orders for the grocer and butcher. Then I arrange the work for the second girl for the day. I go over all the rooms and chambers myself, and always find in my drawers and closets something that needs care or labor, that I must do myself, or arrange for others to do. Oh, the making, the mending, the altering, the washing, and the care of clothing for young children which our present fashions require! And yet I always hang back and do as little as possible without being odd, or making the children fear lest all their companions should outdo them.
"By noon I am so tired and nervous I can not do anything more than sit down quietly and look over the morning paper. Then comes the noon lunch, when I again have all the table serving and care of children. After lunch, I send out the children to play, and then comes the family sewing and mending, the shopping—to buy dresses, bonnets, shoes, gloves, trimmings, and all the numerous et ceteras of the wardrobe for husband, children, and self. The mantua-maker must come some days, and then what worry and work! Then the sempstress comes other times; then company calls that
I must entertain; and then comes the children's music practice, and their hard lessons in arithmetic or geometry, where I must help or oversee.
"Then comes the dinner at 5 or 6, when company often is added, and I must see that all is in order, and the children well behaved, and the table served aright. For an hour or two after dinner comes a little time to talk with my husband and children; but again I am called on to help in the lessons of the older children, or to aid them when sewing or drawing. Then I must go to prepare the little ones for bed, as both servants are busy after dinner.
"All this is what I do when I have no visitors, and when there is no baby. But when there is a nurse and a baby, and visitors staying in the family to entertain, I am sure I do not know how I get through all. I only know that most of my married life I have suffered constant weariness, and a pain in head or back, and that all put together make life such a burden that often I should willingly lay it down were it not for my dear husband and children.
"And all these beautiful things around me, and
my lovely home, seem to double my cares because I have so much to keep in order. For all these rich and delicate things are soon ruined if left in the hands of servants, and the more we get, the more we have to watch and work to save from injury or waste."
"If we lived in such a convenient little cottage as you have put in your American Woman's Home, and had a highly educated governess, and then all of us united to do the family work, except washing and ironing, how much easier and happier life would be!"[140:A]
[140:A] This book is enlarged and has questions for a text book for schools. Its title is "Principles of Domestic Science," and it is published by J. B. Ford, Park Place, New York. The second part entitled The House Keeper & Health Keeper is in press and will be published in the fall by the Harpers.
But at present my thoughts and efforts are most engaged to accomplish that department of a Women's University which relates to the preservation and restoration of health. When often asked what is the reason that our women are so delicate and unhealthy, and that our young girls so often suffer what in former days was rare and then only in connexion with maternity, my reply often is, that