III.] MAKING BREAD, 51 



something wanted besides dimples and cherry cheeks ; 

 and I would have fathers seriously reflect, and to be 

 well assured, that the way to mate their daughters 

 to be long admired, beloved and respected by their 

 husbands, is to make them skilful, able and active in 

 the most necessary concerns of a family. Eating 

 and drinking come three times every day ; the pre- 

 parations for these, and all the ministry necessary to 

 them, belong to the wife ; and I hold it to be impos- 

 sible, that at the end of two years, a really ignorant, 

 sluttish wife should possess any thing worthy of the 

 name of love from her husband. This, therefore, is 

 a matter of far greater moment to the father of a 

 family, than, whether the Parson of the parish, or the 

 Methodist Priest, be the most "Evangelical" of 

 the two ; for it is here a question of the daughter's 

 happiness or misery for life. And I have no hesita- 

 tion to say, that if I were a labouring man, I should 

 prefer teaching my daughters to bake, brew, milk, 

 make butter and cheese, to teaching them to read the 

 Bible till they had got every word of it by heart; 

 and I should think, too, nay I should know, that I was 

 in the former case doing my duty towards God as well 

 as towards my children. 



89. When we see a family of dirty, ragged little 

 creatures, let us inquire into the cause ; and ninety- 

 nine times out of every hundred we shall find that 

 the parents themselves have been brought up in the 

 same way. But a consideration which ought of it- 

 self to be sufficient, is the contempt in which a hus- 

 band will naturally hold a wife that is ignorant of the 

 matters necessary to the conducting of a family. A 

 woman who understands all the things above men- 

 tioned, is really a skilful person; a person whorthy of 

 respect, and that will be treated with respect too, by 

 all but brutish employers or brutish husbands ; and 

 such, though sometimes, are not very frequently 

 found. Besides, if natural justice and our own in- 

 terest had not the weight which they have, such 

 valuable persons will be treated with respect. They 

 know their own worth ; and, accordingly, they are 



