GARDENING.
In the basement of this is found the creamery, equipped with churns, separators, cream ripeners, butter workers, cream testers, bottling apparatus and scales. All is deliciously clean and dainty, and visitors are allowed to enjoy the products as they are finished. Here the girls are given a scientific, practical knowledge of butter and cheese-making and the care and handling of dairy products for the market, including pasteurization and sterilization; the use of hand and power separators and testers, acid testing and churning, beside instruction in dairy bacteriology and the composition and good value of milk, butter and cream.
In another well-lighted apartment, with cement floor, is the laundry, with complete outfits for hand and machine work. Here again the practice is supplemented with lectures showing reasons for washing—sanitary and aesthetic; study of fibres and how to cleanse each, illustrated by practical work in cotton, linen and silk; the effect of soft and hard water and how to treat them; the preparation and use of different cleansing agents.
The basement also contains the manual training rooms, where wood carving, wrought-iron work and modeling are taught. In a broad sense, all of the manual and laboratory work in the curriculum is in the nature of manual training, but especial attention is given to the branches mentioned and to weaving and basketry and other work which prepares students for positions as manual training teachers in the public schools.
On the first floor are the President’s, Secretary’s and other offices, and the art room. This department provides technical courses in drawing, applied design and painting. The work is designed to develop the imaginative and creative faculty from the first, and to give thorough training along industrial lines. Lecture rooms and the library occupy the rest of the first floor, while the second is devoted to the chemical and photographic laboratories and the commercial school.
