INTRODUCTION.
FOR the last two years we have occupied a corner in “The Christian Union” with the following brief articles, and from week to week endeavored to bring to its readers something useful and practical. We have reviewed the daily labors indispensable to all classes of homes, giving whatever suggestions or criticisms seemed to us most needed or desirable, not only as regards the manual labor of a household, but also the actions, motives, and principles which build up and secure the happiness of a family; or which, falsely understood and neglected, must lay the foundation for misery and sin.
We have been requested by many of our readers to gather thesetalkstogether, for the more convenient use of those for whom they were written, namely,young housekeepers, who, marrying before their domestic education has received sufficient attention, daily find many stumbling-blocks in their way, which haply a word fitly spoken might remove.
Where so much has been written in the way of “Advice to Young Housekeepers,” “Household Guides,” etc.,it would seem superfluous to venture on this well-worn track, did it not lead to a portion of general education too little thought of, where “line upon line and precept upon precept” are peculiarly needed.
The home education of our girls is often sadly neglected. Indulgent mothers, who have kept their daughters in school from earliest childhood, think it would be cruel to ask that any part of their vacation should be usefully employed. It must all be given to relaxation and amusement, leaving the knowledge of the homely household duties which would enable them to superintend and adorn a happy home to be learned after they have been “graduated.” Yet how many young girls pass from the seminary at once into married life, and on their first entrance into society are transformed from simple school-girls into wives and housekeepers! If no part of their child-life was devoted to those lessons, which none should be able to teach so kindly and so thoroughly as a mother, what is the result? Thehomewhich the lover dreamed of, proves dark and comfortless, and the bride is too often transformed into the heartless devotee of fashion, instead of the companion and helpmeet God designed a wife to be.
Young ladies would soon discover the richer life there is in one’s own home, if they were early initiated into an intimate knowledge of the whole routine of home duties and household mysteries, so that when theyshall be exalted to the dignity of the mistress of a house, they can with good judgment and intelligence direct their servants, or independently perform the labor of a family, easily and methodically, with their own hands. With such knowledge, and the ability to execute, they can greatly augment domestic happiness and add new lustre to their charms as companion and friend.
True, there is much that is hard and disagreeable in household cares and labors; but what good thing do we possess that does not require thought, effort, and often unpleasant labor before we come into the full possession and enjoyment of it? Under any self-denial or hardship experienced in the performance of duty, there is a great comfort in the knowledge that, the work being once mastered and made familiar, any thought of drudgery connected with it disappears; and in the happy consciousness of independence and power over difficulties one finds great pleasure and full compensation.
In preparing these articles for book publication, we have not attempted to bring them together in a methodical manner, but have allowed them to follow one another in about the order in which we were moved to write them by the daily occurrences around us, or in reply to many letters from discouraged orready-to-haltyoung housekeepers. Nor have we presumed to give advice or instructions to old, well-established mothersand housekeepers, who doubtless know far more than we do, and at whose feet we would cheerfully sit for instruction. But like a mother in the midst of her young daughters we have desired to stand, answering such questions as they would naturally ask, pointing out mistakes that they are likely to make, showing where the error lies, and trying to offer a remedy; not in household affairs alone, but in many phases of the duties that belong to the wife and mother as well as to the housekeeper. To give some little assistance and encouragement in every effort to makehomewhat it should be,—the happiest place on earth,—is our earnest desire.
EUNICE W. BEECHER.