Category: School for Housewives

Slighting as a Useful Art

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This is the first article in December of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on Dec 3, 1905, and is a discussion on how overwork does more harm than good when keeping house.

I find this article interesting as Mrs. Harland talks about using tricks and tools to reduce the workload of the housemother to save her health. In a later article in the month on Washday she also talks about how housemothers should tell their laundress to avoid soda at all costs as it “save the muscles of one class, rasp the sensibilities and deplete the pockets of the other.”

So then, is it only housemothers who should use these tricks to save their muscles and avoid an early grave?

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of The Washington Times.

Slighting as a Useful Art

A FRIEND at my elbow suggests “Simplifying Work” as a more apt title. A Big Brother puts in “How not to make work so hard.”

Not one of the captions covers my ground. I do not mean to talk of methods of arranging work by wise provision and judicious planning. Nor have I in mind the countless ways some women have of laying hold of every task by the heavy end, and making work as they go – the women who sweep the dust toward, instead of away from them, and drain dishes washed in lukewarm water, streaking them so palpably that they must be rubbed hard with one’s napkin before any self-respecting stomach can tolerate the idea of eating from them.

Nor do I quite relish the world “slighting!” It implies willful neglect of a recognized obligation.

Woes of a Fussy Woman.

Let a few homely illustrations define what a single phrase cannot:

I am so unhappy as to know a woman who has her whole house, including attic and cellar, swept every week and dusted thoroughly daily. Every picture is taken down on Saturday morning that the backs and cords may be wiped off with a damp cloth wet with a disinfectant. She changes servants from twelve to twenty-four times a year. She will tell you with an air of calm, sad conviction, that “there is not one tolerably efficient maid in America.” She “despaired long ago of ever keeping her house decent without doing most of the work with her own hands, even when she has tow grown daughters to help her.” The daughters have been her slaves since they could wield broom and duster. They are pale and thin; their eyes have a hunted look and are hollowed by fixed dark crescents beneath them. One of them was married two years ago, and sank into confirmed invalidism after the birth of a pitiful scrap of a baby that wailed feebly for an hour and died.

I met the single sister not long ago on a ferryboat, and she confided to me that she is to submit to a crucial operation in a few days.

“The doctors say it is too much housework,” she said bitterly, “I cannot recollect when I was not tired, tired, TIRED! My mother keeps the cleanest house in town. She says ‘dirt is disease.’ Maybe so! I know that life is not worth living when one has to pay such a price of cleanliness. My mother has bones of steel and nerves of while, and cannot comprehend ‘how it happens that she should be afflicted with delicate children.’”

Fruit Cans Overwork Her.

Another notable housemaker, who puts up never less than a gross of jars of canned and preserved fruits every season, makes it a point of conscience to devote one forenoon of each week to examination of her potted treasures. Each jar is wrapped in thick paper, and the wrapper tied on with a string. Four mortal hours of an immortal creature’s time are devoted weekly to the business of inspecting the fruit, and washing each jar before it is rewrapped, tied up and returned to the shelf. Her boast that, in all the ten years during which she has pursued this plan she has not found one fermented can, aggravates, not justifies, her offense against common sense and economical laws, for it proves the needlessness of the ultra-violence.

The mistress of a superb country house affects to lament the absolute necessity of spending two hours of every forenoon all summer long in arranging in pots and vases the flowers brought in daily by the gardener.

“But what can one do? Servants cannot be trusted to do suck work, and ill-assorted flowers drive me wild.”

A fourth has had a bellows made for dislodging the dust from the corners of stairs and rooms, and since no maid will use it faithfully, the poor slave of her own housewifely caprice, who weighs nearly 200 pounds, and is sixty years old, invites apoplexy six days in the week by getting down upon her gouty knees to blow out the atoms left when the broom has done its best.

Yet another “walks after” her competent staff of servants from two to three hours per diem, to make sure that their appointed takes are well done. She keeps none long which fact she accepts as a proof that surveillance is needed. Three out of these five conscientious housemothers have bemoaned in my hearing their inability to make time for reading. Two confessed that they do not read one book a year, one adding:

Something Must Be Slighted.

“Unless the mistress can reconcile it to her conscience to slight some part of her lawful work, she must resign such luxuries as books and music.”

