Such delightful sensations as these are of course out of the question for the woman who undertakes housekeeping without a good working knowledge of how to conduct it. The theories to which reference has been made may be the best of their kind, but unless they are backed by the ability to do the things they describe there is likely to be trouble. Still, the woman who has more book instruction in the line of housekeeping than actual experience can learn by doing and in time reach a point where her independence is a joy to her. The best aid she can have in this endeavor is system, the habit of doing each task at a certain hour and in a certain way, and she need not consider the time wasted she bestows on planning out her routine so as to make it at once easy and efficient. In a city apartment or a small house fitted with the latest improvements the way is much simplified. If one can have a fire by striking a match and turning on the gas-stove, is supplied with hot water by a means outside her own kitchen, has milk, ice, meat, and other provisions brought to the door of her pantry, and no responsibility as to getting rid of ashes or garbage, she may feel that her lines have fallen in pleasant places. Naturally, a woman who lives in these conditions must direct her work in a very different way from that incumbent upon the dweller in a village or on a farm, who must build and keep in her own fires for cooking and heating, warm every drop of hot water that is used--often perhaps having to draw or pump it first--fill the lamps by which the house is lighted, and do all the many other duties which are performed for the dweller in a city flat and taken by her for granted. Yet as much efficiency, as delightful a life, exist in these conditions as can be found in a home where the work is reduced to a minimum. The housekeeper who must put up with inconveniences will generally find that they are offset by benefits which go far to counterbalance the drawbacks. If the city housekeeper with all modern improvements at her command requires system in her work, it is even more necessary for the one who must do without such aids. At the same time she must secure every help she can. When she can get one of the gasolene-stoves which, if properly managed, are hardly second to a gas-range in excellence, or, if lacking one of these, she can secure a good oil-stove with an oven; if she can provide herself with an oil hot-water-back or heater which will warm the water for cooking and bathing; if she purchases all such aids as fireless cookers, steamers, hand vacuum-cleaners, and other up-to-date appliances, she will simplify her labor and at the same time preserve the youth and strength that would be devoured by the adherence to the methods of her grandmother in a day when twentieth-century living is taken for granted on even the remote rural free-delivery route.