spoke just now need not be injured, any more than it is in
Germany, by intellectual success likewise. I trust that these
words may reassure those parents, if any such there be here, who
may fear that these lectures will withdraw women from their
existing sphere of interest and activity. That they should
entertain such a fear is not surprising, after the extravagant
opinions and schemes which have been lately broached in various
quarters.

The programme to these lectures expressly disclaims any such
intentions; and I, as a husband and a father, expressly disclaim
any such intention likewise.

"To fit women for the more enlightened performance of their
special duties;" to help them towards learning how to do better
what we doubt not many of them are already doing well; is, I
honestly believe, the only object of the promoters of this scheme.

Let us see now how some of these special duties can be better
performed by help of a little enlightenment as to the laws which
regulate them.

Now, no man will deny--certainly no man who is past forty-five,
and whose digestion is beginning to quail before the lumps of beef
and mutton which are the boast of a British kitchen, and to
prefer, with Justice Shallow, and, I presume, Sir John Falstaff
also, "any pretty little tiny kickshaws"--no man, I say, who has
reached that age, but will feel it a practical comfort to him to
know that the young ladies of his family are at all events good
cooks; and understand, as the French do, thrift in the matter of