TRAINING FOR GIRLS

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 24, 1887

TRAINING FOR GIRLS.

NOTHING is more significant of the social condition of a people than the training of its girls in domestic life. In Germany the daughter of the nobleman, of a prince, and of the small shop-keeper, learns alike to cook, to sweep, and to keep house. After the training in books is over, Fraulein Lena and her royal highness, Princess Sophia, both begin their home education.

There are establishments where they are taken by the year, as in a boarding-school. In one month they wash dishes and polish glass and silver; in another they cook meats; in another, bake; in the next, "lay down" meat for winter use, or preserve fruit, make jellies and pickles, sweep and dust. Plain sewing, darning, and the care of linen are also taught, and taught thoroughly. The German "betrothed" is thus almost always a thorough housekeeper, and spends the time before marriage in laying in enormous stores of provisions and napery for her future home.

In France a girl begins at twelve years of age to take part in the household interests. Being her mother's constant companion, she learns the system of close, rigid economy, which prevails in all French families. If there be but two sticks of wood burning on the hearth, they are pulled apart when the family leaves the room, even for a half hour, and the brands are saved. The nourishing soup, the exquisite entrées, and the dainty dessert, are made out of fragments, which in many an American kitchen would be thrown away. The French girl thus inhales economy and skill with the air she breathes, and the habit she acquires lasts her through life.

English girls of the educated classes seldom equal the German and French in culinary arts, but they are early taught to share in the care of the poor around them. They teach in the village school, or they have industrial classes; they have some hobby, such as drawing, riding, or animals to occupy their spare time with pleasure or profit. Hence the English girl, though not usually as clever or as well read as her American sister, has that certain poise and a plomb which belong to women who have engrossing occupations outside of society, beaux, and flirting.—Youth's Companion.