THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS 97 



an to polish. You can put the shine on to a leather boot, 

 for there is some substance to it. But you might rub 

 brown paper with the best of Day and Martin till dooms 

 day, and not get a bit of gloss ; there ain t substance 

 enough to hold the blacking. And you can put the polish 

 on to marble, and bring out leaves and flowers, and all 

 sorts of ornamental things, upon the surface, but you 

 might as well undertake to polish hasty pudding, as to do 

 anything with soap-stone. It won t hold the stroke of the 

 chisel, or respond to the touch of pumice stone. 



And it is jest so with sending a woman in the gristle to 

 a fashionable boarding school. A girl wants to be solidi 

 fied by home duties, and solid studies, before she is fit to 

 be sent away to take on polish. Something ought to be 

 done for her physical education, to make her body fit for 

 the responsibilities of house keeping, and I don t know of 

 anything better than to have her help her mother. A 

 woman has no business to be married until she has shown 

 her capacity to keep house. She should know how to 

 do every thing from washing dishes, emptying slops, mak 

 ing soap and yeast cakes, up to the nicest kind of cook 

 ing and needle -work. 



If they are ignorant of these things, accomplishments 

 won t save them from mortification and domestic unhap- 

 piness. They will be as bad off as poor Eliza was, at her 

 first dinner party, after she got into her new house. She 

 had not been married to Dr. Sturgis more than two months, 

 before she invited a company of their friends to dine. The 

 Deacon and his wife were there, and quite a number of 

 middle-aged and elderly people, like Mrs. Bunker and my 

 self. There was a great display of silver ware and fine 

 linen upon the table, forks, castors, spoons, napkin rings, 

 and fruit dishes, that you could see your face in, and china 

 plates, platters, and vegetable dishes with gilt edges, and 

 nosegays in the middle, so handsome and natural that you 

 c-ould almost smell the perfume of the flowers. There was 



