THE CHILDREN'S LIBRARY
OF WORK AND PLAY

Photograph by Helen W. Cooke

Have You a Play-House?

The Library of Work and Play
HOUSEKEEPING

BY
ELIZABETH HALE GILMAN
Garden City New York
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1911

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

"Look not thou down, but up!
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,
The new wine's foaming flow,
The Master's lips a-glow!
Thou, Heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with earth's wheel?"

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

PART I
THE PLAY-HOUSE

THE PLAY-HOUSE

Monday, I wash my dollies' clothes,
And Tuesday, smoothly press them.
Wednesday, I mend their little hose,
And Thursday, neatly dress them.
Friday, I play they're very ill,
Saturday, something or other.
Sunday, I say, "Lie still,
I'm going to church with mother."

WHEN I was walking in a garden the other day, I saw a play-house. And what do you suppose it was? A big tree with humpy roots which stuck out of the ground, and low branches which nearly touched the grass at the ends. You could not stand up straight in the house if you were more than three feet tall, but as the people who lived in the house were only about two feet eleven inches, they did not mind that.

You should have seen the china-closet. It was under a bent root, and all the dishes were white with violet markings. One might have thought they were big and little and middling-sized clam-shells, if one had not seen them in a china-closet.

There was a bedroom between two big roots. A doll was taking a nap there, not on a pine-pillow, but on a whole bed of pleasant-smelling pine needles which had dropped off a tree in the neighbourhood. The mistress of the house was in the kitchen cooking, and the kitchen, of course, was where the sun came through a break in the branches. One must have a patch of sun in a kitchen, for how can you bake without it? When I went into this kitchen, there was a cake baking, with an ornament on the top that looked quite like an acorn.

I was invited to stay for lunch, and I will tell you what we had: First, there were brown-bread cutlets, and smooth white stone potatoes, and a wonderful salad made of maple leaves and pepper-grass. Then for dessert we had the cake I had seen baking, and milk. The cake had a brown layer made from the garden beds and a yellow layer made from the path, and was iced with white sand. You will guess that the brown bread cutlets and the milk were what people getting up plays call "practicable," which is just a grown-up word for "really and truly."

A tree is one of the nicest play-houses a person can have. But suppose it is a rainy day! We will play it is a rainy day, and we will go and go until we get to a house with a steep roof. And we will go in, and go upstairs, and then upstairs again until we get to a garret, where we can see the rafters sloping to the ridge over our heads, and the inside of the shingles. On the floor are trunks and boxes and barrels, and all sorts of things are hanging from the rafters. Sometimes we hear the pigeons running on the outsides of the shingles and cooing under the eaves. It is a lonely sound. It is rather dark, too, but we are brave, and we get past two saddles, and a row of white petticoats, and a dim place where there are a lot of old books with strange dark pictures in them, which one likes to be sure are shut in tight. At last we get round a corner and find a gable with a pointed window, and there is a play-house where a little girl and eight dolls live. There are four rooms in the play-house, though if you are not thinking, you may very likely walk right through the walls and not know it. On one side of the window is a bedroom, and on the other side is the kitchen. The dining room and the living room are in the corners nearest the rest of the garret.

The little girl's big sister put up some pictures on the sloping wooden walls to suit each room. One of them is very useful when the little girl is deciding what to play. It is seven little pictures on a card with verses to explain them. You can read the verses at the beginning of this chapter; I am sorry the pictures are not there, too.

This little girl likes especially to play "Monday, I wash my dollies' clothes"—because she has a tub and a washboard, and a wringer that will really let buttons through, and clothespins and a clothes-horse, and all the garret to put up lines in. Housework, you know, is so much more fun if you have the right things to do it with.

"Tuesday, I neatly press them," is a good day, too, but "Wednesday, I mend their little hose," is not. One cannot sit still and make believe sew, for many minutes. When mother was told about this trouble, she looked at the pictures and said, "Why, there's no sweeping day! As soon as the stockings are mended on Wednesday, you had better sweep, and tidy things up a little." Mother often wants things "tidied up" when it isn't in the game. She says, she does not keep her little girl's hat on the dining table, nor leave her bed unmade, and she cannot have the dolls brought up that way either.

The Friday game is one of the best. The two dolls that have night dresses are most often sick. Of course, it is a great care to have a doll sick, but it does make a great many interesting things to do. She may need cold-water cloths, or a hot-water bottle, or a poultice, and there is always medicine to give and meals to serve on a tray. Then the bed should be made over often. The little girl who lives in this play-house likes to have her dolls ill when she has company, because then there is some one to be the doctor.

"Saturday something or other," usually means cooking, and that, too, is a favourite game for company. Sometimes the little girl goes down into the "really and truly" kitchen to market, or sometimes mother sends up a little cake baked in a doll's pan. That makes a very grand occasion. The table must be laid with all the dishes, and napkins if possible, when there is a cake from the big kitchen.

A great many things can happen in a garret play-house, besides housekeeping. Sometimes it is so still up there, that one knows one must be in a deep forest, or out on the plains; and, of course, in that case, the cooking or nursing may be interrupted by a band of robbers, or an attack from Indians, or one may have a visit from an escaping prisoner, and besides, there are always long, dangerous journeys to take through the garret. In fact, every time one hears a new story, something unusual is likely to happen in the play-house.

Have you a play-house? I hope you have. Nowadays, when rents are so high, and when many people live in flats and apartments, it is often hard to get a play-house, but it can usually be managed in some way. If we have a nursery or a play-room all our own, then it is easy to have a play-house. We only have to get mother, or nurse to give us a corner to fix as we like, and to advise us about sorting things. Perhaps they will let us make the whole room into a play-house, but we really can keep house nicely in a much smaller space than that. The great point is to get the things together which belong together. If the bedroom things stand together, that is all we need to have a bedroom, and if the kitchen things are together, there is the kitchen. If we have a dining table, why, there is the dining room, and our living room can be anywhere where mother likes us to have most of the chairs.

But even if we have not a play-room we can still have a house. I know some clever dolls and their mother who keep house in the cupboard part of an old-fashioned washstand. The way they manage is to make the cupboard any room they wish to use. Monday morning it is a laundry, and every night it is a bedroom, and if they give a luncheon it is a dining room, and Saturday it is a kitchen. They keep the furniture which does not suit the room they are using in the drawer of the washstand which is over their heads.

I know another family who live under a dressing table. The legs of the table show where the corners of their house are, and they change the room into anything they need it for, as the other people do.

One little girl I know, whose name is Esther, lives in a flat and has only a bureau drawer for her housekeeping things. This is quite hard, for it means so much packing and unpacking, and parting with things she would like to keep when the drawer gets too full. She has to take her two dolls and a few things she thinks they will need into the parlour or the bedroom and play house there. In the bedroom, she plays it is night, because it is always nearly dark in there. Her mother lets her play with her big grown-up beds and chairs and stoves and irons. If she did not, Esther would have a hard time keeping house for her dolls.

But it is not always the people who live in flats who have not room for their things, is it? Sometimes after Christmas, or a birthday, one just feels as if one were trying to keep house in a toy shop. The best cure for this trouble is to give things away. Because—it is dreadful to think about—there are people who have no dolls: and there are people who have not so much as a tin cup to begin housekeeping with; and there are little girls who have real babies to look after, and real meals to cook who would just dearly love to have the games and toys that have to be packed away in closets and drawers because their owners have so many other things.

It is easy to say, give things away, but, my stars! how hard it is to decide which to give. One just can't give away the new things, and one feels so fond of the old ones, when one gets them out and looks at them. The only way to part with them is to think of Saint Martin cutting his cloak in two for the beggar, or something inspiring like that. Even then one feels a little dreary.

Once there was a little girl whose family moved into a smaller house. There was not room in her new play-house for the many things she had in her old one. Some of them had to be given away. One decision was so hard to make that she remembered about it after she was a grown-up woman. There was a little green wagon with yellow wheels, which she had always had, and which her older sisters had played with before she was born, and there was a little orange-coloured cart with four red wheels, which her father had brought out from town, a week or two before, filled with soap.

Two wagons were too many for the new play-house, and mother said keep the green one, because the other was only an "advertisement"; and the older sisters said keep the green one, because it was better and they had played with it; and father just smiled and said, "You must decide."

When no one was looking, the little girl took the little orange-coloured wagon with four red wheels, and the big letters round the outside, which made it an "advertisement," and put it in the box mother was packing for some other children, and it hurt so to do it that she could not quite help crying.

Some of us are troubled more with having too few things than too many, are we not? We can make a game of getting out of this trouble. We must all be discoverers and inventors, and if there is something needed in the play-house, we must keep our eyes wide open to see what else will do or what we can find to make into the thing we want. It spoils the hunt, and the surprise, if some one else tells you what to do, but one or two little things will show what the game is like. For instance, if it is a bed you need, try a strong pasteboard box, not very deep. If you mind its having no legs, then you must go on a journey and have it a berth on a car or a ship.

A cigar-box makes a good trunk for a small doll, especially the boxes which have trays in them. A doll with a cigar-box trunk will never have moths in her clothes.

Paper napkins are useful for dolls' tablecloths, and for napkins when they are cut into small squares. They will even do for sheets, if mother cannot spare us white "pieces" that are big enough. A bandanna handkerchief, or a scrap of bright calico, makes a good bedquilt.

Shells we have brought home from a day at the beach are convenient for dishes. Radiators are splendid stoves. And did you ever find out how much closet room there is under a bed? With the help of a few pins, one can hang all the dolls' clothes from the springs, and shut them in with the counterpane, if it happens to be a long one. But if mother does not want you to do this, you mustn't.

