She does not escape being obliged to do house-work at intervals,
but she does it in a weak, blundering, confused way, that makes it twice
as hard and disagreeable as it need be.
Now what I have to say is, that, if every young woman learned to do
house-work and cultivated her practical faculties in early life, she
would, in the first place, be much more likely to keep her servants,
and, in the second place, if she lost them temporarily, would avoid all
that wear and tear of the nervous system which comes from constant
ill-success in those departments on which family health and temper
mainly depend. This is one of the peculiarities of our American life
which require a peculiar training. Why not face it sensibly?
The second thing I have to say is, that our land is now full of
motorpathic institutions to which women are sent at great expense to
have hired operators stretch and exercise their inactive muscles. They
lie for hours to have their feet twigged, their arms flexed, and all the
different muscles of the body worked for them, because they are so
flaccid and torpid that the powers of life do not go on. Would it not be
quite as cheerful and less expensive a process, if young girls from
early life developed the muscles in sweeping, dusting, ironing, rubbing
furniture, and all the multiplied domestic processes which our
grandmothers knew of? A woman who did all these, and diversified the
intervals with spinning on the great and little wheel, never came to
need the gymnastics of Dio Lewis or of the Swedish motorpathist, which
really are a necessity now.
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