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Page 5
Begin in your own home. Study to make it not only beautiful, but perfectly
appointed. If your own hands must do the work, learn every method of
economizing time and strength. If you have servants, whether one or more,
let the same laws rule. It is not easy, I admit; no good thing is: but
there is infinite reward for every effort. Let no failure discourage, but
let each one be only a fresh round in the ladder all must climb who would
do worthy work; and be sure that the end will reward all pain, all
self-sacrifice, and make you truly the mistresses of the home for which
every woman naturally and rightfully hopes, but which is never truly hers
till every shade of detail in its administration has been mastered.
The house, then, is the first element of home to be considered and
studied; and we have settled certain points as to location and
arrangement. This is no hand-book of plans for houses, that ground being
thoroughly covered in various books,--the titles of two or three of which
are given in a list of reference-books at the end. But, whether you build
or buy, see to it that your kitchens and working-rooms are well lighted,
well aired, and of good size, and that in the arrangement of the kitchen
especially, the utmost convenience becomes the chief end. Let sink,
pantries, stove or range, and working-space for all operations in cooking,
be close at hand. The difference between a pantry at the opposite end of
the room, and one opening close to the sink, for instance, may seem a
small matter; but when it comes to walking across the room with every dish
that is washed, the steps soon count up as miles, and in making even a
loaf of bread, the time and strength expended in gathering materials
together would go far toward the thorough kneading, which, when added to
the previous exertion, makes the whole operation, which might have been
only a pleasure, a burden and an annoyance.
Let, then, stove, fuel, water, work-table, and pantries be at the same end
of the kitchen, and within a few steps of one another, and it will be
found that while the general labor of each day must always be the same,
the time required for its accomplishment will be far less, under these
favorable conditions. The successful workman,--the type-setter, the
cabinet-maker, or carpenter,--whose art lies in the rapid combination of
materials, arranges his materials and tools so as to be used with the
fewest possible movements; and the difference between a skilled and
unskilled workman is not so much the rate of speed in movement, as in the
ability to make each motion tell. The kitchen is the housekeeper's
workshop; and, in the chapter on _House-work_, some further details as to
methods and arrangements will be given.
CHAPTER II.
THE HOUSE: VENTILATION.
Having settled the four requisites in any home, and suggested the points
to be made in regard to the first one,--that of wholesome
situation,--_Ventilation_ is next in order. Theoretically, each one of us
who has studied either natural philosophy or physiology will state at
once, with more or less glibness, the facts as to the atmosphere, its
qualities, and the amount of air needed by each individual; practically
nullifying such statement by going to bed in a room with closed windows
and doors, or sitting calmly in church or public hall, breathing over and
over again the air ejected from the lungs all about,--practice as cleanly
and wholesome as partaking of food chewed over and over by an
indiscriminate crowd.
Now, as to find the Reason Why of all statements and operations is our
first consideration, the familiar ground must be traversed again, and the
properties and constituents of air find place here. It is an old story,
and, like other old stories accepted by the multitude, has become almost
of no effect; passive acceptance mentally, absolute rejection physically,
seeming to be the portion of much of the gospel of health. "Cleanliness is
next to godliness," is almost an axiom. I am disposed to amend it, and
assert that cleanliness _is_ godliness, or a form of godliness. At any
rate, the man or woman who demands cleanliness without and within, this
cleanliness meaning pure air, pure water, pure food, must of necessity
have a stronger body and therefore a clearer mind (both being nearer what
God meant for body and mind) than the one who has cared little for law,
and so lived oblivious to the consequences of breaking it.
Ventilation, seemingly the simplest and easiest of things to be
accomplished, has thus far apparently defied architects and engineers.
Congress has spent a million in trying to give fresh air to the Senate and
Representative Chambers, and will probably spend another before that is
accomplished. In capitols, churches, and public halls of every sort, the
same story holds. Women faint, men in courts of justice fall in apoplectic
fits, or become victims of new and mysterious diseases, simply from the
want of pure air. A constant slow murder goes on in nurseries and
schoolrooms; and white-faced, nerveless children grow into white-faced and
nerveless men and women, as the price of this violated law.
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