You will be able to make a great many discoveries and inventions, if you think what you want, and then think what to make it out of. But the best and most wonderful thing about a play-house is, that if we have to, we can make one anywhere, or out of anything. Once, two little girls wrote home about a visit they had paid, "We had two rag dolls and we played house." Even one little girl, without so much as a rag doll, can have a play-house. She has only to imagine, that is, pretend, and there it is—with rooms, and staircases, and people, and everything needful. It can be big or little; and in the country or in the city. She can do the washing, or give a dinner party; take care of a sick doll, or work in the garden, just as she pleases. It is easier and happier to play with the pleasant things people give us, and to be able to see and touch most of the things in our play-houses, but we always want some imagined things, too. And if it should happen that we are in a place where we "have nothing to play with," then we can imagine and pretend, and go and play in the play-house we always have with us. In a second, we can build it into a wigwam, or a palace, or a cave, or a great castle, or it can be just the house we live in when we are at home.

Sometimes, when we have played a good while in the play-house, we feel tired, and if it isn't a nap we want, perhaps it is that we would like to go and play in a play-house somebody else has made. We need not take a journey to do this, we only need some one to tell us a story, or a story-book to read to ourselves. We might choose to read "Cinderella," for that is the princess of housekeeping stories, or it may be that we will find one we like, if we go on reading this book.

IRISH STEW

Do you ever have Irish Stew for luncheon? Most Irish Stews are a good deal alike, but this is the story of one that was different.

Once upon a time there was an Irishman who lived in a little two-roomed hut on the edge of a bog. All day, he cut peats in the bog, for that is the way he made his living. It was not a very good living; in fact, he was very poor indeed. At night, when he came back to the hut, there were often only a few potatoes for supper, which he boiled in a pot over the fire. His old father had died a few years before, and that was the reason he lived alone.

Photograph by Helen W. Cooke

A Play-house Somebody Else Has Made

One chilly, foggy night, the Irishman had come home late through the wet and the dark, and lighted his fire. There was very little for supper, and he had not had a chance to cook that, when Thump! Thump! came a knock on the door. He was ever so frightened, but he thought it would be better to open the door than have it thumped in. When he did open it—Preserve us! there were five big robbers with knives, and pistols, and high boots and fierce, bright eyes. They all crowded into the little hut, and threw more peat on the fire and demanded supper. The Irishman apologized, and said he had only potatoes. The robbers said they had to have something better than that, and all five of them laid their five big knives on the table with a look which meant, "Supper or your life!"

The Irishman went into the other little room and sat down on a chest to think. There was nothing in the room but the chest, and nothing in the chest but a few old clothes, and the more he tried to think, the less he was able to do it. At last, for no reason at all, he opened the chest. In it lay an old cloak, which his father had worn forty years and more.

No sooner had he seen it, than he went back to the room where the robbers were, and they saw him take the pot into the little room, and very soon come back and put all the potatoes into it and some water, and hang it over the fire, which was now so hot and bright that the pot soon began to boil. It simmered, and bubbled and steamed and soon the robbers began to sniff their supper. It did not smell like anything they had ever had before, but was not bad for a cold, foggy night. Pretty soon the Irishman set the pot on the table, and the robbers ate heartily. The Irishman was busy arranging something near the door. All of a sudden, one robber choked. He choked, and choked, and two others beat him on the back. He coughed and coughed, and then, something flew out of his mouth. It was a button.

The Irishman turned up his eyes to the roof and said, "Ah me, that is the last of a good old cloak." Before the robbers could move, he had opened the door and disappeared into the fog.

KING ALFRED AND THE CAKES

A good while ago there was a king of England named Alfred. He was a great and good king, but in spite of this, he had many enemies, who tried to take his kingdom away from him. Once, after a battle, the country was so overrun with his enemies, that he had to separate from his followers and go away in disguise. You would never have guessed he was a king when he started, and when, after he had wandered a few days in the forest, he came to a cowherd's hut, he looked like a hungry, ragged beggar. The cowherd and his wife gave him supper, and let him stay all night, and gave him some breakfast next morning. After breakfast, he sat for a long time looking into the fire, thinking of his kingdom, and of the dangers and sorrows of his people. The cowherd's wife was a hard-working woman, and it provoked her to see a great big man dreaming over the fire all the morning. She said to herself, "If he has no work of his own to attend to, he shall just help with mine." She put some meal cakes on a board to bake before the fire, and told the King to watch them carefully while she went out to feed the pig.

The King said he would watch them, but he kept on thinking about his army, and the heavy taxes, and by and by the woman came back.

There was smoke in the room, but she could see that the stranger was still sitting beside the fire, and that her cakes were burned to cinders. My, my, but she was angry. She boxed her guest's ears soundly, little dreaming that she was laying hands on the Sacred Person of the King, and might be hanged for it. The King, however, took her blows and her scolding, for he was very sorry he had let the cakes burn.

Afterward, when he had driven out his enemies and was at home again in his own castle he told what a scolding he had got for thinking about his troubles when he should have been baking the cakes.

ROAST PIG

Long ago, longer than you can even imagine, nobody in the world knew how to cook. People were not as dreadfully hungry on that account as you might think, because, you see, they ate their food uncooked. No one had ever cooked, and no one had ever thought of it; no one had ever eaten cooked food, and no one knew how pleasant it tasted.

This is the story of the way a little Chinese boy found out how to roast pig.

His name was Bo-bo and he had been left at home by his father, Ho-ti, to look after their hut, and their one big pig, and their nine little pigs. Bo-bo, was fond of playing with fire, and what did he do but set fire to some straw, and that set fire to the hut, and burned it down. A much more serious matter was that the one big pig and the nine little pigs were burned along with the hut.

Bo-bo was dreadfully frightened when he saw what he had done. He knew his father would beat him, and he began to cry. He also poked round among the ruins of the hut, though he did not hope to find anything. As he was turning over the embers, he found one of the little burnt pigs, and tried to pull it out. It was very hot, and burnt his hands, and he did just what you or I would have done—put his burnt fingers in his mouth.

The instant his hands reached his mouth, Bo-bo forgot all about being burned. He licked his fingers, but not because they hurt him. He did not know why he did lick them, but he kept on. Neither he nor any one else in the world had ever tasted such a wonderful taste.

Pretty soon, it came to him that it was the pig which tasted so delicious, and no sooner had he thought this, than he sat down in the ruins of the hut and began to eat great pieces of the little burnt pig. While he was making the best meal he had ever had in his life, his father came home, and when he saw that the hut was burnt down and that his son was eating some horrible food that no one else had ever eaten before, he began to beat Bo-bo with the stick he had in his hand. But Bo-bo did not seem to feel it. He hunted in the ashes for another pig and thrust it into his father's hands. Then the same thing happened which had happened to him. The pig burned Ho-ti's fingers and he put them in his mouth, and after that he had no time to think of beating any one, but sat down with his son in the ashes and made a good dinner.

From that time on, whenever they had little pigs, they burned down their hut to roast them. When the neighbours found it out, they thought it very wicked of Ho-ti and Bo-bo to eat burnt pig, but as soon as they were persuaded to taste it, they changed their minds, and then everybody was burning down his house in order to roast his pigs. After a long while, some one found out that one could cook without burning one's house down, which I am sure you will agree was a great discovery.

—Some day, when you go to school, you will have this story given to you to read—for a lesson!

THE KING'S KITCHEN

When King Arthur was King of England, a boy named Gareth, was growing up in a castle far away from Camelot, the King's city. But he had two brothers who were at Court, and who were Knights of the Order of the Round Table, and when they came home, now and then, Gareth asked them more questions than you could count about the King and his knights, and the Court, and tournaments, and battles. Every day, he rode and practised with lance and sword, and exercised in all ways that would make him strong and skilful with arms. And always he tried to be brave and to be gentle toward weak things and to tell the truth. And the reason for all this was that, more than anything else in the world, he longed to be in the service of the King, and to be a Knight of the Round Table.

As Gareth grew older, and more and more worthy to be made a knight, his mother, Bellicent, sorrowed and grieved. Her husband was very, very old, and her two elder sons had gone away to the Court, and she could not bear to have Gareth leave her, for he was the youngest and last. Though she saw that his heart's desire was to be with the King, yet she felt as if her heart would break if he went. She tried to make him especially happy at home; she tried to persuade him that he was not skilful or brave enough to be a knight; she told him of dangers and wounds, and besought him not to go. Again and again he asked her permission to go away and earn his knighthood; again and again she refused.

One day when he had spoken so bravely and truly that she knew not how to resist him longer, the thought came to her to test his great desire to be with the King, and she said to him: "If you desire so greatly to serve the King, give the proof of it which I shall ask of you. Go to the King and ask him to let you serve him in his kitchen for a year and a day, and tell no one your name and rank until the time is over."

She thought he would refuse to do it, but he kissed and thanked her, and quickly made ready to go to Camelot. For he wanted to serve the King, and this was a way of doing it, though not the one he had hoped for.

He journeyed a day and a night, and came to Camelot, the wonderful big city which he had never seen before. In the morning, the King sat in the Great Hall of his palace to hear the requests and troubles of his people. There Gareth came, and stood before him. And when he raised his eyes to the King's quiet face, and met his eyes, he loved him and longed more than ever to serve him. It was a little hard, when he was longing to be made a knight, and to be sent on an adventure, just to ask to be a kitchen-boy; but he did it, and the King granted his request.

So joyous and strong was he when he went out from the presence of the King, that he felt nothing would ever be hard to do again. But there were things which were hard. The kitchen was a great stone room with an earth floor, and a fireplace at either end as big as a little room. When the great fires were lit it was mightily hot between, and there was smoke and hurry, and jostling of servants, and there were some bad-tempered people and a great deal of hard work. There were trenchers and platters to be scoured, and big iron pots to be lifted about and washed, and roasting meats to be watched and turned before the fires. The cooking tanned Gareth's face and hands as riding in the hot sun had never done. When he could, he would run out into the courtyard, and play games with the other kitchen-boys, and when they were tired, they would sit against the wall and he would tell long tales he had read, and some that he made up, about knights and dragons and enchanted forests and robbers. The stories he loved best to tell, though, were stories of the King.

