"KITCHEN COLONELS."

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10536, 10 August 1912, Page 4

"KITCHEN COLONELS."

("Woman at Home.")

The husband who is inquisitive about kitchen matters is said to be the cause of half tho matrimonial squabbles brought into the American courts. At least, so a New Jersey magistrate recently stated from the-.bench. Indirectly, however, the fault lies at the door of the " help," who won't help. The independence of the American servant throws a quantity cf extra work on the master and mistress, which, in an English home, even in the occasional disappearances of. the maid-of-all-work, is quite unknown. "In no other civilised country," a gloomy husband wrote in reply to tho New Jersey judge's strictures, "is the man called upon to so large on extent—even in comparatively well-to-do families—to help in the woman's work." The squabbles appear to arise from the man when he has to help imagining that he knows how to do everything better than his wifej and forgetting that the most incompetent woman knows - more about housekeeping through inherited knowledge than the mo3t competent—in other directions — man.

There is always something lacking in a man who obviously likes housework and exGels at it, and something equally lacking in the woman who doesn't. But even ifhis wife was stranded without a maid, and needed his help, the ordinary Englishman does not extend anything more than a diffident and ostentatiously inexpert assistance. He is, unlike his American cousin, rather proud of not knowing things that are not his job, and ho is not interfering by nature^—though, of course, there are exceptions^—but these exceptions more often prove the rule than break it. Perhaps the real difference between the American man and the Englishman —if wo are to believe the American papers—is that the former is at home in a domestic upheaval, and wants to guide it on lines of his own, while the latter; like a sensible man, flies to his club.