ANNA MARIA'S HOUSEKEEPING. By Mrs. S.D. Power. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. If we were asked to recommend any one single book to a young housekeeper which should serve as a domestic guide, counsellor and friend, we should unhesitatingly name _Anna Maria's Housekeeping_. So far as our knowledge extends, there is no other book which so exactly and thoroughly fulfils the needs implied in those titles. It is no mere collection of receipts, but a complete and common-sense treatise on the whole science of housekeeping, tersely and clearly written, with a flavor of experience about it that makes one accept it as authoritative. It is a staff upon which the young housekeeper may confidently lean, and by the aid of which she may overcome obstacles which without it would seem insurmountable. Mrs. Power does not believe in a house keeping itself. It requires continual care and oversight, and a clear knowledge of what is to be done. She believes, too, that a house can be well kept as easily as badly kept, and that a bright, clean, well-ordered home has a deal to do with molding the temper and even character of its members. "It is no small thing," she says, "to stand at the head of affairs, and be the motive power on which depend the welfare and credit, the health, temper and spirit of the whole family. When in midlife you come to find how essential the comfort of a well-kept home is to the bodily strength and good conditions, to a sound mind and spirit, and useful days, you will reverence the good housekeeper as I do, above poet or artist, beauty or genius." In the opening chapter of the book the author instructs Anna Maria in the art of "How to Make Home-work Easier." In the succeeding chapters she takes up the various kinds of work there is to be done about the house, and describes the easiest methods of doing it. "No attitudinizing," she remarks, "no fine lady affectations over the griddles and saucepans; instead, cultivate the fine character which acts up to the need of the hour swiftly, promptly, but with quiet and certainty." Her definition of "good food" is to the point. "It is not," she says, "rich food, nor even the tolerable fare which is just undercooked and flavorless enough to tax digestion more than it ought. It is the best of everything cooked in the nicest possible way, and with pleasant variety." Passing from the kitchen the care of the different rooms of the house is taken up--the chambers, the sitting-room and the storeroom; instructions are given for making "blue Monday" less blue; the arts of starching and ironing are discussed; and a chapter is given to the mending and darning basket. Other portions of the book are devoted to "Company Days," "Shopping," "Sickness in the House," "Making the best of Things," and "Helps that are Helps," the servant-girl question forming the subject of the closing chapter. The volume is very handsomely brought out, but even were it not, it would be worth its