ng a price to the operators which will
enable them to command an excellence of work such as private families
seldom realize. It will also have a town bakery, where the best of
family bread, white, brown, and of all grains, shall be compounded; and
lastly a town cook-shop, where soup and meats may be bought, ready for
the table. Those of us who have kept house abroad remember the ease with
which our foreign establishments were carried on. A suite of elegant
apartments, a courier, and one female servant were the foundation of
domestic life. Our courier boarded us at a moderate expense, and the
servant took care of our rooms. Punctually to the dinner-hour every day,
our dinner came in on the head of a porter from a neighboring cook-shop.
A large chest lined with tin, and kept warm by a tiny charcoal stove in
the centre, being deposited in an ante-room, from it came forth, first,
soup, then fish, then roast of various names, and lastly pastry and
confections,--far more courses than any reasonable Christian needs to
keep him in healthy condition; and dinner being over, our box with its
_debris_ went out of the house, leaving a clear field.

"Now I put it to the distressed 'Young Family Man' whether these three
institutions of a bakery, a cook-shop, and a laundry, in the village
where he lives would not virtually annihilate his household cares, and
restore peace and comfort to his now distracted family.

"There really is no more reason why every family should make its own
bread than its own butter,--why every family should do its own washing
and ironing than its own tailoring or mantua-making. In France, where
certainly the arts of economy are well studied, there is some specialty
for many domestic needs for which we keep servants. The beautiful inlaid
floors are kept waxed and glossy by a professional gentleman who wears a
brush on his foot-sole, skates gracefully over the surface, and, leaving
all right, departeth. Many families, each paying a small sum, keep this
servant in common.

"Now if ever there was a community which needed to study the art of
living, it is our American one; for at present, domestic life is so
wearing and so oppressive as seriously to affect health and happiness.
Whatever has been done abroad in the way of comfort and convenience can
be done here; and the first neighborhood that shall set the example of
dividing the tasks and burdens of life by the judicious use of the
principle of _association_ wi