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6 Worth Woman's While God gives to every man The virtue, temper, understanding, taste That lifts him into life and lets him fall Just in the niche he was ordained to fill. —Cowper The First Woman’s Duties. We have been reading of the proposal in Germany to have the girls of the land in culinary science just as the boys are in the military, and it appeals to ns as the most eminently sensible thing we have known of any nation. Standing armies are very well, but if there were no fightings within there would be fewer warriors without—if the health, and temper of the people were kept intact, dissen sions would not so often arise and the resultant call to arms; a people with a good healthy diges tion is not easily provoked to become the aggressor. A discontented stomach causes an inflammable mind, and what is true of individuals is true of bodies. It is a long established habit for women to re gard themselves what one young woman called the other day, “a poor down-trodden race,” but it is a question if they are not largely the authors of their own undoing. Eve was called into being only when it was found not well for Adam to be alone —plainly because necessary to his comfort and well being—but has she been altogether worthy of her trust? Man is first of all, an animal, that must be fed and nourished as such. Every other creature knows what is good for it, and what to steer clear of, but his instincts are not so keen, he is preserved only by the absence of danger; appetite and the craving of the palate will lead him to any gratification and its conse quences—at whose door then lies the responsibility and the culpability but at that of his Heaven ap pointed protector and savior, his Eve? Fancy a wife with a dyspeptic husband giving him batter breads and underdone hominy and overdone beefsteak for breakfast; and for dinner, pork, may be, followed by rich pastry;— and imagine what his state of readiness must be for supper of hot white biscuits and cheese and more meat and preserves! A perfectly normal digestion will assimilate very nearly everything for a time: hut where will you find it? And how long will it remain so under such treatment as this? But what is the man to do? He doesn’t know any better than to eat what is set before him, asking no questions for conscience sake. Ninety-nine per cent., perhaps, of all the ill health of us all can be traced to imperfect diges tion, and while worry and sleeplessness and a rush ing habit of living may be held to account for a certain part of it, mainly all the rundown condi tion and liability to disease common among us is due to an overloaded stomach and a poorly nourish ed body—to the neglected work of woman. Neglect lies oftenest, we all know, in the failure to be in formed, to know how to do, but the law of the land does not excuse ignorance, and no more does that of health. Ignorance is like the trail of the serpent, or the pestilence that walketh in darkness,, or the destruction that wastetb at noonday; it is all of them. It is disease, or engenders it, the arch enemy of health and of life. The human being from the cradle to the grave is its victim. We heard the other day of a woman who gave her baby a cucumber pickle to cut its teeth on! And it brings tears to the eyes to see how in nearly all homes where are old persons, with poor teeth and en feebled digestions, so little attention is given to the preparation of proper food for them. We visited in a house where the favorite dish of a four-year-old child, morning, noon and night, was hominy with catsup poured over it, a red, chem ical-suggesting article so hot that the grown-ups did not care for it; and his father, a chronic dys- The Golden Age for May 3, 1906. By FLORENCE TUCKER peptic, was served fried meats and the heaviest desserts. The child was irritable, and the mother complained that he was restless at night, and the father continued in ill health. Nor was it entire ignorance on this woman’s part that she fed her family—indolent and indifferent, her walk in life was such that she could not escape having some knowledge forced upon her. The child liked catsup, and the father ate what was given him, she did not trouble herself further; how things were prepared was for the servant to see. In some households it really appears the cook is the most important member—in all it is so, if we but comprehend. It is strange, when you think of it, that women will entrust to servants the sacred duty of the health of the family. Endless hours and care are given tirelessly to the outside of the body, its comfort and adornment, but the time and labor necessary to the preparation of what goes into it, are re garded as so much drudgery by no means to be undertaken if a hireling can be had to lay the burden upon. Cooking, to be done properly, should be done scientifically, with knowledge of the sci ence of foods and their preparations, and the work should be that of high duty and love as well as skill. What conscientious woman will leave to un trained and careless hands the preparing of the viands that will make either for the nourishment of her children or for their irreparable injury? A woman of our acquaintance permitted her