The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking | Page 4

excellent and
elaborate manuals by well-known authors having contributed here and
there, but the majority of rules being, as before said, the result of years
of personal experiment, or drawn from old family receipt-books.
To facilitate the work of the teacher, however, a scheme of lessons is
given at the end, covering all that can well be taught in the ordinary
school year: each lesson is given with page references to the receipts
employed, while a shorter and more compact course is outlined for the
use of classes for ladies. A list of topics is also given for school use; it
having been found to add greatly to the interest of the course to write
each week the story of some ingredient in the lesson for the day, while
a set of questions, to be used at periodical intervals, fixes details, and
insures a certain knowledge of what progress has been made. The
course covers the chemistry and physiology of food, as well as an
outline of household science in general, and may serve as a text-book
wherever such study is introduced. It is hoped that this presentation of
the subject will lessen the labor necessary in this new field, though no
text-book can fully take the place of personal enthusiastic work.
That training is imperatively demanded for rich and poor alike, is now
unquestioned; but the mere taking a course of cooking-lessons alone
does not meet the need in full. The present book aims to fill a place
hitherto unoccupied; and precisely the line of work indicated there has
been found the only practical method in a year's successful organization
of schools at various points. Whether used at home with growing girls,
in cooking-clubs, in schools, or in private classes, it is hoped that the
system outlined and the authorities referred to will stimulate interest,
and open up a new field of work to many who have doubted if the food
question had any interest beyond the day's need, and who have failed to
see that nothing ministering to the best life and thought of this

wonderful human body could ever by any chance be rightfully called
"common or unclean." We are but on the threshold of the new science.
If these pages make the way even a little plainer, the author will have
accomplished her full purpose, and will know that in spite of
appearances there is "room for one more."
HELEN CAMPBELL.
THE EASIEST WAY.
CHAPTER I.
THE HOUSE: SITUATION AND ARRANGEMENT.
From the beginning it must be understood that what is written here
applies chiefly to country homes. The general principles laid down are
applicable with equal force to town or city life; but as a people we
dwell mostly in the country, and, even in villages or small towns, each
house is likely to have its own portion of land about it, and to look
toward all points of the compass, instead of being limited to two, as in
city blocks. Of the comparative advantages or disadvantages of city or
country life, there is no need to speak here. Our business is simply to
give such details as may apply to both, but chiefly to the owners of
moderate incomes, or salaried people, whose expenditure must always
be somewhat limited. With the exterior of such homes, women at
present have very little to do; and the interior also is thus far much in
the hands of architects, who decide for general prettiness of effect,
rather than for the most convenient arrangement of space. The young
bride, planning a home, is resolved upon a bay-window, as large a
parlor as possible, and an effective spare-room; but, having in most
cases no personal knowledge of work, does not consider whether
kitchen and dining-room are conveniently planned, or not, and whether
the arrangement of pantries and closets is such that both rooms must be
crossed a hundred times a day, when a little foresight might have
reduced the number certainly by one-half, perhaps more.
Inconvenience can, in most cases, be remedied; but unhealthfulness or
unwholesomeness of location, very seldom: and therefore, in the

beginning, I write that ignorance is small excuse for error, and that
every one able to read at all, or use common-sense about any detail of
life, is able to form a judgment of what is healthful or unhealthful. If no
books are at hand, consult the best physician near, and have his verdict
as to the character of the spot in which more or less of your life in this
world will be spent, and which has the power to affect not only your
mental and bodily health, but that of your children. Because your
fathers and mothers have been neglectful of these considerations, is no
reason why you should continue in ignorance; and the first