6 



teaching the revolutions of Saturn's moons and the precession of 

 the equinoxes, why should there not be some to teach what it may 

 greatly concern a woman's earthly happiness to know ? " 



I hope a Professorship of Domestic Economy will be established 

 in the Massachusetts Agricultural College, for the benefit of the 

 many young women who will ere long claim the advantages of that 

 institution, especially the excellent facihties it offers for the study of 

 chemistry, botany and horticulture. "Woman has a right to all 

 educational advantages. On the opening day of the noble Agricul- 

 tural College of Iowa, a large nimiber 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 higher tone of study, of mind, manners and mor- 

 als, than can be found in our old protestant monasteries and nun- 

 neries. 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, who had but one 

 fault, — ^he was " as slow as cold molasses." Our extreme conserva- 

 tism, however, may be " not a fault but a misfortune," as in the in- 

 stance of the consumptive horse that was sold as being without a 

 fault. 



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

 tific 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 an 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 wool- 

 len ; and she can remove all kinds of spots and stains by using the 

 proper class of solvents. Having made her own indellible ink by 

 dropping a piece of silver into a penny-worth of nitric acid, she 

 removes an accidental drop of it from the table cloth by using a 

 pinch of moistened common salt, that turns the blot to chlorid of 

 silver, which can be dissolved 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 inteUigent housekeepers, there would be progress 

 in the art. The fact that yoiu" grandmother's doughnuts have never- 

 been excelled, proves that housekeeping has made no advance, and 

 hence that science needs to be appHed to this in edfication. "Woman 

 is intuitive and therefore would be inventive, were she not left to 

 beheve that her work is mere routine drudgery. It is reported that 



