Missouri Housekeepers' Conference Association, 453 



housewife be as thoroughly determined to succeed as her husband 

 is, their ship-of-state will sail into the placid port of peace and 

 comfort. 



For the farmer's wife, the same kind of book will do, and the 

 arrangement would be the same, only to be honest with herself and 

 the business firm, she must keep an account of all butter, eggs, 

 poultry, meat, milk and cream, fruit and vegetables raised on the 

 farm and used in the family, at the selling market price. These 

 accounts should be balanced at the end of each month, and at the 

 end of the year both members of this co-partnership should settle 

 up the books of the firm. It sounds like work, but I assure you 

 that you will not find it such. 



The most kind thing a mother can do for her daughter is to 

 place in her hands, at ten years of age, an account book, and re- 

 quire from her a statement each month, and a total at the end of 

 the year. She will think by the end of the first year that she has 

 cost something, at least. 



"One good mother is worth a hundred school masters." Teach 

 the children to respect money and the methods of right getting; 

 to value it as the means to an end. In this, as in all things of life, 

 example will do more than precept. 



You have doubtless heard that "as a man eateth, so is he." 

 Well, when all women will have learned that the best "skin food" 

 is good cooking, we will hear less chatter about garnished tables, 

 and ribbons and flowers, among which it is hard to find a mouthful 

 of the right food, rightly cooked, which comforteth the soul. 



Ruskin says : "Cookery means the knowledge of Circe and 

 Medea and of Calupso and Helen, and of Rebeckah, and all the 

 queens of Sheba." It means the knowledge of all fruits, herbs, 

 balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in field and 

 grove, and savory in meats. It means carefulness, inventiveness, 

 watchfulness, willingness, and readiness of appliance. It means the 

 economy of your great-grandmother, the science of modern 

 chemists. It means much tasting, and no wasting. It means 

 English thoroughness, French art, and Arabian hospitality. It 

 means in fine that you are to be perfectly and always ladies (loaf- 

 givers), and are to see that everyone has something nice to eat. 



A nation's progress in civilization is often measured by its ad- 

 vancement in the culinary art. Good cooking is not the result of 

 accident or a species of luck. There is reason for every process. 

 A course of medical lectures does not make a physician, nor will 

 a collection of choice recipes make a cook. There must be knowl- 



