ain or what will brighten
a metal, what are common poisons and what their antidotes, and not
knowing enough of the laws of caloric to understand how to warm a house,
or of the laws of atmosphere to know how to ventilate one? Why should
the preparation of food, that subtile art on which life, health,
cheerfulness, good temper, and good looks so largely depend, forever be
left in the hands of the illiterate and vulgar?

"A benevolent gentleman has lately left a large fortune for the founding
of a university for women, and the object is stated to be to give women
who have already acquired a general education the means of acquiring a
professional one, to fit themselves for some employment by which they
may gain a livelihood.

"In this institution the women are to be instructed in book-keeping,
stenography, telegraphing, photographing, drawing, modelling, and
various other arts; but so far as I remember, there is no proposal to
teach domestic economy as at least _one_ of woman's professions.

"Why should there not be a professor of domestic economy in every large
female school? Why should not this professor give lectures, first on
house-planning and building, illustrated by appropriate apparatus? Why
should not the pupils have presented to their inspection models of
houses planned with reference to economy, to ease of domestic service,
to warmth, to ventilation, and to architectural appearance? Why should
not the professor go on to lecture further on house-fixtures, with
models of the best mangles, washing-machines, clothes-wringers, ranges,
furnaces, and cooking-stoves, together with drawings and apparatus
illustrative of domestic hydraulics, showing the best contrivances for
bathing-rooms and the obvious principles of plumbing, so that the pupils
may have some idea how to work the machinery of a convenient house when
they have it, and to have such conveniences introduced when wanting? If
it is thought worth while to provide at great expense apparatus for
teaching the revolutions of Saturn's moons and the precession of the
equinoxes, why should there not be some also to teach what it may
greatly concern a woman's earthly happiness to know?

"Why should not the professor lecture on home-chemistry, devoting his
first lecture to bread-making? and why might not a batch of bread be
made and baked and exhibited to the class, together with specimens of
morbid anatomy in the bread line,--the sour cotton bread of the
baker,--the