The Present Housekeepers.
To be a perfect housekeeper under the present system requires not only forethought, judgment, and incessant mental activity, but also practical knowledge and skill in various complicated industries wholly differing from each other,—for certainly there is no more affinity between sewing and cooking, for example, than there is between fruit-growing and house-building. Thus the mistress of a family must in fact be many persons in one; but this is more than ought to be expected of any body, and far more than civilized men ask of each other. Hence the general result is just what we see to-day,—ill-regulated or extravagant households, or harassed and over-worked mistresses, while hotels and boarding-houses are full to repletion with victims from both classes, and are constantly enlarging their borders. Here and there some woman of remarkable practical ability succeeds in compassing the whole difficulty with apparent ease to herself; but even then it is generally at the neglect of the aesthetic and intellectual elements of modern feminine culture, or by the sacrifice of the geniality, hospitality, and charity of social intercourse. In short, fix it how we may, in some direction the humanities and amenities are suffering all the time.
The Co-operative Housekeepers.
With the exit of the servant element from our families, however, and the lifting from the minds of their mistresses of all the load of care about the family meals, the family clothing, and the thousand indispensable trifles that go to make up domestic comfort and well-being, would come a great calm and freedom of spirit. The house would be, as it were, empty, swept, and garnished, and ready for all pleasant spirits to enter in and dwell there, and for all busy and beneficent enterprises to be conceived and energized there. The wife would no longer be obliged to neglect her charities, her accomplishments, or her Mends. All excuse
