John Fox, Jr. - "The Heart Of The Hills"

Nathaniel Hawthorne - "Our Old Home"

George Washington Plunkitt - "Plunkitt of Tammany Hall "

John Lothrop Motley - "The Life of John of Barneveld, 1609 14"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The American Woman\'s Home

C >> Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe >> The American Woman\'s Home




Another resource for children is the exercise of mechanical skill.
Fathers, by providing tools for their boys, and showing them how to
make wheelbarrows, carts, sleds, and various other articles, contribute
both to the physical, moral, and social improvement of their children.
And in regard to little daughters, much more can be done in this way
than many would imagine. The writer, blessed with the example of a
most ingenious and industrious mother, had not only learned before the
age of twelve to make dolls, of various sorts and sizes, but to cut
and fit and sew every article that belongs to a doll's wardrobe. This,
which was done by the child for mere amusement, secured such a facility
in mechanical pursuits, that, ever afterward, the cutting and fitting
of any article of dress, for either sex, was accomplished with entire
ease.

When a little girl begins to sew, her mother can promise her a small
bed and pillow, as soon as she has sewed a patch quilt for them; and
then a bedstead, as soon as she has sewed the sheets and cases for
pillows; and then a large doll to dress, as soon as she has made the
undergarments; and thus go on till the whole contents of the baby-house
are earned by the needle and skill of its little owner. Thus the task
of learning to sew will become a pleasure; and every new toy will be
earned by useful exertion. A little girl can be taught, by the aid of
patterns prepared for the purpose, to cut and fit all articles necessary
for her doll. She can also be provided with a little wash-tub and irons
and thus keep in proper order a complete miniature domestic
establishment.

Besides these recreations, there are the enjoyments secured in walking,
riding, visiting, and many other employments which need not be
recounted. Children, if trained to be healthful and industrious, will
never fail to discover resources of amusement; while their guardians
should lend their aid to guide and restrain them from excess.

There is need of a very great change of opinion and practice in this
nation in regard to the subject of social and domestic duties. Many
sensible and conscientious men spend all their time abroad in business;
except perhaps an hour or so at night, when they are so fatigued as
to be unfitted for any social or intellectual enjoyment. And some of
the most conscientious men in the country will add to their professional
business public or benevolent enterprises, which demand time, effort,
and money; and then excuse themselves for neglecting all care of their
children, and efforts for their own intellectual improvement, or for
the improvement of their families, by the plea that they have no time
for it.

All this arises from the want of correct notions of the binding
obligation of our social and domestic duties. The main object of life
is not to secure the various gratifications of appetite or taste, but
to form such a character, for ourselves and others, as will secure the
greatest amount of present and future happiness. It is of far more
consequence, then, that parents should be intelligent, social,
affectionate, and agreeable at home and to their friends, than that
they should earn money enough to live in a large house and have handsome
furniture. It is far more needful for children that a father should
attend to the formation of their character and habits, and aid in
developing their social, intellectual, and moral nature, than it is
that he should earn money to furnish them with handsome clothes and
a variety of tempting food.

It will be wise for those parents who find little time to attend to
their children, or to seek amusement and enjoyment in the domestic and
social circle, because their time is so much occupied with public cares
or benevolent objects, to inquire whether their first duty is not to
train up their own families to be useful members of society. A man who
neglects the mind and morals of his children, to take care of the
public, is in great danger of coming under a similar condemnation to
that of him who, neglecting to provide for his own household, has
"denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel."

There are husbands and fathers who conscientiously subtract time from
their business to spend at home, in reading with their wives and
children, and in domestic amusements which at once refresh and improve.
The children of such parents will grow up with a love of home and
kindred which will be the greatest safeguard against future temptations,
as well as the purest source of earthly enjoyment.