Often these play-times were broken in upon by the Master of the Kitchens, who called them back to their tasks with no great gentleness. Especially was he a hard master to Gareth; and, strangely enough, this was because Gareth was willing and cheerful, for there are people with such crooked places in their minds that they cannot see a person working gladly at a hard task but they want nothing so much as to see if they cannot break their cheerfulness. And that was the sort of master Gareth found in the King's Kitchen. He missed his rides over the downs in the clear air, and the right to go and come as he pleased. But when things seemed hard he cast off the thought and laughed to himself, saying, "It is for the King." In a little while, too, he learned to take fault-finding, and, now and again, a blow, in quietness. And this, too, was for the King.

As the days came and went, Bellicent, alone now with her old husband, thought of her son day and night; and the tasks that he must do and the discomforts he must suffer seemed to her a thousand times worse than he ever thought them. At last, when hardly a month of his trial had yet gone by, she could bear it no longer, but sent a messenger to the King to tell him the story, and to take to Gareth a horse and armour and all things that he would need when it should please the King to make him a knight.

After the King had seen the messenger he sent for Gareth, and Gareth left his scouring and went gaily and eagerly to him. He was glad in his love for the King, and I think he may have felt that he had borne rather unusual things for his sake. As he came near, the King loved him for his youth and gaiety and faithfulness. But Gareth, looking up into the quiet, loving eyes that were fixed on him, knelt down at the King's feet and bowed his head, and knew that nothing he could do for the King would ever be too much.

The King ended Gareth's kitchen service and made him a knight, and some day you will read other stories about him, for he fought many battles and loved a beautiful lady.

And it seems likely that the King loved him all the more because he could cook and scour for his sake.

BROTHER JUNIPER'S COOKING

Have you heard stories about Saint Francis of Assisi? There are a great many, and people like to hear them over and over again. For, though Saint Francis lived most of his life in a little, faraway, country town in Italy, called Assisi, and though he died hundreds of years ago, yet every year many people go to see the place where he lived, and the church where he is buried, and many people in countries far away from Italy love him as well as they do their friends whom they can see and talk to.

One of the stories about St. Francis tells of a flock of birds that came to listen to a sermon he preached to them, and another is about a wolf whom he persuaded not to hurt people any more. The reason he could do these things, and the reason people who have never seen him love him very dearly is because he loved everything and everybody in the world, and God and our Lord Jesus more than all.

No one was so dirty, or so sick, that he did not want to take care of him; no one was so cross, or so cruel, that he did not want to be kind to him.

Every day he went about helping poor people, and sick people, and troubled people; and he taught them all to be sorry for the wrong things they had done, and to sing songs of joy because God loved them.

After a little, a good many men began to help him do this. They gave everything they had to the poor, and never after that kept any money. They worked every day to get a little food, and the rest of the time they spent in helping and teaching people. St. Francis called them his "Little Brothers," not because they were small or young, but because he taught them to think themselves of no importance, and to think, if anybody scolded them or hurt them, that they deserved it and more too.

One of these Little Brothers was named Brother Juniper. He was always thinking of ways to help people. One day, all the Brothers went out to work, and left Brother Juniper to take care of the little hut where they lived, and to get some food for them. When he set about this he began to think of the Brothers who usually did the cooking, and how much time they had to spend every day getting food ready for the others to eat. To be sure, they had but one good meal a day, yet even so the cooking of it took time the Brothers might otherwise have used for prayer, or tending the sick, or some other good work.

As Brother Juniper was thinking of this, a plan popped into his head which made him very glad. He took two big baskets, and went off happily to several farmhouses in the neighbourhood, where the people were fond of the Little Brothers and liked to give them anything they needed. That day they gave Brother Juniper chickens and eggs and meat and salad and all sorts of vegetables, and they lent him some big iron pots. He took the baskets home heavy with food, and he came back and took the pots home. Then he made a big fire, and all the time he was happy and sang to himself, because he thought, "I will work hard to-day, and cook all this food, and then the Brothers won't have to think about cooking for a week or more." He hung the pots over the fire, and put into them all the food he had gathered without so much as taking the feathers off the chickens or the shells off the eggs, or stopping to see whether the vegetables were all just fit to eat or not. Then he filled the pots with water, and before long they began to boil. The fire was furiously hot. Brother Juniper could not get near enough to it to stir the pots. When he found this out, he took a board and tied it fast to himself, and, with that for a shield, he leaped to a pot and stirred it, and then leaped away again to cool himself; then he dashed at another and stirred that, and so on.

By and by, the Brothers came back, and the Brother Guardian with them, and they all sat down to dinner. Brother Juniper poured out some of the stew from his pots and brought it to the table. He was hot and tired, but delighted, and he told the others what he had done, and that they need not do any more cooking for a long time. The Brothers looked at him, and looked at the stew, and looked at each other, but not a mouthful could they eat. Brother Juniper urged them to begin, and when they did not, wondered what could be the matter. He was not left long in doubt, for the Brother Guardian told him that the dinner was not fit for a pig to eat, and scolded him well for wasting so much good food.

Brother Juniper listened and the gladness died out of him. He went and knelt at the Brother Guardian's feet and confessed his fault, and begged to be forgiven for wasting the Brothers' food, and for getting them a dinner they could not eat. Then he went away by himself, and the rest of that day and all the next, he neither ate nor spoke, nor ventured to come near any of the Brothers, because he was so sorry for his wastefulness and stupidity.

But the Brothers and the Brother Guardian thought they would be willing to know as little about cooking as Brother Juniper if they could be like him in some other ways.

THE WIDOW'S CRUSE

Long, long ago, there was a famine in a little town called Sarepta. For months and months there had been no rain, and nothing could grow in the fields, and the streams dried up and the sheep died and many people died, too, because they had no food.

A widow lived in Sarepta, who had one boy, and she was poor. When the famine began she had just one barrel of meal and one cruse of oil, and because she knew she could get no more, she and her son ate as little as they could, but even so, in a few months the meal was far down in the bottom of the barrel, and the cruse of oil felt very light.

At last one morning, when the woman got up, she found there was only enough meal and oil to make one little cake. She looked at it a long time, thinking they must certainly starve to death when that was gone; then she went out to get some wood for the fire, for she said to herself, "I will bake this one cake and we will eat it, but after that we will have to die." I expect she looked white and sad as she went, for it hurts very much to be so hungry that you die of it.

She found a few sticks, and was picking them up, when a tall old man stopped beside her and leaned on his staff. His clothes were made of hairy skins, and he had a long gray beard, and his face and arms and legs were brown and rough as if he had lived out in the sun and the frost. He seemed to have been making a journey, and he asked for a drink of water. The widow was glad it was only water that he wanted, and was hurrying off to get it, when the old man called after her, and asked her to bring him a piece of bread.

She thought of the little bit of meal and oil, and of her hungry boy, and of how hungry she was herself—and now, here was this tired old man asking for food! It was really more than she could bear. She came back toward him and said, "As the Lord liveth, I have not a cake, but only a handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oil in a cruse; and behold I am gathering two sticks that I may go and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it and die!"

The old man saw how hungry and desperate she looked; it may be that he knew beforehand that she was; nevertheless, he said: "Fear not; but go and do as thou hast said: but make me thereof a little cake first, and bring it unto me, and after that make for thee and thy son. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel, The barrel of meal shall not waste, neither shall the cruse of oil fail, until the day that the Lord sendeth rain upon the earth."

The widow did not altogether understand what he said, but somehow she felt stronger and more brave. She went home quickly and baked a little meal cake, and brought it to the old man, and asked him to come to her house and rest. He went back with her, and then she set about baking the rest of the meal and oil. She thought it would only make a very little cake, but the more meal she took out of the barrel, the more there was in it; and the more oil she poured from the cruse, the heavier it was to lift. She could hardly believe it, and yet she saw it was surely so. Then she went, crying with gladness and relief, and knelt beside the old man and thanked him, and begged him to stay with them as long as he could. And he did stay, a good many months, and all the time of the famine there was meal in the barrel and oil in the cruse.

By and by, the widow and her son learned that the old man's name was Elijah, and that he was a Prophet of the Lord God of Israel.

THE LUNCHEON

If we sailed across the Atlantic Ocean, and then sailed as far east on the Mediterranean Sea as we could, we should come to Asia. Then if we travelled into Asia for a little distance, we should come to a small lake. Long ago, this lake was called the Sea of Galilee, and one of the little towns on the shore was named Bethsaida. In this town, almost one thousand, nine hundred years ago, a boy lived and played and went to school. His uncles had boats on the lake, for they were fishermen, and the boy played in the boats, and sometimes his Uncle Andrew let him go out with him to the fishing.

Bethsaida was a busy, little town. There was always something to do. The lake and the boats and the fishermen and the nets were always there; then sometimes Roman soldiers marched into the town, and merchants from far-off countries came to trade in the market-place. Now and again men came who gathered crowds round them, and talked loud and shook their clenched fists and tore their long robes and kept the town restless for days together.

The boy liked to go with his uncles to listen to these men. He could not understand what they were talking about, but the crowd buzzed and jostled, and sometimes groaned and yelled. It was very exciting. Uncle Peter was often angry about what he heard these men say, but Uncle Andrew just stroked his beard and went back to the boats.

The people called a man who spoke to them in this way a "Rabbi." This meant in their language, a master—a man who knew a great deal about something.

One day, a Rabbi came to Bethsaida, who acted differently from the others. He did not make speeches in the market-place, and often when people were crowding to hear him, he went away on the lake or into the hills. If they followed him, he would sometimes stand in a boat by the shore, or on a hillside, and talk to them; and he could make sick people well. He liked children; and the boy had seen him once stop in the road and talk to a woman. That was a very queer thing for a great Rabbi to do.

The boy saw very little of his uncles after this new Rabbi came, for they followed him everywhere he went and seemed to be his close friends. When they did come home they spoke of him as if they did not know just what to say, yet always it seemed as if they could have said more if they had thought it well.

