Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/367

 345 WOMAN'S WORK Inside the house all is order and precision. In the kitchen may be seen a girl — the cook of the week — enveloped in a huge apron, with her arms plunged in an earthenware bowl of flour, busily making bread. Students specialising in dairy-work and the management of cows spend two morn- ings and three afternoons a week at a neigh- bouring farm, where the farmer's wife — a noted butter-maker — initiates them into the arts of milking and butter-making, and teaches them the use of the various types of churns and separators in common use, while students of laundry-work repair regu- larly on Tuesdays each week to the dwelling of an excellent local washerwoman, where they put in a hard morning's work at the washtub, again making their way thither on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons, in order to learn how to iron and get up the outcome of Tuesday morning's work. Thus, they soon learn to turn out snowy piles of beautifully got-up personal and household linen. The Type of Girl Wanted Miss Turner firmly believes that for the well-educated young gentlewoman, equipped with a thoroughly practical preliminary training for colonial life and able to work for herself, a place is ready and waiting in our possessions beyond the seas. Such a girl, if she takes a post as mother's help, will prove a real help, and when she marries will be a true helpmate to her husband. Arlesey House, moreover, is intended also for girls who have no intention of emi- grating, but who want to learn the right way to manage a small holding, consisting perhaps of a farmhouse or cottage with a garden and farmyard attached, so as to make it pay. In the gardens are special greenhouses for tomatoes, chrysanthemums, and cucumbers. In addition, there is a vinery. Thus, it is easy for a student to acquire a thorough horticultural training, and for skilled gar- deners there are great openings for women in the Colonies. Miss Turner has, naturally, special facilities tor acquiring information as to the different Colonies and their requirements, and pupils are not only advised and helped in their selection, but every endeavour is made to get them suitable posts when trained. The age limit for students is nominally trom eighteen to thirty, and Miss Turner finds twenty to twenty-five is the ideal age at which to start work at the school. Nothing is more helpful to students than an occasional object lesson in successful gardening, and the Arlesey students have the advantage of visiting the various famous gardens in the surrounding neighbourhood from time to time, for Miss Turner receives many invitations for herself and her pupils to spend an afternoon in some beautifully kept old-world or modern garden. Here the girls can study aspects, soils, ferneries, orchid-houses, and the thousand-and-one things appertaining to garden lore, as carried on in other and different surroundings. The Managfement of Arlesey House The Arlesey House garden and farm are managed on thoroughly comfortable but economical lines. No labour is wasted merely for the sake of learning how this or that task or duty should be performed ; there is always some definite object in view. The girls learn to utilise every scrap of ground for some practical and, if possible, lucrative purpose, so that both garden and farm may at least pay their own expenses. Thus, the shady corners of the garden are utilised for planting a goodly supply of bulbs in early autumn. The flowers then are cut and sold in the early days of spring. Then with the potato bed — which the students are seen hoeing so energetically in the illustration — every care and precaution had been taken to make the crop a success, with the consequence that Miss Kitson foresaw a harvest worth some £^o from that one piece of work alone. Through dealing only with pedigree stock, the girls get to know the points, for instance, of a good healthy, well-bred bird, by instinct, and would never, in purchasing later on for themselves, be taken in by inferior live stock in starting a poultry farm of their own. Home Nursing Taught A knowledge of ambulance and home nursing is one of the utmost value in colonial life in order to deal promptly and success- fully with accidents or sudden cases of illness where the girl settler's farmstead may be situated many miles from the nearest doctor, and accordingly each student is expected to go in for the course of lectures and to obtain the St. John's Ambulance certificates in these two subjects. Life resolves itself into a simple and very pleasant affair at Arlesey, and, in spite of early hours and plenty of hard work, meal- times are always very cheery. An excellent library and a good piano in the students' sitting-room provide plenty of recreation for the long winter evenings. For outdoor recreation in the winter the girls can play hockey, and in the summer tennis and croquet. An admirable lawn was levelled and laid out by the students in 1909. In New South Wales suitable students can be sent out to a small farm — mainly poultry and dairy — at Yarraford, Glen Innes, be- longing to Miss Brace, who will take pupils who have a certificate of proficiency in cook- ing and dairy-work ; but someone must deposit or guarantee their return fare — about ;^25 — should they not prove suitable. On arrival Miss Brace helps them to find work or to take up land of their own. In Canada, Miss Binnie-Clarke receives pupils on her homestead in much the same way, and the expenses of the journey to Canada or British Columbia are from ^15 to i^o.