There are families, also, who make it a definite object to keep up
family attachments, after the children are scattered abroad; and, in
some cases, secure the means for doing this by saving money which would
otherwise have been spent for superfluities of food or dress. Some
families have adopted, for this end, a practice which, if widely
imitated, would be productive of much enjoyment. The method is this:
On the first day of each month, some member of the family, at each
extreme point of dispersion, takes a folio sheet, and fills a part of
a page. This is sealed and mailed to the next family, who read it, add
another contribution, and then mail it to the next. Thus the family
circular, once a month, goes from each extreme to all the members of
a widely-dispersed family, and each member becomes a sharer in the
joys, sorrows, plans, and pursuits of all the rest. At the same time,
frequent family meetings are sought; and the expense thus incurred is
cheerfully met by retrenchments in other directions. The sacrifice of
some unnecessary physical indulgence will often purchase many social
and domestic enjoyments, a thousand times more elevating and delightful
than the retrenched luxury.

There is no social duty which the Supreme Law-giver more strenuously
urges than hospitality and kindness to strangers, who are classed with
the widow and the fatherless as the special objects of Divine
tenderness. There are some reasons why this duty peculiarly demands
attention from the American people.

Reverses of fortune, in this land, are so frequent and unexpected, and
the habits of the people are so migratory, that there are very many
in every part of the country who, having seen all their temporal plans
and hopes crushed, are now pining among strangers, bereft of wonted
comforts, without friends, and without the sympathy and society so
needful to wounded spirits. Such, too frequently, sojourn long and
lonely, with no comforter but Him who "knoweth the heart of a stranger."

Whenever, therefore, new-comers enter a community, inquiry should
immediately be made as to whether they have friends or associates, to
render sympathy and kind attentions; and, when there is any need for
it, the ministries of kind neighborliness should immediately be offered.
And it should be remembered that the first days of a stranger's sojourn
are the most dreary, and that civility and kindness are doubled in
value by being offered at an early period.

In social gatherings the claims of the stranger are too apt to be
forgotten; especially in cases where there are no peculiar attractions
of personal appearance, or talents, or high standing. Such a one should
be treated with attention, _because_ he is a stranger; and when
communities learn to act more from principle, and less from selfish
impulse, on this subject, the sacred claims of the stranger will be
less frequently forgotten.

The most agreeable hospitality to visitors who become inmates of a
family, is that which puts them entirely at ease. This can never be
the case where the guest perceives that the order of family arrangement
is essentially altered, and that time, comfort, and convenience are
sacrificed for his accommodation.

Offering the best to visitors, showing a polite regard to every wish
expressed, and giving precedence to them, in all matters of comfort
and convenience, can be easily combined with the easy freedom which
makes the stranger feel at home; and this is the perfection of
hospitable entertainment.




XXIV.

CARE OF THE AGED.

One of the most interesting and instructive illustrations of the design
of our Creator, in the institution of the family state, is the
preservation of the aged after their faculties decay and usefulness
in ordinary modes seems to be ended. By most persons this period of
infirmities and uselessness is anticipated with apprehension, especially
in the case of those who have lived an active, useful life, giving
largely of service to others, and dependent for most resources of
enjoyment on their own energies.

To lose the resources of sight or hearing, to become feeble in body,
so as to depend on the ministries of others, and finally to gradually
decay in mental force and intelligence, to many seems far worse than
death. Multitudes have prayed to be taken, from this life when their
usefulness is thus ended.

But a true view of the design of the family state, and of the ministry
of the aged and helpless in carrying out this design, would greatly
lessen such apprehensions, and might be made a source of pure and
elevated enjoyment.

The Christian virtues of patience with the unreasonable, of self-
denying labor for the weak, and of sympathy with the afflicted, are
dependent, to a great degree, on cultivation and habit, and these can
be gained only in circumstances demanding the daily exercise of these
graces. In this aspect, continued life in the aged and infirm should
be regarded as a blessing and privilege to a family, especially to the
young, and the cultivation of the graces that are demanded by that
relation should be made a definite and interesting part of their
education. A few of the methods to be attempted for this end will be
suggested.

In the first place, the object for which the aged are preserved in
life, when in many cases they would rejoice to depart, should be
definitely kept in recollection, and a sense of gratitude and obligation
be cultivated. They should be looked up to and treated as ministers
sustained by our Heavenly Father in a painful experience, expressly
for the good of those around them. This appreciation of their ministry
and usefulness will greatly lessen their trials and impart consolation.
If in hours of weariness and infirmity they wonder why they are kept
in a useless and helpless state to burden others around, they should
be assured that they are not useless; and this is not only by word,
but, better still, by the manifestation of those virtues which such
opportunities alone can secure.

