46 MAINE STATE SOCIETY. 



there are trades wliicli might be established to divide labor, and take 

 from the kitchen its drudgery, so that the overtasked -kIHg and 

 mother could obtain the assistance of an equal and friend in that 

 department, as easily as she now can, in the parlor, at the^ piano- 

 forte. Other ]iations have already taken some steps towards this 

 end. In Paris, (France,) no fiimily finds it profitable to have their 

 washing done at home. In Rio de Janeiro, they know how to dis- 

 tribute excellent bread daily, so cheaply, that the poorest families 

 had better buy bread than flour. In Germany, ready cooked din- 

 ners are carried around to private dwellings. And we read that in 

 some parts of Europe a joint stock dairy is a successful experiment. 

 Surely, if Frenchmen, Brazilians and Germans, have taken partial 

 steps towards this division of household labor, Yankee energy and 

 skill, with its labor-saving machines, might be expected to go much ■ 

 farther in the same department, when once it attempts it. 



Our Creator has so made human beings, that some shall enjoy 

 one kind of work, and some another ; but no advantage is taken of 

 this natural difference in the work of the married woman of our land. 

 If she works at all, she must work at a little of every thing, and if 

 not skillful in all the various accomplishments which are required 

 in housekeeping, she must suffer shame and mortification. There 

 are both men and women whom Nature designed for cooks. They 

 possess the accurate eye and hand, to detect color, size and weight ; 

 a quick judgment to combine proportions, and a nice alimentary 

 taste to discover a shade of imperfection in the various dishes which 

 the civilized palate demands. Such enjoy cooking, for it is easy 

 for them to cook well ; and there are women who have not these 

 qualities in themselves, nor can they develop them in such of their 

 unlucky "help" as have them in a perfectly dormant state, if at all. 

 To such women the cooking of the household is as distasteful as it 

 was to Charlotte Bronte, who with all her talent, and patient, self- 

 denying virtues, declared that she would 7iot cook for a living, to 

 whatever straits she might be reduced. Sweeping, dusting, scrub- 

 bing and cleaning, as housemaid, the author of Jane Eyre could 

 accept, but to cook, she would not ! Stern custom says, to the 

 women of New England at least, " cook or die"; and Horace Mann 

 adds, "cook, women, or be guilty of a moral delinquency." As 

 well tell every man to make his own flour, or go without bread. 



