for everybody. If he cannot,--if he is too weary with his day's work for early rising, or if the mother is disturbed with her baby in the night,--if neither parent can be early in the morning, then let it not be insisted on that the children shall be so. It is a less evil that they should forego all the advantages of early rising than that any contest on the subject should take place between them and their parents.
I have seen cases where the parents could not, or did not, appear till nine o'clock or later, but yet made it a point of conscience with the children to be early;--with the most disastrous effect. The children were conscientious, and they did try. When they now and then succeeded, they were satisfied and triumphant, and thought they should never fail again. But the indolence of the growing season of life was upon them: and there was the languor of waiting for breakfast. In the summer mornings, they were chilly and languid over their books; and in the winter, the fire made them sleepy. They grew later and later; they were rebuked, remonstrated with,--even warned against following the example of their parents: but they sank deeper into indolence. At last, the suffering of conscience became so great that it was thrown off by a most audacious effort. I happened to be a witness to the incident; and I have never lost the impression of it. The two girls were only half-dressed at half-past eight. They heard their mother's door open, and looked at each other. She came (herself only half-dressed) to say that she had been defied long enough, and she _would_ be obeyed. She slapped them heartily. As she shut the door, the younger sister, all horror and dismay, stole a look at the elder. The elder laughed; and the younger was evidently delighted to join. I saw, on the instant, that it was all over with the mother's authority. The spirit of defiance had risen, and burst the bonds of conscience. Late rising,--the very latest,--curse as it is,--is better than this. What a struggle is saved in such cases--what a cost of energy, and health, and conscience, by a complete establishment of good habits, through the example of the parents! If the father be but happy enough to be able to take out his little troop into the fields, or merely for a stretch along the high road, in the freshness of the morning, what a gain there is on every hand! He has the best of their affections, if he can make himself their companion at this most cheery hour of the day; and they will owe to him a habit which not only enhances the enjoyment of life, but positively lengthens its duration. Then, after their walk of a mile or two, they find mother and breakfast awaiting them at home,--the house in order and already aired; and everything ready for business when the morning meal is done. They are in the heart of their work, whatever it be, when their neighbours are opening their chamber doors. In London, I am aware, one meets with the plea, in every case, that early rising is impossible, on account of the lateness of the hours of everybody else. I only know that when I lived in lodgings in London, I used to boil my coffee on the table at seven o'clock,--giving no trouble to servants,--and that I used to think it pleasant to have my pen in hand at half-past seven,--the windows open to the fresh watered streets, and shaded with summer blinds, and the flower-girls stationing themselves below,--their gay baskets of roses still wet with dew. I think London streets pleasanter in the dawn than at any other time. In country towns, I know that families can and do keep early hours, without any real difficulty: and in the country, everybody can do as he pleases. I need not say that growing children must have their breakfast before they feel any exhaustion for want of it. I do not understand the old-fashioned method of early rising;--working hard for three or four hours before eating anything at all. If adults can bear this, it is certain that children cannot. I may mention here that a prime means of health for persons of all ages is to drink abundance of cold water on rising, and during the vigorous exercise of the early morning. This morning regimen, if universally adopted, would save the doctors of our island half their work.
There is no part of the personal habits of children more important than that which relates to their eating. We must remember how vivid the pleasures of the senses are to children,--how strong their desire of every kind of gratification,--and how small their store, as yet, of those intellectual and moral resources which make grown people careless of the pleasures of sense. If we look back to our own childhood, and remember our intense pleasure in looking at brilliant colours, and at hearing sweet sounds, unconnected with words and ideas,--such as the chords of an Eolian harp,--and the thrill of pleasure we had at the sight of a favourite dish upon the table, we shall be aware that, however ridiculous such emotions appear to us now, they are realities which must be taken into account in dealing with children.--The object is so to feed children as to give them the greatest amount of relish which consists with their health of body and mind. If their appetites are not considered enough, they will suffer in body; if too much, they will suffer infinitely more in mind. I have seen both extremes; and I must say, I think the consequences so important as to deserve more consideration than the subject usually meets with.