Another mode of cheering the aged is to engage them in the domestic
games and sports which unite the old and the young in amusement. Many
a weary hour may thus be enlivened for the benefit of all concerned.
And here will often occur opportunities of self-denying benevolence
in relinquishing personal pursuits and gratification thus to promote
the enjoyment of the infirm and dependent. Reading aloud is often a
great source of enjoyment to those who by age are deprived of reading
for themselves. So the effort to gather news of the neighborhood and
impart it, is another mode of relieving those deprived of social
gatherings.

There is no period in life when those courtesies of good breeding which
recognize the relations of superior and inferior should be more
carefully cherished than when there is need of showing them toward
those of advancing age. To those who have controlled a household, and
still more to those who in public life have been honored and admired,
the decay of mental powers is peculiarly trying, and every effort
should be made to lessen the trial by courteous attention to their
opinions, and by avoiding all attempts to controvert them, or to make
evident any weakness or fallacy in their conversation.

In regard to the decay of bodily or mental faculties, much more can
be done to prevent or retard them than is generally supposed, and some
methods for this end which have been gained by observation or experience
will be presented.

As the exercise of all our faculties tends to increase their power,
unless it be carried to excess, it is very important that the aged
should be provided with useful employment, suited to their strength
and capacity. Nothing hastens decay so fast as to remove the
_stimulus_ of useful activity. It should become a study with those
who have the care of the aged to interest them in some useful pursuit,
and to convince them that they are in some measure actively contributing
to the general welfare. In the country and in families where the larger
part of the domestic labor is done without servants, it is very easy
to keep up an interest in domestic industrial employments. The tending
of a small garden in summer--the preparation of fuel and food, the
mending of household utensils--these and many other occupations of the
hands will keep alive activity and interest, in a man; while for women
there are still more varied resources. There is nothing that so soon
hastens decay and lends acerbity to age as giving up all business and
responsibility, and every mode possible should be devised to prevent
this result.

As age advances, all the bodily functions move more slowly, and
consequently the generation of animal heat, by the union of oxygen and
carbon in the capillaries, is in smaller proportion than in the midday
of life. For this reason some practices, safe for the vigorous, must
be relinquished by the aged; and one of these is the use of the cold
bath. It has often been the case that rheumatism has been caused by
neglect of this caution. More than ordinary care should be taken to
preserve animal heat in the aged, especially in the hands and the feet.

In many families will be found an aged brother, or sister, or other
relative who has no home, and no claim to a refuge in the family circle
but that of kindred. Sometimes they are poor and homeless, for want
of a faculty for self-supporting business; and sometimes they have
peculiarities of person or disposition which render their society
undesirable. These are cases where the pitying tenderness of the Saviour
should be remembered, and for his sake patient kindness and tender
care be given, and he will graciously accept it as an offering of love
and duty to himself. "Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these
my brethren, ye have done it to me."

It is sometimes the case that even parents in old age have had occasion
to say with the forsaken King Lear, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth
it is to have a thankless child!" It is right training in early life
alone that will save from this.

In the opening of China and the probable influx of its people, there
is one cause for congratulation to a nation that is failing in the
virtue of reverence. The Chinese are distinguished above all other
nations for their respect for the aged, and especially for their
reverence for aged parents and conformity to their authority, even to
the last. This virtue is cultivated to a degree that is remarkable,
and has produced singular and favorable results on the national
character, which it is hoped may be imparted to the land to which they
are flocking in such multitudes. For with all their peculiarities of
pagan philosophy and their oriental eccentricities of custom and
practical life, they are everywhere renowned for their uniform and
elegant courtesy--a most commendable virtue, and one arising from
habitual deference to the aged more than from any other source.




XXV.

THE CASE OF SERVANTS.

