My family has never had the slightest training in practical affairs.  If we were cast away on a fertile tropical island we should be forced to subsist on bananas and clams, and clothe ourselves with leaves,—­provided the foliage was ready made and came in regulation sizes.

These things are vastly more important from an educational point of view than a knowledge of the relationship of Mary Stuart to the Duke of Guise, however interesting that may be to a reader of French history of the sixteenth century.  A knowledge of the composition of gunpowder is more valuable than of Guy Fawkes’ Gunpowder Plot.  If we know nothing about household economies we can hardly be expected to take an interest in the problems of the proletariat.  If we are ignorant of the fundamental data of sociology and politics we can have no real opinions on questions affecting the welfare of the people.

The classic phrase “The public be damned!” expresses our true feeling about the matter.  We cannot become excited about the wrongs and hardships of the working class when we do not know and do not care how they live.  One of my daughters—­aged seven—­once essayed a short story, of which the heroine was an orphan child in direst want.  It began:  “Corrine was starving.  ‘Alas!  What shall we do for food?’ she asked her French nurse as they entered the carriage for their afternoon drive in the park.”  I have no doubt that even to-day this same young lady supposes that there are porcelain baths in every tenement house.

I myself have no explanation as to why I pay eighty dollars for a business suit any my bookkeepers seems to be equally well turned out for eighteen dollars and fifty cents.  That is essentially why the people have an honest and well-founded distrust of those enthusiastic society ladies who rush into charity and frantically engage in the elevation of the masses.  The poor working girl is apt to know a good deal more about her own affairs than the Fifth Avenue matron with an annual income of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.

If I were doing it all over again—­and how I wish I could!—­I should insist on my girls being taught not only music and languages but cooking, sewing, household economy and stenography.  They should at least be able to clothe and feed themselves and their children if somebody supplied them with the materials, and to earn a living if the time came when they had to do it.  They have now no conception of the relative values of even material things, what the things are made of or how they are put together.  For them hats, shoes, French novels and roast chicken can be picked off the trees.

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