mathematics and invention, to poetry and fine art.

From potato-washing to architectural design the distance is great, yet
there are possible steps, and easy ones too, leading from one to the
other. I began with the potatoes and know all their tricks and their
manners. The accompanying sketch is the nearest approach to
architecture yet attained. A long way off, you will say; but I insist
it is worthier of recognition than the plans of amateurs who begin
with the parlor and leave the kitchen out in the cold. It is not for
Mr. Fred; he must work out his own kitchen. If Mrs. Fred can't help
him, more's the pity. I give my notions of general principles; the
application of them I leave to you.

My kitchen is not merely a cook-room, nor yet the assembly and
business room of the entire household, as in the olden time. It is the
housekeeper's head-quarters, the mill to which all domestic grists are
brought to be ground,--ground but not consumed. I should never learn
to be heartily grateful for my daily bread if it must always be eaten
with the baking-pans at my elbow. Indeed, we seldom enjoy to the
utmost any good thing if the process of its manufacture has been
carried on before our eyes. Hence the dining-room is a necessity, but
it must be near at hand. If the kitchen cannot go to it, it must come
to the kitchen. If this goes to the basement, or to the attic, that
must follow, but always with impassable barriers between, protecting
each one of our five senses. The confusion usually attending the
dinner-hour should be out of sight; the hissing of buttered pans and
the sound of rattling dishes we do not wish to hear; our sharpened
appetites must not be dulled by spicy aromas that seem to settle on
our tongues; we do not like, in summer weather, to be broiled in the
same heat that roasts our beef; while, as for scents, wrath is cruel
and anger is outrageous, but who is able to stand the smell of boiling
cabbage? Yes; the kitchen must be separated from the dining-room, and
the more perfect its appointments, the easier is this separation. The
library and the sitting-room are completely divided by a mere curtain,
because each is quiet and well disposed, not inclined to assert its
own rights or invade those of others; but the ordinary kitchen, like
ill-bred people, is constantly doing both. Thomas Beecher proposes to
locate his at the top of the church steeple. That is unnecessary; we
have only to elevate it morally and intellectua