Although in earlier ages the highest born, wealthiest, and proudest
ladies were skilled in the simple labors of the household, the advance
of society toward luxury has changed all that in lands of aristocracy
and classes, and at the present time America is the only country where
there is a class of women who may be described as _ladies_ who do their
own work. By a lady we mean a woman of education, cultivation, and
refinement, of liberal tastes and ideas, who, without any very material
additions or changes, would be recognized as a lady in any
circle of the Old World or the New.

The existence of such a class is a fact peculiar to American society,
a plain result of the new principles involved in the doctrine of
universal equality.

When the colonists first came to this country, of however mixed
ingredients their ranks might have been composed, and however imbued
with the spirit of feudal and aristocratic ideas, the discipline of
the wilderness soon brought them to a democratic level; the gentleman
felled the wood for his log-cabin side by side with the plowman, and
thews and sinews rose in the market. "A man was deemed honorable in
proportion as he lifted his hand upon the high trees of the forest."
So in the interior domestic circle. Mistress and maid, living in a
log-cabin together, became companions, and sometimes the maid, as the
one well-trained in domestic labor, took precedence of the mistress.
It also became natural and unavoidable that children should begin to
work as early as they were capable of it.

The result was a generation of intelligent people brought up to labor
from necessity, but devoting to the problem of labor the acuteness of
a disciplined brain. The mistress, outdone in sinews and muscles by
her maid, kept her superiority by skill and contrivance. If she could
not lift a pail of water, she could invent methods which made lifting
the pail unnecessary,--if she could not take a hundred steps without
weariness, she could make twenty answer the purpose of a hundred.

Slavery, it is true, was to some extent introduced into New England,
but it never suited the genius of the people, never struck deep root
or spread so as to choke the good seed of self-helpfulness. Many were
opposed to it from conscientious principle--many from far-sighted
thrift, and from a love of thoroughness and well-doing which despised
the rude, unskilled work of barbarians. People, having once felt the
thorough neatness and beauty of execution which came of free, educated,
and thoughtful labor, could not tolerate the clumsiness of slavery.

Thus it came to pass that for many years the rural population of
New-England, as a general rule, did their own work, both out-doors and
in. If there were a black man or black woman or bound girl, they were
emphatically only the _helps_, following humbly the steps of master and
mistress, and used by them as instruments of lightening certain portions
of their toil. The master and mistress, with their children, were the
head workers.

Great merriment has been excited in the old country because, years
ago, the first English travelers found that the class of persons by
them denominated servants, were in America denominated _help_,
or helpers. But the term was the very best exponent of the state of
society. There were few servants, in the European sense of the word;
there was a society of educated workers, where all were practically
equal, and where, if there was a deficiency in one family and an excess
in another, a _helper_, not a servant in the European sense, was
hired. Mrs. Brown, who has several sons and no daughters, enters into
agreement with Mrs. Jones, who has several daughters and no sons. She
borrows a daughter, and pays her good wages to help in her domestic
toil, and sends a son to help the labors of Mr. Jones. These two young
people go into the families in which they are to be employed in all
respects as equals and companions, and so the work of the community
is equalized. Hence arose, and for many years continued, a state of
society more nearly solving than any other ever did the problem of
combining the highest culture of the mind with the highest culture ofthe
muscles and the physical faculties.

Then were to be seen families of daughters, handsome, strong women,
rising each day to their in-door work with cheerful alertness--one to
sweep the room, another to make the fire, while a third prepared the
breakfast for the father and brothers who were going out to manly
labor: and they chatted meanwhile of books, studies, embroidery;
discussed the last new poem, or some historical topic started by graver
reading, or perhaps a rural ball that was to come off next week. They
spun with the book tied to the distaff; they wove; they did all manner
of fine needle-work; they made lace, painted flowers, and, in short,
in the boundless consciousness of activity, invention, and perfect
health, set themselves to any work they had ever read or thought of.
A bride in those days was married with sheets and tablecloths of her
own weaving, with counterpanes and toilet-covers wrought in divers
embroidery by her own and her sisters' hands. The amount of fancy-work
done in our days by girls who have nothing else to do, will not equal
what was done by these who performed, besides, among them, the whole
work of the family.

