WHY DON'T LADIES LEARN TO COOK?
AMONG the common things to the teaching of which public attention is now so strongly directed, it is to be hoped that the art of cookery—one of the commonest, and yet, apparently, one of the most difficult and neglected of all—will not be forgotten. The instruction of the female peasantry in this useful art would be as advantageous to themselves when settled on their own hearths as to the families of the middle classes, in which, before marriage, they officiate as domestic servants. On all sides we hear complaints of the difficulty of finding, and of retaining when found, a cook who can roast a leg of mutton, and make batter-pudding or pea-soup. In point of fact, we have heard of ladies who have it in serious contemplation to dispense with servants altogether, as the least troublesome alternative. Without wishing matters carried quite so far, we are convinced that many of our fair friends would lose nothing, either in point of respectability or happiness, while they could add at least one-third to the effective incomes of their husbands, if they were to spend a little more time in their kitchens, superintending the preparation of the family dinner, instead of contenting themselves with ordering it—if, indeed, they condescend to do even that. Some forty years back, ladies were driven to shoemaking as a fashionable way of killing time. Why not try a little cooking? Thanks to the modern stoves, with their nicely-arranged skillets and stewpans, which science and mechanical skill have substituted for the blazing kitchen hearth of other days, young ladies of the nineteenth century, just passing its prime, may cook without soiling their fingers or injuring their complexions. Were it not so, we would not recommend them to cook. We would rather live on bread and cheese all the days of our lives.
It will be said, perhaps, that our notions with regard to female education and employment are too antiquated—that in these matters, as in everything else, a new era has dawned, and the solid course of instruction now given in colleges for ladies will be triumphantly appealed to. Ladies, however, who possess these solid acquirements—who, like Lady Jane Grey, prefer Plato to a picnic—will be least likely to neglect the economy of the kitchen. They will thoroughly understand the dignity of the employment, and call to mind all the poetry of cooking. To say nothing of the dinner which Milton describes Eve as preparing when "on hospitable thoughts intent," there are the Homeric banquets at which kings literally "killed their own meat," and at which queens and princesses turned the spit for the roasting, or drew the water and chopped wood for the boiling. Cooking is classical, and no lady will disdain to take part in it who has read of these feasts in the original Greek. Let it be observed that it is the middle and working classes on whom we wish to urge the importance of the study. A gentleman's daughter can afford to be so ignorant of common things as not to be able to recognize chickens in a poultry-yard, because they do not run about with a liver under one wing and a gizzard under the other, though our modern poultry shows, it must be confessed, will tend much to dissipate this error. A knowledge, however, of the art of cooking is of more importance to the wives of the laboring population than to those of the middle classes, because it is the art, when properly cultivated, of making a little go a great way.—Mark-lane Express.
A LACE BASQUE.
Furnished from Madame Demorest's Emporium of Fashions, 375 Broadway, New York.
THIS novel and graceful design is adapted for black lace or any other thin material that fancy may dictate, as will be seen by reference to the engraving. It is gathered in a graceful fulness to a band of insertion across the back, and also to a similar band fitting closely to the form at the waist, and falls in a rich double flounce over the person. The corsage is made high in the neck, gathered into a band same as the back. The style of sleeve (which is so clearly illustrated by the artist as not to need any further description) harmonizes most beautifully with the general design.
VOIGT Del