“Extreme cases these, amounting to eccentricity, if not to monomania,” I hear some one say.

I could multiply the five by ten, and not exhaust my stock of similar anecdotes. Coming to close inquiry into our individual experiences, each of us who is a careful, practical housekeeper, if she puts herself into the confessional, would be forced to admit similar blunders as to the relative value of domestic duties.

My dear mother gave me an initial lesson in this useful art when I was but ten years old. Her skill with her needle was my pride, and I was eager to emulate it. In the effort I crowded tiny stitches upon one another in hemming a towel she had set me as a task. “My child,” she said, when she came to see why I was so long in completing the task, “never take two stitches when one will do the business as well.”

Dust may be disease in embryo, and should be done away with by the use of all reasonable means. Overwork and worry kill more women in one year than the neglected deposit upon picture cords slays in a century. “Let all things be done decently and in order” is a capital working motto, but reserve the right of private judgment in determining what constitute order and decency. Study what you can leave undone, or what may be laid over for another day with least inconvenience or discomfort to yourself and others.

Simplify work by labor and time-saving machines. Don’t beat eggs with a spoon or two forks for fifteen minutes when a patent beater will produce a stiff froth in two. Don’t mince meat in the old way when a chopper worked by a crank will make it even and fine in one-tenth of the time.

Spare yourself, and study Slighting (so-called) as a Useful, Life-Lengthening Art.

MARION HARLAND.

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
Chats With Housemothers
A Handy New Cabinet for the Kitchen
Marion Harland Recipes
A Pretty Salad for the Christmas Table
A Treasure for the Lover of Beautiful Glass
Value of Good Music

Is Nervous Prostration a Necessity with the Modern Woman?

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This is the fourth article in June of the School for Housewives 1904 series published on Jun 26, 1904, and is a longer article on worrying.

School for Housewives – Is Nervous Prostration a Necessity with the Modern Woman?

“Don’t Let Yourself Go! To Cut the Slender Line of Will Power Is to Drift Out!”

New York doctors have been exercising their wits lately to account for the alarming prevalence of cerebro-spinal meningitis among the children in that city. The impression is strong that the disease is contagious. Some ask, “Is there a cerebro-spinal meningitis germ?”

The student student of woman’s nature and ways is tempted to set on foot a like inquiry anent the fashionable malady of nervous prostration. Once in a while a man is threatened with it. Once in several whiles he becomes to kill himself to get rid of the horror. When the family of nerves – great and small – unites against the will, life to the masculine mind is not worth living.

For this, I take it, is what nervous prostration means – a general insurrection of the nervous system and the dethronement and banishment of the ruler God set over it – the Will.

No woman is ashamed of the rebellion. A physician called it yesterday, in my hearing, “the fashionable fad of women who have time to pamper whims.” A plain-spoken business man, when asked what one grievously afflicted woman, whose “prostration” was town talk, needed to bring about a cure, ripped out: “A steady regimen of washtub!”

The brutal prescription was based upon the fact that washerwomen and laborers’ wives, who must cook, wash, iron and “do” generally for their families, do not have nervous prostration. The luxury is as far beyond their reach as a summer at Carlsbad or a winter on the Nile. When our toiler is “tried to death” and “that worried that she feels as if she could fly,” she has the name of being “cross and ugly-tempered.” When she cries stormily over the washboard she gets no sympathy. “Just let her have it out, and she’ll’’ come ‘round all right!” say her nearest of kin and dearest of heart.

A PREVENTIVE

And since the clothes must be out on the line and dinner be cooked before “he” comes in at noon, and there is nobody but herself to do these things, she “has it out,” and keeps the traces taut.

Necessity, in her case, braces the will to hold its own against the mutinous crew.

When the sufferer is not a fashionable puppet, jaded by the murderous round of “functions” and the demand upon invention and ingenuity made necessary by the effort to keep up with richer competitors for social distinction, but a conscientious, refined woman, wife and mother, or artist, or author, or editor, or minister’s wife, who succumbs piteously to the load laid upon her by duty and circumstances – where is the fault?

