal
and the amulet were choice personal possessions. Combs and
pins of metal, highly ornamented, were also among their treas-
ures. Scarlet and white were the choice hues; black and deep
brown belonged to servants and to mourning."
"And what were the chief articles of food?" asked Miriam.
"Vegetables, especially varieties of beans and melons; fruit,
the fig, date, grape and olive being chief; wheaten cakes, olive
oil and honey ; milk, cheese and curds ; fish, when obtainable ;
locusts, game, birds, and the flesh of goats, sheep, and kine,
but flesh was sparingly used. The killing of an animal for food
was regarded in a half sacrificial light. The animal was chosen
and killed by the patriarch himself, and the blood was poured
out in sacrifice. The wife, even though a chief princess,
esteemed it her proper duty to prepare the food, leaving but
minor parts of this work to her attendant maids. .Water, milk,
the juice of dates, and a sour thin wine of grapes afforded their
drink. Sweetmeats of fruit and honey were in use."
" Hospitality was freely exercised, I think," said John Roche-
ford.
" Yes, the orientals were always noted for this : a guest was
always in some sort an angel unawares, breaking the monotony
of their lives. They had also family feasts and festivals, as on
the naming or weaning of a child, or his coming to man's
estate."
After this information given by our pastor, we spent the
remainder of the evening in general discussion of the theme,
and appointed our next meeting at Hester's, where she and
ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HOMES. 4g9
Doctor Nligent must be prepared to expound to us the Classic
Home. We expected something rather nice at Hester's, because
there they have plenty of money, and their house is full of
curiosities and antiquities, while we knew their hearts were set
on entertaining us as well as possible! We were not disap-
pointed. We were received in the front parlor, and when the
hour for the Home discussion came, the folding doors were drawn
back, and we found hung across the whole width of the back
parlor a large painted canvas, representing the interior of a
Classic H/3me. Before this picture stood a low table with various
curiosities piled upon it. Doctor Nugent began the discussion.
" We hjive concluded to discuss, under the head of the Classic
Home, both the homes of. Greece and Italy, without dividing
between them; especially as in an evening like this, one can only
describe chief points without going into particulars. The pic-
ture which we have here represents the restoration of one of the
homes in Pompeii, and from it we gather a general idea of the
home of z, rich citizen of Greece or Rome about the time of
Christ. In Rome, the home of the Empress Livia has been
found find laid open; also, in Greece, we have found the remains
of both palaces and private homes, and we find the same general
plan in all. Observe that the rooms are small, the ceilings are
low, the walls are painted in brilliant hues — orange, scarlet and
blue being favorite; and pictures are not framed and hung on
the wall as with us, but painted upon it. The chief floors are
mosaiced — that is, made of small cubes of stones of various
colors, bedded solidly in mortar to form a pattern as a border,
corner arabesques, and a centre-piece, as a pair of doves, a dog,
a group of figures, or flowers. These rooms enter upon a
central court, open to the sky, but screened by a pavilion from
the sun. Here plays a fountain, the delight of the whole
family ; here vines grow, and jars of plants are in bloom. The
floor of the court is in mosaic; around the sides and around
490 THE COMPLETE HOME.
the fountain are seats or divans in marble or stone ; the ancients
delighted in statuary, and choice works of art are placed in the
court or in the rooms opening from it. These were supposed to
create beauty of body and mind in the beholders."
" I observe," said Mrs. Winton, " that these rooms have not
doors, but draperies hanging from their door-posts."
