Household Organization Part 10

If, instead of our ordinary washstands with their jugs and basins, we had fixed basins with plugs in them and taps above, much of the water-bearing difficulty would be obviated. These washstands should be placed back to back, as it were, in every two rooms, having only the part.i.tion-wall between them, so that the same pipe would supply two taps.

I have three sorts of basins in use in my house: one kind has the ordinary tap and plug, another kind has handles for supply and waste, the water being sucked away on turning the waste handle. This is safe for careless people who let rings or any other articles drop in the basin, and nothing but water can go down to choke the pipe. But the basin I find easiest and most pleasant to use, tilts out the water by lifting a handle, or rather finger-niche, in front of the basin; and when this is let fall it strikes on an india-rubber pad beneath the tap, so that the basin cannot be cracked. All these different basins are fitted into marble washstands with dishes for soap and tooth-brushes hollowed in the marble, with holes for drainage connected with the waste-pipe below. These conveniences, with a housemaid's-closet with sink and tap on the same floor, save all carrying up and down of pails and cans of water, and, in fact, the heaviest part of a housemaid's work.

Where the hall is warmed by hot-water pipes, water from the same source will supply the bedrooms. It will be warm if the first quart is allowed to flow away. Or the pipes may be connected with the kitchen boiler, which, in the case of our kitchen on the ground floor, will not be so expensive as where the pipes have to communicate with the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Supplying the taps is perfectly easy when only cold water is required, and children and delicate persons may be indulged with jugs of warm water, which, however, every boy using should fetch for himself. We should thus be able to dispense with ewers and toilet-cans, which would at once pay for the fitting of the pipe and tap to each room.

It is better and nicer to use filtered water for the toilet-decanter, and not water drawn directly from the cistern, unless it has been tested and found pure. In such a case, which is rare, no decanter will be needed, unless we like to have a Venetian gla.s.s one for the sake of its beauty.

Let all persons, in dressing, replace the things they have used, and spread their towels on the horse to dry; then the rooms will be set in order for the day, only needing the daily dusting, which will be done after the beds are made. Boys and girls who go to school should make their beds before they go, so they must open them to air immediately they get up.

"These seem little things: and so they are unless you neglect them"

(_Sir A. Helps_).

Everybody should have his or her own wardrobe, and keep it in order.

Men and boys and little children will have everything neatly made and mended for them, and laid in its proper place; so all they have to do is to leave the drawers as tidy as they found them, taking heed not to lose their gloves and neckties; the larger things take care of themselves. The secret of keeping one's clothes tidy is not to have too many.

Of course, where there are no servants to provide for, the house has fewer rooms than a family of the same size requires in our present experience, and the uglier part of the house is abolished, or where not abolished, is converted from servants' bed-rooms and attics--unpleasant, dusty, and ill furnished; redolent of tallow candle, shoes, brushes, and stale perfumery; with closed windows and the floor strewn with old letters, hair-pins, half-empty matchboxes, and dogs-eared penny novels--into a bower-like study or morning-room, where a young lady may entertain herself and her own especial visitors. I have even known an attic in Baker Street so converted by the invention and taste of a young lady, as to live in one's recollection as as pretty a summer room as any country rectory could boast, by being papered with bright flowery paper all over its sloping roof, and its window made cheerful with climbing plants and flowers; tasteful draperies, a work-table and work-basket in embroidered green satin, book-shelves carved by friends, a piano just good enough for practising upon, and water-colour drawings on the walls.

I have known another room, cheaply fitted up in a French style by a French lady, as a dressing-room, with looking-gla.s.s wardrobe and painted furniture. A small bed in an alcove, in case the room might be wanted as a spare room, and lace curtains drawn over the alcove. The head of the bed and all its plain wood-work covered in quilted white cotton in large diamonds, and cross-barred with narrow blue satin ribbon, and large blue bows here and there. The walls papered with a paper resembling quilted muslin. The effect was soft, clean, and extremely pretty.

A few words on the topic of sick-rooms before quitting this part of the subject.

In cases of severe illness it is advisable to engage a professed nurse.

