pardonable enough, but
still a waste; and to the mistaken fancy that it is the mark of a lady to
sit idle and let servants do everything for her.

Such women may well take a lesson by contrast from the pure and noble,
useful and cultivated thrift of an average German young lady--for ladies
these German women are, in every possible sense of the word.

But it is not of this sort of waste of which I wish to speak to-day. I
only mention the matter in passing, to show that high intellectual
culture is not incompatible with the performance of homely household
duties, and that the moral success of which I 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
they 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 food.

Neither will any parent who wishes, naturally enough, that his daughters
should cost him as little as possible; and wishes, naturally enough also,
that they should be as well dressed as possible, deny that it would be a
good thing for them to be practical milliners and mantua-makers; and, by
making their own clothes gracefully and well,