isters, nursed anyone
who was sick (at which she was particularly good)--all the homely,
helpful things that neighbors and families did for each other in New
England towns.

In those days little mothers of families could not telephone specialists
to help them out in emergencies; there were neither telephones nor
specialists! But there were always emergencies, and the Alcott girls had
to know what to put on a black-and-blue spot, and why the jelly failed
to "jell," and how to hang a skirt, and bake a cake, and iron a
table-cloth. Louisa had to entertain family guests and darn the family
stockings. Her home had not every comfort and convenience, even as
people counted those things then, and without a brisk, clever woman,
full of what the New Englanders called "faculty," her family would have
been a very unhappy one. With all our modern inventions nobody has yet
invented a substitute for a good, all-round woman in a family, and until
somebody can invent one, we must continue to take off our hats to girls
like Louisa Alcott. Imagine what her feelings would have been if someone
had told her that she had earned half a dozen merit badges by her
knowledge of home economics and her clever writing!

And let every Scout who finds housework dull, and feels that she is
capable of bigger things, remember this: the woman whose books for girls
are more widely known than any such books ever written in America, had
to drop the pen, often and often, for the needle, the dish-cloth and
the broom.

To direct her household has always been a woman's job in every century,
and girls were learning to do it before Columbus ever discovered
Sacajawea's great country. To be sure, they had no such jolly way of
working at it together, as the Scouts have, nor did they have the
opportunity the girl of today has to learn all about these things in a
scientific, business-like way, in order to get it all done with the
quickest, most efficient methods, just as any clever business man
manages his business.

We no longer believe that housekeeping should take up all a woman's
time; and many an older woman envies the little badges on a Scout's
sleeve that show the world she has learned how to manage her cleaning
and cooking and household routine so that she has plenty of time to
spend on other things that interest her.

THE PIONEER

But there was a time in the history of our country when men and women
went out into the wilderness with no nearer neighbor