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
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
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
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
AMERICAN WOMAN'S HOME ***

Produced by Steve Schulze, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

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