I could furnish a list of a score and more, at a minute’s notice, nervous wrecks, crying by the hour and the week like homesick babies; sleepless by night and smileless by day; travellers in the care of trained nurses on land and sea, dwelling in the dead calm of sanitariums and rest cures, forbidden to hold communication with friends and kindred until the belligerent nerves return to their allegiance.

They are “smitten of God and afflicted,” say those who love them; “cumberers of the earth,” say well people with well-balanced systems. The suffering is real and intense, whatever may have been the original cause. And the long list grows longer daily and yearly.

May I offer a single suggestion as to a possible preventive as the result of careful and compassionate examination of the fearful scourge of home and society? In every case of which I have any knowledge there came what may be called a crucial stage, when the tortured nerves broke the bounds of reason and defied the will. In plainer terms, the woman “let herself go.”

Every reader who has known the agony of a long-continued nervous strain will comprehend what I mean. She wanted to cry, and she gave way to hysterical weeping. She “felt (as some of us feel a dozen times a week) as if she must scream!” and she screamed. In short – she gave up the fight, and the enemy took possession.

One more screw upon the willpower, one desperate last stand for liberty, and the Rubicon would have been safely passed.

Suffer one of a hundred illustrations of the truth of my position – one the memory of which has tided me over many a crisis in my own history.

A busy woman was pronounced a hopeless invalid by physicians and friends. There was no talk of hypochondria. Repeated hemorrhages had sapped strength; crushing sorrow and unremitting toil had lowered her nervous forces to a minimum.

For weeks she had struggled to rise in the morning and go about her daily tasks, fighting bravely against debility, depression and the terrible, nameless sensation of drifting out into a sea of nothingness, which may not be strange one morning. A night of horrible insomnia left her as faint of will as of body. When her husband came to her bedside with the usual inquiry as to how she felt, she answered that she could not rise.

THE REMEDY

“I have let go! I shall drift out, and make an end of it!” she ended, mournfully calm.

He was a sensible man, and to sense he added tact. “I know it is asking much of you to wish you to try to live a little longer,” he said. “I say nothing of the inconvenience to myself and the elder children that would come from your death. But there is Bob! He’s your only boy, and just 3 years old, you know. If you could make up your mind to live long enough to see him through college it would be a great thing for him. He’ll go to the devil without his mother!”

The mother lay still for a long minute, her eyes apparently fixed upon the all. In reality, she was seeing Bob – motherless baby, schoolboy, college-lad, impulsive, headstrong, clever for evil or for good – going wrong without the balance wheel, the sure anchor of her love. Presently she said softly – still gazing into the air – “Send my maid to me; I am going to get up!”

She lived to see Bob graduated. She is living still, in a hale old age, and her children call her blessed. That minute-and-a-half decided the current of their lives with hers.

Dropping from the pathetic to the ridiculous – he was a shred carter who stuffed a handful of dirt into the mouth of his balky horse – to give him a new idea!

To return to my homely prescription for the nerve-worn and weary – DON’T LET YOURSELF GO! TO CUT THE SLENDER LINE OF WILL POWER IS TO DRIFT OUT!

Marion Harland

Glove Cleaning: A New Occupation for Women

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This is the third article in June of the School for Housewives 1904 series published on Jun 19, 1904, and is an article on female occupation.

School for Housewives – Glove Cleaning: A New Occupation for Women

Among the many new avocations undertaken by the clever modern woman, when suddenly thrown upon her on resources, is that of professional glove cleaner.

It is work that any girl of average intelligence can do, and for which there is always good demand.

A trade is usually obtained by cleaning gloves for one’s wealthy friends, gradually widening the circle among mutual acquaintances and the outside world.

The glove cleaner calls once a week o once a fortnight, according to arrangement, at the house of the customer.

She goes armed with a small work case, which contains all the furnishings necessary for repairing torn kid, and with a bottle of some good liquid cleaner.

An expert worker gives the following rules for the work:

The fluid is poured into a large bowl, and two pairs are cleaned at a time, using enough to cover the gloves well.

Wash the cleaner pair first, treating them just as if washing with water.

Rub one glove with the other, with special attention to the seams.

Have a little cloth for scrubbing spots.

Clean the fingers by dipping them into the fluid, then rubbing hard on a clean towel.

Wooden glove hands in the different sizes are invaluable for this work.

The gloves should be dried by squeezing, not wringing.

