Motherly talks with young housekeepers: embracing eighty-seven brief articles on topics of home interest, and about five hundred choice receipts for cooking, etc.Beecher, H. W., Mrs.
General
Motherly talks with young housekeepers: embracing eighty-seven brief articles on topics of home interest, and about five hundred choice receipts for cooking, etc.
Beecher, H. W., Mrs.
Cooking; Home economics
The airing is all very proper, but two or three days are not needed
for it, and, if you leave the bed unmade, you will not find it wise
or at all labor-saving in the end. Let the room and bed air until you
are ready to take off the sheets and pillow-cases that need to be
changed. When you go up to do that, take with you the clean articles,
and being there, why not finish the work and leave all in order? But,
if instead of that you say, “We’ll put the ‘spare chamber’ in order
to-morrow,” perhaps just as you are retiring, a carriage stops at your
door, and guests quite unexpected arrive, who find it convenient to
stop with you overnight, to be ready for the morrow’s train, and late
in the evening the guest-chamber must be prepared. Just try this once
or twice,--you’ll not care to try it oftener,--and see if some one
don’t come unannounced just as, when tired and sleepy, you are ready to
retire. Will it be any easier to do the work which was put off till a
“more convenient season,” at this late hour, than it would have been to
have finished it at the proper time?
“There is hardly enough bread to last through to-morrow.”
“Well, it is stormy; we sha’n’t be likely to have company to-morrow. I
guess this will answer, or we will stir up some biscuit if needed.”
In spite of wind or weather, be sure if you risk the delay you will
have unexpected guests, and will regret that you neglected to be ready
for the emergency.
“Here are some letters which should be answered immediately.”
“I guess it won’t make much difference if I leave them till to-morrow.
I am very busy now.” So you wait. Are you any less busy to-morrow? A
headache, or a sick child, or company prevents an answer then. Your
correspondent waits anxiously for your reply, the failure of which may
be the cause of great inconvenience.
We could multiply examples, but your own experience will fill up
the picture, and, if you are wise, teach you that each day has its
own duties, which can be mastered; but if you add to them the work
of yesterday you make the burden grievous to be borne. Your old
“copy-books” told you, when you were young, that _Procrastination is
the thief of time_. In riper age remember it. “Never put off till
to-morrow that which you should do to-day.”
LXXI.
THE SUREST REMEDY.
TO the troubles and annoyances which befall housekeepers there is no
end, if they are obliged to rely on servants for comfort and peace of
mind. In social gatherings the conversation often turns on the trials
they experience from this part of their household. It is not at all
strange that it should be so, for “out of the abundance of the heart
the mouth speaketh,” and verily in this particular the heart has ample
reasons for being abundantly filled, and there is no end to just cause
of complaint.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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