Instead of filling the papers with lamentations because they are not permitted certain rights which an unregulated ambition urges them to claim, let our women first be certain that they fully understand how to exercise all the _rights_ which are unalienably their own, and which no one attempts to dispute. Let these rights be well cared for and properly executed, and who will object to any woman’s reaching out after, and securing just as many more as she can possibly assume and manage successfully, without neglect of other duties already her own. Let the highest right, the noblest that woman can desire,--for it is next to the angels’,--the _supreme right_ which God gave us, and no man disputes or can usurp, be fully appreciated and acted upon,--the right to make a glorious _home_, to make our husbands nobler, because they are happy and comfortable there (they don’t know how to do that, they can’t take care of themselves without us); the right to nurse and rear and bless our children; the right, with the ability, to teach our servants by our own practice how to be a blessing to themselves and to us. Then enter the lists, if you choose, and do battle for just as many of what have been called _man’s rights_ as you are capable of managing well, or have any ambition for. Until these first duties are understood and properly performed the prospects for home comforts and happiness are very shadowy. The fault is not wholly with the servants. If those duties which belong to the mistress are delegated to uneducated, ill-informed subordinates, what, even with the very best intentions, can you expect but anarchy and misrule? Care and experience are as essential to good housekeeping and home comforts as in any other profession or field of labor. The lawyer cannot look for success in his profession if he simply opens an office and delegates the care to an ignorant office-boy, while he himself knows nothing about law, and never studies. The doctor gives years of time and study before he attempts to practice. The merchant goes through a long apprenticeship before he commences business for himself; but our young girls leave the school-room to assume a _right_ of which they know nothing,--the privilege and honor of making a _home_. If women would only understand how much skill and power is requisite, what a noble, honorable thing it is to succeed, or become eminent as a _homemaker_, there would be fewer boarding-houses, fewer miserable, dissipated husbands, fewer fast, wild, reckless children, and fewer worthless servants. LXXII. A FEW LITTLE THINGS. WE take up now a few perplexities which are apt to disturb the equanimity of the young housekeeper, and propose to give some minute directions for the better performance of those “little things” which so often discourage the beginner, such as the building of fires, dusting, etc.