Before hanging out to dry inflate with a bellows. Dry in the wind.

Be careful, if your cleaning fluid contains any explosive, not to use it near a light.

Marion Harland

A Simple Summer Dessert – by the French Method

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This is the second article in June of the School for Housewives 1904 series published on Jun 12, 1904, and is a recipe.

School for Housewives – A Simple Summer Dessert – by the French Method

Here is a little cooking school lesson in pictures, given by a French pastry cook – a pâtissier.

The subject is a dainty summer dessert which can be varied from month to month by employing the different fruits as those come into season.

The pastry, if well made, is not unwholesome, and stewed fruit is unquestionably more appetizing served in these pretty shells than ungarnished in a dish or bowl.

To make the puff paste, use exactly equal parts of flour and butter, a little water and a pinch of salt.

Sieve the flour, preferably upon a marble-topped table. By stirring with the fingers in the centre of the heap thus formed, make a hollow ring of the flour as shown in the illustration. Have this ring equally thick and wide all around. Now put the salt and water into the hollow formed by the ring; melt the salt; stir in the flour a little at a time.

When the mixture has begun to thicken, stir in the rest of the flour as rapidly as possible.

Using both hands, roll the paste away from you upon the table. Now gather it together and work it with the base of the thumb, pushing it away from you in small pieces, little by little.

Sprinkle the table with flour, make a ball of the paste, pat the top down a little to make it lose some of the elasticity acquired in the working, and let it stand for a moment.

Now for the butter. Dust the surface of a clean towel with flour, place the butter on this. Fold the edges of the cloth over the top and bear down it to soften the butter, this movement several times from different sides, giving the batter a square shape.

Take the ball of paste which lies in front of you on the table, sprinkled with flour; flatten out into a square, put the butter on this and fold it in tightly as shown in the picture.

Sprinkle the table once more with flour, hold the paste in the hand at some height and dash it down upon the table. Take the roller gently roll out the embryo crust in a forward direction, using moderate force and proceeding without jerks, which last are sure to create unevenness in the crust.

Roll out very thin. Fold over a third part in a forward direction and bring another third over toward you.

Turn the paste half way around, that is to say, let the side which is at your left hand come directly in front of you. Take the roller, roll out once more and again fold it in the same way. Flour a baking board, a dish or a pie plate, put the paste on it, and set aside in a cool place for fifteen minutes.

Roll out and fold over twice; then allow it to stand another quarter of an hour.

Roll out in circular shape and place on a round plate or dish. In the middle pour four generous spoonfuls of the fruit as for any tart.

Spread out the rest of the paste which remains intact. Place this upon the foundation piece on which the fruit is spread; cut it by pressing down the ring and passing the point of the knife all around. Brush over with raw egg, indent a trifle with the point of the knife and bake forty minutes.

When finished dust with the finest of powdered sugar, and put back into the oven for a moment in order that the sugar may melt. Remove at once from the pan on which it is cooked, or it will taste of the metal.

Marion Harland

Dainty Table Furnishings Give a Flavor to Home Cooking

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This is the first article in June of the School for Housewives 1904 series published on Jun 5, 1904, and is an article on dining room furniture.

School for Housewives – Dainty Table Furnishings Give a Flavor to Home Cooking

It requires so little in the way of painstaking to produce a dainty, welled take, that there is little excuse for the slovenly board to which the average family is asked to sit down.

Does the average house mother realize how easy it is to keep the home table looking as well groomed as that of a fashionable cafe?

An occasional polishing will keep the table top bright and fresh. If centrepiece and doylies are substituted for the cloth at luncheon and any informal meal, the table linen can always be crisp and spotless without appalling increase in the laundry bill. Flowers, during a large portion of the year, may be had for the gathering, and even during the winter a flowering pot in a pretty jardiniere entails no great extravagance.

Today’s illustrations suggest a few of the little elegances hat may be applied to the breakfast, luncheon or dinner at home.

Artificial light is not considered requisite for breakfast, therefore the candlesticks, which may very correctly appear for luncheon, are not employed for this meal.

The ideal breakfast menu commences with fruit of some sort, and, as every fruit course calls for finger bowls, this little nicety should be observed at every home table. Have the bowls standing on the place plates with a doylie between when the breakfast arrives. They are lifted and placed at one side before beginning the repast, as shown in the illustrations.

