Note 81 — Chapter I · (continued 2)

A writer of the seventeenth century gives the following as the popular programme of female study: "To learn alle pointes of good housewifery, spinning of linen, the ordering of dairies, to see to the salting of meate, brewing, bakery, and to understand the common prices of all houshold provisions. To keepe account of all things, to know the condition of the poultry—for it misbecomes no woman to be a hen-wife. To know how to order your clothes and with frugality to mend them and to buy but what is necessary with ready money. To love to keep at home." How like the German four K's and the words on the sarcophagus of a Roman matron—lanifica, frugi, domiseda—a diligent plyer of the distaff, thrifty and a stay-at-home.