COOKERY AND TAILORING.
When male writers have nothing else to say they fall "afoul" of all women for not being adepts in cookery. Now, one might just as well insist that every man should know how to make his own trousers, as that every woman should be a cook.
Suppose reverses should come, and the man who don't know how should not be able to employ a tailor, where would he be then, not understanding how to make his own trousers? And suppose reverses should not come, how much wiser and better for him to know practically all about tailoring, so that he might with knowledge be able to direct his tailor? At present he thoughtlessly steps in and recklessly orders them. How does he know whether the amount of cloth used is necessary, or the contrary? How does he know that he isn't swindled fearfully on buttons, lappets, and facings, and even the padding inserted to make his rickety figure bewitching? I grieve when I think of this, and then of his asking his wife afterward, "what she did with the twenty-five cents he gave her yesterday to go shopping with." He ought to be master of tailoring in all its branches, before he links his destiny with a woman, or else he ought to wear a cloak, which, morally speaking, is his normal condition.
He may reply that he don't like tailoring; that he has no gift for tailoring; that studying it ever so long he should only make a bad tailor, to spoil the making of a good lawyer or doctor. That's nothing to the purpose. I insist that he shall learn tailoring; not only that, but I insist that he shall like it too. His lawyering and doctoring can come in afterward wheresoever the gods will, in the chinks of his time, but breeches and coats he shall know how to make, or every editor in the land shall be down on him whenever they are hard up for an editorial, if, without this important branch of knowledge, he presumes to address a political meeting. For not understanding breeches, how the mischief can he understand politics, or be prepared to speak about them?
He may tell me that he don't intend to "link his destiny with woman," but instead, to be a gay bachelor, and have a latch-key, and one towel a week at some boarding-house, and whistle "Hail Columbia" at midnight, at his own sweet will, with variations, without the fear of waking some wretched baby. That's nothing to do with it. I insist that even then, he, being obliged to wear breeches, should know how many yards of different width cloth it takes to make them. I insist that, without this knowledge, he is not even prepared to be a bachelor. Nobody can tell, in this world, when misfortune may overtake one. Cigars may become so dear, and his exchequer so low in consequence, that he may be obliged to alter his little plan, and link his destiny to some woman who will earn them for him. And suppose the twins should afterward interfere with her earnings, then think how glorious it would be to turn his knowledge of tailoring to account on this conjugal rainy day, and not only make his own breeches, but those of the twins, who would undoubtedly be boys, because men like boys, and therefore ought to have them.
Now, having freed my mind on this point, I proceed to say that the brightest and most gifted women I have known have perfectly understood cookery, and have written some of their best things over the cooking-stove, while they kept two "pots boiling." Furthermore, that the more brains a woman has, the less she will "look down upon," or "despise," a knowledge so important as that of cookery. But because she knows how, and because she does it, it need not of necessity follow that she "hankers after it." And when she does it, she should have the credit of doing it; and if her husband be a literary man, he should know and acknowledge—which is the thing he don't always do—that though she resolutely performs her duty without shirking, while he quietly scribbles, a sigh occasionally goes up chimney with the smoke, at the thoughts which fly up with it, that she may never catch again, either for fame or money. I say, when gobbling down the food she prepares, or oversees the preparing, in these days of incompetent servants, he should sometimes recognize this.
Then I would call attention to the fact that married men should everywhere, and in all classes, remember, that it is very discouraging for any wife and housekeeper, when, for the same efficient labor which she expends under her own roof, she could earn for herself at least a competence, to be obliged to go as a beggar to her husband for the money which is justly her due. Perhaps, if husbands were more just and generous with regard to this matter, women might take their pleasure in "cookery," which every man seems to think is her only "through ticket" to Paradise, and to their affections, viâ their stomachs.