“What is the meaning of this?” I sat up on my knees and faced the speaker, essaying a miserable imitation of a laugh. “Emily has got her hand out in bread-making, and I am trying mine. This is almost ready now.” He walked across the floor and lifted me to my feet; laid me incontinently upon the lounge, and confronted the cook. “Take up that tray!” She obeyed dumbly. “Carry it out into the kitchen and finish the bread. Yes! I mean it! Get your hand in before you are a minute older, or I’ll know the reason why. And if the bread is not good, I shall send you back to your master to-morrow morning, and tell him I have no further use for you.” He would have cut his hand off before he would have struck a woman, and the creature knew it as well as I did, but she cowered before the blue blaze of his eyes, as at a lightning flash. His call stayed her on the threshold. “Do you understand what I have said?” The sphinx crumbled: “Ya’as, suh!” “You understand, too, that your hand is not to get out again?” “Not ef I can holp it, Mars’ Ed’ard!” “See that you _do_ help it!” Then I held my head hard with both hands to keep the sutures from flying asunder, and laughed until I cried. From the stress and toils, the mortifications and bewilderment of that year, grew into a settled purpose the longing to spare other women—as ill-equipped as I was, when I entered upon my housewifely career—the real anguish of my novitiate. The foundation of _Common Sense in the Household_ was laid in the manuscript recipe-book begun at Mrs. Eggleston’s instance. I had learned, to my bitter woe, that there was no printed manual that would take the tyro by the hand and show her a plain path between pitfalls and morasses. I learned, by degrees, to regard housewifery as a profession that dignifies her who follows it, and contributes, more than any other calling, to the mental, moral, and spiritual sanity of the human race. I received my call to this ministry in that cottage parsonage. My departure from the beaten track of novel-writing, in which I had achieved a moderate degree of success, was in direct opposition to the advice of the friends to whom I mentioned the project. The publishers, in whose hands my first cook-book has reached the million mark, confessed frankly to me, after ten editions had sold in as many months, that they accepted the work solely in the hope that I might give them a novel at some subsequent period. Even my husband shook a doubtful head over the wild scheme. It was the only book published by me that had not his frank and hearty approval. Upheld by the rooted conviction that I had been made, through my own shortcomings and battles, fit to supply what American women lacked and needed sorely, I never debated or doubted. My husband found me “gloating” over a copy of _Common Sense_ the week after it was published. “I verily believe,” he said, wonderingly, “that you take more pride in that book than in all the rest you have written.”