especially among the cultivated classes, who, more than at any period of
woman's history, are at the mercy of their servants. Every science is
learned but domestic science. The schools ignore it; and, indeed, in the
rush toward an early graduation, there is small room for it.

"She can learn at home," say the mothers. "She will take to it when her
time comes, just as a duck takes to water," add the fathers; and the
matter is thus dismissed as settled.

In the mean time the "she" referred to--the average daughter of average
parents in both city and country--neither "learns at home," nor "takes to
it naturally," save in exceptional cases; and the reason for this is
found in the love, which, like much of the love given, is really only a
higher form of selfishness. The busy mother of a family, who has fought
her own way to fairly successful administration, longs to spare her
daughters the petty cares, the anxious planning, that have helped to eat
out her own youth; and so the young girl enters married life with a vague
sense of the dinners that must be, and a general belief that somehow or
other they come of themselves. And so with all household labor. That to
perform it successfully and skillfully, demands not only training, but the
best powers one can bring to bear upon its accomplishment, seldom enters
the mind; and the student, who has ended her course of chemistry or
physiology enthusiastically, never dreams of applying either to every-day
life.

This may seem a digression; and yet, in the very outset, it is necessary
to place this work upon the right footing, and to impress with all
possible earnestness the fact, that Household Science holds every other
science in tribute, and that only that home which starts with this
admission and builds upon the best foundation the best that thought can