The Education of American Girls | Page 6

in domestic work which is one of the principal
causes of the inefficiency of our domestic servants * * * The
intellectual and moral habits necessary to form a good cook and
housekeeper are thoughtfulness, method, delicacy and accuracy of

perception, good judgment, and the power of readily adapting means to
ends, which, with Americans, is termed 'faculty,' and with Englishmen
bears the homelier name of 'handiness.' Morally, they are
conscientiousness, command of temper, industry and perseverance; and
these are the very qualities a good school education must develop and
cultivate. The object of such an education is not to put into the pupils
so much History, Geography, French or Science, but, through these
studies, to draw out their intelligence, train them to observe facts
correctly, and draw accurate inferences from their observation, which
constitutes good judgment, and teach them to think, and to apply
thought easily to new forms of knowledge. Morally, the discipline of a
good school tends directly to form the habits I mentioned above. The
pupils are trained to steady industry and perseverance, to scorn
dishonest work, and to control temper. The girls who leave school so
trained, though they may know nothing of cooking or housekeeping,
will become infinitely better cooks and housekeepers, as soon as they
have a motive for doing so, than the uneducated woman, who has
learned only the technical rules of her craft."
Every girl ought certainly also to know how to drive a nail, to put in
and take out a screw, and to do various other things of the same kind,
as well as to sweep and to dust; but of all these "readinesses," if I may
be permitted the word, the same thing may be said. I have spoken of
them under Physical education, as their most appropriate place.
Passing now to the more definite consideration of Physical education, it
will be convenient to consider this division of the subject under three
heads, as I have to speak of
1. Repair, 2. Exercise, 3. Sexual Education.
REPAIR.
All parts of the body are, of course, as long as life exists, in a state of
continual wear, old cells being constantly broken down, and new ones
substituted in their places. When the Apostle exclaimed, "I die daily,"
he uttered an important physiological as well as a spiritual truth; though,
if he had said, "I die every instant," he would have expressed it more

exactly. It is only by continual death that we live at all. But continual
death calls for continual creation, the continual destruction for
continual repair, and this is rendered possible by means of food and
sleep. Clothing, too, properly belongs under this division; for, were it
not for this, the heat of the body would often be carried off faster than it
could be generated, and the destructive process would outstrip the
reconstructive. Moreover, the clothing too frequently interferes with the
normal functions of the most important repairing organs, and its
consideration, therefore, must constitute the third branch of our inquiry.
The division Repair, then, will embrace a consideration of
a. Food, b. Sleep, c. Clothing.
Food.--The kind and quantity of food must obviously vary with age,
temperament, and the season. But three general rules may be laid down
as of prime importance: the meals should be regular in their occurrence;
they should be sufficiently near together to prevent great hunger, and
absolutely nothing should be taken between them. An exception may,
however, be safely made to this last rule, with regard to young children,
in this wise, making a rule which I have known as established in
families. "If the children are hungry enough to eat dry bread, they can
have as much as they want at any time; if they are not, they are far
better off without anything." These are the plainest rules of Physiology,
and yet how few of the girls around us are made to follow them!
Nothing is more sure to produce a disordered digestion, than the habit
of irregular eating or drinking. If possible, the growing girl should have
her dinner in the middle of the day. The exigencies of city life make
this arrangement in some cases inconvenient, and yet inconvenience is
less often than is popularly supposed synonymous with impracticability.
If this cannot be done, and luncheons must be carried to school, the
filling of the lunch-basket should never be left, except under exact
directions, to the kind-hearted servant, or to the girl herself; and she
should under no circumstances be allowed to buy her luncheon each
day of the baker, or the confectioner, a usual practice twenty years ago
of the girls in Boston private schools.
There are children and young girls who are said to have cravings for

certain kinds of food, not particularly nutritious, but in ninety-nine