ents? Do they not study the various processes of mechanics,
and learn to understand and to do many as difficult operations, as any
that belong to housekeeping? All these things are explained, studied,
and recited in classes, when every one knows that little practical use
can ever be made of this knowledge. Why, then, should not that science
and art, which a woman is to practise during her whole life, be studied
and recited?

It may be urged, that, even if it is studied, it will soon be forgotten.
And so will much of every thing studied at school. But why should that
knowledge, most needful for daily comfort, most liable to be in demand,
be the only study omitted, because it may be forgotten?

It may also be objected, that young ladies can get such books, and
attend to them out of school. And so they can get books on Chemistry and
Philosophy, and study them out of school; but _will_ they do it? And why
ought we not to make sure of the most necessary knowledge, and let the
less needful be omitted? If young ladies study such a work as this, in
school, they will remember a great part of it; and, when they forget, in
any emergency, they will know where to resort for instruction. But if
such books are not put into schools, probably not one in twenty will see
or hear of them, especially in those retired places where they are most
needed. And is it at all probable, that a branch, which is so lightly
esteemed as to be deemed unworthy a place in the list of female studies,
will be sought for and learned by young girls, who so seldom look into
works of solid instruction after they leave school? So deeply is the
writer impressed with the importance of this, as a branch of female
education, at school, that she would deem it far safer and wiser to omit
any other, rather than this.

Another reason, for introducing such a branch of study into female
schools, is, the influence it would exert, in leading young ladies more
correctly to estimate the importance and dignity of domestic knowledge.
It is now often the case, that young ladies rather pride themselves on
their ignorance of such subjects; and seem to imagine that it is vulgar
and ungenteel to know how to work. This is one of the relics of an
aristocratic state of society, which is fast passing away. Here, the
tendency of every thing is to the equalisation of labor, so that all
classes are feeling, more and more, that indolence is disreputable. And
there are many mothers, among t