WOMAN AND HOME SCIENCE. 41 



opening day of the noble Agricultural College of Iowa, a large 

 number of ladies were received among the pupils, and no harm 

 has come of it yet. At the West the co-education of the sexes 

 is no longer an experiment. It is fully proved that it promotes 

 a higlier tone of study, of mind, manners and morals, than can 

 be found in our old Protestant monasteries and nunneries. 

 Even old England is getting ahead of New England on this 

 subject. It is all very well for us to be slow and sure, but there 

 is no merit in being as slow as the farmer' S' horse, which had but 

 one fault, — he was " as slow as cold molasses." Our extreme 

 conservatism, however, may be " not a fault but a misfortune," 

 as in the instance of the consumptive horse that was sold as 

 being without a fault. 



Certainly, this study will smooth and bless home life. The 

 scientific housekeeper, for reasons she understands, never, for 

 example, washes cotton or linen in hard water, and she can 

 soften water in a variety of ways, if it be hard ; she knows how 

 to detect &,n excess of silicate of soda in the soap, invented after 

 the war had cut off the supply of South Carolina rosin ; she never 

 uses rosin soap for woollen ; and she can remove all kinds of 

 spots and stains by using the proper class of solvents. Having 

 made her own indelible ink by dropping a piece of silver into a 

 pennyworth of nitric acid, she removes an accidental drop of it 

 from the tablecloth by using a pinch of moistened common 

 salt, that turns the blot to chloride of silver, which can be dis- 

 solved with a drop of ammonia. And she never forgets how to 

 do anything or loses a good hint, because she knows the whole 

 simple philosophy of the matter. 



And, with such intelligent housekeepers, there would be prog- 

 ress in the art. The fact that your grandmother's doughnuts 

 have never been excelled, proves that housekeeping has made 

 no advance, and hence that science needs to be applied to this in 

 education. Woman is intuitive and therefore would be inven- 

 tive, were she not left to believe that her work is mere routine 

 drudgery. It is reported that a poor apple-woman in New 

 York invented the paper strings now in common use. The 

 rightly educated woman could at least appreciate and apply all 

 good inventions, and reject the many foolish ones hawked about 

 the country. She would have the mechanical knowledge, too, 



