From the beginning it must be understood that what is written here applies
chiefly to country homes. The general principles laid down are applicable
with equal force to town or city life; but as a people we dwell mostly in
the country, and, even in villages or small towns, each house is likely to
have its own portion of land about it, and to look toward all points of
the compass, instead of being limited to two, as in city blocks. Of the
comparative advantages or disadvantages of city or country life, there is
no need to speak here. Our business is simply to give such details as may
apply to both, but chiefly to the owners of moderate incomes, or salaried
people, whose expenditure must always be somewhat limited. With the
exterior of such homes, women at present have very little to do; and the
interior also is thus far much in the hands of architects, who decide for
general prettiness of effect, rather than for the most convenient
arrangement of space. The young bride, planning a home, is resolved upon a
bay-window, as large a parlor as possible, and an effective spare-room;
but, having in most cases no personal knowledge of work, does not
consider whether kitchen and dining-room are conveniently planned, or not,
and whether the arrangement of pantries and closets is such that both
rooms must be crossed a hundred times a day, when a little foresight might
have reduced the number certainly by one-half, perhaps more.

Inconvenience can, in most cases, be remedied; but unhealthfulness or
unwholesomeness of location, very seldom: and therefore, in the beginning,
I write that ignorance is small excuse for error, and that every one able
to read at all, or use common-sense about any detail of life, is able to
form a judgment of what is healthful or unhealthful. If no books are at
hand, consult the best physician near, and have his verdict as to the
character of the spot in which more or less of your life in this world
will be spent, and which has the power to affect not only your mental and
bodily health, but that of your children. Because your fathers and mothers
have been neglectful of these considerations, is no reason why you should
continue in ignorance; and the first duty in making a home is to consider
earnestly and intelligently certain points.

Four essentials are to be thought of in the choice of any home; and their
neglect, and the ignorance which is the foundation of this neglect, are
the secret of not only the chronic ill-health supposed to be a necessity
of the American organization, but of many of the epidemics and mysterious
diseases classed under the head of “visitations of Providence.”

These essentials are: a wholesome situation, good ventilation, good
drainage, and a dry cellar. Rich or poor, high or low, if one of these be
disregarded, the result will tell, either on your own health or on that of
your family. Whether palace or hut, brown-stone front or simple wooden
cottage, the law is the same. As a rule, the ordinary town or village is
built upon low land, because it is easier to obtain a water-supply from
wells and springs. In such a case, even where the climate itself may be
tolerably healthy, the drainage from the hills at hand, or the nearness of
swamps and marshes produced by the same cause, makes a dry cellar an
impossibility; and this shut-in and poisonous moisture makes malaria
inevitable. The dwellers on low lands are the pill and patent-medicine
takers; and no civilized country swallows the amount of tonics and bitters
consumed by our own.

If possible, let the house be on a hill, or at least a rise of ground, to
secure the thorough draining-away of all sewage and waste water. Even in a
swampy and malarious country, such a location will insure all the health
possible in such a region, if the other conditions mentioned are
faithfully attended to.

Let the living-rooms and bedrooms, as far as may be, have full sunshine
during a part of each day; and reserve the north side of the house for
store-rooms, refrigerator, and the rooms seldom occupied. Do not allow
trees to stand so near as to shut out air or sunlight; but see that, while
near enough for beauty and for shade, they do not constantly shed
moisture, and make twilight in your rooms even at mid-day. Sunshine is the
enemy of disease, which thrives in darkness and shadow. Consumption or
scrofulous disease is almost inevitable in the house shut in by trees,
whose blinds are tightly closed lest some ray of sunshine fade the
carpets; and over and over again it has been proved that the first
conditions of health are, abundant supply of pure air, and free admission
of sunlight to every nook and cranny. Even with imperfect or improper
food, these two allies are strong enough to carry the day for health; and,
when the three work in harmony, the best life is at once assured.

If the house must be on the lowlands, seek a sandy or gravelly soil; and
avoid those built over clay beds, or even where clay bottom is found under
the sand or loam. In the last case, if drainage is understood, pipes may
be so arranged as to secure against any standing water; but, unless this
is done, the clammy moisture on walls, and the chill in every closed room,
are sufficient indication that the conditions for disease are ripe or
ripening. The only course in such case, after seeking proper drainage, is,
first, abundant sunlight, and, second, open fires, which will act not only
as drying agents, but as ventilators and purifiers. Aim to have at least
one open fire in the house. It is not an extravagance, but an essential,
and economy may better come in at some other place.

Having settled these points as far as possible,–the question of
water-supply and ventilation being left to another chapter,–it is to be
remembered that the house is not merely a place to be made pleasant for
one’s friends. They form only a small portion of the daily life; and the
first consideration should be: Is it so planned that the necessary and
inevitable work of the day can be accomplished with the least expenditure
of force? North and South, the kitchen is often the least-considered room
of the house; and, so long as the necessary meals are served up, the
difficulties that may have hedged about such serving are never counted. At
the South it is doubly so, and necessarily; old conditions having made
much consideration of convenience for servants an unthought-of thing.
With a throng of unemployed women and children, the question could only
be, how to secure some small portion of work for each one; and in such
case, the greater the inconveniences, the more chance for such employment.
Water could well be half a mile distant, when a dozen little darkies had
nothing to do but form a running line between house and spring; and so
with wood and kindling and all household necessities.