One day, the Rabbi and his friends had gone up into the hills, and people from the towns on the lake, and from the country round it, had gone out to find him; for those who had seen him wanted nothing so much as to see him again, and those who had not seen him could not rest until they had found out what the others went to see. The boy had been playing in the boats that morning, which nowadays were most of the time pulled up on the shore, and when he saw some of the neighbours setting off for the hills, he made up his mind to go too. First, though, he thought, "Uncle Andrew will be hungry, and so shall I," and he went home and got some food to take with him.

The way up through the hills was long and steep. The boy and his neighbours were tired enough before they came in sight of a great crowd of people in a green hollow of the hills. It was strange but, though there were thousands of people all standing together, they did not make a sound. As the boy came a little nearer, he heard the Rabbi's voice in the stillness. He wondered why the people kept so quiet. He did not realize that he was keeping very quiet himself.

After a while he no longer heard the Rabbi's voice, and the people began to move and make a little murmur of talking. He crept through the crowd toward the group round the Rabbi where his Uncle Andrew would be. When he got there he found they were trying to think of a way to feed all these hundreds of people who were tired and hungry, and miles away from any place where they could get food. That reminded him of the luncheon he had brought, and he pushed the basket into Uncle Andrew's hand.

Uncle Andrew looked into the basket and smiled when he saw what it had in it. Then he said to the Rabbi, "There is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves and two small fishes; but what are they among so many?" All the same, though, he held out the basket to the Rabbi, as if he really thought it would be of some use to him.

The boy looked to see if the great Rabbi would be angry with Uncle Andrew for saying such a useless thing, when all the others were trying hard to think what could be done. But no; instead of that, he looked as if something had made him delightfully happy, and he said, "Make the men sit down." And they did. Then the Rabbi blessed the five little loaves and the two little fishes which he had taken out of the basket, and began to break them up and give them to those especial friends of his who were always with him. And they carried them to the people sitting on the grass, and came back for more again and again.

And there always was more.

The boy went with Uncle Andrew, back and forth, again and again. He wanted, more than anything, to help in some little way, if it were only to hold back his uncle's robe as he bent toward the people on the ground.

When they would walk back for more food, he scarcely dared go so near to the wonderful Rabbi. And yet—his heart was in his throat with the joy and wonder of it—was it not his own barley bread and fish that the Rabbi had been so glad to have, and with which he was feeding all these thousands of hungry people?

Last of all, after every one was fed, the boy sat down close to his uncle and they had some luncheon, too; but he could not take his eyes from the Rabbi's face. He looked and looked until he could not see it any more, for he had gone to sleep in the warm grass.

When he waked the crowd was moving away, and his uncle was helping gather up the food which was left. The Rabbi had gone away alone into the hills.

THE FIRE OF COALS

It was spring-time, and eventide, in the thirty-third year of that amazing time when God walked on the earth, not only everywhere, and in every man as He does now, but Himself in the form of one Man.

Five of those men who loved Him best, and had been with Him most often, stood on the shore of the Sea of Galilee in the quick-coming darkness. Only a week or two before, they had seen their dear Lord nailed on a cross and left to die. And He had died. And when that happened, they felt they could not bear to live any longer. But—what do you think?—first one, and then another, had seen Him alive again, had talked with Him, touched Him, and been taught by Him as they used to be. When He was with them, they wished for nothing else; and when He was away they watched and longed for His return.

It had now been several days since He had been with them, and meanwhile they had been going about among people who thought of them as men who had wasted three years wandering round after another man, who was always about to do something but never did, and who, at last, had been put to death by the government. I expect it made these men feel lonely then, just as it makes us feel lonely now, to have to be with people who think that Our Lord is not alive.

They did not know what to do with themselves as they stood on the shore that evening. So, when one said, "I go a-fishing," all the rest said they would go, too. They were glad to be at work again, at something they had done all their lives.

They started out on the dark water under the stars, and cast their nets, but when they drew them in, they had caught nothing. They cast them again, and rowed here and there, and worked as hard as they could, but they got no fish for their pains, and the night was passing. One cannot tell whether or not they thought it strange, that men who had made sick people well, and cast out devils, could not now catch a few fish. Whatever they thought, they were wet and tired, and hungry, and the cold, gray early morning had come.

When it began to dawn, they rowed toward the shore. As they drew near, they saw some one standing on the beach who called to them and asked if they had any fish. They had to say no. Then the Stranger said "Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find." They had cast it, perhaps, in that very place during the night, but they did not say so; they just cast the net. When they began to draw it, it was heavy with fish.

This was a strange thing. One of the men said very low, "It is the Lord." Then the one who had suggested that they go fishing, threw himself into the water and swam to the shore; he just could not wait. The others came in the boat, dragging the net full of fishes.

As all through the night everything had seemed to go wrong, so now, everything was all right. On the shore was just the thing that tired, hungry, cold people want—a fire, burned down to glowing coals, with fish and bread baking on it.

But that was not the best thing they found on the shore.

The Stranger told them to draw up the net, and they did, and counted the fish, one hundred and fifty-three. Then He told them to come and eat, and He said grace for them and waited on them, and they knew every word and every gesture, but they could not speak. They just ate and rested and looked at Him. It made them so glad, and yet it almost made them afraid, too, that He should care about their hard work, and come and cook for them and wait on them Himself.

Perhaps it often happened in the years which followed, that when a friend, or a woman, or a slave came to these men, bringing food and comfort for their weariness, that with them came also the memory of the dawn on the beach, and the fire of coals, and the blessing of a Presence more than theirs.

PART II
LEARNING AND HELPING

LEARNING AND HELPING

"She was one of those persons who possess, as their exclusive patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement. It is a kind of natural magic that enables these favoured ones to bring out the hidden capabilities of things around them; and particularly to give a look of comfort and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a period, may happen to be their home."

—Hawthorne

ONE would like to take the person Hawthorne is describing on a camping party or a picnic. She would be equally agreeable to stay at home with, or to find at home when one came in. It is a sign that there is such a person in a house when the whole family have to know where "Mother" is, as soon as they get inside the front door. Sometimes it is a sister or an aunt, sometimes a father, who has to be found before one can settle down, but whatever the relationship, it is the person who makes us feel at home.

It is odd, is it not, the way we are always saying that we "feel at home," or "not at home," or "homesick," or that something is "homelike"? What do we mean by it, anyway? When people try to tell what home is, they usually make poor work of it. It is not in the least necessary to tell what it is; a home is a thing to have, not to talk about. All I want to say here is that homes are not houses and furniture, but people. There is an Indian proverb which says, "The hearth is not a stone but a woman." Fathers and brothers have their own share in making their homes, but mothers and daughters are more apt to take care of their homes and stay in them. So it has come to be that making homes is a special and particular work of women.

Whatever work a girl may hope to do in the future, she will live somewhere, and whatever that somewhere is like, it should be as homelike as she can make it. This is partly on account of a good many people she will find who need a little pleasantness and comfort given to them, and partly because she will not be comfortable and happy herself unless she has something homelike about her. This is why it is a great advantage to be a woman; what power we have to make homes, we carry with us. Hawthorne says that a woman, who is especially gifted in this way, can make a home of any place, even though she is there but a few hours—a hotel bedroom, for instance. The Indian proverb, however, goes even further. It says, not that a woman can make a home, but that she is a home. That is, we should have the power to make people feel at home wherever we are.

Most women, though, have something more to make a home out of than themselves. They have little houses or big houses to keep. When they begin to do this they find themselves very glad of all the cleverness, and learning and experience which they can gather. It is much easier to do some of this gathering before one has a house of one's own, and ways of doing it lie all round us, often unrealized and unused.

Through most of our teens, school is the principal thing. Whether we are interested in it or not, it is then our recognized occupation. Nowadays, there are opportunities in many schools to learn things helpful in housekeeping. They are not only to be found in cooking and sewing classes. Chemistry and physics, which may one or other of them be required of you for college entrance examinations, are also of excellent service in housekeeping. Some of you will be in schools where you can choose to some extent what courses you take. In that case, do not say chemistry is "messy," and physics is "too hard," but just tussle with them for the sake of your home-making, as a boy would who knew he was to be a physician or an engineer. I hardly dare to mention it, but detested arithmetic, learned in school, often afterward saves the peace of a household and the happiness of the housekeeper. Personally, I have found what geometry I know useful on many unexpected occasions. But to turn to a more agreeable subject, I can recommend any course in light carpentry, for you will almost surely like it if you try it, and no one thing is more useful in a house—except perhaps, arithmetic.

If, on the contrary, you are in a school where there are no choices, or if you are obliged to narrow down to the requirements of a college entrance examination, the only thing to do is to keep in mind the things which will be especially useful to you—physical sciences, mathematics, manual training, domestic science; study some of them if you can, and, besides that, see what you can learn at home. I do not mean that the other things which you study at school are not useful in home-making; they are. It is just that certain things are part of the special training for this work, and those named above are the ones more usually taught in schools.

We turn now to the preparation which can be given to us, and which we give ourselves, at home. Ideally, this is the place to learn home-making.

If we have a home, whether it is a palace or a room in a tenement, some one in it "keeps house." If that person is one's mother, then is one the normal and fortunate person who learns in the normal and fortunate way, from being with her. If she does some of the work of the house herself, and we help her, we learn far more than we realize until some moment of emergency comes and we find that our eyes, and hands, and noses, and muscles are trained for service.

If your mother merely directs the affairs of her house and the details are carried out by others, watch how she does it, for this may be the way in which you will keep house; and persuade her to let you try it, sometime when she is to be absent. In this case there will be some one else in the house from whom you will need to take a few lessons. It will perhaps be a housekeeper, or a very trusted maid. Make friends with her and ask her questions. If she sees you want to learn and not to criticize she will become the most delighted, flattering teacher you ever dreamed of.