The napkin is seldom now folded around a roll upon the place plate, as used to be the custom. It is laid at one side of the plate in the position indicated by the photograph.

It adds much to the daintiness of the household board to have the glass and silver prettily arranged as if for a more formal repast, with replenishments for each succeeding course.

Marion Harland

A New Glass for Serving Grape Fruit and the Various Fruit Mixtures Comes Just in Time for the Warm Weather Luncheon Table

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This is the fourth article in May of the School for Housewives 1904 series published on May 29, 1904, and is an article a fruit glass.

School for Housewives – A New Glass for Serving Grape Fruit and the Various Fruit Mixtures Comes Just in Time for the Warm Weather Luncheon Table

A new glass for serving grape fruit, salad and kindred appetizers is going to be a boon to more than one housewife this summer.

For the sensible first course of fruit is no longer limited to hotels and fashionable cafes, where trained chefs are well aware of its appetizing, refreshing qualities.

The housekeeper who keeps abreast of things has adopted the idea for the home table. Instead of a hot soup or shell fish, the languid appetite is quickened by a mixture of fruits in season, palatably chilled with perhaps a taste of wine as flavoring.

The new glasses for serving these fruit mixtures come in various styles. Perhaps the most convenient among them is one in the shape of a tall goblet of cut or tinted glass having a small handleless bowl to match. The mixture is filled into the bowl, which is set in the goblet and packed in with shaved ice, so as to come just to the upper rim of the glass.

Of course all manner of dainty finishes are possible. Maraschino cherries, strawberries and hothouse grapes may be dotted over the surface of the preparation, and for state occasions a narrow ribbon can be tied around the glass, as shown in the picture.

The several methods of preparing grapefruit are pretty generally known and appreciated.

For a delicious fruit salpicon now served at the Waldorf use the following recipe:

Make such a selection of fruits as is desired. Pulp cut from halves of grapefruit, maraschino cherries, cut in halves, brandied peaches, cut in pieces, orange pulp, and slices of banana afford a choice. Chill thoroughly, then sprinkle lightly with sugar, and dispose in grapefruit glasses packed around with shaved ice.

Marion Harland

The Neighborhood Picnic

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This is the final article in May of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on May 28, 1905, and is a continuation of the previous week’s talk on the picnic. In this article, Marion Harland discusses the joy that can be found in the group or neighbourhood picnic.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the The Buffalo Sunday Morning News.

The Neighborhood Picnic

How to Make It a Real Pleasure for Everybody Concerned

A MONSTER picnic run by contract is a social enormity. He builded better than he knew who characterized such as a “pleasure exertion.” Even the average child has ceased to regard the Sunday or day school picnic as a delight.

Huddled in hot cars, packed sardinewise in steam transports, disgorged upon rents grounds, worn bare of turf by former hordes and sparsely shaded by spiritless trees, the revelers are turned loose to frolic and to feed for a given number of hours. When the time is up they are corralled like driven, dirty, discontented cattle and deposited by bedtime at dock or depot, having achieved one more travesty that is peculiarly United Statesian.

A New England Picnic.

But an al fresco pleasure-taking on the part of a dozen or more congenial families or a company of nice, neighborly young people, properly chaperoned, is one of the least conventional and altogether agreeable forms of summer entertainment.

It was my fortune, several years ago, to spend a summer in one of the loveliest of New England towns, where the private picnic was a favorite means of dispensing and receiving hospitality. A description of one of these veritable pleasure excursions will convey my meaning more truly then a list of formal instructions could.

The young people, numbering sometimes twenty-five, sometimes forty, assembled at the house of her who gave the function. If the designated pleasure ground were to be reached by land, carriages were at the door to convey the party. Those who owned private carriages brought them; perhaps half a dozen would be on horseback; the rest were accommodated in vehicles furnished by the hostess. One wagon contained the collation.

Plenty of Good Cheer.

