Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/709

Rh of fourteen and another for girls of eight to ten, a mothers' cooking class in the homes, besides classes in sewing. In fact, in all the settlements this work with the mothers and children, and through them for the homes, is one of the most important.

One young college woman. Miss Alberta Thomas, of the domestic science department of Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, has had the needs of students who wish to board themselves particularly in mind, and has invented an oven upon the principle of the Aladdin oven, which she declares that a housekeeper could improvise with boxes from the grocers. The long cooking necessary makes the food easy to digest and cheap pieces of meat palatable, and also makes possible the leaving of puddings, meats, and vegetables many hours without attention, which is so valuable to the student who is often away many hours at a time. She has lately been experimenting with various menus for breakfast, luncheon, and dinner which will be appetizing, contain the necessary amount of nutriment, and give the student but little trouble to prepare, and which can be supplied for one dollar and a half per week.

Not long ago Mrs. Eliza R. Sunderland, a Ph. D. from Michigan University and a Unitarian minister of great ability, reminded her large audience of women that their chief interests must, in the majority of cases, ever center about the home; that women are the natural home makers, and that any system of education which lost sight of this fact was incomplete.

Thus, by addressing popular audiences, by writing magazine articles and books, by demonstration lectures upon the science and art of cookery, by teaching the subject in high schools, grammar schools, and colleges, by the establishment of depots for the sale of scientifically prepared as well as savory food, by practically demonstrating her knowledge in different ways in the homes of her poor neighbors in connection with college settlements, by working upon practical problems connected with domestic science in strong committees connected with education associations and branches of the Association of Collegiate Alumnæ, and in many other ways do we find the college woman working in the field of domestic science, reaching thousands of homes and home makers. All her intellectual training, which it has been feared might divert her energies from home duties which by nature and opportunity she is especially fitted to discharge, has but made her the more eager to discharge them, but with a new and different interest, along better lines thought out as a natural consequence of her new opportunities.

We are getting beyond the day when instinct and Providence were expected to do duty for definite knowledge and special training in the business of home making. The college woman is giving us