Now, here is where the Society for the Diffusion of Time among Mothers shall take up the work, and show how, by the application of its grand principle of Simplification to cooking and to dress, the inferior duties can be made to deliver up their “lion’s share” of time. Statistical writers in “The Columbian Simplifier” shall state the exact number of rolling-pin strokes required by an average family in a year, and the amount of time said strokes will consume, for the purpose of calculating how many hours and minutes are thus stolen from the two special objects. The same statistical writer, for a similar purpose, shall give, in figures, the stitches and minutes required to flounce an average family for a year. Comic writers will hold up to ridicule, in “The Simplifier,” elaborate passages from the cook-book, thus handing them down to posterity, by whom they will be considered as relics of a barbarous age. Among these passages will no doubt be this one concerning
MINCE-PIES.
“Ten pounds of meat, three pounds of suet, one of currants, three of sugar, five of apple, four of raisins, one of citron, a pint of sirup of preserved fruit, a quart of wine, salt, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, the juice and pulp of a lemon, the rind chopped fine.”
Among the illustrations of “The Simplifier” may be, perhaps, one of a woman at a sewing-machine, half-buried in as yet unruffled ruffling; musical instruments at the right of her, an easel with its belongings at the left of her, book-shelves well-filled in front of her. If the artist be imaginative, he may depict, hovering over their several emblems, dim, shadowy forms to represent, respectively, the genius of music, of painting, of literature, each vainly, and sorrowfully because vainly, beckoning the ruffler away. Or, instead of a woman ruffling, it may be a woman, chopper in hand, concocting the above-quoted horror of the cook-book, surrounded, of course, by the various ingredients, each properly labelled. If the artist be sensational, as well as imaginative, he may introduce here, instead of the dim and shadowy figures just now mentioned, the grim and shadowy figure of Death, as saying with an exultant laugh, “Go on, madam, go on. You are working in my interests!”
Then will come the essayist. Imagine him thus,—
“Some may ask, Mr. Editor, is it not desirable to live neatly, and to cook palatable food? Yes. But is it for this alone that woman has intellect, talent, genius, aspirations? Suppose, now, that one of these women live forty working-years. At the end of that time she can look back, and say, ‘I have polished my stove twelve thousand times; have scoured my knives thirty-six thousand times; have never left one wrinkle in one coarse towel; have swept the house from garret to cellar two thousand and eighty times; and I have made unnumbered thousands of cakes, pies, and hot biscuits.’ Now, without saying any thing against neatness, or against eating, can that woman, in accomplishing these ends only, be said to have fulfilled the essential purposes of life?
“The case is something like this. A person is sent on an important mission, and, being asked if he has performed his mission, replies, ‘Why, no! I had no time. It took all the time to look out for provisions, brush the dust off my clothes, and polish my boots. These duties have been faithfully attended to, I am proud to say.’
“Or suppose a sea-captain should devote his energies mainly to keeping the ship in order and his storeroom supplied, but never steer for any port. ‘“Cleanliness and good living” is my motto,’ he would say, pointing exultingly to his well-scrubbed decks and to his well-filled storeroom. ‘Yes; but it is necessary to get somewhere,’ might properly be answered.
“Let woman, then, while insisting on neatness, remember her mission. Let her, sailing on life’s seas, keep the ship in order and wholesomely provisioned, but at the same time steer for some port.”