But what of the poor rich woman who throws away her life in the vain endeavor to bring servants and children "up to time?" Two things. First, she dies of worry, not of work - a distinction with a difference.

Second, if she possess one-half enough strength of mind and strength of purpose to have made herself mistress of a single art or science, or sufficient tact to sustain her as a successful leader in society, or the degree of administrative ability requisite to enable her to conduct rightly a public enterprise of any note, be it benevolent, literary, or social, she ought to be competent to the government of her household ; to administer domestic affairs with such wise energy as should insure order and punctuality without self-immolation.

"If they have run with the footmen and they have wearied them, how shall they contend with horses?"

Let us look at this matter fairly, and without prejudice on either side. I should contradict other of my written and spoken opinions; stultify myself beyond the recovery of your respect or my own, were I to deny that more and wider avenues of occupation should be opened to woman than are now conceded as their right by the popular verdict. But not because the duties of the housewife are overburdensome or degrading. On the contrary, I would have forty trained cooks where there is now one; would make her who looketh diligently to the ways of her household worthy, as in Solomon's day, of double honor. Of co-operative laundries I have much hope. I would have waashing-day become a tradition of the past to be shuddered over by every emancipated family in the land. In "co-operative housekeeping," in the sense in which it is generally understood, I have scanty faith as a cure for the general untowardness of what my sprightly correspondent styles "the materials this country affords." Somebody must get the dinners and somebody superintend the getting-up of these. 1 honestly believe that the best method of reforming American domestic service and American cookery is by making the mistress of every home proficient in the art and a capable instructress of others. I know - no one better - how women who have never cared to beautify their own tables, or to study elegant variety in their bills of fare, who have railed at soups as "slops," and entrees as "trash," talk, after the year's travel 'in foreign lands their husband's earnings and their own pinching have gained for them. How they groan over native cookery and the bondage of native mistresses, and tell how cheaply and luxuriously one can live in dear Paris.

"Will the time ever come," they cry, "when we, too, can sit at ease in our frescoed saloons surrounded by no end of artificial flowers and mirrors, and order our meals from a restaurant?"

To which I, from the depths of my home-loving heart, reply, "Heaven forbid!"

Have you ever thought how large a share the kitchen and dining-room have in forming the distinctive characteristics of the home? It is no marvel that the man who has had his dinners from an eating-house all his life should lack a word to describe that which symbolizes to the Anglo-Saxon all that is dearest and most sacred on earth. I avow, without a tinge of shame, that I soon tire, then sicken of restaurant and hotel dainties. I like the genuine wholesomeness of home-fare.

"Madame," said a Frenchman whom I once met at an American watering-place, "one of my compatriots could produce one grand repast - one that should not want for the beautiful effects, with the contents of that pail - tub - bucket - of what the peoples here "call the svill" pointing to a mass of dinner debris set just without a side door.

"Monsieur," I rejoined, with a grimace that matched his, "moi, je n'aime pas le svill!"

He was right, without doubt, in the implication that very much is thrown away as refuse which could be reproduced upon the table to the satisfaction and advantage of host and guest. Perhaps my imagination was more to blame than he for my unlucky recollection of his countrywoman's recommendation of a mayonnaise to a doubting guest:

"You need not fear to partake, madame. The fish has been preserved from putrefaction by a process of vinegar and charcoal!"

It is a substantial comfort to the Anglo-Saxon stomach for its owner to know what he is eating. Call it prejudice, if you like, but it may have something to do with making one "true clear through," as my Yankee girl puts it.

"But such poetic repasts!" sighs my travelled acquaintance. "Such heavenly garnishes, and flowers everywhere, and the loveliest side-dishes, and everything so exquisitely served ! When I think of them, I abominate our great, vulgar joints and stiff dinner-tables!"

Yet Mrs. Nouveau Riche dawdles all the forenoon over a piece of tasteless embroidery, and gives the afternoon to gossip; while Bridget or Dinah prepares dinner, and serves it in accordance with her peculiar ideas of right and fitness.

"Train American servants?" she says, in a transport of contemptuous incredulity at my suggestion that here is good missionary ground, "I have had enough of that! Just as soon as I teach them the rudiments of decent cookery they carry off their knowledge to soime-body else, trade for double wages from my neighbor upon what they have gained from me!"

"But," I remark, argumentatively, "do you not see, my dear lady, that so surely as ' ten times one is ten,' if all your neighbors were, in like manner, to instruct the servants who come to them and desert, so soon as they are taught their trade, the great work of securing wholesome and palatable cookery and tasteful serving would soon be an accomplished fact in your community? and, by the natural spread of the leaven, the race of incompetent cooks and clumsy waiters would before long become extinct? Would it not be worth while for housekeepers to co-operate in the attempt to secure excellence in these departments instead of 'getting along somehow' with 'the materials' - i. e., servants - 'this country affords?' Why not compel the country - wrong-headed abstraction that it is! - to afford us what we want? Would not the demand, thus enforced and persisted in, create a supply?"