American Womans Home

㏐American Woman's Home

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The American Woman's Home
by Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe #3 in our series by Harriet Beecher Stowe
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Title: The American Woman's Home
Author: Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6598] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on December 30, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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AMERICAN WOMAN'S HOME: OR, PRINCIPLES OF DOMESTIC SCIENCE;
BEING A GUIDE TO THE FORMATION AND MAINTENANCE OF ECONOMICAL, HEALTHFUL, BEAUTIFUL, AND CHRISTIAN HOMES.
BY CATHERINE E. BEECHER AND HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA, IN WHOSE HANDS REST THE REAL DESTINIES OF THE REPUBLIC, AS MOULDED BY THE EARLY TRAINING AND PRESERVED AMID THE MATURER INFLUENCES OF HOME, THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.
_INTRODUCTION._
The chief cause of woman's disabilities and sufferings, that women are not trained, as men are, for their peculiar duties--Aim of this volume to elevate the honor and remuneration of domestic employment--Woman's duties, and her utter lack of training for them--Qualifications of the writers of this volume to teach the matters proposed--Experience and study of woman's work--Conviction of the dignity and importance of it--The great social and moral power in her keeping--The principles and teachings of Jesus Christ the true basis of woman's rights and duties.
I.
_THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY._
Object of the Family State--Duty of the elder and stronger to raise the younger, weaker, and more ignorant to an equality of advantages--Discipline of the family--The example of Christ one of self-sacrifice as man's elder brother--His assumption of a low estate--His manual labor--His trade--Woman the chief minister of the family estate--Man the out-door laborer and provider--Labor and self-denial in the mutual relations of home-life, honorable, healthful, economical, enjoyable, and Christian.
II.
_A CHRISTIAN HOUSE._
True wisdom in building a home--Necessity of economizing time, labor, and expense, by the close packing of conveniences--Plan of a model cottage--Proportions--Piazzas--Entry--Stairs and landings--Large room--Movable Screen--Convenient bedsteads--A good mattress--A cheap and convenient ottoman--Kitchen and stove-room--The stove-room and its arrangements--Second or attic story--Closets, corner dressing-tables, windows, balconies, water and earth-closets, shoe-bag, piece-bag--Basement, closets, refrigerator, washtubs, etc.--Laundry--General wood-work--Conservatories-Average estimate of cost.
III.
_A HEALTHFUL HOME._
Household murder--Poisoning and starvation the inevitable result of bad air in public halls and private homes--Good air as needful as good food--Structure and operations of the lungs and their capillaries and air-cells--How people in a confined room will deprive the air of oxygen and overload it with refuse carbonic acid-Starvation of the living body deprived of oxygen--The skin and its twenty-eight miles of perspiratory tubes--Reciprocal action of plants and animals--Historical examples of foul-air poisoning--Outward effects of habitual breathing of bad air--Quotations from scientific authorities.
IV.
_SCIENTIFIC DOMESTIC VENTILATION._
An open fireplace secures due ventilation--Evils of substituting air-tight stoves and furnace heating--Tendency of warm air to rise and of cool air to sink--Ventilation of mines--Ignorance of architects--Poor ventilation in most houses--Mode of ventilating laboratories--Creation of a current of warm air in a flue open at top and bottom of the room--Flue to be built into chimney: method of utilizing it.
V. STOVES, FURNACES, AND CHIMNEYS.
The general properties of heat, conduction, convection, radiation, reflection--Cooking done by radiation the simplest but most wasteful mode: by convection (as in stoves and furnaces) the cheapest--The range--The model cooking-stove--Interior arrangements and principles--Contrivances for economizing heat, labor, time, fuel, trouble, and expense--Its durability, simplicity, etc.--Chimneys: why they smoke and how to cure them--Furnaces: the dryness of their heat--Necessity of moisture in warm air--How to obtain and regulate it.
VI.
_HOME DECORATION._
Significance of beauty in making home attractive and useful in education--Exemplification of economical and tasteful furniture--The carpet, lounge, lambrequins, curtains, ottomans, easy-chair, centre-table--Money left for pictures--Chromes--Pretty frames-- Engravings--Statuettes--Educatory influence of works of art--Natural adornments--Materials in the woods and fields--Parlor-gardens--Hanging baskets--Fern-shields--Ivy, its beauty and tractableness--Window, with flowers, vines, and pretty plants--Rustic stand for flowers--Ward's case--How to make it economically--Bowls and vases of rustic work for growing plants--Ferns, how and when to gather them--General remarks.
VII.
_THE CARE OF HEALTH._
Importance