hands of indifferent, careless servants and confided to those who
realize the nobleness of the responsibility, and will strive to meet
it faithfully. Ultimately, the ignorant, careless ones must be taught,
but that will never be till culture is a manifest necessity and finds
a fit reward. When a man undertakes the charge of a new business, he
learns, not only its general principles, but as far as possible, its
minutest details, otherwise he fails inevitably, and the place is
given to his well-qualified competitor. If our prospective
housekeepers were amenable to similar rules, the competent mistresses
of this most useful art would find plenty of apprentices glad to serve
them long and well for their tuition, and if those who have now the
care of households will patiently instruct their help, they will find
abundant recompense in a more faithful and efficient service.

Doubtless we must wait a little longer for our lost Eden to be
restored by the angels of the household; but, in the hastening of that
good time, such examples, permit me to say, as your own will be worth
far more than any multiplying of conveniences and labor-saving
machines for the benefit of those who do not know or care to learn
how to use them,--examples of the nobleness, the gentility if you
please, of all useful labor. Until that everlasting truth is
understood and applied, there will be more need of your teaching than
of my plans. If you will teach your neighbors what a fully equipped
home building should contain, I will try to show them how their wants
can be supplied. Teach them, at the same time, what it need not
contain. As certain folks do not understand how heaven can be
enjoyable without a Tartarean attachment to which all disagreeable
people and performances are consigned, so a common notion of home,
that earthly epitome of heaven, appears to be that it should also
contain an abridgment of the same direful institution; that there must