GOOD HOUSEKEEPING.

Western Star, Issue 1548, 28 March 1891, Page 2 (Supplement)

GOOD HOUSEKEEPING.

Only the Most Thorough Education Can Secure It. The Business of Keeping House Analysed and Its Purpose Defined—lts Principal Object is to Keep the Household Well and Happy. Some people consider a woman a good housekeeper if her rooms are always in order and no dust is allowed to settle upon her furniture. Another is called a good housekeeper because she has a knack for cooking, and her table is bountifully supplied with well chosen and well prepared food. A third depends for her reputation as a housekeeper upon her faithful and expert darning ; she cuts the sheets in two when they become worn in the middle, she makes napsins of her half-worn table cloths, she keeps her children neatly clad and is always immersed in sewing, says a writer in Harpers Bazaar. It is seldom that any woman excels in these three departments —as seldom as anyone is to be found who is at the same time rich, handsome and clever ; and even if a housekeeper existed who combined great neatness, facility in cooking and deftness with the needle, she might still fail of being a good housekeeper. This can be readily seen when the business of housekeeping is analysed and its purpose definedIn the first place, what is the object of housekeeping? Is it solely to keep a house clean? Heaven forbid 1 Is it to provide well-cooked meals? Any properly conducted restaurant can do that. Is it to send forth its members fashionably attired? A seamstress would accomplish that better than nine-tenths of the mothers.

The object of housekeeping is no one of these, but all of them, and a great deal more. It is to keep the household, first, well.aud second, happy. These two objeots are really one, for no household can be happy which is chronically unhealthy ; but since this fact does not seem to be clearly understood, it is, perhaps, well to separate the statement into two component parts. It is necessary, in order that a family should be well, that the walla of its house, its floors, its windows, its beds, the clothes and bodies of its mambeis should be kept scrupulously clean. Yet, by becoming a monomaniac upon the subject of cleanliness, the main purpose of the housekeeper is frustrated. The happiness of a family is ruined if things in the house cannot be used for feat of smirching them, if the heedlesß, childish feet aie to be followed everywhere by the dust brush and pan, and if continual scoldings are to be delivered for the breaking of rules.

No household is healthy where the food provided is not wholesome. A family to which rich viands are often served cannot be well. Plain, savory steaks and roasts, carefully cooked cereals and vegetables, fresh milk and eggs, light, thoroughly baked bread, and plenty of ripe fruit—these are the only suitable articles for regular daily living. Warm breads, cakes, pies, pickles, fried food, puddings and confections and strong tea and coffee can be eDJoyed by most people, sometimes with impunity, but in families where they are frequently served it will be found that there is also frequent illness—children out of school for two or three days at a time, and the elders periodically laid up with sick headaches or attacks of neuralgia. "My stomach has nothing to do with my illness," they say. "Oh 1 no, it is my nerves," as though nerves were not dependent, alas I upon digestion, good or the reverse.

Then there are the careful adjustments of clothing to the temperature, the ventilation of sleeping rooms and the regulation of of sleeping hours, the management of baths, and a dozen other considerations which the good housekeeper must supervise.

Thus it goes. She who would keep her household in good condition must be constantly intelligent and on the alert, balancing this duty against that, deciding upon the most important, and doing it, no matter what difficulties fence her about. "The woman who constantly changes servants is a poor housekeeper, for she makes her family uneasy and uncomfortable. The woman is a poor housekeeper whose family is delicate and ofteu ill (unless there be some radical difficulty in their location, or inherited tendencies, and even these can be largely overcome). The woman who is habitually in debt (unless there is great poverty, or avarice on the part of the other head of the family) is a poor housekeeper. It may seem almost wicked to add, though it is implied in almost every line of this little screed, that the woman who is often ill herself is a poor housekeeper. She may occasionally have to claim Iter right to re;t, and she should not take it to heart if some notable neighbor accuses her of being lazy and self-indulgent. Her first duty to her famNy is to keep heiself well, and unless biting poverty or organic disease prevent, she can by strength of mind and discreet accomplish this object. It may be remarked, in conclusion, that only the broadest and moss thorough education can produco good housekeepers, and that up to this time they are appallingly rare.