I've taught school, and I've taught music; sold goods in a store and worked in a factory; run a sewing-machine, travelled with subscription-books, and hired out to do house-work; and I solemnly aver that the only time I was conscious of genuine enthusiasm for my work, or felt that I was doing myself or others any actual good, was while keeping house. In school I was
required to teach things I knew little and cared less about, and to punish the dear children for doing precisely what I would have done myself had I been in their places, losing all the while in amiability more than was gained in mental discipline. My experience in a factory was limited to three months. From working with the machines and as they worked, hardly using more intelligent volition than they, I began to fancy myself becoming like them, with no more rights to be respected, no more moral responsibility, and left without even serving my notice. Clerking I tried "just for fun." If all people who came to trade were like some, it would be the pleasantest, easiest work imaginable; if all were like others, the veriest torment. It was an excellent place to study human nature, but made me somewhat cynical. My sewing-machine had fits and gave me a back-ache, so I've locked it up until some one invents a motive-power
that can be applied to house-work, washing, churning, mincing meat and vegetables, driving sewing-machines, and—if it only could—kneading bread, sweeping floors, washing dishes, ironing clothes, and making beds. My book agency was undertaken for the sake of travel,—of learning something, not only of the land we live in, but of its people and homes. If I had gone from house to house and with malice aforethought begged an outright gift of a sum equal to my commission on each book, I should have felt more self-approval than in asking people to buy what I had not the slightest reason to suppose they wanted.
Now I'm sure you are beginning to think me one of the disagreeably strong-minded, who think the whole world has gone astray when it's only themselves who are out of tune, but, truly, I'm not; only I don't like to be or to feel idle and useless, nor yet to be constantly striving to do
from a sense of duty what is positively distasteful.
Like many other important discoveries, my aptness for house-work was found out by accident. Our next neighbor happened to be thrown, without a word of warning, into one of those dreadful whirlpools in regard to help, to which even the best regulated households are liable. My services, charitably volunteered as temporary relief, were gladly accepted, and the result on my part was two years of pleasant and profitable labor. All I earned was clear profit, and I had the satisfaction of knowing I saved the family many times over what was paid me. I'm converted beyond the possibility of backsliding to this truth: that there is no work so fit and pleasant, so profitable and improving, to the mass of womankind,—rich or poor, wise or unlearned, strong or weak,—yes, proud or meek,—as the care and control of a home; none so worthy of thorough
study, none so full of opportunity for exercising all the better bodily and mental powers, from mere mechanical and muscular skill, up through philosophy and science, mathematics and invention, to poetry and fine art.
From potato-washing to architectural design the distance is great, yet there are possible steps, and easy ones too, leading from one to the other. I began with the potatoes and know all their tricks and their manners. The accompanying sketch is the nearest approach to architecture yet attained. A long way off, you will say; but I insist it is worthier of recognition than the plans of amateurs who begin with the parlor and leave the kitchen out in the cold. It is not for Mr. Fred; he must work out his own kitchen. If Mrs. Fred can't help him, more's the pity. I give my notions of general principles; the application of them I leave to you.
My kitchen is not merely a cook-room, nor yet
the assembly and business room of the entire household, as in the olden time. It is the housekeeper's head-quarters, the mill to which all domestic grists are brought to be ground,—ground but not consumed. I should never learn to be heartily grateful for my daily bread if it must always be eaten with the baking-pans at my elbow. Indeed, we seldom enjoy to the utmost any good thing if the process of its manufacture has been carried on before our eyes. Hence the dining-room is a necessity, but it must be near at hand. If the kitchen cannot go to it, it must come to the kitchen. If this goes to the basement, or to the attic, that must follow, but always with impassable barriers between, protecting each one of our five senses. The confusion usually attending the dinner-hour should be out of sight; the hissing of buttered pans and the sound of rattling dishes we do not wish to hear; our sharpened appetites must not be