This particular town was fortunate as to have within easy walking distance, and also accessibly by trolley cars, a chain of lakelets leading up into the hills; “ponds,” the country folk called them. They furnished water power for flourishing mills. They were the popular resort of lovers of boating and swimming. “Water picnics” were the order of the day in the summer I speak of. The young men wore flannel yachting suits; the girls, white waists and blue serge skirts, or waists and skirts of white duck or colored linen. Anything like display in costume would have been reckoned vulgar and out of taste. The chaperon and two or three couples went in the first boat; the provisions, under the care of a trusty domestic, followed in the wake of a convivial fleet. The amateur musicians were near the middle of the line, with guitar, banjo, violin and flute. When we cleared the town the music began—part songs, glees, rollicking boating ballads following one another. Everybody sang, whether or not voice or ear were good. Four o’clock was the hour of meeting. By 5 we disembarked at one of the many attractive landing places bordering the upper lake. The wood was full of wild flowers, sand violets rioting upon the slopes, ferns fringing the shore and towering into beds of bracken in the edge of the grove. A committee of flower lovers sallied forth in quest of decorations for the sylvan feast. Another and a smaller deputation remained behind to lay the cloth and spread the table. A level expanse of sward was selected, and the damask was secured against vagrant gusts by laying heavy stones at the corners. One hamper contained napery and table furniture. This consisted of wooden plates, bowls and dishes, bought for a few cents a piece; stout glasses and stoneware pitchers, silver forks, knives and spoons. The napkins were of Japanese paper. Sometimes several girls joined hands in providing refreshments, one bringing nothing but sandwiches, another providing cakes, and third iced tea and coffee, a fourth salads, and all “clubbing in” on the ice cream.

This last was the most cumbrous article in the van or boat, packed down in a freezer, surrounded by salt and ice. Salad dressing, French or mayonnaise, came in a wide-mouthed jar, closely corked; lettuce was washed and picked over at home, wrapped in a damp napkin and laid lightly in a basket, bits of ice scattered among the leaves preserving their crispness. Each sandwich was enveloped in paraffine paper, such as lines cracker boxes; hard-boiled eggs, stuffed and deviled eggs were done up separately in tissue papers frilled at the ends. Cold tea and coffee came in quart bottles, set closely in a round basket about a lump of ice, wrapped first in canton flannel, then in oilcloth.

Only One Break.

Chicken or celery or any other salad that would toughen or wilt if left long in the dressing was packed, unseasoned, in a bowl, covered closely and dressed just before it was eaten.

Cushions, taken from boats or from carriages, if we had come by land, were laid around the cloth upon rugs, which protected flannels and duck from grass stains or earth damps.

Lastly, the floral treasures collected by the decorating committee were disposed tastefully between dishes, pitchers and bowls, and the material part of the feast began, to the accompaniment of much jesting and more laughter.

I recall with sincere satisfaction that in all the eight or ten picnics it was my happiness to attend that golden summer I witnessed but one incident that could be construed into rudeness or undue license of speech or act.

A young collegian, with more spirits than wit, had brought, of his own motion, a huge bag of dates, and, producing it after all were seated about the tastefully decorated table, scattered the contents broadcast over the array, splashing into glasses, dotting salads and sandwiches and shocking the company into the momentary silence.

Then the clear, girlish voice of the hostess was heard: “Mr. B—has evidently made a specialty of chronological tables in the university. I am afraid most of us are too unlearned to appreciate them!”

A Dance on the Turf.

By the time the supper was over the sun war near the setting. Tablecloth and napkins, glass, crockery and silver were returned to the hampers and a camp fire was kindled, with plates and dishes as a foundation. We sat in a ring about it, singing, chatting and story-telling, until the flames sank into embers. These were extinguished carefully before we set out for home.

Sometimes there was an impromptu dance upon the turf in genuine fairy fashion. Always we carried away with us lighter hearts and healthier bodies for the innocent diversion of the summer afternoon.

Recipes for the preparation of some picnic viands will be found in the recipe column.

Marion Harland

OTHER ARTICLES ALSO PUBLISHED…
The Housemothers’ Exchange
Picnic Recipes
Porch Furniture

Where Some Women Fail as Home Makers

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This is the third article in May of the School for Housewives 1904 series published on May 22, 1904, and is an article on homemaking.

School for Housewives – Where Some Women Fail as Home Makers

Photographs Taken Especially for This Newspaper Illustrating Some of the Things Which Do and Don’t Make the Home Happy

You understand why so many marriages “prove unhappy” and why so many husbands are promptly “disillusioned” when you see some women in their household attire.

