44 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



for his mischief, drives them away from their bread, and so they 

 go to bed siipperless, because they have been in bad company. 

 That is the way bread is raised ; and the scientific housewife 

 would be able to tell her children the edifying story. 



The young lady who wastes her time in reading novels might 

 find a salutary romance in a soda-biscuit. Soda is a giddy girl 

 who accepts the society of that respectable youth, Carbonic 

 Acid, he being chiefly engaged in the limestone business, though 

 also a worthy agriculturist, raising plants. In a biscuit picnic, 

 she — Soda — first meets Tartaric Acid, who is a dissipated per- 

 son, known to be found around wine-casks. She forsakes Car- 

 bonic for Tartaric, and finds that she has caught a Tartar. 

 Surely, our lady-chemist would be better occupied in prying 

 into the doings of Soda, Gluten and the rest, than in gossiping 

 about her neighbors' affairs. 



This word " gossip " suggests another reason for the pursuit 

 of Home Science. It would lift the whole matter of housekeep- 

 ing above the low level of idle talk about housekeeping itself. 

 What everlasting table-talk on this subject do we hear, of a sort 

 no more elevated than that which geese indulge in over a din- 

 ner of polly wogs. Perhaps a quarter of an hour is spent in dis- 

 cussing the price of sugar, and telling where this or that per- 

 son buys silgar, whether at White & Co.'s or Brown & Co.'s, 

 and who does like sugar in tea and who doesn't, and whose aunt 

 does and whose doesn't. Now, what an infinite fund of thought 

 and interest there is in sugar, its sources, manufacture, chemi- 

 cal varieties, physiological effects — the last point suggesting a 

 series of experiments recently made on the muscle-forming 

 valu-e of non-nitrogenous food, disproving the doctrine of our 

 text-books. What entertainment in the thought that sugar and 

 starch are simply the forms in which we, human locomotives, 

 take our coal and water. 



However, there is one weighty consideration that alone should 

 recommend the study of science in this connection, namely, 

 health. Health is physical happiness. With strength enough, 

 there is no such thing as hard work. Our philosophic house- 

 keepers would secure greater vigor in a thousand ways — dress, 

 diet, ventilation, etc. Take a single illustration — moisture in 

 the air. They would be able at once to determine the amount, 

 and thus would know whether an evaporating pan is advisable 



