I would like to see the time when our sisters will take more pains to beautify their children. When your children arise in the morning, instead of sending them out of doors to wash in cold, hard water, with a little soft soap, and wiping them as though you would tear the skin off them, creating roughness and darkness of skin, take a piece of soft flannel, and wipe the faces of your children smooth and nice, dry them with a soft cloth; and instead of giving them pork for their breakfast, give them good wholesome bread and sweet milk, baked potatoes and also buttermilk if they like it, and a little fruit, and I would have no objections to their eating a little rice. Rice is an excellent food for children, and I wish some of the brethren would cultivate it in these valleys. Upland rice will flourish in this country. Train up your children to be beautiful and fair, instead of neglecting them until they are sunburned and become like the natives of our mountains. 12:201.
Need of Parent Training—You should go to work to study and see what you can do for the recovery of your children. If a child is taken sick with fever, give it something to stay that fever or relieve that stomach and bowels, so that mortification may not set in. Treat the child with prudence and care, with faith and patience, and be careful in not overcharging it with medicine. If you take too much medicine into the system, it is worse than too much food. But you will always find that an ounce of preventive is worth a pound of cure. Study and learn something for yourselves. It is the privilege of a mother to have faith and to administer to her child; this she can do herself, as well as sending for the Elders to have the benefit of their faith. 13:155.
CHAPTER XVIII
SOME WOMANLY DUTIES
The Housewife—I am addressing myself to the ladies of the Kingdom of God, to those who know how to keep their houses, furniture and beds pure and clean, who can cook food for their husbands, and children in a way that it will be clean, tasteful and wholesome. The woman that can do this I call a lady. In this view I differ from the world generally; for the lady of the world is not supposed to know anything about what is going on in the kitchen; her highest ambition is to be sure and be in the fashion, at no matter what cost to her husband or father; she considers that she may as well be out of the world as out of the fashion. 11:138.
A good housewife, whether she possesses much or little, will have a place for everything she has in the house, and make her house orderly and comfortable, and everything when wanted can be found in its place. 9:157.
If I had nothing but a piece of an old newspaper folded for a holder I would have it where I could put my hand on it in a moment, in the dark if I wanted it. And so with the dishcloth, the broom, the chairs, tables, sofas, and everything about the house, so that if you had to get up in the night you could lay your hand on whatever you wanted instantly. Have a place for everything and everything in its place. 14:89.
When I go into a house, I can soon know whether the woman is an economical housekeeper or not; and if I stay a few days, I can tell whether a husband can get rich or not. If she is determined on her own course, and will waste and spoil the food entrusted to her, that man will always be poor. 4:313.
It is an old saying that a woman can throw out of the window with a spoon as fast as a man can throw into the door with a shovel; but a good house-keeper will be saving and economical and teach her children to be good housekeepers, and how to take care of everything that is put in their charge. 12:195.
Ladies, if you are the means of plunging this whole people into debt so as to distress them, will there be anything required of you? I think there will, for you will be judged according to your works. Are not the men as extravagant as the women? Yes, certainly they are, and just as foolish. I could point out instances by the score and by the hundred of men who are just as unwise, shortsighted, and foolish as the women can be; but a condemnation of the male portion of the community will not justify the female portion of it. 14:105.