In Fig. 7 are planned two conservatories, and few understand their value in the training of the young. They provide soil, in which children, through the winter months, can be starting seeds and plants for their gardens and raising valuable, tender plants. Every child should cultivate flowers and fruits to sell and to give away, and thus be taught to learn the value of money, and to practice both economy and benevolence.
According to the calculation of a house-carpenter, in a place where the average price of lumber is four dollars a hundred, and carpenter work three dollars a day, such a house can be built for sixteen hundred dollars. For those practicing the closest economy, two small families could occupy it, by dividing the kitchen, and yet have room enough. Or one large room and the chamber over it can be left till increase of family and means require enlargement.
A strong horse and carry-all, with a cow, garden, vineyard, and orchard, on a few acres, would secure all the substantial comforts found in great establishments, without the trouble of ill-qualified servants.
And if the parents and children were united in the daily labors of the house, garden, and fruit culture, such thrift, health, and happiness would be secured as is but rarely found among the rich.
Let us suppose a colony of cultivated and Christian people, having abundant wealth, who now are living as the wealthy usually do, emigrating to some of the beautiful Southern uplands, where are rocks, hills, valleys, and mountains as picturesque as those of New-England, where the thermometer but rarely reaches 90° in summer, and in winter as rarely sinks below freezing-point, so that outdoor labor goes on all the year, where the fertile soil is easily worked, where rich tropical fruits and flowers abound, where cotton and silk can be raised by children around their home, where the produce of vineyards and orchards finds steady markets by railroads ready-made; suppose such a colony, with a central church and school-room, library, hall for sports, and a common laundry, (taking the most trying part of domestic labor from each house)—suppose each family to train the children to labor with the hands as a healthful and honorable duty; suppose all this, which is perfectly practicable, would not the enjoyment of this life be increased, and also abundant treasures be laid up in heaven, by using the wealth thus economized in diffusing similar enjoyments and culture among the poor, ignorant, and neglected ones in desolated sections where many now are perishing for want of such Christian example and influences?
CHAPTER III.
ON HOME VENTILATION.
When “the wise woman buildeth her house,” the first consideration will be the health of the inmates. The first and most indispensable requisite for health is pure air, both by day and night.
If the parents of a family should daily withhold from their children a large portion of food needful to growth and health, and every night should administer to each a small dose of poison, it would be called murder of the most hideous character. But it is probable that more than one half of this nation are doing that very thing. The murderous operation is perpetrated daily and nightly, in our parlors, our bedrooms, our kitchens, our school-rooms; and even our churches are no asylum from the barbarity. Nor can we escape by our railroads, for even there the same dreadful work is going on.
The only palliating circumstance is the ignorance of those who commit these wholesale murders. As saith the Scripture, “The people do perish for lack of knowledge.” And it is this lack of knowledge which it is woman’s special business to supply.