SOMETHING FOR THE GIRLS.
By J. W. Kirton, LL.D.
LEARN to keep house. If you would be a level-headed woman, if you would have right instincts and profound views, and that most subtle, graceful, and irresistible of all things, womanly charm; if you would make your pen, your music, your accomplishments tell, and would give them body, character, and life; if you would be a woman of genuine power, and queen o'er all the earth, learn to keep house thoroughly and practically. You see the world all awry, and are consumed with a desire to set it right. Must you go on a mission to the heathen? Very well, but learn to keep house first. Begin reform where all true reform must begin, at the center, and work outwards, at the foundation, and work upwards. What is the basis and center of all earthly life?—It is the family, the home; these relations dictate and control all others. There is nothing from which this distracted world is suffering so much to-day as for want of thorough housekeeping and homemaking. It is the cause of heathendom the world over. "What," I hear you cry, "become a household drudge, with all my classics, mathematics, science, and music, and my abounding sympathy and enthusiasm!" As to all the drudgery, the highest motive invariably precludes it, and if you master the business, it can never master you; and, though your education may be too broad for the hospital, the studio, or the schoolroom, it can never be too broad for the model home, and I engage that you will never have any wisdom too deep, or sympathy and enthusiasm too large, for the infinite variety and delicacy of relation and situation incident to a household with children and servants. If school has unfitted you for domestic life, there is reason to fear that your education has been narrow and on a low plane. It is only the literary dabbler, and the woman whose social position is not assured, who thinks domestic care and work degrading. A woman of first-class literary reputation and of highest social position recently said to me, "Housekeeping is primary." Her housekeeping is perfect and her writing most effective. So true is it that in a woman's life domestic education is the basis of all other education that, without it, you may well fear fatal weakness in any work you may undertake.—J. W. Kirton, LL.D.