It is generally assumed that the only preparation necessary to become proficient in these multiform tasks is found in the instinctive love of domestic life common to all women. But this of itself does not make a woman a successful housekeeper any more than a taste for medicine renders a young man a skillful surgeon, or a talent for law constitutes a learned jurist. There has been a growing recognition of this fact, but at the same time it is said that the home training of every girl ought to be sufficient. There are many reasons why this is not so. If we apply the principles to the case of girls who become household employees, it is seen to be at fault. It is from the ranks below the so-called middle class, to use an invidious phrase, that the great army of household employees is recruited. It is impossible for a girl belonging to this class to go into a family whose social advantages have been greater than her own, and become at once an adept in the conventional forms of table service, an expert cook, or a good general houseworker. She has had neither the means, nor the opportunity, to gain even a knowledge of what duties will be required of her, to say nothing of knowing how to perform them. An incompetent mistress is unable to give the necessary instructions; a competent one has often neither the time nor the patience to undertake such training, and indeed it ought not to be expected of her any more than it is supposed that a banker who desires an expert accountant will teach the applicant the process of addition and subtraction. If, on the other hand, it is assumed that the home training in domestic affairs is sufficient for girls of the middle and upper classes, there is also danger of error. It is often quite as difficult to give regular instruction in the home in these matters as it is in the ordinary school branches. The Law School of the University of Michigan, after thirty years’ experience, said a few years since in regard to the previous reading of law: “It is not often that the student receives the needed assistance except in law schools. The active practitioner, engrossed with the care of business, cannot, or at least, as proved by experience, does not, furnish the students who place themselves in his charge the attention and assistance essential to give a correct direction to their reading, and to teach them to apply it usefully and aptly in their subsequent professional life.” This same principle too often applies in regard to housework, even when the teacher is the mother. The most competent mothers often have the most incompetent daughters--it is far more easy to do the work than to teach another how to do it. Sometimes it is assumed that the daughter can learn, as the mother has learned, by the hard road of experience. It is, also, too often a question of how the blind shall lead the blind. Again, many girls are early left without homes, and thus deprived of the opportunity.