school education who could pass these tests, and I do not believe that one out of the thirty eight is without its actual value for the development and usefulness of woman-kind.
And when you have become a needle-woman of fame, you may also take the degree of the canner and jelly maker. This is a delightful department. It reminds one of the education the pioneer women of America must have had and must have given their daughters, and it certainly would add to the popularity of any young woman to be able to do all that is demanded of her as a real jelly maker. But it is not enough to he a needle-woman and a jelly maker: you may, it you wish, become a housekeeper in the highest sense of the word, that is, one possessing all the knowledge for the comfort of real home making, by entering the lists of the Colonial Housekeeper. The tests here are twenty-nine and they involve the learning of many of the most delightful occupations, it seems to me that youth could turn to. Fancy gathering bayberries and making a half dozen candles; gathering the sap and making a pound of maple sugar; dyeing pieces of dress goods and skeins of yarn; or dyeing twelve squares of felt in different colors with stuffs found in the woods — butternut bark, golden oak, sassafras, golden rod tops! It is a pastime for a Shakespeare sonnet. Also you must know how to make a cherry balm of black cherry bark, and you must crochet your own sweater and you must gather the hops and make a hop pillow and you must know how to make candied fruit and mincemeat and you must brew sage tea and cammomile tea for the health of your playmates or, happily some day, your family. And you are taught to candy sweet flag and mint leaves and you make a marigold salve, which sounds like some mysterious fairy ointment, and then after you have hecome a Colonial Housekeeper, there are still more honors, a greater knowledge of Nature, a wider understanding of humanity that await you.
All human beings delight in badges ..text pokračuje
