FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 131 



It is said that the spirit builds the house and afterwards the house 

 confines the spirit, sometimes making it a prisoner in its house beautiful 

 if the art of making spirit master is unknown. 



The white robed ''Benedictine of French Romance," once said: "The 

 highest powers of the mind may be developed through simple diet and 

 cha&te living," and no monk under holy order ever lived a more chaste 

 life than this celibate of the magic mirror while he wrote life as he 

 saw it. 



It is great to be a painter, to put upon canvas a picture of the inno- 

 cent, beautiful child in life's springtime. 



It is great to be a sculptor, and from the solid block of white marble to 

 bring out the perfect semblance of the human form; but how much 

 greater are they who mold and develop the human figure, the model. The 

 world educates the artist and expects the home-builder^ the molder of 

 the artist's model, to work through intuition, yet it is known that God 

 rarely makes a genius, expecting the rest of the family to be educated. 



SKILLED LABOR NEEDED IN THE HOME. 



There is no place where the skilled laborer is so needed as in the home, 

 for family life is the foundation of the nation's life. When the art of liv- 

 ing is understood, the product of that most important social institution, 

 family life, will be a being nobly planned, who will discharge his duties 

 nobly, being able to produce and maintain successful moods, exercise 

 power without fatigue, living in the flowing current of progress in har- 

 mony, health and happiness. When shall this being live? When we, 

 using the progress made in education in this century as stepping stones 

 to higher life, work for the men and women of tomorrow, teaching them 

 to use our efforts as mounts on which to rise to a higher plane. 



Let us work for a course of study that will instruct them how to live 

 more in accordance with the laws of health. We need a better digestion, 

 more perfect assimilation of food. Strength of thought and will power 

 are dependent on muscular development. Then educate brain, hand and 

 eye. The alleviation of poverty is found in better industrial conditions, 

 a larger knowledge of household economics. Statistics show that 85 

 per cent of the wages of the very poor are spent in food, to be wasted in 

 preparing and so spoiled in cooking that nutrition is lost, and the craving 

 appetite unsatisfied is unsuccessfully drowned in drink. The good cook 

 is a factor in reform, an ally to temperance. 



HOUSEHOLD ART IN SCHOOLS. 



We may not be able to cure or reform the men and women of today, 

 but we can work for those of tomorrow, by establishing a course of study 

 in our schools in which household arts shall form a part. Supt. Ella F. 

 Young, of Chicago, says that children trained in making useful things in 

 school make better house and home keepers. Let us work for the teach- 

 ing of household arts in our schools, that the seventh and eighth grade 

 pupils may learn useful lessons. So many leave school ere they finish the 

 high school or reach the M. A. C. to learn domestic science where it is 

 so well taught. It is as essential to the nation's success that our girls 

 should be instructed in house and home keeping as that they should 

 learn the three r's. "Knowledge is power/' is as true of home life as any 



