Buckmaster's cookery

Buckmaster's Cookery. and respect rather than the speechifiers on the intellectual equality and rights of woman. Do not interpret these remarks as favourable to any social or political degradation of woman. There are some duties inseparable from a woman — they have their origin in the fact of her being a woman which nothing can alter ; and by the faithful performance of these duties she inherits her rights and responsibilities, and fulfils in the highest degree the mission assigned to her by God. Every girls’ school should have a properly arranged kitchen, not one where the cooking is done by steam and complicated arrangements, but one that contains an ordinary fireplace, with the pots and pans usually found in the houses of the working classes, so that dinners could be provided daily for some of the children. In large towns pupil teachers and the more advanced girls should be instructed at convenient centres. School Boards have the power of introducing this instruction into their girls’ schools. But how is this knowledge to be introduced into ladies’ schools ? As far as my experience goes old maids are not the best persons to keep ladies’ schools ; disappointed perhaps in early life they grow cold, rigid, formal, and often unfeeling. The natural joyousness of youth, the hearty merry laugh, is at once put down as rude and vulgar. I knew a school from which a young lady was expelled for jumping over a stile. The mention of such things as saucepans and gridirons would no doubt have been considered as a gross breach of etiquette. Some arrangement might be made in ladies’ schools for one or two to take part every day The Education of Girls. in the work of the kitchen under an educated cook, who ought to rank as one of the teachers ; she might occasionally give lessons on the chemistry and physiology of food ; and in this and other ways much useful knowledge might be communicated at school. I shall be met with the oft-repeated objection that there is no time for these things; but how many dreary hours are occupied over the piano, how large a portion of time is swallowed up with this accomplishment; and, when we consider its practical value on the afterlife of a girl, is it worth the time and money bestowed upon it? I do not say you are not to learn the piano, but what I do say is, that your whole force of thought is not to be exhausted on it. It would not take a tithe of the time to learn how to make a fricassee of chicken or to fry a pair of soles in hot fat, as it does to learn a sonata which may be easily forgotten ; cookery once learnt is never forgotten. Now that public attention has been called to the subject, mothers perhaps will take more personal interest in the domestic education of their daughters ; for it is chiefly in their own homes that this education must be encouraged and enforced. Making pastry, preserving fruit, pickling, making ketcup, cultivating, gathering, drying, and compounding herbs, are elegant, healthful occupations. After leaving school the life of many young ladies becomes most aimless and vapid, without any useful occupation or purpose; valuable hours are wasted on dress, and when the chance of marriage is over, no condition is more hopeless or helpless than that of a well-educated, dependant lady, Better take to hospitals and workhouses and orphanages. Buckmaster's Cookery.