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Page 22
"I'm glad there's going to be a 'butler's pantry,' it sounds so
stylish. I notice that among people who have accommodations for a
'butler' in their house plans, about one in a hundred keeps the
genuine article. All the rest keep a waitress or a 'second girl.'
Sometimes the cook, waitress, butler, chambermaid, valet and
housekeeper are all combined in one tough and versatile handmaiden."
[Illustration: JILL'S KITCHEN IN BLACK AND WHITE.]
"Well, call it china closet, though it is really something more than
that, or serving-room, or dining-room pantry--whatever you please. We
shall keep two servants in the house, one of whom will wait on the
table; consequently I do not want a door from this room-of-many-names
to the kitchen. It is much easier to maintain the dignity and order
that belong to our precious pottery, our blue and crackled ware, our
fair and frail cut glass, if they are not exposed to frequent attacks
from the kitchen side. There is, however, an ample sliding door or
window in the partition, and a wide serving table before it, on which
the cook will deposit the dinner as she takes it from the range. A part
of the top of this table is of slate, and may be kept hot by steam or
hot water from the range. With but one servant it would of course be
necessary to make the route from the kitchen range to the dining-room
table more direct."
"What if you had none?"
"If I had none, my kitchen, dining-room, store-room, china-closet,
butler's pantry and all the blessed facilities for cooking, serving and
removing the meals should be within a radius of ten feet. How any
mortal woman with a soul above dress trimmings can be content to spend
three hours in preparing meals to be eaten in thirty minutes passes my
comprehension. When I 'do my own work,' as Aunt Jerusha says, there
will be no extra steps, no extra dishes, no French cooking, no
multiplying of 'courses.'"
"No cards, no cake, no style."
"Yes, indeed! The most distinguished and elegant style. Such style as
is not possible except where all the household service is performed by
the most devoted, the most thoughtful, the most intelligent, if I may
say so--"
"Certainly the most intelligent, amiable, accomplished and altogether
lovely member of the family. I agree to that."
"There will be no _pretense_ of style--if that is what you mean, no
vain endeavor to conceal poverty or ignorance, but a delightful
Arcadian candor and simplicity that will leave the mistress of the
house, who is also housekeeper, nurse, cook, dairymaid, butler,
waitress, laundress, seamstress, governess and family physician,
abundant time and strength for such other occupations and amusements as
may be most congenial. It would be a delightful way of living, and I
should not hesitate to try it if I felt certain that I _had_ a soul
above dress trimmings. I am not willing to be a household drudge,
overwhelmed by the 'work that is never done;' therefore, to be on the
safe side, we will keep two servants.
"The cooking range, whether of the portable or 'set' kind, will have a
brick wall behind it and at each side, which, carried above, will form
a sort of canopy to conduct into the chimney the superfluous heat in
warm weather and the steam and smoke from cooking at all times. I
suppose some housekeepers would object to separating the two pantries,
but they have no common interests requiring close proximity. The
kitchen pantry is a store-room and a kind of private laboratory, where
the mysterious experiments are made that develop our taste for esthetic
cooking and give us an experimental knowledge of dyspepsia. Its
operations precede the work of the range to which it is a near
neighbor, as it ought to be. It has also the merit of being in the cool
northwest corner of the house, with small windows on two adjacent
sides, which are better than a single window, for the air of a
store-room or pantry cannot be changed too freely in warm weather.
"Do you see the closets at the end of this pantry? One is for ice,
which is shoved in through a little door just above the sink where it
is brought by the ice-man; the other is for a cold closet and is built
in such a way as to get the full benefit of its cold-blooded neighbor.
Don't forget, in making the plan, that the door through which the ice
slides must be large enough to take in the largest cakes, and must be
so arranged that after being washed at the sink they will slide easily
without lifting or _banging_ into their proper places inside."
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