nt and
accomplished woman, whose education has taught and practiced her in
everything that woman ought to know, except those identical ones which
fit her for the care of a home, for the comfort of a sick-room; and so
I say again that, whatever a woman may be in the way of beauty and
elegance, she must have the strength and skill of a practical worker,
or she is nothing. She is not simply to be the beautiful,--she is to
make the beautiful, and preserve it; and she who makes and she who
keeps the beautiful must be able to work, and know how to work.
Whatever offices of life are performed by women of culture and
refinement are thenceforth elevated; they cease to be mere servile
toils, and become expressions of the ideas of superior beings. If a
true lady makes even a plate of toast, in arranging a _petit souper_
for her invalid friend, she does it as a lady should. She does not
cut blundering and uneven slices; she does not burn the edges; she
does not deluge it with bad butter, and serve it cold; but she
arranges and serves all with an artistic care, with a nicety and
delicacy, which make it worth one's while to have a lady friend in
sickness.

"And I am glad to hear that Monsieur Blot is teaching classes of New
York ladies that cooking is not a vulgar kitchen toil, to be left to
blundering servants, but an elegant feminine accomplishment, better
worth a woman's learning than crochet or embroidery; and that a
well-kept culinary apartment may be so inviting and orderly that no
lady need feel her ladyhood compromised by participating in its
pleasant toils. I am glad to know that his cooking-academy is thronged
with more scholars than he can accommodate, and from ladies in the
best classes of society.

"Moreover, I am glad to see that in New Bedford, recently, a public
course of instruction in the art of bread-making has been commenced by
a lady, and that classes of the most respectable young and married
ladies in the place are attending them. These are steps in the right
direction, and show that our fair countrywomen, with the grand good
sense which is their leading characteristic, are resolved to supply
whatever in our national life is wanting.

"I do not fear that women of such sense and energy will listen to the
sophistries which would persuade them that elegant imbecility and
inefficiency are charms of cultivated womanhood or ingredients in the
poetry of life. She alone can keep the poetry and beauty of married
lif