to get up a small
piece of household linen once a year, and provide the family with
the stockings, by employing the odds and ends of their time in these
ways. But there is another manufacture which I am carrying on, and I
know of none within my own reach which is so valuable." "What can
that be?" said the squire. "_To make good wives for working men_,"
said she. "Is not mine an excellent staple commodity? I am teaching
these girls the arts of industry and good management. It is little
encouragement to an honest man to work hard all the week, if his
wages are wasted by a slattern at home. Most of these girls will
probably become wives to the poor, or servants to the rich; to such
the common arts of life are of great value: now, as there is little
opportunity for learning these at the school-house, I intend to
propose that such gentry as have sober servants, shall allow one of
these girls to come and work in their families one day in a week,
when the house-keeper, the cook, the house-maid or the laundry-maid,
shall be required to instruct them in their several departments.
This I conceive to be the best way of training good servants. They
would serve this kind of regular apprenticeship to various sorts of
labor. Girls who come out of charity-schools, where they have been
employed in knitting, sewing, and reading, are not sufficiently
prepared for hard or laborious employments. I do not in general
approve of teaching charity children to write, for the same reason.
I confine within very strict limits my plan of educating the poor. A
thorough knowledge of religion, and of some of those coarser arts of
life by which the community may be best benefitted, includes the
whole stock of instruction, which, unless in very extraordinary
cases, I would wish to bestow."

"What have you got on the fire, madam?" said the squire; "for your
pot really smells as savory as if Sir John's French cook had filled
it." "Sir," replied Mrs. Jones, "I have lately got acquainted with
Mrs. Whyte who has given us an account of her cheap dishes, and nice
cookery, in one of the Cheap Repository little books.[16] Mrs. Betty
and I have made all her dishes, and very good they are; and we have
got several others of our own. Every Friday we come here and dress
one. These good woman see how it is done, and learn to dress it at
their own house. I take home part for my own dinner, and what is
left I give to each in turn. I hope I have opened their eyes on a
sa