If your mother does part or all of the housework it will probably be one of your appointed duties to assist her. If it should happen, as is sometimes the case, that you are not required to help with the housework, then be a woman, and not a lap dog, and ask to help. In the proper story-book, a mother's response to such a request would be an affectionate answer and much patient teaching, and I think, in many, many cases, that is the reply a daughter does receive. But just suppose that you are one of the other cases. I can imagine a variety of answers you might get to "May I help?" One of them might be, "Go out of the kitchen, you'll spoil your clothes"; and others might be, "Don't bother me, I'm busy," or "Don't interrupt," or, "I'd rather do it myself than put up with your clumsiness."

The first thing to do when one gets an answer like this is to go away. The second is according to temperament; if you feel hurt and discouraged, then, try not to, or if you feel that your responsibility is ended by the refusal of your offer, then don't think that; it isn't true. Think rather, that you may have offered just at the wrong moment—you will find when you begin to keep house yourself that there are a good many wrong moments—or that there may have been some simpler thing you could have done which would have been a greater help. We might also consider the possibility that our way of helping has not been quite agreeable on some former occasion. Perhaps, alas, we may be clumsy, or we may be slow, or we may be more nuisance than help just at first. After we have gone away and thought ourselves quiet, then we must do that most difficult and heroic of things—try again to help the person by whom we have been rebuffed.

You see I speak entirely of your side in this matter. That is because neither you nor I may be permitted to pass judgment on your mother. She is like some one about whom we have read a short story, we only know one little period of her life and only a few of her thoughts and feelings even then. She must always remain a bit of a mystery to us, because we can never know very much about what happened before we were born.

There is a thing which makes helping mothers difficult, that one must guard oneself against, especially because it is so natural and so insidious. It is especially a snare when we learn about housekeeping outside of our homes, though it very frequently lies in wait for us anyway. It is the desire to reform our homes and our mothers, and that instantly. I venture to say that the trouble with this lies in the instantly. The ways you are taught at school may be better than mother's ways; but, on the contrary, mother's ways may be the result of practical experience, and they may be an adaptation to the practical needs and tastes of her family. It may be that the things you learn are better adapted to your own generation and your own future housekeeping than they are to your parents' tastes and needs. You are the future, but remember that your parents are the past, without which you would never have been. There is this also to consider, that as we grow older, we grow toward orthodoxy. We place our faith in the "new thing" of the hour, and in a little while, find that it was proved impracticable ten centuries ago. While we are deciding that the old people we know are narrow-minded old fogies, behold, some girl or boy tells us that the reason we do not believe in their theory of the universe is because we are "old-fashioned." To you, young, thoughtful, and alive, belongs the belief that you are born to make the world better; and this is true. Not, however, by tearing down is this accomplished, but by building up. And the building is done by laying in a lifetime one small stone in the structure, ages old, which has its foundations in the deeps of the universe, and upon whose finished spires shall shine the glory of Heaven.

But there—it is of some practical ways of helping mother, and thereby learning housekeeping, that I wish to speak just now. They belong to the class of things called little services, but I can assure you, they are great, in tact, and helpfulness and love. They are homely; but they are just the sort of things angels would like to do. Dusting is one of them, the little everyday dusting which makes such a difference in the tidiness of the house, and perhaps takes five minutes, or less, to a room. With this goes taking up crumbs in the dining room, with a sweeper or dustpan and brush, and arranging flowers and watering plants. Tidying means removing dirt and litter, and putting each thing in the place where it belongs. Tidiness is not a housekeeper's superstition; it is a mechanical device for invoking the spirit of restfulness.

Another homely thing always needing to be done is mending. It is, by nature, incidental work, and therefore it is especially grateful to the housekeeper to have it done by an incidental helper. I do not mean merely darning stockings and sewing on buttons though that is the larger part of it, but also, mending which is done with hammer and tacks, or glue, or perhaps a varnish brush. I mean all those odd jobs which pursue the busy housewife in the hours when she ought to rest. Get your mother to write a list of these odd jobs on her memorandum pad, as she sees or thinks of them during the day, then see how many of them you can find a way to do.

Photograph by Helen W. Cooke

Tidying

If your household does not include a waitress, there is a class of small services which need to be done before each meal. One is not quite so sure to be at home at meal times, as if one were a boy, but one can arrange to be. Certain things are needed on the table which come from the refrigerator or the cellar, cool things which should be put on at the last moment. The cook has already fifty things to do at the last moment, and few things relieve her more than to know that she need not think of the table until she puts the meal upon it. I saw a girl, once, looking at the dining-room table, and tapping out some sort of rhythm with four finger-tips against her cheek. She owned up that she was saying to herself, "Bread, butter, milk and water"—four things which she had made it her business to see on the table before each meal. Sometimes there were jelly and pickles and other relishes to put on, but these four, which she counted off on her fingers and her cheek, were the essentials.

Wiping and putting away the dishes is a small service which one can do often and acceptably. It is elsewhere described, but is also mentioned here because it belongs to this list of opportunities.

If your mother, or whoever does the cooking in your house, likes to be helped with it, there will be many little things which you can do, like beating eggs for instance, or shelling peas. No one can tell you what they are, though, except the person who is cooking.

How many, and which of these small services you are able to do, depend on how long your school hours are, and on what sort of health you have, and on how much of the housework is done by the family. It is not fatal if you do not do any of them, provided your reason is not laziness or selfishness.

There is another group of small things, helpful, but more personal to yourself, which you are less likely to be prevented from doing. You probably have a room, or half a one, and a closet, and bureau drawers, and certainly clothes, which are your own. Possession means responsibility. If we find this sharp-cornered foundation-stone of truth in the depths of our own bureau drawers, it is less likely to fall heavily on us later on. Our own things and the places in which they are kept should be our own care, and not another's.

It may not be your business to do the periodical sweeping in your room, but the daily dusting and tidying the household authorities will be glad to have you do.

You cannot find a better way to learn to make beds than to make your own, for in that case you get the benefit of the insufficient airing or the crease, or the crumb, which you have let go. If, for some reason, you cannot make your bed every day, try to do it on Sunday. It is a custom of gentleness from one woman to another.

Keeping a room in order is accomplished by the same means that any tidiness is brought about, that is, by having a place for things and seeing that they are there. The things that most girls want in their rooms are apt to be hard to keep in order. They are things which our heartless elders call "trash." I would not undertake to say what a girl's room should or should not contain, but I would ask her not to have so many things that they are either never neat or else a tormenting care; not to hang things on her walls which are vulgar or silly; and not to leave her clothes and little adornments for other people to put away. Keeping one's own possessions in order is a reasonable service to others, and one of the natural, gradual ways of learning home-making.

Will you turn over a few pages and read the suggestions about the fittings and care of closets you will find in the chapter on upstairs work? Bureau drawers, however, are not mentioned elsewhere than here, for I consider them the private property of individuals, to be cared for by their owners and not to be intruded upon by others except in emergency. Articles put in drawers should be classified as far as possible, and things used least often should be put in drawers least easy to get at. Suppose, for instance, a bureau has four drawers, the lowest is probably deepest and requires stooping to open it. In it can go best waists, and sashes, and girdles, and scarfs, and fluffy objects which should lie loosely. In the third drawer underclothes might be put; to be folded and packed close does not hurt them. As they are things which go into the wash, they should be worn in rotation, and this is accomplished without thought or trouble if we pile all the garments of the same kind together and always put the newly washed ones on the top or the bottom of the pile, and take the ones we are to wear from the opposite place. It takes a great many troublesome words to describe this action, which is very simple, and almost immediately becomes mechanical. In the second drawer of this possible bureau might go collars, and handkerchiefs, and gloves, and ties, and things which must be kept uncrumpled. If one has ample room, pretty boxes are good to keep these things in, and they make for neatness. If one must economize space, it is better to have some squares of silk, or pretty coloured linen or silkoline in which one's possessions can be laid flat, and then the four corners of the wrapper folded over upon them. I have found these more convenient to get into and more easily washed than regular veil and necktie and glove cases.

The top drawer is the one which locks most securely, because it is under the top of the bureau, instead of under another drawer which might be removed. It is therefore the one in which people usually keep the things which they especially value, and their pocketbooks or handbags. If a part of the top drawer is set apart for the collars, ties, handkerchiefs, hair ribbons and belts which are in immediate use, it will assist immensely to keep a room and bureau top neat. One does not wish to put things, which have been worn, away with things which are perfectly fresh, and one wants the belt and ribbons which one wears for two or three days in succession close at hand. If they are folded or rolled up to keep them shapely, and put in a space in the top drawer which has been chosen for the purpose, time and tidying will be saved. The space will need emptying out frequently, but that can be done on those Saturdays when one is seized with a sudden clearing-up fit.

Care of our clothes is not directly related to housekeeping—it is only a collateral relation. A neat house, however, is marred if the housekeeper herself is untidy. For our immediate purpose, though, the point is, that the habit of caring for our clothes, and the deftness and inventiveness which such care requires, are qualities constantly useful in housekeeping. I met a woman once, who boasted that she did not know how to hold a needle, but give her a hammer and nails and she could do anything. I happened to see her later with a hammer and nails, and she was clutching the hammer close to the head, and pounding in nails with more disregard for the help of leverage, than if she had been a cave-woman pounding a stake with a stone. Some people can hammer who cannot sew; and some people can sew who cannot hammer; some people can do neither, and some people can do both. But the fact remains that if we can use our hands and heads cleverly for one thing, we have a better chance of using them cleverly for another; and blacking shoes, and binding skirts, and mending stockings, and putting in ruchings, are steps in an apprenticeship to more interesting and clever work. Incidentally, too, we are giving ourselves that exquisite daintiness which is one of a girl's charms.

At least one means of learning something of housekeeping lies open to every creature. That means is an observing interest. We never remain entirely ignorant of the things in which we are interested. We gather ideas about them everywhere, and in the most unexpected and unintentional places. If we sit at tables where the meals are carefully served and well cooked, that privilege teaches many things about serving and cooking. There is as much to learn in a cheap restaurant, if we watch how things are done, and think out the reason for the methods. If we watch a servant or a housewife doing work well, we need never again be entirely ignorant of how to do that work. If we read a book or hear a lecture, or overhear a scrap of talk in a street car which contains a thought to help us or an unusual method to be tried, it ought to stick to our memories as if magnetized. Think in the morning that you want to know something about the cats in Thibet, and almost surely before night, you will have heard or read something about them. We know how often this is true of remote and unusual affairs; it is infinitely more true of intimate daily ones. It is a great blessing; a means of getting knowledge without other struggle than remembering what we want to know. If it is not a royal road, it is at least a royal by-path, to learning.