In one large family which I had for some time the opportunity of observing, there was a pretty strict discipline kept up throughout, with excellent effect on the whole; but in some respects it was carried too far. Some of the children were delicate, particularly in stomach; and the intention of the parents was that this should be got over, as better for the children than yielding to it. Three or four of the children throve well on the basin of bread and milk, which was the breakfast of them all: but there was one little girl who never could digest milk well; and the suffering of that child was evident enough. She did not particularly dislike milk; and she never asked for any thing else. That would have been, in her eyes, a piece of shocking audacity. She had a great reverence for rules; and she seemed never to dream of any rule being set aside for her sake, however hardly it might bear upon her. So she went on for years having the feeling of a heavy lump in her throat for the whole of every morning,--sometimes choking with it, and sometimes stealing out into the yard to vomit; and, worse than the lump in the throat, she had depression of spirits for the first half of every day, which much injured the action of her mind at her lessons, and was too much for her temper. She and her friends were astonished at the difference in her when she went, at, I think, twelve years old, to stay for a month in a house where she had tea-breakfasts. She did, to be sure, cast very greedy looks at her cup of tea when it was coming; and she did make rather a voracious breakfast; but this was wearing off before the end of the month. She went home to her milk-breakfasts, her lump in the throat, and her morning depression of spirits and irritability. But at last the time came when she was tall enough to have tea with the older ones; and in a little while, she showed no signs of greediness, and thought no more about her breakfast than any body else.
I remember another case, where a similar mistake appeared more broadly still in its bad effects. In a family where it was the custom to have a great rice-pudding every Saturday, and sometimes also on the other baking day,--Wednesday,--there was a little fellow who hated rice. This was inconvenient. His mother neither liked to see him go without half his dinner, nor to provide a dish for him; for the child was disposed to be rather greedy, and troublesome with fancies about his eating. But in the case of the rice, the disgust was real, and so strong that it would have been better to let it alone. His mother, however, saw that it would be a benefit to him if he could get over it: and she took advantage of a strong desire he had for a book, to help him over his difficulty. The little fellow saw at a shop-window a copy of the Seven Champions of Christendom, with a gay picture of the dragon and St. George: and his longing for this little book was of that raging sort which I suppose only children ever feel. He was to have this book if he would eat rice-pudding. He eagerly promised; feeling at the moment, I dare say, when there was no rice within sight, as if he could live upon it all his days, to get what he wanted. When Saturday came, I watched him. I saw how his gorge rose at the sight of the pudding: but he fixed his eyes upon the opposite wall, gulped down large spoonfuls, wiped his mouth with disgust, and sighed when he had done, demanded his fee, ran for the book, and alas! had finished it, and got almost tired of it, before bedtime. The worst of it was,--he never again tasted rice. Here was the moral injury. He was perfectly aware that his bargain was to eat rice-pudding whenever it was upon table; and he meant to do it. But it required more fortitude than he could command when the desire for the book was gratified and gone: and his honour and conscience were hurt.
Another bad consequence of this mistake about two or three of his dislikes was that he thought too much about eating and drinking; was dainty in picking his meat, and selfish about asking for the last bit, or the last but one, of any thing good. Of course, I do not speak in censure, when I give such anecdotes. I blame nobody where nobody meant any harm. On the one side there was a mistake; and it was followed by its inevitable consequences on the other.
In such a case, where there is a large family, with a plain common table, I should think the best way is for a child in ordinary health to take his chance. If there is enough of meat, potatoes, and bread to make a meal of, he may very well go without pudding, and should, on no account, have one provided expressly for himself: but he should be allowed to refuse it without remark. Where the mother can, without expense and too much inconvenience, consider the likings and dislikes of her children in a silent way, her kindness will induce her to do it: but it must be in a quiet way, or she will lead them to think too much about the thing; and to suppose that she thinks it an important matter.