To-day, with the old service done away with once for all, and with a set
of new conditions governing every form of work, the Southern woman faces
difficulties to which her Northern or Western sister is an utter stranger;
faces them often with a patience and dignity beyond all praise, but still
with a hopelessness of better things, the necessary fruit of ignorance.
Old things are passed away, and the new order is yet too unfamiliar for
rules to have formulated and settled in any routine of action. While there
is, at the North, more intuitive and inherited sense of how things should
be done, there is on many points an almost equal ignorance, more
especially among the cultivated classes, who, more than at any period of
woman’s history, are at the mercy of their servants. Every science is
learned but domestic science. The schools ignore it; and, indeed, in the
rush toward an early graduation, there is small room for it.

“She can learn at home,” say the mothers. “She will take to it when her
time comes, just as a duck takes to water,” add the fathers; and the
matter is thus dismissed as settled.

In the mean time the “she” referred to–the average daughter of average
parents in both city and country–neither “learns at home,” nor “takes to
it naturally,” save in exceptional cases; and the reason for this is
found in the love, which, like much of the love given, is really only a
higher form of selfishness. The busy mother of a family, who has fought
her own way to fairly successful administration, longs to spare her
daughters the petty cares, the anxious planning, that have helped to eat
out her own youth; and so the young girl enters married life with a vague
sense of the dinners that must be, and a general belief that somehow or
other they come of themselves. And so with all household labor. That to
perform it successfully and skillfully, demands not only training, but the
best powers one can bring to bear upon its accomplishment, seldom enters
the mind; and the student, who has ended her course of chemistry or
physiology enthusiastically, never dreams of applying either to every-day
life.

This may seem a digression; and yet, in the very outset, it is necessary
to place this work upon the right footing, and to impress with all
possible earnestness the fact, that Household Science holds every other
science in tribute, and that only that home which starts with this
admission and builds upon the best foundation the best that thought can
furnish, has any right to the name of “home.” The swarms of drunkards, of
idiots, of insane, of deaf and dumb, owe their existence to an ignorance
of the laws of right living, which is simply criminal, and for which we
must be judged; and no word can be too earnest, which opens the young
girl’s eyes to the fact that in her hands lie not alone her own or her
husband’s future, but the future of the nation. It is hard to see beyond
one’s own circle; but if light is sought for, and there is steady resolve
and patient effort to do the best for one’s individual self, and those
nearest one, it will be found that the shadow passes, and that progress is
an appreciable thing.

Begin in your own home. Study to make it not only beautiful, but perfectly
appointed. If your own hands must do the work, learn every method of
economizing time and strength. If you have servants, whether one or more,
let the same laws rule. It is not easy, I admit; no good thing is: but
there is infinite reward for every effort. Let no failure discourage, but
let each one be only a fresh round in the ladder all must climb who would
do worthy work; and be sure that the end will reward all pain, all
self-sacrifice, and make you truly the mistresses of the home for which
every woman naturally and rightfully hopes, but which is never truly hers
till every shade of detail in its administration has been mastered.

The house, then, is the first element of home to be considered and
studied; and we have settled certain points as to location and
arrangement. This is no hand-book of plans for houses, that ground being
thoroughly covered in various books,–the titles of two or three of which
are given in a list of reference-books at the end. But, whether you build
or buy, see to it that your kitchens and working-rooms are well lighted,
well aired, and of good size, and that in the arrangement of the kitchen
especially, the utmost convenience becomes the chief end. Let sink,
pantries, stove or range, and working-space for all operations in cooking,
be close at hand. The difference between a pantry at the opposite end of
the room, and one opening close to the sink, for instance, may seem a
small matter; but when it comes to walking across the room with every dish
that is washed, the steps soon count up as miles, and in making even a
loaf of bread, the time and strength expended in gathering materials
together would go far toward the thorough kneading, which, when added to
the previous exertion, makes the whole operation, which might have been
only a pleasure, a burden and an annoyance.

Let, then, stove, fuel, water, work-table, and pantries be at the same end
of the kitchen, and within a few steps of one another, and it will be
found that while the general labor of each day must always be the same,
the time required for its accomplishment will be far less, under these
favorable conditions. The successful workman,–the type-setter, the
cabinet-maker, or carpenter,–whose art lies in the rapid combination of
materials, arranges his materials and tools so as to be used with the
fewest possible movements; and the difference between a skilled and
unskilled workman is not so much the rate of speed in movement, as in the
ability to make each motion tell. The kitchen is the housekeeper’s
workshop; and, in the chapter on _House-work_, some further details as to
methods and arrangements will be given.