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Christian Temperance
331
and remain there if necessary for weeks, until I had become mistress
of the art, an intelligent, skillful cook. I would pursue this course if
I were forty years old. It is your duty to know how to cook, and it is
your duty to teach your daughters to cook. When you are teaching
them the art of cookery you are building around them a barrier that
will preserve them from the folly and vice which they may otherwise
be tempted to engage in. I prize my seamstress, I value my copyist;
but my cook, who knows well how to prepare the food to sustain life
and nourish brain, bone, and muscle, fills the most important place
among the helpers in my family.
[371]
Mothers, there is nothing that leads to such evils as to lift the
burdens from your daughters, and give them nothing special to do,
and let them choose their own employment, perhaps a little crochet
or some other fancywork to busy themselves. Let them have exercise
of the limbs and muscles. If it wearies them, what then? Are you
not wearied in your work? Will weariness hurt your children, unless
overworked, more than it hurts you? No, indeed. They can recover
from their weariness in a good night’s rest and be prepared to engage
in labor the next day. It is a sin to let them grow up in idleness. The
sin and ruin of Sodom was abundance of bread and idleness.
We want to work from the right standpoint. We want to act like
men and women that are to be brought into judgment. And when we
adopt the health reform we should adopt it from a sense of duty, not
because somebody else has adopted it. I have not changed my course
a particle since I adopted the health reform. I have not taken one step
back since the light from heaven upon this subject first shone upon
my pathway. I broke away from everything at once,—from meat and
butter, and from three meals,—and that while engaged in exhaustive
brain labor, writing from early morning till sundown. I came down
to two meals a day without changing my labor. I have been a great
sufferer from disease, having had five shocks of paralysis. I have
been with my left arm bound to my side for months because the pain
in my heart was so great. When making these changes in my diet, I
refused to yield to taste and let that govern me. Shall that stand in the
way of my securing greater strength, that I may therewith glorify my
Lord? Shall that stand in my way for a moment? Never! I suffered
keen hunger. I was a great meat eater. But when faint, I placed my
arms across my stomach and said: “I will not taste a morsel. I will