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Fundamentals of Christian Education
are families without number whose happiness is wrecked by the ineffi-
ciency of the wife and mother. It is not so important that our daughters
learn painting, fancy work, music, or even “cube root,” or the figures
of rhetoric, as that they learn how to cut, make, and mend their own
clothing, or to prepare food in a wholesome and palatable manner.
When a little girl is nine or ten years old, she should be required to
take her regular share in household duties, as she is able, and should be
held responsible for the manner in which she does her work. That was
a wise father, who, when asked what he intended to do with his daugh-
ters, replied, “I intend to apprentice them to their excellent mother,
that they may learn the art of improving time, and be fitted to become
wives and mothers, heads of families, and useful members of society.”
Washing clothes upon the old-fashioned rubbing-board, sweeping,
dusting, and a variety of other duties in the kitchen and the garden, will
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be valuable exercise for young ladies. Such useful labor will supply
the place of croquet, archery, dancing, and other amusements which
benefit no one.
Many ladies, accounted well-educated, having graduated with
honors at some institution of learning, are shamefully ignorant of
the practical duties of life. They are destitute of the qualifications
necessary for the proper regulation of the family, and hence essential
to its happiness. They may talk of woman’s elevated sphere, and of her
rights, yet they themselves fall far below the true sphere of woman. It
is the right of every daughter of Eve to have a thorough knowledge of
household duties, to receive training in every department of domestic
labor. Every young lady should be so educated that if called to fill
the position of wife and mother, she may preside as a queen in her
own domain. She should be fully competent to guide and instruct her
children and to direct her servants, or, if need be, to minister with her
own hands to the wants of her household. It is her right to understand
the mechanism of the human body and the principles of hygiene, the
matters of diet and dress, labor and recreation, and countless others
that intimately concern the well-being of her household. It is her right
to obtain such a knowledge of the best methods of treating disease
that she can care for her children in sickness, instead of leaving her
precious treasures in the hands of stranger nurses and physicians.
The idea that ignorance of useful employment is an essential char-
acteristic of the true gentleman or lady, is contrary to the design of God