Some day, you will discover that you are "grown up," and if you have learned what you could and helped when you could, you will discover, too, that you have the gift and power to make a home—that you are a woman, who is not a stone but a hearth.

PART III
MY HERITAGE

I
MY HERITAGE

"The lot has fallen unto me in a fair ground, yea, I have a goodly heritage."

THERE is a deep surprise and joy in these words, which grows to exultation. They might have been spoken by one who had climbed a height to look for the first time on the place where henceforth his life and work were to be, and saw in the curve of many-folded, blue hills, white roads with crops warming in the fields on either hand, woods and streams, laden orchards, and vines in garlands.

"It is a fair ground." Then—"yea, I have a goodly heritage." There is joy in beauty, and in possession—and more than that. There is exultation in the vision of seed-time and harvest, of growing beauty and usefulness, of life renewed; and in the strength and power to work for all this and to achieve it.

It is not fanciful to say that a woman may regard her heritage in some such way as this. The childhood, and the homes of the world are hers, and her work is the making of men and women. If she chooses to say that God has exalted His handmaiden, who is able to deny it?

The particular work of women is not just like any other work; indolence and failure in doing it, however, have been too often excused on account of this fact. Their work is yearly becoming more and more allied with other commercial, intellectual and moral activities. Even their housekeeping is no longer a disagreeable thing kept out of sight as much as possible, as the plumbing used to be. Its varied problems are being recognized and studied. Nobody denies that they are difficult, but it is not reasonable to suppose that they are the most difficult in the world, nor that they are unsolvable. One reason why they are difficult is that they are an attempt to establish order and law, without destroying individuality and freedom; and another reason is that the housewife exercises her profession chiefly for the benefit of her own family. If the physician had to doctor himself, the preacher preach to his wife, and the teacher teach his own children, their professions might be in as much confusion as the housekeeping profession is. The efforts to do away with these difficulties by having families live together, eat together, or do anything else in a wholesale way, have not succeeded and have led in a wrong direction. What is wanted is a way to preserve the separate family and the separate family home, not a way to make them into something else.

Difficulty is a characteristic of their work which should appeal to women. They are seeking to do difficult things. They are seeking to prove that there is no profession, nor labour, nor art in which they cannot succeed. In many cases they have succeeded admirably; it has not proved the point they set out to prove however, but another. What they have proved by their activities is that they are amply able to solve the problems and accomplish the organization of the work which is especially their own. They cannot get it believed that they are equal to anything while their own work lies undone—while they wilfully leave the home or helplessly stay in it.

Things which we are proud to do in other fields, we neither see nor do in our own. For the sake of a college degree, or a paper to be read before a club, we delve in difficult books; yet we do not study, nor even read about our own work. We would be proud to invent a flying machine, or a mud-digger, yet most of the inventions to aid housework are made by men. We aspire to be stockbrokers, merchants, accountants, bankers—while housekeeping finance has become a stock joke. We are eager to study social problems and take up settlement work, but we do not think it worth while to study our own cooks. We feel in ourselves a power to organize and betake us to the club, and leave the cook and the nursemaid to organize our homes and our children's lives. We have raised the woman's work of teaching and of nursing into excellent professions, and yet we are ready to sit down and cry before the difficulties of housekeeping.

Unpleasant and monotonous things, which we claim make our own work unbearable, we ignore in occupations which we covet or admire. Under Mr. Kipling's influence we cultivate an enthusiasm for machinery and engineering, but we neglect his constantly emphasized lesson that the digging of a canal or the building of a bridge involves humble toil and unsightly details far beyond any we may encounter in peeling potatoes or washing dishes. We look at the wide, slow waters which have been let into the land and they silence us; we follow with our eyes the great span of the bridge and hold our breath as if it were music. It is right that we wonder and admire. They are great things. But see that woman beside you who is looking at the bridge with such especial interest. Is the bridge any more wonderful than her son, who built it? He is what she has built. It seems to me, one might peel several tons of potatoes as a thank-offering for a son.

But I will not take such high ground as to suppose that we might be willing to do some hard and disagreeable things just because we feel very earnestly the privilege and glory of being women. Much more ordinary considerations urge us to get about our work. If the engineer son of whom we were speaking said, "Estimates make me nervous," or, "I hate dealing with dirty, foreign labourers," or, "You can't expect me to concern myself with the nasty river-bottom when I have the arch of a bridge in my mind," or, "This work is so monotonous, I certainly have a right to one day a week when I can go to town and shop"—if he said these things, we should say he was—effeminate.

Effeminate!

Our times are so quick that, if we went earnestly to work, the next generation would see nothing in the remarks quoted above, to suggest a woman.

And do you know that this work of ours is a profession in which we can be as clever, and independent, and advanced, and emancipated as we please, and no man will like us the less for it. They like us to be inconsistent and unexpected, and they do not like us to know more than they do. But if we can keep house thriftily and comfortably and not bother them with it, they like that. In this we are not their rivals. They like our charming unexpectedness better elsewhere than in the butcher's bills; and they love the inconsistency of the woman who, in the home which her cleverness and toil have made peaceful and adequate, is yet full of pleasure and wonder at the things her husband or her son has accomplished.

This is my thought of our fair heritage of clever, helpful and devoted work, with its goodly promise of a harvest of people whom we have helped to be happier and better. Such is the country of my Vision.

II
THE PLAN

IF WE want something, we plan to get it. We say, "I will do this, not that; I will use my time, as I have little strength; I will give my strength, as I have little money; or, I will give my money as I have little time to give." A plan is merely a series of choices, a record of things taken and things left for the sake of obtaining some end or of following some ideal.

If we wish the people for whom we keep house to be well and happy, and good, we shall plan to make them so, as earnestly and definitely as if we were making a train schedule, or drawing the plans of a house, or writing the outline of a book.

The object of a housekeeping plan may be an ideal, but the plan is based on a definite, practical fact—the amount of income. The plan itself is the record of the choices made in the outlay of that amount of income.

The first thing for a family to do when they wish to make a plan, is to impress on their minds, not what they think they will have or what they think they ought to have, but the definite amount of money which they have. Some people gamble who do not go to races or play cards. They bet on futurity by spending something they expect to make, or risk a purchase on the security of Aunt Maria's usual Christmas present. The indications of this sort of gambling are the casual remarks one hears too often; "I just had to have it," or "We could not keep up our position without it," or, "I can't have my children dressed like beggars," or "It was awfully expensive, but I will save on something else." They are silly words and not honest. Silly, because they mean that some momentary self-indulgence has been thought worth the price of long unrest and anxiety; not honest, because if people have what they cannot pay for, they have what some one else has paid for as truly as if they had carried off a parcel belonging to the person standing beside them at a counter. In that matter of Aunt Maria, there is an extra offense. A gift should bring some special pleasure, or meet some special emergency. Counted on, or spent beforehand, it gives no happy surprise, no unexpected pleasure or relief; and what is worse, Aunt Maria gets no more happiness from making the gift than she would from paying the interest on a mortgage. Counting on gifts is a mean trick. If a child's parents do this, they cannot reasonably blame him for calculating the inheritance he will acquire at their death.

The income from some kinds of work is of necessity uncertain. This makes the housekeeping plan especially difficult. Probably the wisest way to meet this is to pretend that one's income is an amount somewhat under one's brightest hopes, and to live on that amount. In case of a disappointment, there is not then so large a deficit to struggle with; or, if the hopes come true, the surplus can very easily be put into a needed garment or a needed pleasure, or perhaps into the savings bank. Some people manage uncertain incomes by the month instead of the year. The trouble with this is that there is likely to be "always a feast or a famine," and that is demoralizing. As far as possible, a family should have an established style of living, to be changed only gradually, as an assured income increases.

This thing called the style of living is the insidious, untiring rival of that hard, cold fact, the amount of income. The two are forever quarrelling. Logically, the amount of income should settle the style of living, but often people spend weary lives trying to stretch the hard fact to fit its ever-increasing rival. This conflict is the source of most household troubles, and quarrels, and sorrows. What is the matter? Why is one less ashamed to wear one's heart on one's sleeve than a patch? Why would you rather owe the grocer, than say to your friend, "I can't afford it?" Why, when I say I am not ashamed to be poor, does the blood rise in my cheeks to belie my words? Poverty is not a badge of failure and laziness. It is often a decoration for high principle, or for noble self-sacrifice,—it is the lady-love of saints.

Very soon and very often in housekeeping, whatever may be the income, the conflict will arise between needs and wants and the financial ability to supply them. For this struggle we must gather our common sense and courage. They will help us to choose the things which really matter, and to laugh at ourselves for pretending to have what we have not.

Some husbands and wives make the financial plans of the family together. In other cases, the husband decides what amount of the income should be spent on the table, and the wife plans only the expenditure of that. The households in which the wife buys and the husband pays without consultation or agreement, exist, but let us hope they are few. Then, there is the household in which the woman is financier, and the man lives on an allowance. And, of course, there are a great number of households which are not complete families, but are groups of people, related or unrelated, who make their homes together, and in which the division of income is made by one person, or by the group, as they wish or are compelled by circumstances.

Plans for a whole income are considered here because they include the problems and details of less elaborate plans.

As has been said, the first thing for a family to do is to find out their definite income, irrespective of Aunt Maria. Incomes of all sizes are lived on in some way. The way which their income will cover, is the style of living suitable for a family. If the family income pinches, however, and there is some way of increasing it which does not destroy the home life, nor work some member of the family to death, then it is well to take that way. But only in cases verging on starvation, should an increase in income be made by the homemaker leaving her housekeeping, or the breadwinner working eighteen hours a day.