' Yes," said Doctor Nugent, " and notice the elegance of the
effect. Thf.se walls are of white marble, or the pillars are of
polished jJ'one or carved wood. Here hang these heavy cur-
tains in blue, purple or scarlet, with gold embroideries or deep
fringes : they can be dropped for privacy or looped back, throw
ing the whole house into one apartment. For windows we have
only these smnll, high-up, latticed openings; for fires the bra-
zier full of glowing coals ; or possibly some of the apartments
have a raised floor under which beat is introduced, and that is
called the liypocMist — a Greek word meaning a fire beneath. I
wish to say that the Classic Home carefully attended to three
important points : heat, drainage and baths. The drains were
supplied with metal or clay-pipes running to the cloaccs or
drains of the city ; the houses also had deep, covered rubbish
pits, and water was freely introduced. When one looks at frag-
ments of ancient plumbing, one wonders at so small present
advance in the plumber's art. The bath-rooms had tubs, seats
around the sides and gayly painted walls. The beauty of the
painted and frescoed walls, the elegance lent by open jars oi
vases of perfume, the presence of elegant statuary and the abun-
dant use of flowers gave these homes a marvellous grace and
refinement, and we do not wonder that they produced painters,,
poets, sculptors, orators. Notice also that the Classic Home is
a religious Home in its way : the fire on the hearth-stone is
sacred to the household lares, or hearth-gods ; this shrine with
images is the place of the penates, or household divinities, and
here they offer flowers, incense and prayers. In this corner of
ANCIENT AND MEDIMVAL HOMES. 491
the largest room you see a carved wooden chest, something like
■1 little wardrobe : that is the family book-case. In that are
kept the precious parchment books, rolled and tied, wrapped in
silk,- and scattered with perfumes. Books were not then given
to children to tear up: books were venerated and treasured, and
were choice heirlooms. Here is something else which was an
heirloom: this elegant vase and bowl of Samian ware: these
and crystal goblets were choice treasures. We are told of one
Roman noble who condemned a slave-boy to be eaten alive by
carp, because at a feast he bi'oke a crystal goblet. The emperor,
who was present, for his cruelty, freed the slave, and ordered
all this master's goblets to be broken."
" I should like," said Mrs. Winton, " to hear something of
these slaves."
" They were," said Doctor Nugent, " both captives taken in war
and slaves born in the house. Power of life, death and torture
lay in the hands of the masters, and often this power cruelly ex-
ercised, so that this slavery was often a terrible thing. Another
view of it is, that slaves being made free could take any rank in
society to which they had genius to attain, and reached often
very lofty positions, being friends of emperors and nobles. They
were adopted and made heirs by childless masters ; they were
often educated to be the family schoolmasters or tutors. The
famous philosopher Epictetus was a slave. They were often the
scribes and readers of the family ; if the master were too lazy to
learn his letters, he had his slave learn in his place. Many of
these slaves were artists and artificers."
" Let us hear something about dress and social customs,"
said Mrs. Burr.
" That is Mrs. Nugent's part of the discussion," said the Doc-
tor ; and pulling a cord, he let down over the large canvas of
the home three smaller ones — the picture of a Roman woman,
one of a young boy, and a central picture of a dining-hall, with
guests seated at a supper.
492 THE COMPLETE HOME.
We all considered the dress very beautiful : it was a white
robe, with wide sleeves falling back from the middle of the arm;
the skirt hanging in easy folds to the ankle, and showing the
ornamented sandal ; at the hem of the dress, and at the waist, a
band of purple indicated the wearer's noble blood ; the hair, not
frizzed and twisted out of shape, but gathered up into a loose
knot, following the contour of the head, was held in place by a
large ornamental pin, and by a narrow fillet of gold, passing
about the head. The fillet was not the only jewel, for she had
rings, bracelets and a chain ; also a mirror at her girdle. The
lad was represented as crowned with a garland, and going to a
feast, having just assumed his toga virilis, or man's dress. The
picture of the table next attracted us.
Said Hester: "This table occupied three sides of a square;
the fourth was left open so that the servants could freely enter
to wait on guests. The host and his family occupied the places
on the lowest or left-hand sofa or couch — all reclining on one
arm at the meal. The place of honor was the lowest on the
middle couch. Guests were sprinkled with perfumes : it was the
custom for the servants to pour perfumed water from urns over
the hands held above a basin, and towels ' with a soft nap ' were
then offered for wiping them. The guests wore garlands of
flowers — myrtle, parsley and olive were favorites at feasts,
Songs and conversation enlivened the progress of the feast; a
deal of wine was used, and the feasting was carried through
many courses and several hours. Fruits, flesh, vegetables,
sweetmeats of all kinds loaded the tables. Fortunes were spent
upon a single meal, and such dishes as peacocks' brains and
nightingales' tongues were used for their costliness rather than
for their flavor. Honey, used alone or made into cakes, was
much prized. The slaves cooked and served the meal, entering
in a long procession, bearing the dishes. These slaves waited
on the table with their tunics kilted up out of the way, and
ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL HOMES. 493
Horace ridicules a man who, to be fashionable, has his slaves
bind their robes very high."
"And did they use cooking utensils like ours, and dishes like
ours?" asked Mary Watkins.
" They had tripods or square frames .or holding pots over a
fire ; they used ladles, skimmers., with draining holes in them
knives, long flesh-hooks, spits for roasting; a mill for grinding,
this mill being made of two stones, with a handle in the upper
one, and a groove out of which the flour may run ; they used
mortars for pounding fruit and spices; chopping bowls also.