This affair of the table is one worth a good deal of attention, as it regards the temper and manners of the household, and the personal habits of each. There is no reason why the father's likings as to food should not be seen to be cared for. If he is a selfish eater, he will ensure that the matter is duly attended to. If he is above such care for himself,--if it is clear that his pleasure at his meals is in having his family about him,--that is a case in which the mother need not conceal her desire to provide what is liked best. The father, who never asks or thinks about what is for dinner, is most likely to be the one to find before him what he particularly relishes; a dish cooked, perhaps, by his wife's or his little daughter's hands. And, again, if the little daughters see that their mother never thinks about her own likings, perhaps they will put in a word on market-day, or at such times, to remind her that somebody cares for her tastes. Then, again, in middle-class families, where the servants dine after the family, they should always be openly considered. After the pudding has been helped round once, and some quick eaters are ready for a second plateful, it must be an understood thing that enough is to be left for the servants.--On the ground of the danger of causing too much thought about eating and drinking, it is desirable that, where the family take their meals together, all should fare alike. If there is anything at table which the younger children ought not to have, it is better that they should, if possible, dine by themselves. This is the plan in great houses, where the little ones dine at one o'clock, eating freely and without controversy of what is on the table, because there is nothing there that can hurt them. If the family dine together, and there are two or more dishes of meat on the table at the same time, all must learn the good manners of dividing their choice, so that the father may not have to send a helping of goose to everybody, while none is left for himself, but that the mother's boiled mutton may have left half the goose for the choice of the parents. All this is clear enough: but, if a present arrives of anything nice,--oysters, or salmon, or oranges, or such good things as relations and friends often send to each other, it seems best for all the household to enjoy the treat together, who are old enough to relish it.
It can scarcely be necessary to mention that the earliest time is the best for training children to proper behaviour at table, as every where else. Every one of them has to be trained; for how are the little things to know, unless they are taught, that they are not to put their fingers in their plates, or to drain their mugs, or to make shapes with their potato, or to crumble their bread, or to kick their chairs, or to run away to the window before dinner is done? They will require but little teaching, if they see everybody about them sitting and eating properly; but it is hard upon children when they have been allowed to take liberties and be rude at the nursery dinner, and then have everything to learn, under painful constraint, as they are growing up.
I have been sometimes struck with the conviction that the bad manners I have seen at the school-room table arise from a misconception as to what dinner is. In one house, you see the busy father hurry from his work to table, hardly stopping to wash his hands, turning over to his wife the task of helping the children, or even pushing round the dish for them to help themselves,--throwing his dinner down his throat, and after it his solitary pint of porter; snatching his hat, and off again to business, almost without saying "good bye" to any one. When he is gone, the others think they have liberty to do as they please; and a pretty scene of confusion there is,--one child scraping a dish, another kneeling on a chair to reach over for something, a third at the window: and the mother with baby on her arm, coming at last to carry off the dishes, saying that she is sure dinner has been about quite long enough, while some of the children are perhaps really wanting more.--Again: one sees in a rich gentleman's family, ill-managed, a great mistake as to dinner. The bell is rung at the nominal dinner-hour,--or probably a good deal after it: for servants can hardly be punctual under such management. The soup is on the table, and one or two of the family are in their seats, waiting for the rest. One young lady has her fancy-work in her hand: another has the newspaper. Papa comes in for luncheon. He will have a plate of soup. The reader jumps up to help him; but the soup is cold. As nobody seems to wish for any cold soup, it is sent away; but turned back at the door by a hungry boy, who has only just learned that dinner is ready, and is ravenous for the first thing he can get to eat. While the joint is helped, one drops in from the stable,--another from the music-lesson; a third from botanising in the wood; and the first comers run away to look for something in the library, or to have a turn on the gravel walk, saying that they do not care for pudding, and will come back for cheese. Altogether, it is an hour and a half before the cloth is removed, and the weary governess can get her charge in order for the Italian master,--if indeed he be not come and gone in the interval. This is an extreme, but not an impossible case: and in such a case, the plea we shall hear is that it is a waste of time for a whole family to sit doing nothing but eating their dinners in the middle of the day: and that formality makes eating of too much importance. Such is the plea; and here lies the mistake. The object of dinner is not only eating but sociable rest. The dinner hour is a seasonable pause amidst the hurry of the busy day; and the harder people have to work, the completer should be the pause of the dinner hour. The arrangement is very important to health; for the largest meal of the day is best digested when it is eaten with regularity, at leisure, and in a cheerful mood of mind; and when a space of cheerful leisure is left after it. And more important still is the arrangement to the manners and tempers and dispositions of the family. It is a great thing that every member of a household should be habituated to meet the rest in the middle of the day, neatly dressed and refreshed;--the boys' coats brushed, and the girls' frocks changed or set straight; the hair smoothed, and face and hands just washed. It is a great thing that they should take their chief nourishment of the day in the midst of the most cheerful conversation, and at a time so set apart as that nobody is hankering after doing anything else. When we consider too that after dinner is the only time between Sunday and Sunday that the working father has for play with his infants,--who are in their beds, or too sleepy for fun, when he comes home in the evening,--we shall own that there is no waste of time in the dinner hour, even if nothing whatever is done but eating and talking. In fact, it is this time which, from its importance, ought to be saved from all encroachment. The washed faces, and the cloth on the table, and the hot dinner should all be in readiness when the father appears. Not a minute of his precious hour should be lost or spoiled by any one's unpunctuality, or any body's ill-manners. All should go smoothly at his table by every one's gentleness and cheerfulness and good-breeding. When the meal is finished, all the clearing away should be quickly and quietly done, that he may have yet a clear half-hour for rest, or for play with the little ones. Where this hour is managed as it ought to be,--(and nothing is easier under the care of a sensible mother) the busy father goes forth to his work again with his mind even more refreshed by his hour of cheerful rest than his body is strengthened by food.
