Household Papers and StoriesStowe, Harriet Beecher
General
Household Papers and Stories
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Didactic fiction; Home economics -- Fiction; Short stories
"Now I put it to the distressed 'Young Family Man' whether these three
institutions of a bakery, a cook-shop, and a laundry, in the village
where he lives, would not virtually annihilate his household cares,
and restore peace and comfort to his now distracted family.
"There really is no more reason why every family should make its own
bread than its own butter,--why every family should do its own washing
and ironing than its own tailoring or mantua-making. In France, where
certainly the arts of economy are well studied, there is some
specialty for many domestic needs for which we keep servants. The
beautiful inlaid floors are kept waxed and glossy by a professional
gentleman who wears a brush on his foot-sole, skates gracefully over
the surface, and, leaving all right, departeth. Many families, each
paying a small sum, keep this servant in common.
"Now, if ever there was a community which needed to study the art of
living, it is our American one; for, at present, domestic life is so
wearing and so oppressive as seriously to affect health and happiness.
Whatever has been done abroad in the way of comfort and convenience
can be done here; and the first neighborhood that shall set the
example of dividing the tasks and burdens of life by the judicious use
of the principle of association will initiate a most important step in
the way of national happiness and prosperity.
"My solution, then, of the domestic problem may be formulized as
follows:--
"1st. That women make self helpfulness and family helpfulness
fashionable, and every woman use her muscles daily in enough household
work to give her a good digestion.
"2d. That the situation of a domestic be made so respectable and
respected that well-educated American women shall be induced to take
it as a training-school for their future family life.
"3d. That families by association lighten the multifarious labors of
the domestic sphere.
"All of which I humbly submit to the good sense and enterprise of
American readers and workers."
VI
BODILY RELIGION: A SERMON ON GOOD HEALTH
One of our recent writers has said, that "good health is physical
religion;" and it is a saying worthy to be printed in golden letters.
But good health being physical religion, it fully shares that
indifference with which the human race regards things confessedly the
most important. The neglect of the soul is the trite theme of all
religious teachers; and, next to their souls, there is nothing that
people neglect so much as their bodies. Every person ought to be
perfectly healthy, just as everybody ought to be perfectly religious;
but, in point of fact, the greater part of mankind are so far from
perfect moral or physical religion that they cannot even form a
conception of the blessing beyond them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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