When the amount of the income is found out, the next thing is to divide it among the family needs in a reasonable proportion. This proportion is decided in the first place according to necessity, and in the second, according to taste.

Let us take for illustration a family with an income of $2,000 a year. And then let us take, from Mrs. Ellen H. Richards's book called "The Cost of Living," the following proportions for an income of that amount.

Translated into dollars this is:

The next thing is to find out whether this is a possible proportion for us, if this income is our own.

Food, $500 a year, $9.61 a week, $1.37 a day—we shall probably think this a possible allowance.

Rent $400 a year, $33 a month—here there may be a difficulty.

If we own a house in a country town or a suburb, we can probably pay the taxes and make repairs, and have something left from $400. If we rent a house in a country town or in a not too popular suburb we can perhaps get it for less than $400, but in the latter case, the remainder may need to be used in carfares if some member of the family has to go to the city every day. If we live in a flat in a large city, it is an uninviting one that can be had for $33 a month, and even so, nothing is left for carfares. Regular carfares are usually reckoned in the department with the rent, because the place where one's home is situated determines their amount.

Here are two cases, then, in which the proportion for rent does not work. The first, in which there is more money than is necessary to provide a dwelling, is easily arranged. The surplus can be used for more clothes, or more "help," or to satisfy more of the unfailing supply of miscellaneous needs, or it can be put by for future needs.

The second case, in which we feel we must have a $40 flat and have only $33 with which to pay for it, is not as hopeless as it looks. For the next thing in the table of proportions is $300 a year for running expenses, that is, wages, fuel, light, water, etc. Here is at once a partial solution of the rent difficulty. In that forty-dollar flat, heat and water are supplied. If we use gas for cooking, $7 a month will be an average gas bill for a careful family, that is $84 a year. This amount will likewise cover the expense if we use gas for light and coal for the range. Then if we pay three dollars a week to an inexperienced girl, or $1.50 a day for two days a week to a combination washerwoman and scrubwoman, that will be $156 a year. Our running expenses will then be $240 a year. The $60 saved will pay $5 a month on the rent, and we shall then need only $2 a month more to secure the forty-dollar flat.

Next, $300 for clothes. In a year when things have lasted over, we may be able to get the $2 a month for the rent from this department. If, on the contrary, there is a new overcoat, or a new street dress to buy, or a new member of the family to clothe, then it cannot be spared.

The next division is $500 for holidays, recreations, books, charity, savings, doctors' bills and all unclassified expenses. This is the division which is most difficult to manage. If we think we cannot spare that $24 from the clothes department, we shall need to consider very carefully whether we take it from this, or from the food department. We shall have to consider the price of food in the neighbourhood; the health of the family; how much they need a holiday; whether there is any special purpose for which we must save; whether there is some piece of furniture much needed; whether there is a present which we greatly desire to give. And these are only samples of the things which will need to be considered. A choice must be made, though, however difficult, for when one item of expenditure in the family life is exceptionally large, there is but one thing to do, that is, to decide, reasonably and carefully, in what other department of living the expenditure can be lessened.

In this case of a high rent which has just been described, see in the table below what has happened.

The high rent is balanced by a saving in running expenses and in some item of miscellaneous expense.

This is merely a suggestion of the way in which a housekeeping plan is worked out. Every family has its own needs and wants, and its income must be proportioned to suit them as far as possible. If your income is larger than the one used as an example, you will find that the department of miscellaneous expenses will grow and need to be subdivided many times—you will have more concerts than cabbages—if, on the contrary, your income is less than the example, you will find that the food and rent departments will begin to swallow up the other departments.

An example of the extreme of this is exhibited by a budget of housekeeping expenses given by Mr. Arthur Morrison in the Fortnightly Review a few years ago, for a family with an income of £1 10s. a week—about $7.50 a week and $390 a year.

This table, roughly calculated, gives the following proportions:

Nearly half the income was used for food; the same proportion for rent as it is reckoned should be paid by a family with an income of $2,000; and about a third ($2.50 in our money) was left for fuel, clothes, and every other need or want. Yet Mr. Morrison says that if the wife is not lazy and the husband does not drink, a family can live in London on this income and manage to be well and decent. "Pretty hard!"—yes. "Pretty sordid!"—no. Courage and perseverance and self-denial made that budget, such as most of us save up for heroic occasions, and would not think of expending upon marketing and meal getting.

One cannot be as definite about housekeeping plans as one would like to be in dealing with such a definite and practical subject. In the nature of things, each family must decide on the purposes for which its income is used, and on the amount to be devoted to each. I cannot, however, emphasize too strongly the necessity of definiteness on the part of those dealing with their own actual incomes. A carefully thought out plan of expenditure, written down and earnestly adhered to, is a family backbone. A first plan has to be made somewhat in the dark, but every year brings enlightenment and confidence. Though the purposes for which their income is used are for each family to decide upon, yet I venture to lay stress upon three purposes which are often subdivisions of that general and entirely voluntary department of miscellaneous expenses. For convenience, I shall call them, "Allowances," "The Tenth," and "Savings."

There is an odd sort of innate privacy about money matters. Children are taught that it is ill-bred to open other peoples' pocketbooks or checkbooks, or to ask them what their possessions cost. As they grow up they find that business affairs are considered confidential, and that no honourable person investigates another's money affairs without some authority. It is desirable that these rules of honour should be preserved, and one simple way to help in this is to arrange that each member of the family has an allowance, if it is only five cents a week—an allowance for which he is responsible to himself alone. These allowances should go down in the family accounts as "Allowances," the details belong to the individual. The members of families in which this arrangement is made should conscientiously keep their private expenses within the amount agreed upon, for allowances not only teach the right of individual privacy, they teach that old and difficult lesson that "you can't eat your cake and have it too";—that one can't have marbles and candy the same week. An allowance also supplies each person with something to give away, which is really his to give. He may not have earned it by work, but he has earned it by going without something he would have liked to spend it for. There is yet another purpose which allowances serve. They help to prevent the failure of a plan of expenditure. For they keep a strict and careful plan from becoming a galling chain. They prevent the absorption of personal privacy and freedom by the regulations of the family as a group against which the individual, sooner or later, invariably rebels.

"The Tenth" is that part of the family income, more or less than an actual tenth, which is given away. It is not mine to offer advice as to the size or use of this division. I merely emphasize its necessity. It is the small thing, which keeps meanness and bitterness out of the management of scanty means, and selfishness and brutality out of the management of ample means. Establish a give-away division in your plan, for the sake of your own disposition, if you are not urged to it by any other consideration.

Next to this division, which is considered the generous division, comes one which has a less agreeable reputation, but undeservedly—"Savings." Many people who will say giving is a good thing, will deny that saving is. And is it? Why? What is it for? It is to provide those who suffer adversity, or who live to old age, against becoming a "public charge"; or against dependence upon relatives and friends. There is a fine honour in not taking the risk of these things. One ought to be willing to struggle hard and self-denyingly to save oneself and one's family from becoming burdens to other people.

Perhaps you say, "But why pinch and save for something which may never happen?" If you speak as one solitary individual, it is true, you may die before old age; it is the rare family, however, in which some member does not need a provision for a last period of helplessness. Then, there are those things called adversities, and those things called opportunities, which turn to adversities if they cannot be used. Do you know many people, who have not at some time been in a difficulty where they needed money, or who have not had a chance that depended on an outfit or a pledge? Is it reasonable to expect to run to some one else for help at such times?

And, by the way, to whom would you run? To the friend who is the open-handed, good companion, or to the careful, farseeing friend? Of the two, which is the more to be depended upon, the more finely honourable, the more worthy to be imitated?

There are two very usual ways of keeping savings. Life insurance is one of them. It is more than a way of keeping savings, for in most cases, the amount finally received is more than the amount paid in. It has this advantage, and also the advantage that the savings thus laid by are only available at a time of great need—sickness, accident or death—or sometimes, after a long period of years. It has the corresponding disadvantages that these savings are not available for small needs, and also that they may be lost, if for any reason the subsequent premiums cannot be paid.

A savings-bank account is another way of keeping savings. Savings banks will take money in very small sums and will pay a reasonable interest on it. This method of keeping savings has the advantage that the money can be drawn whenever it is needed, but the resulting disadvantage that the account may be small at the moment of sudden need. If it is possible, as it often is, to have both a life insurance and a savings-bank account, a household may feel well protected against calamity, and well provided against sudden wants.

If some member of a family has a life insurance, a definite premium will have to be paid at definite times. A savings-bank account is not so insistent. But to succeed in saving and to do it with as little discomfort as possible, it is better to put ten dollars or ten cents into an account on the first day of the month, and forget about it, than to save five cents in carfare on Monday, one cent on a newspaper on Tuesday, ten cents on lunch on Wednesday, and so on.

You will say that it amounts to the same thing. That if that money is put into the bank, all these little pinching economies will have to be borne as a consequence. That is logical, but only to a certain extent true in practice. In one case, that of the definite amount put away monthly, the money is saved because it is not there to spend; in the other case, it is there, but is saved with the thought of saving. The latter method means going without everything that possibly can be gone without. It is the method by which one fills a Lenten mitebox—it is disciplinary, that is, it is meant to hurt a little, and it does. People do not keep Lent all the year, however; it is an especial season for an especial purpose. At some time of serious difficulty in household affairs, it may become necessary to save in this Lenten way, but the usual, regular sort of saving, which is a duty for life with most of us, should be done as far as possible by a decision once carefully made, and afterward automatically carried out.

I wish I could in some way show the pleasant side of the matter of savings. There is much comfort and gladness in the possession of a small reserve fund. The mere sight of the big, ugly Savings Bank which contains it can give new courage. We look up at the building in passing and know we have there the chance to start again if we are not succeeding; a holiday if we very much need one; weeks to recover in if we are ill; protection from dependence upon other people; the power to keep some one we love from suffering; and the joy of sometimes giving a gift.

