We know two little girls whose mother is training them to meet such inconvenient changes when they are women, in the same independent spirit. They have a large-sized _toy cooking-stove_, but one in which they can make _real pies_, as the little ladies say, and real bread and real cake can be made on it, though of lilliputian size. The stove is kept in mother’s room, the pipe passing into the nursery flue. They have a little molding-board and rolling-pin, and all needed implements on a small scale, and no richer reward can be given than to be allowed to bake a cake, or something of their own making, to be placed on the family table. Of course they work under mother’s eye and by her instructions, and in later years these little girls will thank their mother for this early teaching. This _playing cook_ is an easy and pleasant way of teaching little girls the first lessons, and if, as in other days, they were fully taught at home the very important accomplishment of housekeeping by their mothers, there would be no necessity for a union of domestic and intellectual institutions in our schools and seminaries; but, unfortunately, very few, comparatively, of the mothers of the present day have health to teach their daughters as thoroughly as would be satisfactory or available; or, if health be given, the disposition to devote their time and attention to the matter is wanting. For this reason we see no better way than to have this part of our girls’ education incorporated, if possible, with the other branches taught in schools and colleges, so that sewing, sweeping, washing, and cooking--all minutiæ of household knowledge--may be as fully taught as reading, writing, or the so-called higher studies; or, if this union is not possible, at least the domestic education might be made a supplementary course,--the scholars understanding that no one can “graduate” until she has passed through that department. We fear the good old times of mother-teaching will not very soon be revived, and our idea of uniting this important part of woman’s education with that which is thought higher and more intellectual arose from the impression that, if not in some way instructed in home duties, our girls in the course of four or five years of sedentary life would acquire a distaste for more active employment, or, having destroyed their health by injurious and long-continued application, would be utterly incapacitated for it. We offer these suggestions in the hope that the attention of some of our progressive spirits may be called to this subject with more effective earnestness than has been shown. XLVI. GREAT MISTAKES.