In those former days most women were in good health, debility and
disease being the exception. Then, too, was seen the economy of daylight
and its pleasures. They were used to early rising, and would not lie
in bed, if they could. Long years of practice made them familiar with
the shortest, neatest, most expeditious method of doing every household
office, so that really for the greater part of the time in the house
there seemed, to a looker-on, to be nothing to do. They rose in the
morning and dispatched husband, father, and brothers to the farm or
woodlot; went sociably about, chatting with each other, skimmed the
milk, made the butter, and turned the cheeses. The forenoon was long;
ten to one, all the so-called morning work over, they had leisure for
an hour's sewing or reading before it was time to start the dinner
preparations. By two o'clock the house-work was done, and they had the
long afternoon for books, needle-work, or drawing--for perhaps there
was one with a gift at her pencil. Perhaps one read aloud while others
sewed, and managed in that way to keep up a great deal of reading.

It is said that women who have been accustomed to doing their own work
become hard mistresses. They are certainly more sure of the ground
they stand on--they are less open to imposition--they can speak and
act in their own houses more as those "having authority," and therefore
are less afraid to exact what is justly their due, and less willing
to endure impertinence and unfaithfulness. Their general error lies
in expecting that any servant ever will do as well for them as they
will do for themselves, and that an untrained, undisciplined human
being ever _can_ do house-work, or any other work, with the neatness and
perfection, that a person of trained intelligence can.

It has been remarked in our armies that the men of cultivation, though
bred in delicate and refined spheres, can bear up under the hardships
of camp-life better and longer than rough laborers. The reason is,
that an educated mind knows how to use and save its body, to work it
and spare it, as an uneducated mind can not; and so the college-bred
youth brings himself safely through fatigues which kill the unreflective
laborer.

Cultivated, intelligent women, who are brought up to do the work of
their own families, are labor-saving institutions. They make the head
save the wear of the muscles. By forethought, contrivance, system, and
arrangement they lessen the amount to be done, and do it with less
expense of time and strength than others. The old New-England motto,
_Get your work done up in the forenoon_, applied to an amount of
work which would keep a common Irish servant toiling from daylight to
sunset.

A lady living in one of our obscure New-England towns, where there
were no servants to be hired, at last, by sending to a distant city,
succeeded in procuring a raw Irish maid-of-all-work, a creature of
immense bone and muscle, but of heavy, unawakened brain. In one
fortnight she established such a reign of Chaos and old Night in the
kitchen and through the house that her mistress, a delicate woman,
encumbered with the care of young children, began seriously to think
that she made more work each day than she performed, and dismissed
her. What was now to be done? Fortunately, the daughter of a neighboring
farmer was going to be married in six months, and wanted a little ready
money for her _trousseau_. The lady was informed that Miss So-and-so
would come to her, not as a servant, but as hired "help." She was fain
to accept any help with gladness.

Forthwith came into the family-circle a tall, well-dressed young person,
grave, unobtrusive, self-respecting, yet not in the least presuming,
who sat at the family table and observed all its decorums with the
modest self-possession of a lady. The new-comer took a survey of the
labors of a family of ten members, including four or five young
children, and, looking, seemed at once to throw them into system;
matured her plans, arranged her hours of washing, ironing, baking, and
cleaning; rose early, moved deftly; and in a single day the slatternly
and littered kitchen assumed that neat, orderly appearance that so
often strikes one in New England farm-houses. The work seemed to be
all gone. Every thing was nicely washed, brightened, put in place, and
staid in place; the floors, when cleaned; remained clean; the work was
always done, and not doing; and every afternoon the young lady sat
neatly dressed in her own apartment, either quietly writing letters
to her betrothed, or sewing on her bridal outfit. Such is the result
of employing those who have been brought up to do their own work. That
tall, fine-looking girl, for aught we know, may yet be mistress of a
fine house on Fifth Avenue; and if she is, she will, we fear, prove
rather an exacting mistress to Irish Bridget; but she will never be
threatened by her cook and chambermaid, after the first one or two
have tried the experiment.