Like many other important discoveries, my aptness for house-work was found out by accident.  Our next neighbor happened to be thrown, without a word of warning, into one of those dreadful whirlpools in regard to help, to which even the best regulated households are liable.  My services, charitably volunteered as temporary relief, were gladly accepted, and the result on my part was two years of pleasant and profitable labor.  All I earned was clear profit, and I had the satisfaction of knowing I saved the family many times over what was paid me.  I’m converted beyond the possibility of backsliding to this truth:  that there is no work so fit and pleasant, so profitable and improving, to the mass of womankind,—­rich or poor, wise or unlearned, strong or weak,—­yes, proud or meek,—­as the care and control of a home; none so worthy of thorough study, none so full of opportunity for exercising all the better bodily and mental powers, from mere mechanical and muscular skill, up through philosophy and science, mathematics and invention, to poetry and fine art.

From potato-washing to architectural design the distance is great, yet there are possible steps, and easy ones too, leading from one to the other.  I began with the potatoes and know all their tricks and their manners.  The accompanying sketch is the nearest approach to architecture yet attained.  A long way off, you will say; but I insist it is worthier of recognition than the plans of amateurs who begin with the parlor and leave the kitchen out in the cold.  It is not for Mr. Fred; he must work out his own kitchen.  If Mrs. Fred can’t help him, more’s the pity.  I give my notions of general principles; the application of them I leave to you.

My kitchen is not merely a cook-room, nor yet the assembly and business room of the entire household, as in the olden time.  It is the housekeeper’s head-quarters, the mill to which all domestic grists are brought to be ground,—­ground but not consumed.  I should never learn to be heartily grateful for my daily bread if it must always be eaten with the baking-pans at my elbow.  Indeed, we seldom enjoy to the utmost any good thing if the process of its manufacture has been carried on before our eyes.  Hence the dining-room is a necessity, but it must be near at hand.  If the kitchen cannot go to it, it must come to the kitchen.  If this goes to the basement, or to the attic, that must follow, but always with impassable barriers between, protecting each one of our five senses.  The confusion usually attending the dinner-hour should be out of sight; the hissing of buttered pans and the sound of rattling dishes we do not wish to hear; our sharpened appetites must not be dulled by spicy aromas that seem to settle on our tongues; we do not like, in summer weather, to be broiled in the same heat that roasts our beef; while, as for scents, wrath is cruel and anger is outrageous, but who is able to stand the smell of boiling cabbage?  Yes; the kitchen must be separated from