ver a quarter-century ago. But age cannot wither
nor custom stale, nor render old-fashioned the delightful volume with
its many quaint and original ideas. Others besides girls have learned
the practical truth of one sentence which, for the good it has done,
deserves to be written in letters of gold:

"_Something must be crowded out._"

More than one perplexed and conscientious worker has, like myself,
written it out in large text and tacked it up in sewing-room, kitchen,
or over a desk.

In the beginning, I want to guard what may seem to be a weak point by
stating, first and above all, that this is not an excuse for slighting
or "slurring over" our legitimate work.

One easygoing housekeeper used to say that, in her opinion, there was
a genius in slighting. Her home attested the fact that she had reduced
the habit of leaving things undone to a science, but it is doubtful if
the so-called genius differed largely from that which forms a
prominent characteristic of the porcine mother, and enables her to
enjoy her home and little ones with apparent indifference to the fact
that outsiders denominate one a sty, and her offspring small pigs.

Not very long ago I was frequently brought into contact with a woman
who has, as all her friends acknowledge, a faculty for "turning off
work." She has a jaunty knack of pinning trimming on a hat, which,
although bare and stiff in the start, evolves into a toque or capote
that a French milliner need not blush to confess as her handiwork.
She can run up the seams in a dress-skirt with speed that fills the
slower sisters working at her side with sad envy. She puts up
preserves with marvelous dexterity, and can toss together eggs,
butter, sugar and flour, and turn out a cake in less time than an
ordinary woman would consume in creaming the butter and sugar. But it
is an obvious fact that the work of this remarkable woman lacks
"staying power." Her too rapid and long stitches often give way,
allowing between them mortifying glimpses of white under-waist or
skirt to obtrude themselves; in a high wind the trimmings or feathers
are likely to blow loose from the dainty bonnets; her preserves
ferment, and have to be "boiled down," while the cutting of her cake
reveals the truth that under the top-crust are heavy streaks, like a
stratum of igneous formation shot athwart the aqueous. The maker of
gown, hat, preserves, and cake lacks thoroughness. As one irreverent
young man once said after dan