On the remaining topic of Personal Habits,--Modesty,--Decency--it cannot be necessary to say much. The points of mistake which strike me the most are two:--I think that in almost every part of the world, people herd too much and too continually together:--and I think that few people are aware how early it is right to respect the modesty of an infant.
As to the first point;--it is one of the heaviest misfortunes of our country,--I speak advisedly,--that among whole classes of our people, poverty or want of space from other causes, compels them to herd together in crowds, night and day. No words are needed to show how little hope of health there can be when people live in this way; and even less hope of good morals. Among classes more favoured than these, it appears that there is little thought of making the provision that might easily be made for more privacy than people are yet accustomed to.
I fear it is the wish that is wanting: for "where there's a will there's a way;" and I have been in many houses, both at home and abroad, where the requisite privacy might have been had, if any wish for it had existed. In the factory villages in the United States, I was painfully struck by this. I saw good and pretty houses built from the savings of the factory girls,--with their shady green blinds, and their charming piazzas without; and places within for book-shelves, piano and pictures and work-tables; but not a corner of any house was there where any young woman of the household could sit by herself for ten minutes in a day, or say her prayers, or wash. The beds were ranged in dormitories; or four or six in a room: and there were not even washing-closets. Here, there was no excuse of inability; and at home I too often see the same thing, where there is no sufficient excuse of inability.
Where each child cannot possibly have a room, or the use of a dressing-closet to itself, arrangements may easily be made, by having folding screens, to secure absolute privacy to every member of a household, for purposes of the mind, as well as the body. When I see how indispensable it is to the anxious and hard-worked governess to have a room to herself, and how earnestly she (very properly) insists upon it, I am always sorry when I remember how many have to go without this comfort,--which should be considered a necessity of life. When I think of the school-boy, with his burden of school cares upon him, and the young girl, thoughtful, anxious and irritable, as most people are, at times, in entering upon the realities of life; and of the wearied servant maid, and of the child in the first fervours of his self-kindling piety, I pity them if they have no place which they can call their own, for ever so short a time in the day, where they can be free from the consciousness of eyes being upon them. The thing _may_ be done. Mrs. Taylor of Ongar, the wife of a dissenting minister, and mother of a large family, who from an early age worked for their bread,--did contrive, by giving her mind to it, to manage separate sleeping places for a wonderful number of her children; and, where this could not possibly be accomplished for all, she so arranged closets and hours as that every one could have his or her season of retirement, secure from disturbance.
As for the case of the infant, to which I alluded above,--I believe it to be this. The natural modesty of every human being may be left to take care of itself; if only we are careful that it is really left entirely free. It is the simplest matter in the world for the mother to give this modesty its earliest direction during the first weeks, months, and year or two of life. After that, it will not fail, if only it be duly respected. That this respect should begin very early is desirable, not because the innocent little creature has then any consciousness which can be injured by anything it sees or is allowed to do; but because as it grows up, it should be unable ever to remember the time when every thing was not arranged with the same modesty and decorum as at a later period. Again, in order to the preservation of true modesty, the smallest possible amount of thought should be bestowed upon it. All transactions, personal and domestic, should go on with the smoothness of perfect regularity, propriety, and consequent freedom of mind and ease of manners. And it conduces much to this that there should never have been a time when the child was conscious of any particular change in its management. It should never have seen much of any body's personal cares; and the more gradually it slides into the care of its own person, with its accompanying privacy, the better is the chance that it will not dwell on such matters at all, but have its mind free for other subjects, wearing its modesty as unconsciously as it carries the expression of the eye, or utters the tones of its voice.
