A BETTER EDUCATION WANTED.
A PRACTICAL example of the inefficiency of the modern education to meet ordinary household requirements occurred with us the other day, to my shame be it spoken, said the intellectual mother of a couple of highly educated daughters. Our laundress was taken suddenly ill, leaving the clothes washed and dampened ready to iron; the housemaid took her place and finished the house linen, but confessed her total inability to cope with my husband's and son's shirts and collars. I tried in vain to find someone to come by the day, and finally, in desperation, as the men were becoming rampant, I attempted a collar myself. Such a limp, queer-looking rag it was! "Come, girls," I said, "what is the use of your Latin and Greek and all your 'ologies if you can't even do up a man's collar?" But it was of no use. There was not one among us who could manage to make the wretched things fit to wear. "Truly," I thought to myself, as I hied to a Chinese laundry, "there is something wanting in a woman's general knowledge if the simplest practical details of her household are unknown to her." And I have made up my mind that my daughters shall have a "finishing course," not in the generally accepted sense of the expression, which is usually understood to refer to mere accomplishments, but a course of useful information, and the practical knowledge of each part of the household economy. This should comprise a thorough understanding of every branch of the work of the house,—cooking, laundry work, housework, in fact, every department in which they expect to supervise in the future.—N. Y. Tribune.