The inefficient way of doing things is a too frequent experience. A farm housekeeper will bring a dish of cold potatoes from the kitchen, carry it all the way through the dining-room, set it down on a chair while she opens the door to the cellar, carry it haltingly down the stairs, and then set it down on a box because it is too dark to place it in the cupboard where it belongs. She does not want to take the pains to get a lamp, but she has to. She carefully lights the lamp, carries it down the cellar stairs, places it in a safe place, and then takes care of the potatoes. Then she comes back and carries a little plate of bacon that has been left and deposits it in the same careful way. Then follow the bread, the milk and the cream in pitchers; follow the cake, the jam, and many other things in little precious bits too good to be thrown away, all requiring a careful passage, each one at a time. It is good that she has so many beautiful and promising things to put away; but how different it would have been if she had been able to load all these things on the dummy and with one stroke of the arm to move it all downstairs. Then, O joy! if she had had the electric light to turn on in the cellar-way and down in the cellar cupboard, she could have gone downstairs with perfect safety and without fear, and she could have returned with a light heart, swung the wheeled tray into its place, and all would have been over in three minutes at the most, instead of taking twenty-five and being accomplished only by a vast expenditure of effort and nervous fear. The money that woman wasted in reduced energy and nervousness causing doctor's bills, would have bought her a wheeled tray, put in a dummy with pulley, rope, and weights, and paid the family doctor's bill besides! Nothing can be done hygienically that is done in the dark.
The Country Girl may practise for efficiency while she is waiting for her perfect kitchen to materialize, by doing all in her power to make herself save steps. To learn to make no useless passages across the floor is to begin a conquest of one's own mind, to establish self-control, and to utilize forethought.
"Think twice and step once," was a good motto. There is a one best way to do all things. Why not search for it?
CHAPTER XIV
AN OLD-FASHIONED VIRTUE
Ill Housewifery pricketh herself up with pride;
Good Housewifery tricketh her house as a bride.
Ill Housewifery lieth till ten of the clock;
Good Housewifery trieth to rise with the cock.
Penny Magazine, 1798.