LEARN IN TIME.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XII, Issue 13, 18 July 1884, Page 22

LEARN IN TIME.

Do those mothers who bring up their daughters in ignorance of the art of cooking realize the injustice that they are guilty of in, thus shirking a plain duty, and entailing suffering which might be avoided ? I fear not. Many girls in the (so-called) middle class of society attain, to their majority without knowing how to prepare a decent meal. One of my last summer's visitors, when urged to stay longer, said :—: — " Oh, I cannot, the folks at home will have nothing to eat if I do not go home to-morrow." I was surprised t« hear her say this, for I knew she had one daughter in her twenty-first year, and another nearly nineteen, and so I asked her : " Why, can't your daughter cook the meals ?" She said : '"They don't know how; I can't afford to let them learn, for they would waste while learning, and I am obliged to be very economical. It will be time enough for them to learn when they have got homes of their own." Well do'l remember the first soup I made a fe-w days after our marriage. A neighbour told me what vegetables to use, etc., but did not mention the thickening. Cook books were very scarce thirty years ago, and I had no resource but to ask my neighbour. I followed her directions, seasoned and put upon the table. You can imagine my feelings when my husband asked : " What makes the soup look so watery ?" Someone says that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. In the first few months of my wedded life, I certainly did not reach my husband's heart by cooking well. Indeed, I often found the food unpalatable myself. I must have sned a bucketful of tears during these long months of toil and trouble ; yet one good resulted from it. I determined that the three daughters, who, as the years went by, came to bles3 onr home, Bhould be taught while they were young, and they knew more about cooking and housekeeping at sixteen than their mother did at thirty years of age. I have heard young girls say that there was no need of learning to cook before marriage ; for they could easily follow the recipes given in a cook-book ; and I have told them the following, " All the recipes ever published, and their name is legion, cannot benefit you one-half as much as a year or two of practice under a wise mother's tuition." — Exchange.