ich forms so
agreeable a feature of it in the Old World. This being the case, it
should be an object in America to exclude from the labors of the
family all that can, with greater advantage, be executed out of it by
combined labor.

Formerly, in New England, soap and candles were to be made in each
separate family; now, comparatively few take this toil upon them. We
buy soap of the soap-maker, and candles of the candle-factor. This
principle might be extended much further. In France no family makes
its own bread, and better bread cannot be eaten than what can be
bought at the appropriate shops. No family does its own washing; the
family's linen is all sent to women who, making this their sole
profession, get it up with a care and nicety which can seldom be
equaled in any family.

How would it simplify the burdens of the American housekeeper to have
washing and ironing day expunged from her calendar! How much more
neatly and compactly could the whole domestic system be arranged! If
all the money that each separate family spends on the outfit and
accommodations for washing and ironing, on fuel, soap, starch, and the
other et ceteras, were united in a fund to create a laundry for every
dozen families, one or two good women could do in firstrate style what
now is very indifferently done by the disturbance and disarrangement
of all other domestic processes in these families. Whoever sets
neighborhood laundries on foot will do much to solve the American
housekeeper's hardest problem.

Finally, American women must not try with three servants to carry on
life in the style which in the Old World requires sixteen: they must
thoroughly understand, and be prepared _to teach_, every branch of
housekeeping; they must study to make domestic service desirable by
treating their servants in a way to lead them to respect themselves
and to feel themselves respected; and there will gradually be evolved
from the present confusion a solution of the domestic problem which
shall be adapted to the life of a new and growing world.

X

COOKERY

My wife and I were sitting at the open bow-window of my study,
watching the tuft of bright-red leaves on our favorite maple, which
warned us that summer was over. I was solacing myself, like all the
world in our days, with reading the "Schoenberg Cotta Family," when my
wife made her voice heard through the enchanted distance, and
dispersed the pretty vision of German cottage life.

"Chris