526 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



pected hygienic effect. There is the instance of a penniless young 

 man, threatened with fever in a strange country, shipping as a 

 deck-hand to return and die among his people. During the voy- 

 age he scrubbed away the dirt from the ship-boards, and with it 

 the disease that had invaded his life-craft. A story is also told 

 of a family whose women were of the delicate, ailing sort. Mis- 

 fortune obliged them to perform their own domestic work. What 

 seemed for them a sad necessity proved itself a double blessing. 

 They gained what they had never known before, robust health ; 

 and their enforced economy restored them to a prosj)erous con- 

 dition. 



Not all physicians are clear-sighted or independent enough to 

 prescribe as did one of their number. A young lady supposed to 

 be suffering with anaemia, nervous prostration, and other fashion- 

 able ills sent for the family doctor. " Is there anything I can do 

 to get well ? " she asked, after the usual questioning, " There is,'* 

 answered he ; " follow this prescription faithfully.'' The folded 

 scrap of paper read as follows : 



" One broom : use in two hours of house-work daily." 



That domestic work is not without its aesthetic side many au- 

 thors bear witness. George Eliot introduces us to Hetty Sorrel 

 at the butter-making, and writes, "They are the prettiest atti- 

 tudes and movements into which a pretty girl is thrown." But 

 if dairy- work is rapidly taking a place beside spinning and weav- 

 ing as one of the picturesque employments of the past, what there 

 is to do about the house may be also gracefully done. And here, 

 it may be said of this as of all other work, the spirit and care we 

 put into it endow it with beauty as well as health. 



Aside from the physical view of homely gymnastics, there is a 

 social and an economic aspect. Courtship need not wait upon a 

 problematic income if the fair Dorothea has not only a clear head 

 but arms willing to take up the burden of life equally. Does 

 Hermann need to toil ? She deems it incumbent upon her, unless 

 busy with young children, to earn her own living within the 

 home or outside of it. "When women shall have been educated to 

 a keener sense of justice, they will no longer imagine they have 

 discharged their debt to the community by adding a few beauti- 

 fying touches to the household furniture ! Nor, although they 

 fulfill the higher and more exacting duties of a mother, will they 

 thenceforth fold their hands and do nothing. To be a good 

 father does not absolve a man from work, neither does being a 

 good mother exempt a woman from her share in the maintenance 

 of the home. The maiden of to-day is yet enslaved by caste cult- 

 ure ; but the maiden of to-morrow may scorn to be merely orna- 

 mental or useless. She may be too proud to allow her husband 

 to support her in idleness and may refuse to be re-enforced by a 