She is a great help to the physician, and a support to the family, who too often, in their love for the sufferer, overtax their strength, and break down at the moment this is most required. No person can long sustain night and day nursing, particularly if to bodily fatigue anxiety and distress of mind be added; nor can they keep up that appearance of cheerfulness which is such a support to a sick person. It is a great mistake to attempt to do this in any case, but more especially if it is likely to be a prolonged illness. A sister of mercy is often found a most valuable member of the household under such circ.u.mstances. People often talk of not having had their clothes off for a fortnight. One's first thought on hearing this said is, how glad you will be to take a bath! And one's second thought, what good did it do the patient?

The sick-room should be kept as much as possible in its usual order.

The paraphernalia of illness distresses the sick person, causing nervousness. Do not let physic bottles be visible in all directions, or the patient will never feel well, and those in attendance will fancy they have caught the infection, simply because they are nauseated with the smell of the medicines, and the disagreeable sight of their dregs left about in spoons and gla.s.ses. The medicines that have to be given at stated hours should be neatly placed in readiness on a small tray, near the clock if possible, so that they may be remembered and the hours observed. Keep perfect cleanliness and neatness in the room, and avoid clatter. Wear thin shoes, and do not let your dress rustle. A woman's hand should at every touch improve or replace something, so that there may never be a great bustle of setting to rights. We have already spoken at length of ventilation: in sickness it must be particularly attended to, as fresh air is the most beneficial of all medicines.

At the time of the great cattle-plague, fumigation with chlorine gas was advocated, and beneficially employed, by Professor Stone, of Owen's College, Manchester. It is simple for domestic use.

One teaspoonful of powdered chlorate of potash should be loosely stirred together with three table-spoonfuls of dry sand in an empty dry pickle bottle; add to this nearly an ounce of muriatic acid; stand the bottle on some warm embers in an old Australian-meat tin, or other receptacle of this kind, and place it (with the embers in it) on a shelf, or somewhere high up in the room, taking care not to scorch the wood-work. The heavy chlorine gas will descend and so fill all parts of the room, and in about three hours disinfection will be complete.

It would be a good thing if district-visitors, and other charitable persons, would instruct the clergy and their poor people in such effectual means of stamping out infection.

In all hospitals "Condy's solution" is placed with the water and towels for the use of the visiting medical men. It is highly advisable to keep this in every house for cleansing and disinfecting purposes, and for the removal of unpleasant smells. It is useful in cleansing bird-cages and gun-barrels, in preparing poultry or game, and in many other ways.

The solution may be made at home. The British Pharmacopoeia allows four grains of the permanganate of potash (the basis of the solution) to the fluid ounce. It is chiefly for external use. The permanganate of potash is sold in crystals of two kinds: the most expensive is the purple, which is used in what is called the ozonized water, a very weak solution of permanganate, sold by chemists for toilet use. The cheaper and more general disinfectant is a greenish coa.r.s.e powder, sold by any honest chemist at under five s.h.i.+llings a pound. It may be bought of the General Apothecaries' Company, 49, Berner's Street, London, for from three s.h.i.+llings a pound to three-and-sixpence, as it varies with the market; and this does as well as Condy's patent, and is 500 per cent.

cheaper, as fourteen gallons of disinfectant may be prepared from a pound of the powdered crystals, and these again will be extensively diluted for use. The purple crystals may be bought by the ounce.

Be cautious in using this fluid, or the Condy, whichever you may happen to prefer, as it turns almost everything brown that it touches. Very deep stains will never come out; slight stains wash and wear out after a time, but china and all white ware, and sponges and brushes, have their appearance greatly injured by it. Bed-room floors may be washed with it; they will be thoroughly purified, and the colour will be as if they were stained dark oak previous to being varnished. Stains will wear off the hands in a few days, and a weak solution will not discolour them. The purple fluid is a test of water--if it turns brown the water is impure. It decolorizes on contact with animal matter.

It is a useful plan to keep a filter on every floor of a house; the expense is not very great, while the increased safety is incalculable.

Spencer's patent, or magnetic-carbide, filter is one of the best. He imitated nature's process when constructing it, having observed that the purest water filtered through oxide of iron in the earth's strata.

Two articles of furniture will be found of great use in a sick-room.