They had bowls, goblets, platters, deep dishes, from which
several ate at once ; pitchers, usually of elegant shape ; also
baskets for bread and cakes. They had table-cloths, and nap-
kins for the hands. All household utensils, clothes, draperies,
couches, bed furniture, chairs and foot-stools were expected to
last longer than with us ; they were handed down from father to
son ; much property was invested in elegant jewels and in choice
robes. This properi.' was cared for by the head slaves."
"And what was the family life of these people ? " asked Cousin
Ann.
"The young children remained in the care of their mothers;
at eight or nine the boys began to go to school, when a slave,
called a pedagogue, followed them to and from their master,
carrying their books and guarding them. Girls also learned
reading, writing and music, but were more usually instructed at
'home; they were also adepts in weaving, spinning and embroid
ery. Mothers seem to have had a large influence over their
sons. These Roman and Greek ladies were generally much
devoted to their religion; were deeply attached to their children,
and looked well to the ways of their households; they were
often very cruel to their slaves, and this indulgence in bad pas-
sions hardened their whole natures, so that often deformed or
*eeble children were deliberately cast out at their birth to die ;
3^
494 THE COMPLETE HOME.
or, if more children came into the family than the family prop-
erty would be likely to endow, these were cast out to perish, or
be picked up by strangers. Daughters were often dedicated
from infancy to be priestesses at shrines, especially to those of
Vesta and Diana. Vestal priestesses had high honors."
"What were the holiday amusements of these families?"
inquired Belinda Black.
" The theatre, where plays or poems were recited or sung in
the open air, was a favorite resort; gladiatorial games; triumphal
processions ; beast fights ; shows given by candidates for political
honors, or by the emperors ; the singing or reciting of long
poems — all these called out the people by thousands. The Col-
osseum was a magnificent circular building many stories high,
dedicated entirely to such displays. They also loved gardens
and rural festas ; had many supper parties ; entertained their
callers with refreshments, and with exhibiting their jewelry, and
the rich garments brought from foreign lands."
" Were they not very extravagant an^'. luxurious ? " asked
Grace.
'■ They became so by degrees as they grew rich and powerful;
they then indulged madly in gaming, drinking and feasting ; the
softness and effeminacy of manner that was once despised be-
.came the prevailing style. Immediately the nation began to
■weaken; their poets sang no more of gods and heroes, but of
I lovers and of wine ; their reverence for their gods perished ; they
: grew too lazy to labor, too weak to fight ; corruption, bribery
and murder became common, and these niighty nations fell be-
:fore the strong barbarians of the North."
"And," said Doctor Nugent, "it is the home of these Northern
t barbarians, our ancestors, the home of Celt, Saxon and Norman,
at which we must next look. Mrs. Burr, we go to you at our
■next meeting to hear about the Celt."
We now had opportunity to examine the curiosities on the
•table. Belinda Black picked up a little glass vial.
ANCIENT AND MEDIMVAL HOMES. 495
" What is this ? " she cried ; " a perfume-bottle ? "
" No," said Mrs. Winton ; " that is a lachrymal or tear-bottle,
where mourners were supposed to treasure up their tears as
memorials of their woe. You remember the verse in the
Psalms : ' Thou puttest all my tears into thy bottle ? ' These
lachrymals wet;e often buried with their dead."
"And what is this largest piece in the centre ? — it looks sortie^
thing like a marble soup-tureen," cried Dick.
" That is another funereal relic," said Doctor Nugent ; " that
is an urn for the ashes of the dead. After the body was burned
the ashes were quenched in wine and gathered into an urn. The
body was burned with treasures and spices."
A number of Roman coins, medals, rings and amulets were
also on the table. We especially admired two lamps: swan-
shaped bowls, with fanciful recurved heads, which served for a
handle, were to be filled with oil, and in this ^ wick floated ; we
thought, however, they would be but a poor substitute for our
present lamps, to say nothing of gas. There was also a beauti-
ful wide, flat bowl, ornamented with winged heads and wreaths
of olive, which Doctor Nugent said was a bronze patera, from
which priests poured libations of oil, wine or milk, in o^ering to
the gods. A drinking-cup, shaped like a horn, some combs
and a little metal hand-mirror completed the collection.
" Now," said Grace Winton, when we had gathered at Mrs
Burr's, "we shall hear how our great-great-greatest grand-
fathers, the Celts, lived and behaved themselves."
"They must have been horrible beings," said Miss Black.