CHAPTER XXV.
CARE OF THE HABITS.--FAMILY HABITS.
It is difficult to keep a distinction between personal and family habits. In our last chapter, on Personal Habits, we got to the family dinner table; and here, in speaking of Family Habits, we shall doubtless fall in with the characteristics of individuals.
First; as to occupations. Unless I knew for what class of readers I was writing this, it is difficult to assume what their occupations may be.
In one class, the father may be busy in his office; and the mother in ordering a large household, taking care of the poor in her neighbourhood, and in study or keeping up her accomplishments; while the boys are with their tutor, and the girls with their governess, and the infants in the nursery.--In another, the mother may be instructing her girls, while busy at her needle; and the boys may be at a day-school, and the father in his warehouse or shop.--And again, this may be read by parents who cannot spare their children from home, because they keep no servants, and who charge themselves with teaching their young people, in such hours as can be spared from the actual business of living. One thing, however, is common to all these; and it is enough to proceed upon. All these _are_ occupied. They have all business to do which ought to engage their faculties, regularly and diligently: so that the great principles and rules of family morals cannot fail to apply.
The first great point concerns them all equally:--Economy of Time.
Nobody yet ever had too much time; and the rich need all they can save of it as much as the poorest. And the methods by which time is to be made the most of are universally the same. This seems to be everywhere felt, except among the ignorant. The most remarkable care, as to punctuality, is actually found, in our country, among the highest classes. It has bean said that "punctuality is the politeness of the great:" and so it is. It shows their consideration for other people's time and convenience: but there is more in it than that. The Queen, who is extraordinarily punctual, and statesmen, and landed-proprietors, and all who bear a burden of very important duty, are more sensible than those who have less responsibility of the mischief of wasting minutes which are all wanted for business; and yet more, of the waste of energy and freedom of thought, and of composure and serenity which are caused by failures in punctuality. For my own part, I acknowledge that not only is any compulsory loss of time the trial, of all little trials, that I most dislike, but that nothing whatever so chafes my temper as failure in punctuality in those with whom I have transactions. And to me, one of the charms of intercourse with enlightened and high-bred people is their reliableness in regard to all engagements, and their exact economy of time. To go from a disorderly household where no one seems to have any time, and where one has to try hard all day long to keep one's temper, to a great man's house, where half a hundred people move about their business as if they were one; where all is quiet and freedom and leisure, as if the business of life went on of itself, leaving minds at liberty for other work, is one of the most striking contrasts I have met with in society. And I have seen the same order and punctuality prevail, with much the same effect, in very humble households, where, instead of a score or two of servants, there were a few well-trained children to do the work. It is a thing which does not depend on wealth, but on intelligence. There is, (here and there, but not often) a great house to be seen where you cannot get anything you want till you have rung half-a-dozen times, and waited half an hour; where you are pretty sure to leave some of your luggage behind you, or be too late for the train, without any fault of your own; and where the meals, notwithstanding all the good cookery, are comfortless, from the restlessness and uncertainty of family and guests, and the natural discouragement of the servants.
And there are houses of four rooms, where all goes smoothly from the politeness which arises from intelligence and affectionate consideration. When a new Administration came into office, some years ago, the Ministers agreed that not one of them should ever be waited for, on any occasion of meeting. At the first Cabinet dinner, the party went to table as the clock finished striking, though the Prime Minister had not arrived. The Prime Minister was only half a minute late; but he apologised, as for an offence against good manners. What would be thought of this in homes where the young people come dropping down to breakfast when their parents have half done, or where father or mother keeps the children fretting and worrying because they are waiting for breakfast when they ought to be about their morning business!
It may be said that the fretting and worrying are the greater offence of the two: and this is very true. So much the worse for the unpunctuality which causes a greater sin than itself. Why be subject to either? If a young person, no longer manageable as a child, continues, after all reasonable methods have been tried, to annoy his family by a habit of wasting his own time and theirs, there is no use in losing temper about it. Scolding and fretfulness will not bring him round, if other methods have failed. He must be borne with (though by no means indulged) and pitied as the slave of a bad habit. But how much better to avoid any such necessity! And it might always be avoided.