And now, a word more on the subject of choices.

In a little town I know, there live two old women. One will not go to prayer meeting because she cannot afford to put five cents into the collection basket; the other goes every week and contributes one bright penny. She devoutly brightens it on a piece of old carpet before she starts. As it is such a little gift, it must be made as fair as possible.

There is a stern business principle in the whole of life. It is that law of choice of which we spoke at first. If we have a thing, we must in some way pay for it, we cannot have the thing and its price too. We pay in various commodities: in work, in money, in time, in ability, in thoughtfulness, in suffering; but in some way we pay. It is not a harsh and ungenerous law; it is to be rejoiced in. God meant us to be self-supporting, not objects of charity.

The trouble with His law is made by us. Some of us try to get out of paying at all; some of us are angry because we would rather pay in something we have not. We would rather pay for food and clothes with money only, instead of with a little money and much thought and labour. We would like to buy our friend a birthday gift, instead of writing that birthday letter which costs us thoughtfulness and an ache in our pride. Because we cannot afford a holiday, we will not pay for comfort and pleasantness at home with the coin of gaiety, or a favourite dessert, or a new book from the Library.

Each of you, and I, whatever our incomes, have our choices of this kind to make, and the price of them to pay.

—It is prayer-meeting night. Shall we stay at home?—Or rub up a penny?

III
THE ACCOUNTS

WHEN a family have made a plan of yearly expenditure, they must have some way of testing at short intervals whether they are keeping to it or not, and some record by which at the end of the year they can tell whether their plan is a good one. These tests and records are furnished by accounts.

Accounts are as old as the brick books of Assyria. They have been found necessary to business transactions for ages. One of the reasons that housekeeping does not receive its proper recognition as a business and a profession is that it does not bear the stamp of either in the form of accurate accounts and statistics. Perhaps these are lacking because so many women are driven to tears or fury by accounts. It is odd that they are, too, for they keep golf and tennis scores, and devote themselves to whist, and are madly fascinated with jig-saw puzzles, and all these things are a good deal like accounts.

A favourite excuse for not keeping accounts is this: "I have just so much, and I can't spend what I haven't, so what's the use?" This ignores two things. The first is, that spending a little more than one's income, and thus gradually running up a debt, is an extremely easy thing to do. The second is, that people who do not plan their expenditures, deprive themselves of the chance to choose what their expenditures shall be made for. If you plan to have strawberries and cream on the first Monday in February, and bread and tea on the next Saturday, and you like that, then there is nothing more to say—except to hope for improvement in the next generation. If, however, in the exuberance of appetite or hospitality you have strawberries and cream on the first Monday in February, and are awfully surprised to find you can only afford bread and tea on Saturday—then you need to realize that you have deprived yourself of the freedom of choice, whether right or wrong, and that you had better keep a few accounts. The moment a family have one penny more than they need to buy the food which will keep them alive, there comes to be an element of choice in the spending of that penny. When the penny grows to an amount not easily calculated mentally, that freedom of choice is only obtainable by accepting the bondage of some sort of accounts. It is like the bondage of the truth, it makes us free.

There are many methods and variations of methods of keeping accounts. Mr. Morrison's woman with thirty shillings a week undoubtedly kept her accounts in her head, but she kept them. Many women keep accounts with a collection of small boxes or envelopes, each marked with the name of the commodity for which the money within is to be used. They find it easier to calculate with the actual money than with figures. It is well enough if they cannot do better, but it is primitive. I suppose that some six or seven thousand years ago, it was the latest thing in account keeping. No woman wants to be as far behind the style as that.

Accounts kept in figures have several obvious advantages. The symbol of five thousand dollars—$5,000—takes less room than that amount in money, and is no temptation to a thief. Another advantage is, that these symbols of money do not have to be paid out, but remain in a book, and furnish a record of just what has been bought and what money remains. They also make it clear to the owner of the money whether she has had what she most needed or not. That is one of the reasons accounts are so disagreeable; they often say, "You made a fool of yourself that time."

Photograph by Helen W. Cooke

The Account Book

There are two sides in accounts, which are usually represented by opposite pages in a book. The right-hand page is the Credit side; the left hand page is the Debit side. On the right hand, or Credit, page are written the sums of money we have or acquire. Credit is related to the word creed. The reason for this relationship is, that a credit page represents how much we may be believed in financially; and to what amount people believed in us who paid us for work; and to what amount people believed in us who gave us gifts in money. On the left-hand, or Debit, page are written the sums of money we have paid out. The word debit is related to due and duty and devoir. Therefore, on this page go the amounts which have been due to others for the things which we have had, and which it has been our duty to pay because we have had these things. If we are honourable people, we will do our devoir in this matter.

At the end of a day, or a week, or a month, as seems best, the account is balanced. This word balanced is a metaphor. By its means the credit and the debit pages are changed into the pans of a pair of scales, and the account is balanced when they hang even. That is, when the items on the debit page add up to the same amount that the items on the credit page add up to, the account balances. But suppose the pages do not add up to the same amount—they rarely do, and they rarely should—What then? Then the metaphor of the balance suggests what to do. If one scalepan is lighter than the other, put a weight into it. If the debit side is lighter, that is, if it is less than the credit side, add on the amount which will make it even with the credit side, and write beside that amount, "Balance." In that case, there is a little money yet unspent, and when the next two pages of the accounts are begun this money yet unspent is put down at the head of the credit page like this:

If, on the contrary, the credit side is less than the debit side, add the balance there. This means that something has been bought which has not been paid for, and the meaning of another word related to debit becomes intrusive—debt. Debt is sometimes a temporary necessity—like oxygen pumped into lungs which can no longer pump for themselves; sometimes it is a calamity, sometimes it is a disgrace; and it is always dangerous.

Two pages of an account such as a girl might keep of her personal expenses, when balanced at the end of a week, look like this:—

The person to whom this account belongs has a balance on hand of $11.15 to put at the head of the next credit page. She is evidently an exemplary person for she has spent just about a fourth of her money in a fourth of the month.

One would think that simple household accounts might be kept like this personal cash-account. They could, except that it is desirable, almost necessary, that household accounts should be divided into departments. The departments will be those which have been decided upon in the plan of expenditure, such as food, clothes, fuel, savings, etc. There are several ways in which accounts can be kept in departments. Two or three of the simplest are suggested here. The rule for selecting a method is, use the one which confuses you least.

One method is, to begin in different parts of an account-book, accounts for each department like the simple cash-account above. It is convenient to have an indexed book, or else to paste slips on the pages where each account begins, which will stick out beyond the leaves and indicate by a word or an initial what department will be found there. The book should be one made for accounts, for then it will be ruled correctly. In each place where a department begins, write the name of the department at the head of opposite pages. On the credit page put down the amount allotted to this department for a week or month. This amount is copied from the plan of expenditure, which should be written down in the beginning or end of the book. On the debit page write the names of the items for which the money is spent and the dates. It is safer to balance house-accounts once a week. This prevents the use of more than the week's allowance, or if it has been necessary to use more, this serves as a warning to spend less than the allowance the next week. Below is a brief, two-weeks' account for the Clothes Department.

If it should happen that one department has to help another department, put the amount down on the credit page as: From X—Department—$10.00; just as the birthday present is put down in the personal account.

Here is another method, which is easy to understand, but tends to become clumsy if the details are many. For this, one should have a book with an unusually large page, and wider than it is high. Rule it like this form below. It saves confusion if the vertical rulings are done in red ink.

At the end of the week, the amount at the foot of each of these columns should be compared with the weekly amount for that department allowed in the plan of expenditure. If the week's total is more than the allowance, the amount it has exceeded should be put down in red ink at the head of the column for the next week. This will serve as a reminder that when that column is added up, it should be possible to add in the red number without exceeding the week's allowance for that department.

This method has the disadvantage that it does not record the items for which the money was spent. It is practicable, however, especially for a housekeeper who only manages the part of the income devoted to the food supply. Often, in this case, items can be obtained, if desired, from the little books of the butcher or the grocer in which purchases are charged for a week or a month.

This method does not show the credit side of the accounts. The previous method has a credit side, but it is theoretical. That is, the amounts on the credit pages were taken from the plan, they are not a record of actual checks or amounts of money in which the income was received. This defect in these methods must be remedied.

It can be done by devoting a page of the account book to the dates on which, and the amounts in which, the actual credits come in. They will be salary, wages, interest on investments, gifts, etc.; or the sum of money from the business which supports the family, which at stated times is deposited in a bank or given into the hands of the housekeeper for the living expenses. It is necessary to see that these things come in regularly; if they do the housekeeping plan may safely remain unchanged. If they decrease, a way must quickly be found to lessen the expenses; if they increase, one must decide slowly what is the wisest thing to do with the surplus.

If this way of recording actual credits does not seem convenient, a general account can be kept to supplement the detailed accounts. It will be well to have a small account book especially for this purpose. Two of its pages will look like the example below. The items on the debit page are gathered from detailed accounts such as have been described. Completed for a month, it should be balanced as any account is balanced.

Many people keep no accounts except in their checkbooks. That is, they write down carefully therein the date and source of every check deposited; and on the stub of each check drawn they write the purpose for which the money is to be used. This method is much better than no account keeping, but it is hardly detailed enough for a house account in which there are many items too small to be paid by check. After every three or four checks there is apt to be one marked "Incidentals," or "General Expenses." Into these indefinite checks often go the trip the family meant to take, the table linen they meant to buy, the savings they meant to put away, and at the end of a year it is impossible to say what they had instead.

Unless purchases are always paid for in cash, charge-accounts will have to have a place in the house account book. Some people have passbooks kept by the baker and the butcher and the grocer, and pay these accounts weekly. Others have charge-accounts with all their tradespeople and pay their bills monthly. If one has a charge-account with a firm, purchases made from them should invariably be charged. Paying for one purchase, and charging the next makes a tangle which neither the purchaser nor the shopkeeper can hope to prevent.