The little photographic sermonette preached today, unhappily for our homes, requires no elucidation here.

“Gaze first on this picture, then on that.”

We all know the type.

She invariably wears a wrapper – or, at best, a soiled kimono with bedraggled petticoat – and she is morally certain to have a limited number of curl papers aureoling her brow.

The visitor who drops in for an afternoon call catches a flying glimpse of her as she scurries through the hall for a two minutes’ grooming in the bedroom.

Or the maid is out, and she herself comes to the door pinning on a collar all awry and struggling with a coiffure that threatens momentarily to escape from the anchorage of three wire hairpins.

If she were one of these sorely burdened creatures who do their own housework with half a dozen little ones to be tended and red and amused withal, your sympathy would be readier.

But in nine cases out of ten she is nothing of the kind. Mrs. June Bride, with at least one servant to do her bidding, and almost without cares, is as great a sinner in this respect as anyone.

Indeed, it is frequently the struggling sister, from whom one would naturally expect least, who presents the most creditable appearance indoors.

It is she, too, who manages to slip on a pretty bodice every night before coming to the dinner table.

The material may be cheap, and as for the flowers – they were culled from the window garden, costing nothing – but you see the picture that she makes across the table. Is it any wonder that the dinner tastes delicious!

Occasionally, too she wears “the company smile” at home. She of the wrapper-and-curl-paper type is apt to keep this charming possession laid away with her best dress for visiting purposes only.

Marion Harland

A Family Basket Picnic

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This is the third article in May of the School for Housewives 1905 series published on May 21, 1905, and is an article on the picnic.

Transcribed from the Sunday edition of the The Buffalo Sunday Morning News.

A Family Basket Picnic

“Oh! that we two were Maying
Down the stream of the soft spring breeze!
Like children with violets playing
In the shade of the whispering trees.”

SO SINGS the English poet, with the scent of the hawthorn hedges in his imagination—the stifling, roaring town oppressing his senses.

The perpetual miracle of springtime awakens in people who talk, write and live prose, unuttered longings for country sounds, country sights and country smells. As a nation we Americans are just learning to spell vacation, after the Squeersian fashion. And when we, too, “know this our of book, we go and do it”—or we think we do. To nine hundred and ninety-seven out of every thousand, “Vacation” means a dead stop in the routine of our daily living, for one, two or four weeks in the hottest season of the year, and “going somewhere.” If that daily living be very plain as to externals and monotonous as to mental exercises, the “outing” is probably to the gayest “resort” of which the pleasure-seeker has any knowledge. There he or she tarries, an unconsidered looker-on, as long as the money allotted for leisure holds out. Then—back into harness for another eleven months and a half!

We take ourselves and all connected with us too seriously. We set for ourselves tasks too long and too heavy. Our Teutonic, Gallic and Latin immigrants could give us profitable lessons in the art of taking duty in broken doses, and diversifying by breathing spells the long pulls, the strong pulls and the pulls all together for which we are noted.

A Holiday Each Month.

I think sometimes that Benjamin Franklin was the truest exponent of the typical American spirit our country has yet produced. He took to the strenuous life early. His proposed grace over the whole barrel is a representative anecdote. We compress our merrymaking into tabloids and swallow them periodically. May invites and June wooes in vain. Vacation, as a business, has its season. Rich people can take liberties with rules, and play when the humor seizes them. Men and women who have their living to make cannot intermit the grind.

That a holiday once a month, even if it be classed with uncovenanted mercies, would make the grind easier, and brace the back to carry the burden jauntily, does not enter into the working man’s calculations. A Sunday off, now and then, he may indulge in, if he be a non-churchgoer. Otherwise, he stands in his lot—i.e., in the groove of the grind. “Holidays are too costly for poor folks.” As a people we know not of cheap pleasure-taking.

To such sober-minded citizens the family picnic may not commend itself, unless they are caught young by the attractions of what I shall try, to the best of my humble ability, to set before flat-dweller and cottager as a delight within the reach of the poor in purse and reasonable in desire.

