But, when the favored volume and the poem have to be filtered through a nasal accent and an uneducated drawl, we feel that the poet has been vilified, and his gold and silver turns to dross. Every woman especially should remember the fable of the girl whose lips dropped pearls and diamonds, who was so much more agreeable as a friend and acquaintance than that other damsel whose lips dropped toads and vipers. The latter, evidently, had never taken lessons in elocution.
We have a certain national vice in pronunciation and in accent which we ought to correct. A moment’s listening to the English accent will soon teach us to pronounce with a more melodious finish. We need not hug ourselves with any vainglorious national conceit. We do not speak as well as our English cousins.
[XX.]
THE KITCHEN.
We began at the garret, and we are now at the kitchen. So our readers may learn that we are on the home-stretch, and shall be through very soon. If we have wearied them, let them bear with us but a little longer, and then, on our faithful steed, whom they shall find at the kitchen door, they shall ride off and never be troubled with us any more.
A model kitchen is every housekeeper’s delight. In these days of tiles and modern improvement, what pretty things kitchens are!
The modern dairy, with its upright milk-pans, in which the cream is marked off by a neat little thermometer; the fire-brick floor; the exquisite range, with its polished batterie de cuisine; every brilliant brass saucepan, seeming to say, “Come and cook in me”; every porcelain-lined pan urging upon one the necessity of stewing nectarines in white sugar; every bright can suggesting the word “conserve,” which always makes the mouth water; every clatter of the skewers, saying, “Dainty dishes, dainty dishes, come and make me! Come and make me!” All this is quite fascinating to an amateur.
No pretty woman—did she but know it—is ever half so pretty as when she is playing cook. The clean, white apron, the neat, short cambric dress, the little cap, the fair bare arms—does the reader remember Ruth Pinch and the beefsteak-pie? A lady should make the desserts in summer sometimes. Such ice-cream, such glorified Charlotte Russe, such cakes, such delicate apple-pies, such creams and jellies as fall from a lady’s fingers—these are ambrosial food!
There is among certain women a great passion for the cleanly part of household work. The love of a dairy has grown to be a favorite task with many a duchess. In our country, where ladies are compelled to put a hand, perhaps once too often, to the household work, owing to the inefficiency of the servants, this is not ordinarily considered the most thoroughly amusing of Home Amusements. To cook a heavy dinner in warm weather, to wash dishes afterward—this is sober prose, and by a very dull author. But the poetry of house-work, the rose hue o’er our russet cares—this can be classed as a Home Amusement.