The way in which people usually fall into unpunctual habits is, I think, from interest in what they are about, whether it be dreaming in bed, or enjoying a walk, or translating a difficult passage, or finishing a button-hole in a shirt, or writing a postscript to a letter. In households where punctuality is really a principle, it should be a truth ever before all eyes that whatever each individual is about is of less importance than respect to the whole family. In a school, when the bell rings, one girl leaves off in the middle of a bar of music, another at the middle line of a repetition, and a third when she is within two figures of the end of her sum. The time and temper of mistress and companions must be respected first, and these things finished afterwards. And so it is in a well ordered household. The parents sacrifice their immediate interest in what they are about; and so must the children. And so they will, and with ease, when the thing is made an invariable habit, from the earliest time they can remember.
It is this punctuality, this undeviating regularity which is the greatest advantage that school has over home education, in regard to study. In a large family, where there is much business of living and few servants, it really is very difficult to secure quiet and regularity for the children's lessons. It seems at any one moment, of less importance that the sum should be done, and the verb conjugated, just for that once, than that the boy should run an errand, or the girl hold the baby.
Now this will never do: and the small progress in learning usually made by the home-taught shows that it does not answer. The consideration is not of the particular sum, or practice in saying the verb, but of the habit of the children's minds. It _is_ of consequence in itself that sums should be done and verbs learned in their proper season, because they cannot be so easily mastered afterwards; and there is plenty to be done afterwards; but much more important is it that the children should acquire that punctuality of faculties which grows out of punctuality of habits: and this can never be when there is any uncertainty or insecurity about the inviolability of their lesson-time. I know how difficult it is to manage this point, and how very hard it is for the mother to resist each day's temptation, if she has not fortified herself by system and arrangement, and by keeping constantly before her mind that nothing that her children can do by being called off from their books can be so important as what they sacrifice at every interruption.
If it is possible for her to find any corner of the house where they may be undisturbed, and any hour of the day when she will allow no person whatever to call off her attention from them, she may do them something like justice: but she never can, though the books and slates may be about all the morning, if she admits any neighbour, or allows any interruption whatever. If possible, she will fix upon an hour when she may settle down with her plain-sewing, which requires no attention; and when her neighbours all know that they will not be admitted. One single hour, diligently employed, may effect a great deal. And it need not be all that the children give to study, though it be all that she can spare. They may learn at some other time in the day the lessons which she is to hear during the hour: and in that case, she must see that they are protected in their time of learning, as well as of repeating their lessons. Whether they are in their own rooms, or in the common sitting room, or she can spare any place for a school room, she must see that they have their minds to themselves, to do their business properly. If the father relieves her of the teaching, and hears the lessons at night, she will see more reason than ever for doing all she can to facilitate their being well learned.
If the time for lessons be necessarily but one hour in the day, let not the parents be uneasy, however much they might wish that their children should have their six hours of study, like those of richer people.
Perhaps they can give both boys and girls educational advantages which those of the rich have not;--advantages which offer themselves in the natural course of humble life. I have witnessed a process of education for boys in a middle-class home which could not well be instituted in a great house, and among a multitude of servants, but which was of extraordinary benefit to the lads who were made happy by it. Their father gave into their charge some of the departments of the comforts of the house. One had charge of the gas-pipes and lamps. He was responsible for their good condition; and he was paid the same sum per annum that supervision by a workman would have cost. Another had charge of the locks and keys, the door-handles, sash-lines and window-bolts, bells and bell-wires: and he was paid in the same manner. Each had his workbench and tools in a convenient place; and, if every part of his province was always in order, so that there were no expensive repairs, he had some money left over,--which was usually spent in buying materials for mechanical handiworks. These lads were happier than poor Louis XVI. of France, who was so fond of making locks that he had a complete locksmith's workshop fitted up in a retired part of his palace: and delighted to spend there every hour that he could command. _He_ was obliged to conceal his pursuit, both from the absurdity and the uselessness of it in his position; while these lads had at once the gratification of their faculties, and the dignity of usefulness. There are many offices about every house which may well be confided to boys, if they are intelligent and trustworthy;--that is, well educated up to the point required; and the filling of such offices faithfully is in itself as good a process of education as need be wished.
There is no need to declare the same thing about girls; for I suppose nobody questions it. I go further than most persons, I believe, however, in desiring thorough practice in domestic occupations, from an early age, for girls. I do not see why the natural desire and the natural faculty for housewifery which I think I see in every girl I meet, should be baffled because her parents are rich enough to have servants to do