Saturday is the most approved day for family excursions, if the occasion has been foreseen and provided for. If the father be his own master, he can pack and accommodate work to leave part of the day free. The mother can do the same. The hardest student among the children has what the much-courted fopling in “Patience” stipulated for—“the usual half-holiday.”

An Unconventional Family.

Throwing American traditions to the winds, and forgetting. Poor Richard for six hours, set we forth with the unconventional family after a 12 o’clock luncheon, for the actual country by the shortest route. Each of the party, the west tot not excepted, has a basket or a paper box. The eldest boy or biggest girl has also a shawl strap, the purport of which will be discovered by and by. The destination of the happy crew, decided upon weeks ago, is a secluded grove or shady meadow so near town that little time is lost in reaching it. There must be grass, and wild flowers grow in the grass’ trees and birds and squirrels haunt the branches. Water within easy distance is an absolute necessity. Whatever else was left at home, be sure a box of fish-hooks and a coil of twine form a part of each boy’s outfit. If an unwary shiner or a brainless perch reward three hours’ patient fishing, it will be eviscerated, stuck on a stick and crisped in the smoke of the camp-fire kindled upon the edge of the picnic grounds.

Mamma has brought the magazine she had no time to read at home. The shawl is taken from the strap and spread upon the softest turf where a treebole will support her back; papa stretches his lazy length of limb upon the ground near her, and, his head supported by his crossed arms, looks up through green boughs at the blue sky and thinks (consciously) of nothing.

Wholesome Enjoyment.

Reflect for a moment what it is for an American-born business man to think of nothing, with the open heavens above him, sweet airs wandering over him, the chirp of free birds and the laughter of his joyous children in his ear! He is not making money for that hour, but he is laying in health and happiness, with a store of pleasant memories for the busy weeks beyond the half holiday.

The children spread the cloth, which was the nucleus of the strapped bundle. Supervised by the mother, they unpack and arrange upon the cloth the contents of boxes and baskets—sandwiches, cakes, hard-boiled eggs, fruit and bonbons, chatting like magpies as they bustle over the pleasing task. There are bottles of milk and lemonade, and for the parents, ginger ale, all cooled in the shadiest part of the brook, or in the spring.

A little later in the season there will be berries and gayer wild flowers than the “Innocents,” anemones and wood violets, withering in the hot and grimy little hands that bear them homeward as the sun touches the tops of the trees. And yet later, nuts in hedge-row and wood, and wild apples to be had for the climbing and picking, and

“On the hill the golden rod,
And the aster in the wood,
And the yellow sunflower by the brook.”

Always there will be wholesome enjoyment, the simple delights—exquisite as simple—of face-to-face communion with nature. The blessed old mother takes young and old lovingly to her bosom; now, as in the very oldest days of myth and parable, we, too, arise refreshed from contact with her teeming heart—the same now and for all time.

Our next talk will be upon THE NEIGHBORHOOD PICNIC, with directions for the conduct of the same, including recipes for portable delicacies.

Marion Harland

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Keeping House by Electricity

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This is the second article in May of the School for Housewives 1904 series published on May 8, 1904, and is a short article on electric lighting.

School for Housewives – Keeping House by Electricity

Many Old-Time Drudgeries Abolished and New Pleasures given by the Use of the Current

The electric current is now being harnessed in a dozen and one little ways to do the work of the modern housekeeper and her bidding.

The ceaseless treadmill of the sewing machine is done away with. A little motor getting its power from the ordinary lighting circuit does the work without labor and much more evenly. The speed can be regulated by means of a small lever. Any comfortable position can be assumed and an invalid can safely operate the machine.

The electric flatiron is particularly good for people occupying boarding houses or flats.

This iron heats up in a few minutes and can be kept at even temperature as long as the attachment is connected with the electrical circuit.

Electric curling irons working automatically are found in many progressive hotels. The popularity of this apparatus lies in the fact that no soot occurs, as is the case in heating with gas.

The electric chafing-dish is really a small stove which can be regulated so as to give the desired intensity of heat.

It can be carried in the overcoat pocket, and in a train, hotel or wherever electricity is available it can be set up and used for preparing coffee, tea, welsh rabbit and other viands.

None of these require more than the expenditure of three-quarters of an hour to operate. The greatest advantages of electricity are absolute cleanliness and safety.

Marion Harland