Women Who Live Alone

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 17, 1907

Women Who Live Alone

WOMEN living alone have a bad trick of trying to save money at the expense of their meals.

Economy in food is right, up to a certain point; after that it becomes folly.

Worse yet, they try to save labor in washing dishes, and when that means not cooking a thing because it is too much trouble to wash the pan afterward, that woman's digestive future is in a bad way.

The worst of this sort of shrinking is that the light housekeeper often works harder to save work than she would if she had things decent and in order.

Especially is this the case with young women who get their breakfast before starting out on their day's work, and

who come back at night too tired to care for anything but a cup of tea and a piece of bread—if it rests with them to prepare it.

This may be economy for a little while, but let a young woman's system once get run down—and nothing will accomplish this sooner than not being properly nourished—and there is no limit to the list of fearful diseases that lie in wait for her.

The actual money cost of having enough to eat is so small that comparatively few working women have to deprive themselves of the necessities in the raw state; but the trouble of preparation often seems altogether too great for a family of one. Then solitary meals are not conducive to enjoyment, and are apt to be a good guide to indigestion and its attendant train of evils.

It is woman's duty—almost her first duty—to provide herself with internal fuel.

Baker's bread is cheap and easy, but its nourishing power is meager. And sweet things that look so attractive in the pastry cook's windows are vain delusions. They do not taste half as good as they look generally, and they take the place of nothing else, being merely extras, not substitutes, to say nothing of their indigestible properties.

If two or three working women can club together, there will be a surprising saving.

The same fire, kettle, and filling of it, will cook a dish for three as well as for one, and the division of labor makes each one's part seem so much easier, even if she actually does more than if she were alone.

Men, as a rule, will pay more attention to the simple rules of health, but then they are less fastidious about their surroundings.

And they are not apt to feel that terrible nervous strain that makes the average woman think she must succeed in putting herself on an entirely self-supporting footing, and help everybody else related to her, all at one time.—St. Louis Republic.