A QUESTION FOR HOUSEKEEPERS.

Otago Witness, Volume 23, Issue 2684, 23 August 1905, Page 67

A QUESTION FOR HOUSEKEEPERS.

What is it that constitutes the difference between the housekeeper who runs a house with economy and efficiency, and who yet contrives to make every one beneath her roof thoroughly uncomfortable, and the one whose domestic management is not quite so perfect, but whose., home is the abiding place of peace and comfort? Perhaps the real difference lies in the fact that the first housekeeper makes all beneath her roof subservient to the house itself. When her husband comes home she wonders audibly if he has wiped his feet on the doormat, and fidgets the poor man to death with her fears that he may disarrange a certain antimacassar on a chair, or scolds him if he drops a little tobacco ash on the carpet. Her children are constantly rebuked for making a litter with theii toys, or allowing their clothes to be splashed with mud when they are crossing the street, or sent to bed because they have broken one of their mother's innumerable rules. Though the house be the pink of perfection and cleanliness, no one is happy in it, and all are glad to leave its shelter when the time comes for departure. In the other home the inmates are considered before the house. It is a real home, with sympathy and love overshadowing every little fault. The father and children are always at their ease. There is no fear of continual reprimand and faultfinding. It lies with every woman to be a real home-maker, or merely a housekeeper with a system. Husband and children prefer the homemaker, with her loving sympathy, to the most perfect housekeeper, who never overlooks a fault against order and cleanliness. Which role do you prefer?