676 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



good do you expect all this will do you in the kitchen? " " As if," 

 as she says, " I was necessarily to spend my life in the kitchen, or 

 as if there was no chemistry to be used in the kitchen ! " 



Even sneers have their value, since, as we shall see in this case, 

 they are often the spurs to great achievements. 



Shortly after the culmination of the work of the Sanitary Science 

 Club in Home Sanitation, in the fall of 1889, Mrs. Mary Hinman 

 Abel, a graduate of Elmira College, returned from a six-years' resi- 

 dence in different European cities with the idea that something 

 might be done toward the better nourishment of the working people, 

 such as she had seen in Germany and Austria in the Yolhskuche, 

 and in the Fourneau Economique in France. 



During her husband's prolonged absence in Europe, she went 

 for six months to stay with Mrs. Ellen H. Richards, now professor 

 of sanitary chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 

 who had become especially interested in her through being one of 

 the judges in the matter of the prize of five hundred dollars offered 

 by Mr. Lomb, of Rochester, N. Y., for the best essay on practical 

 sanitary and economic cooking. Mrs. Abel won this prize, and her 

 little volume bearing this title is considered the simplest and still the 

 most scientific presentation of the subject yet made. 



The fruit of this six-months' companionship was the now famous 

 New England Kitchen, started under Mrs. Abel's direct charge. 

 Even the first meeting of these two women foreshadowed the future 

 developments along this line, for then, in mentioning the needs of the 

 working people in this country, Mrs. Richards remarked that Mrs. 

 Quincy A. Shaw, of Boston, and a daughter of the scientist Louis 

 Agassiz, had been ready for some time with the money which might 

 be necessary for such an experiment, she having especially in mind 

 the establishment of a place which, by furnishing cheap and good 

 food, should help to keep laboring men from the saloons. 



Mrs. Shaw, having only the benevolent idea in mind, relied 

 entirely upon her friend Mrs. Richards as to ways and means, but 

 agreed with both her and Mrs. Abel that much experiment and the 

 gathering of information must underlie true philanthropy in this 

 direction. 



The principles upon which this experiment rested were, then, as 

 they said, the necessity of finding out " how people live, how they 

 cook, and what they buy ready cooked, in order to lay out any satis- 

 factory plan of reform," and the value of bringing absolute accuracy 

 into certain departments of food preparation, so that a physician in 

 ordering an article of diet — beef broth, for instance — might know 

 just what unvarying nutrients it would contain. 



In accordance with these ideas and plans, a first-floor room and 



