Then there were days when I have the vision of my wife in calico dress and crisp white apron, taking lessons in ornamental housewifery of my mother and aunt in the great, clean kitchen. There the three proceeded with all care and solemnity to perform the incantations out of which arose strange savory compounds of cakes and confections, whose recipes were family heir-looms. Out of great platters of egg-whites, whipped into foamy masses, these mystical dainties arose, as of old rose Venus from the foam of the sea.
I observe that the elderly priestesses in the temple of domestic experience, have a peculiar pride and pleasure in the young neophyte that seeks admission to these Eleusinian mysteries.
Eva began to wear an air of precocious matronly gravity, as she held long discourses with my mother and aunt on all the high mysteries of household ways, following them even to the deepest recesses of the house where they displayed to her their hidden treasures of fine linen and napery, and drew forth gifts wherewith to enrich our future home.
In the olden times the family linen of a bride was of her own spinning and that of her mother and kinswomen; so that every thread in it had a sacredness of family life and association. One can fancy dreams of peace could come in a bed, every thread of whose linen has been spun by loving and sainted hands. So, the gift to my wife from my mother was some of this priceless old linen, every piece of which had its story. These towels were spun by a beloved aunt Avis, whose life was a charming story of faith and patience; and those sheets and pillow-cases were the work of my mother's mother; they had been through the history of a family life, and came to us fragrant with rosemary and legend. We touched them with reverence, as the relics of ascended saints.
Then there were the family receipt books, which had a quaint poetry of their own. I must confess, in the face of the modern excellent printed manuals of cookery and housekeeping, a tenderness for these old-fashioned receipt books of our mothers and grandmothers, yellow with age, where in their own handwriting are the records of their attainments and discoveries in the art of making life healthful and charming. There was a loving carefulness about these receipts—an evident breathing of human experience and family life—they were entwined with so many associations of the tastes and habits of individual members of the family, that the reading of my mother's receipt-book seemed to bring back all the old pictures of home-life; and this precious manual she gave to Eva, who forthwith resolved to set up one of her own on the model of it.
In short, by the time our honeymoon had passed, Eva regarded herself as a passed mistress in the grand free-masonry of home life, and assumed toward me those grave little airs of instruction blent with gracious condescension for male inferiority which obtain among good wives. She began to be my little mother no less than wife.
My mother and aunt were confident of her success and abilities as queen in her new dominions. It was evident that though a city girl and a child of wealth and fashion, she had what Yankee matrons are pleased to denominate "faculty," which is, being interpreted, a genius for home life, and she was only impatient now to return to her realm and set up her kingdom.