This ignorance and aversion are too widespread, and have existed too many centuries to be removed in a single generation, nor can we expect any one remedy to prove a panacea. But we may ask how far the efforts made have proved successful. The cooking-school is now in vogue, and doubtless has done much to teach new ways of preparing food, but the cooking-school has the same relation to the general subject of household science that an evening class in arithmetic has to a college education. The mistress learns a few things in a general way, and the maid does not care to learn at all. It is ephemeral in its nature, and while it attracts public attention to the need of more thorough instruction on the subject, it is far from going to the root of the question, even of how to teach cooking. The same may be said in general of domestic economy in our fashionable schools. Sewing and cooking as taught in charity schools do apparently give practical help in teaching the children of the poor to assist in the care of their own homes; but this work, like that done in the public schools on the same lines, distinctly disclaims any desire to give technical information. In the public schools the object of instruction in sewing and cooking is purely an educational one, and it is an incidental result scarcely to be expected when it leads girls to look upon housework as a means of support. It has long been a belief with many, and one that it has been most difficult to give up, that schools for the training of domestic servants would do more than anything else to solve the domestic service problem, and thus indirectly provide for the overflow in shops and factories. In all of our large cities the experiment has apparently been faithfully tried. The theory has seemed unexceptionable, labor and expense have not been spared to carry it out, but the result has been, if not an utter failure, at least far from commensurate with the effort expended. In one school personally visited accommodations for twenty were found. When asked what was done in case there were more than twenty applicants for membership in the class, the superintendent replied that no such difficulty ever arose, as their numbers were never full. The answer was at least significant.