little tod dling baby girl to be around the kitchen, and the negro cook; the servant fed her underdone hominy and the result was the child was paralyzed for life, and her mind never grew beyond her stunted body. Infants and children are so perfectly at the mercy of the mother’s carelessness. The mother instinct that in sickness hovers over the child for its preservation, faithful as the very love of Heaven, will yet through ignorance, let the parent, even while nursing and tending through years of helplessness, give to the child the very thing that keeps it ailing. A little one with a deli cate stomach is permitted continued gratification of a morbid appetite, and what avail then the care and devotion? What good the application of all means of healing and comfort ? Except actual neg lect and cruelty there is nothing unkinder, nothing more pitiful than improper and over feeding of the tiny human beings who are not even as protected as the young of animals. Nothing unless it is to see an old person having to eat of the general provis ion whatever its kind; for the old suffer the con sciousness that the food is not suited to them and with it the pain of submissive silence—for some reason it is not their privilege to speak or assert themselves. Another responsibility the housewife bears, and the usages of society make it heavy upon her, is that of the safety of her guest. Who has not sat down to the board of a friend and inwardly groaned at the choice allowed him of certain disaster to him self if be partake or offense to his hostess if he did not? The requirements of accepted hospitality will not permit him to refuse, and so he is hopelessly in tbe toils of his inconsiderate entertainer. It is more than inconsiderate, it is unkind and unfair to invite one to food inconvenient for him. The truly hospitable woman wishes only the welfare and good of friend or stranger who sups with her, and would have him go his way refreshed and nour ished, yet how is that to be unless she consider his possible weakness and provide for it—provide such wholesome dishes as the reasonably healthy may partake of with impunity? And how is she to be able to prepare such with out knowledge and experience? We do not fail to recognize we are in the sad mi nority, but none the less stoutly do we maintain our ground that woman’s first and hishest duty is the care of the physical lives, the bodies, of those en- trusted to her; souls that must struggle for devel opment in ill-nourished and stunted and enfeebled bodies have not the show for this life or the next, they would have had in well-builded and well-kept temples—“your body,” says St. Paul, “is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you,” that is, of the soul. How carefully, then, should the tem ple be guarded and tended, protected from foes within which are more to be dreaded than without. All praise, say we, to that wise German man, and may he have the willing and devoted co-operation of his countrymen! Cooking schools in our own land are coming more and more into favor, and with Germany taking the lead, we may look forward to a day, far distant, perhaps, when part of every girl’s education will be the training for the proper feeding and nourishing of a household. It is said that the manly kiss James A. Garfield gave his aged mother before the assembled multi tudes on the day of his inauguration, endeared him to the people more than any other one act of his. When Mr. Longworth wedded with Alice Roose velt be won a wife who not only could speak sev eral languages, and shoot, swim, row and drive, but could bake, sew and keep house. The president having a profound appreciation for the domestic side of life, and the things that contributed to the making of the home, has always required that his children shall neglect no useful art appertaining thereto. There is nothing noble in being superior to some other men. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.—Hindu Sayings. A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; a beautiful behavior is better than a beautiful form; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts. A man is but a little thing in the objects of nature, yet, by the mor al quality radiating from his countenance, he may abolish all considerations of magnitude, and in his manners equal the majesty of the world. —Emerson. Half-Way Town. An easy road runs smoothly down To Half-Way Town. For everything that’s but begun, And everything that’s never done, Goes into Half-Way Town. Half-finished walls are tumbling down In Half-Way Town. Half-finished streets are always lined With half-done work of every kind; And all the world just lags behind In dreary Half-Way Town. Keep straight along, and don’t look down Toward Half-Way Town. They say, if every one should try To keep on moving, brisk and spry, We should discover, by and by, There’d be no Half-Way Town. —Frank Walcott Hutt. Mount Capulin, an extinct volcano situated eight miles from Folsom, N. M., is said to be emitting smoke and heat from a fissure broken in its side by two distinct earthquake shocks. The mountain is 10,000 feet high, and trees grow to the mouth of the crater. It has not been in eruption for years. No serious damage was done.