properly fed and
clothed, it will grow up feeble and ill-conditioned. And as the child
is, so will the man be.

Grown people cannot be comfortable without regular attention to these
common matters. Every one needs, and ought to have, comfort at home; and
comfort is the united product of cleanliness, thrift, regularity,
industry,--in short, a continuous performance of duties, each in itself
apparently trivial. The cooking of a potato, the baking of a loaf, the
mending of a shirt, the darning of a pair of stockings, the making of a
bed, the scrubbing of a floor, the washing and dressing of a baby, are
all matters of no great moment; but a woman ought to know how to do
these, before the management of a household, however poor, is entrusted
to her.

"Why," asked Lord Ashburton in a lecture to the students of the Wolvesey
training-schools, "why was one mother of a family a better economist
than another? Why could one live in abundance where another starved?
Why, in similar dwellings, were the children of one parent healthy, of
another puny and ailing? Why could this labourer do with ease a task
that would kill his fellow? It was not luck nor chance that decided
those differences; it was the patient observation of nature that
suggested to some gifted minds rules for their guidance which had
escaped the heedlessness of others."

It is not so much, however, the patient observation of nature, as good
training in the home and in the school, that enables some women to
accomplish so much more than others, in the development of human beings,
and the promotion of human comfort. And to do this efficiently, women as
well as men require to be instructed as to the nature of the objects
upon which they work.

Take one branch of science as an illustration--the physiological. In
this science we hold that every woman should receive some instruction.
And why? Because, if the laws of physiology were understood by women,
children would grow up into better, healthier, happier, and probably
wiser, men and women. Children are subject to certain physiological
laws, the observance of which is necessary for their health and comfort.
Is it not reasonable, therefore, to expect that women should know
something of those laws, and of their operation? If they are ignorant of
them they will be liable to commit all sorts of blunders, productive of
suffering, disease, and death. To what are we to attribute the frightful
mortality of children in most of o