I have written the above in the past tense--but it is really existent to-day in the majority of homes. “Why,” I asked a splendid housekeeper, “don’t you seal up those dark receptacles and hang up your utensils?” “Gracious,” said she, “if I hang them up they’d get all dusty and it wouldn’t be sanitary. Ridiculous,” quoth she! “But, my dear friend, do you think those dark closets are dust-proof and do you think darkness is a germ killer?” The truth is these closets, away from light, are almost ominous! “But,” continued my friend, “if I decided to hang my things up, where could I do it in this tiny kitchen? It’s all right in modern kitchens, but here it is impossible!” Here she touched a universal note--in fact, two notes--the old fashioned kitchen, and no room. Two notes upon which the housekeeper plays monotonous choruses to excuse modern advances. “My dear friend,” snapped I--“once upon a time I ran an experiment station in a tenement kitchen--the kitchen was four feet wide by ten feet long--in it were tubs, stove, glass closets under which were the pot and pan receptacles. I was too busy to stoop every time I needed anything so I had the carpenter nail on the wall over the tubs and over the sink a piece of wood three inches wide (this will go in even the tiniest kitchen) into which I screwed hooks, and there I hung every tool I used. Later I had a shelf nailed above it and made my work a smooth performance. I felt like a carpenter working at my bench with all my tool ‘en plein air.’” And I went on to say, as I had a good opportunity, there is no reason why your kitchen can’t be made like a tool chest. No man would tolerate breaking his very strong back to get a pan, or his nerve to pull out a drawer, which so often sticks, for a can opener! Not he. Could you imagine a carpenter, a butcher, or any one else, who worked at everything requiring sharp tools, or fine quality tools, jumbling them all up together in a drawer that moves in and out, provoking an earthquake rhythm among the tools, or a little closet in which everything is banged to pieces and has to be groped for? GOOD TOOLS, GOOD TREATMENT No!--No one could. Because no tools will last under such treatment and good tools are worth keeping--and the very best are reduced to nothingness if not kept well. It’s a case, pure and simple, of noblesse oblige. There is a good housekeeping reason, too, for things to be hung up, and this is: when things are in plain sight they become a constant curse to the cook or to the beholder if they are not scrupulously clean. In the kitchen of “suspended animation” you are pretty sure to have clean and spotless pots and pans, to have knives whose edges are not nicked, and to have egg beaters and mayonnaise mixers that are not so out of kilter that you get nervous prostration in coming in contact with a scrambled egg or Russian dressing. These are facts to grapple with.