One is a chair back with bars of broad webbing, made to lift up and down like the music-desk of a grand piano. This is a most comfortable support to an invalid when sitting up to take food or medicine. When closed flat it will slip easily under the pillow, and it can be raised gently and gradually to the angle required. The other thing is an arm-chair, stood and fastened on a board with four French castors. This is a great a.s.sistance in cases of lameness or extreme weakness, as it is easy for the invalid to sit on it and be wheeled to any part of the room; and it costs less than a wheeled chair.

None of the learned professions have advanced during the last thirty years so much as the medical. Medicine has become a new science since it has taken hold of the sanitary improvement of our towns and dwellings. The profession, with a disinterestedness and devotion to science worthy of liberal minds, combines to make the prevention of disease its aim, even beyond its cure. It forms a n.o.ble co-operative society.

At the last meeting of the British Medical a.s.sociation at Sheffield, it was most truly said that independent medical officers of health would before long change the character of disease throughout the nation, and save future generations much misery. It is to be hoped that the country, which will reap the benefit of their endeavours, will strengthen the hands of those whose efforts are directed to raising the standard of national health.

THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS.

To what age should boys' and girls' education be alike?--Accomplishments fruitlessly taught--Nursery and School-room government--Helplessness --Introduction to society--The convent system--Unhappy results--Scientific education--Geometrical ill.u.s.tration--Religion--Professional life for women--Home training--Varied knowledge--Companions.h.i.+p of a mother-- Experience--Kindness--Truth.

At what age should the training of boys and girls begin to differ? This is a doubtful point, though we may consider that as, until about the age of fourteen, their nature has been much the same, their strength of mind and body nearly equal, and their tastes and dispositions much alike, this may be the time when their training should begin to follow each its own path; as the boy's strength grows from this time beyond that of the girl, while she becomes more remarkable for the increasing delicacy of her skill.

Practically there is a divergence when their clothing begins to differ, but this is merely artificial. The girl is made to wear finer and more delicate clothing than the boy; its texture and form impede her movements, and it is more easily injured by the weather. But where a girl is sensibly dressed, so that her clothes will not spoil with the rain, nor prevent her moving her limbs freely, this diversity between the two disappears.

But although it will not harm a girl to share her brother's pursuits till the age of fourteen, the conditions of her so doing will depend upon circ.u.mstances. Except in the case of twins, the boy will be rather older or younger than the girl, if even she have brothers about her own age at all, and many accidents will be found to control her education.

Besides these, nature works gradually, and there are seldom abrupt transitions in her processes. The girl's future skill of hand and the boy's strength of arm will be prepared for, and seen, in their differences of taste and choice of pursuits and games; the girl will prefer working for her doll and protecting it from the boy's rough handling, and the boy will love his bat and knife. He will show his instinct for construction, and she hers for preservation, after the first early stage when both alike delight in destruction. Here education comes into use, leading each child to exercise the good instinct instead of its converse.

When the conventional proprieties are not allowed to warp the natural taste, a girl loves running and climbing as well as the boy does: she likes to collect stamps, minerals, fossils, birds' eggs, insects, etc., fully as much as he does. Their favourite books are identical, their sc.r.a.p-books equally enjoyed, the theatre and theatricals at home delighted in by both, and their pets are much beloved. Why, then, should we make so much difference between them where Nature has created none?

Girls of the upper cla.s.ses are always at lessons of some kind from six years old to eighteen; thus they have twelve years of instruction, and we know that of old a seven year's apprentices.h.i.+p was held sufficient to make a master in some craft. What do the twelve years do for our girls? Does their training enable them to maintain them decently in any one line? What have they learnt, and what can they do?

They have learnt music enough to play a _morceau de salon_ showily, and the allegretto movement of a sonata stumblingly, and the latter only because it was thought 'proper' that they should learn 'cla.s.sical music.' But they do not know enough even to learn another _morceau de salon_ without the help of a master, so of course music cannot be reckoned upon as doing much for them.

I place music first, because the most time has been given to it; a weary hour every day, had it not been so broken up by visits to the clock. Practical girls grudge this hour wasted on a weakness they are sure to give up when they marry, for they all think they are as certain to marry as to give up their music. They are healthy and strong and have good voices, but few of them can do more than incomprehensibly murmur a few lines of twaddle to a feeble accompaniment, or sing out of all time the top line of a glee, provided the piano helps them out with the notes. So here is a physical gift thrown aside.

