It may seem humiliating, to those who go in for spirit pure and simple, to speak of the condition of the soul as in any way determined by beef and cabbage; but it is so, nevertheless; the connexion between food and virtue, food and thought, being a very close one. And the sooner wives recognize this connexion the better for them and for their husbands. The clumsy savagery of a plain cook, or the vile messes of a fourth-rate confectioner, are absolute sins in a house where a woman has all her senses, and can, if she will, attend personally to the cooking. Many things pass for crimes which are really not so bad as this. But how seldom do we find a house where the lady does look after the food of the family; where clean hands and educated brains are put to active service for the good of others! The trouble would be too great in our fine-lady days, even if there were the requisite ability; but there is as little ability as there is energy, and the plain cook with her savagery and the fourth-rate confectioner with his rancid pastry, have it all their own way, according as the election is for economy or ostentation. If by chance we stumble on a household where the woman does not disdain housewifely work, and specially does not disdain the practical superintendence of the kitchen, there we are sure to find cheerfulness and content. There seems to be something in the life of a practical housekeeper that answers to the needs of a woman's best nature, and that makes her pleasant and good-humoured. Perhaps it is the consciousness that she is doing her duty--of itself a wonderful sweetener of the temper; perhaps the greater amount of bodily exercise keeps her liver in good case; whatever the cause, sure it is that the homes of the active housekeepers are more harmonious than those of the feckless and do-nothing sort. Yet the snobbish half of the middle-classes holds housewifely work as degrading, save in the trumpery pretentiousness of 'giving orders.' A woman may sit in a dirty drawing room which the slipshod maid has not had time to clean, but she must not take a duster in her hands and polish the legs of the chairs:--there is no disgrace in the dirt, only in the duster. She may do fancy-work of no earthly use, but she must not be caught making a gown. Indeed very few women could make one, and as few will do plain needlework. They will braid and embroider, 'cut holes, and sew them up again,' and spend any amount of time and money on beads and wools for messy draperies which no one wants. The end, being finery, sanctions the toil and refines it. But they will not do things of practical use; or, if they are compelled by the exigencies of circumstances, they think themselves martyrs and badly used by the Fates.