"I read that they went without clothes, painted themselves
blue, and ate people ! Is that true, Mrs. Burr ? "
"Doubtless," said Mrs. Burr, "the barbarism of the early
Celts has been exaggerated for the sake of magnifying the
races which came after them. The Celts in a full dress of blus
496 TBE COMPLETE HOME.
paint must have been either the representatives of the very
lowest tribes, or Celts decorated for war in a style to horrify
their enemies, just as Indians paint themselves for battle.
Probably the Celts of Ireland, in some tribes and instances, did
eat men under an idea of vengeance, or to increase, as it was
fancied, their bravery. The Celts were very brave, hardy in
body, strong of mind, and with a fine capacity for education.
When religion and education were introduced into Ireland, the
Celts of that "country soon became the saints and teachers of
the world. The Celts were religious in their natures : their
ideas of God, the soul and the future were vague but sublime ;
they had none of the trifling prettiness of the classic mythology.
Wisdom they reverenced greatly. Their most promising youths
were sent to school to the Druids to learn to become priests :
they sometimes spent twenty years in their education. This
time was employed by them in committing runes and hymns.
The Celtic women were strong in body and fierce in spirit; they
frequently went to war with the men ; they also loved the chase.
The weapons of the Celts were of stone and bronze."
'' What kind of places of worship did they have ? " asked
Helen.
" Great circles of stone, open to the sky, with an altar in the
centre ; on this altar they often sacrificed human victims."
"And what kind of houses did they have — are any left?"
" Three or four remnants of such houses exist : some on the
shore of the Irish Sea, one or two in Scotland. These are
beehive huts, with low, circular stone walls; they were about
fifteen feet in diameter, and possibly as many high in the
centre — no fires, no separate rooms. The fire was out of doors,
a great bonfire in the centre of the hut circle, where they
roasted their meat on spits before the fire, or making a great
hole, lined it with red-hot stones, and putting a whole boar
therein covered it with cinders and hot ashes, and so baked it"
AA\IZ.\'T AND MEDIEVAL HOMES. 497
" Then, did they never boil food ? " asked Mary Watkihs.
" Yes ; they had clay-pots which they set in hot ashes, and
made the water boil by dropping in red-hot stones."
"A fine way to boil potatoes ! " cried Belinda Black.
"They had no potatoes, for they have been but lately
discovered and cultivated. They had beans, and they ground
meal in a quern, such as our minister described to you as a mill
in patriarchal times. What a trouble it was to strike a fire,
when there were no matches, and flints must be struck together^
or sticks rubbed on each other to elicit the wonderful spark !
Furnished with clubs and with rude knives of flint, these Celts
killed and flayed elks, oxen, bears and wolves ; they dug caves
for store-houses or habitations, cut down trees, cut up peat for
fuel, and managed to scrape the surface of the ground, and sow
a little grain. They dressed skins and made rude cloth for
clothing; they made nets, and in boats of ox-hide stretched
on a wicker frame they went out fishing ; they made baskets
of osier and willows, caught birds in traps, or shot them with
arrows or with stones. In such rude homes the feeble soon
died, the strong only survived. At mid-winter they kept a
feast in honor of the northern gods. They boiled ducks, as I
told you, by red-hot stones ; hung the haunches of elks on sticks
before the fire; the women made cakes by pounding up grain
and spreading the wet meal on stones before the fire to dry into
bread. The fortunate hunters put over their doorways the horns
of an ox, sometimes eleven feet across : these were their
trophies. They made for their children bows, clubs, tiny hide-
boats, and knives of bone. They sang songs of battle, and of
the fierce gods of the North-land. When wild beasts attacked
them they fought them like beasts also, and the best hunter was
the best man."
"And how did these people bury their dead ? " asked Miriam.
" In barrows or mounds. With the dead body they put food,
498 THE COMPLETE HOME.
weapons, household utensils. Many of these barrows yet exist
A rude people, indeed, yet with, the elements of grand civil-
ization in them. Many of the Celtic tongues still remain, and
some of their runes and songs are very lofty and poetic. The
introduction of the Roman civilization, then of Christianity, the
mingling, first, with the strong Saxon, then with the more
polished Norman, have all contributed to change this furious
hunter-Celt, of the beehive hut, into the gentleman and scholar."
"Mrs. Burr showed us some portfolios of pictures which she
had made of Celtic relics : among these a hut, a barrow, a
cromlech or place of worship, some weapons, knives, a hand-
mill, a hand-made clay-pot, some water-jars and cups ; copies
from English books, or from articles in various museums."
Our next gathering was at Mrs. Winton's, and as the Saxons
succeeded the Celts in the British Islands, and were also in the
line of our ancestors, we were to hear next about them. Mr.
Winton 
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