Can anything be made of that pencil-stroking on buff paper, with some splashes of white, which is held to represent a cottage, flanked on one side by a gate-post which could never have been a good gate-post, and on the other side by something smeary which is not at all like a tree, nor any other created thing?

Every willow-pattern plate has a better landscape on it than that. So there are two hours a week gone, for the lop-sided chalk head is of no more use to anybody than was the landscape.

The girl has been taught French and German, but has not learnt enough of either language to enjoy a good book, or to converse with intelligence in either tongue, and her stock of dialogue-book phrases is soon exhausted. Indeed, she can hardly talk better in English when she gets beyond the depth of drawing-room chatter, as her knowledge of facts is of a most uncertain sort; so in general conversation she covers her deficiencies by slang, which, although it distresses us, we forgive in a pretty, lively girl.

She cannot cook, how should she? She was never permitted to peep inside the kitchen, but was kept in an upstairs nursery until she was six years old, under the stultifying dominion of "nurse," whose sole training was "Miss, I'll tell your ma," when wicked or cruel teaching did not replace this feebleness. When she was promoted to the school-room and made over to the care of the governess, the system of instruction was little more satisfactory. The list of the Kings of England superseded standing in the corner as a punishment for weariness, but her chief experience of life was gathered from tales in cheap magazines, read surrept.i.tiously; and as she grew older, the railway novel by a sensational author replaced the serial in the penny paper.

The child saw her parents together for a quarter of an hour in the evening, when she was full dressed to go down to dessert, and her mother for about five minutes in the course of the morning, when she came up to the school-room to find fault with the governess for the children's bad grammar, or awkward behaviour, on the previous evening.

The round of the year brings the sea-side visit. Here, although health is gained, there is no education beyond lodging-house gossip. The children are put into the train like so many parcels, and in so many hours are somewhere else; frocks suited to the sea-side are put on them by the nurse, but these might have dropped from the clouds, and the children have been none the wiser. Helplessness is the natural outcome of all this.

The school-room course begins in about six years to be agreeably diversified by the visits of music and drawing-masters; which, if the governess did not sit in the room all the time, trying to attract their admiration, would be a really pleasant change. But nothing comes of the lessons beyond the showy _morceau de salon_ aforesaid, the buff-paper drawing, and the weak rhyme jingled to an accompaniment in quavers; except an increase of energy in borrowing, or hiring, yellow-covered books revealing stirring impossibilities in the lives of Edwin and Angelina, over which a girl, according to her disposition, may weep or rage. For this is the only outlet for her poor imprisoned life, until, on her introduction to society, she is suddenly flung upon the world, to make her way as best, or worst, she can; and now, and now only, does her real education begin.

This manner of bringing up our girls differs from the convent system in this, that it is worldly instead of being religious, and needlework and confectionery are worse taught; other things are about equal. Both we and our continental neighbours imprison our girls in a school-room or convent for twelve years, and yet boast of our superiority over the Turks!

After this, can we wonder at the weakness or the folly of girls, or be surprised that society is at a dead-lock, or that our women eat bitter bread?

Can we marvel that women ruin their husbands by their dress and extravagance; that they drive them to their clubs for companions.h.i.+p, and freedom from the wretchedness of home; that they tyrannize over their milliners, and are in their turn tyrannized over by their servants; that their sons drink the brandy and smoke the tobacco of idleness, and that their daughters grow up the patterns of themselves?

Only where the mother is pa.s.sively useless, the daughter will be actively mischievous; where the mother was merely frivolous, the daughter will be actually wicked.

Does all our boasted culture come to this; or will Cambridge examinations and a scientific education set all right again? When an hour a day, at least, for twelve years pa.s.sed in the study of music has failed to implant those habits of accuracy which this beautiful science so pre-eminently combines with sweetness and grace, is a smattering of geology certain to succeed? Will Greek strengthen the character more than German? Or is one as likely as the other to puff the mind with conceit, where it does not equally encourage a deceitful appearance of knowledge. And is the new system better calculated than the old one to prepare girls for fifty years of womanhood?

People talk of depth, as if truth were only to be found at the bottom of a well. What seems most wanted is breadth, free expansion all round to keep the soul healthy. Let every branch have due encouragement to stretch out towards the light, to receive the shower or suns.h.i.+ne as they come.