The young lady who wastes her time in reading novels, might find 

 a salutary romance in a soda-biscuit. Soda is a giddy gii'l who ac- 

 cepts 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 pic-nic, she — Soda — first 

 meets Tartaric Acid, who is a dissipated person, known to be found 

 around wine-casks. She forsakes Carbonic 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' aflfairs. 



This word " gossip" suggests another reason for the pursuit of 

 Home Science. It would lift the whole matter of housekeeping 

 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 dinner of poUy- 

 wogs. Perhaps a quarter of an hour is spent in discussing the 

 price of sugar, and teUing where this or that person buys sugar, 

 whether at White & Go's or Brown & Go's, and who does like sugar 

 in tea and who doesn't, and wh^e aunt does and whose doesn't . 

 Now, what an infinite fund of thought and interest there is in sugar, 

 its sources, manufacture, chemical varieties, physiological effects — 

 the last point suggesting a series of experiments recently made on 

 the muscle-forming value 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. 



Indeed, here is the great argument for the scientific education of 

 farmers and their wives — that it will hft ihevi above the low level of 

 thoughtless Hfe, whether or not it brings money into their pockets. 

 Their minds are the soil that most needs cultivation — their brains 

 the bread that most needs to be raised. 



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 housekeepers would se- 

 cure 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, in the stove or furnace, — would not be 

 left to any writer's unqualified recommendation or condemnation of 

 this expedient. In the kitchen, they could have a large hood over 



