A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at SchoolBeecher, Catharine Esther
General
A Treatise on Domestic Economy; For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School
Beecher, Catharine Esther
Home economics
If this Country increases in virtue and intelligence, as it may, there
is no end to the wealth which will pour in as the result of our
resources of climate, soil, and navigation, and the skill, industry,
energy, and enterprise, of our countrymen. This wealth, if used as
intelligence and virtue dictate, will furnish the means for a superior
education to all classes, and every facility for the refinement of
taste, intellect, and feeling.
Moreover, in this Country, labor is ceasing to be the badge of a lower
class; so that already it is disreputable for a man to be "a lazy
gentleman." And this feeling must increase, till there is such an
equalisation of labor, as will afford all the time needful for every
class to improve the many advantages offered to them. Already, in
Boston, through the munificence of some of her citizens, there are
literary and scientific advantages, offered to all classes, rarely
enjoyed elsewhere. In Cincinnati, too, the advantages of education, now
offered to the poorest classes, without charge, surpass what, some years
ago, most wealthy men could purchase, for any price. And it is believed,
that a time will come, when the poorest boy in America can secure
advantages, which will equal what the heir of the proudest peerage can
now command.
The records of the courts of France and Germany, (as detailed by the
Duchess of Orleans,) in and succeeding the brilliant reign of Louis the
Fourteenth,--a period which was deemed the acme of elegance and
refinement,--exhibit a grossness, a vulgarity, and a coarseness, not to
be found among the lowest of our respectable poor. And the biography of
Beau Nash, who attempted to reform the manners of the gentry, in the
times of Queen Anne, exhibits violations of the rules of decency among
the aristocracy, which the commonest yeoman of this Land would feel
disgraced in perpetrating.
This shows, that our lowest classes, at this period, are more refined,
than were the highest in aristocratic lands, a hundred years ago; and
another century may show the lowest classes, in wealth, in this Country,
attaining as high a polish, as adorns those who now are leaders of
good-manners in the courts of kings.
FOOTNOTE:
[M] The universal practice of this Nation, in thus giving precedence to
woman, has been severely commented on by Miss Martineau and some others,
who would transfer all the business of the other sex to women, and then
have them treated like men. May this evidence of our superior
civilisation and Christianity increase, rather than diminish!
CHAPTER XIII.
ON THE PRESERVATION OF A GOOD TEMPER IN A HOUSEKEEPER.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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