FEMININE EDUCATION.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1776, 29 October 1879, Page 4

FEMININE EDUCATION.

The "Californian Farmer" says, "Girls are admitted to the lowa Agricultural College and taught all sorts of queer and absurd things; For instance, the authorities there have the funny notion that girls ought to know bow to cook 1 Every girl in the junior class has learned how to make good bread; weighing, and measuring her ingredients, mixing and kneading and bakiDg. and regulating her fire. Each has also been taught to make yeast and bake biscuit, pudding, pie, and cake of various kinds ; how to cook a roast, to broil a steak, and make a fragrant cup of coffee; how to stuff a turkey, make oyster soup, prepare stock for other soups, steam and mash potatoes so that they will melt in the month, and, in short, to get up a first-class meal, combining both substantial and lancy disheß, in good style. Theory and manual skill have gone hand in hand. Vast stores of learning have been accumulated in the arts of canning, preserving, and pickling fruits, and they have taken practical lessons in all the details of household management, such as house furnishing, care of beds and bedding, washing and ironing, care of the sick, and numerous other things. It is not stated whether the girla are taught how to get up in the morning and build fires, but no doubt _ such a useful branch of information receives the attention its importance demands. It is hard to see what use a modern young lady can make of these lost aits. These things can'tJbe done in a parlour, with nice gloves on. Such a course of instruction must totally unfit a young lady for the grave duties of life, such as flirtation, reading Ledger stories, gossiping and all things of this nature that must be attended to. Still, it is just possible that numbers of eensible young men can be found who will just be idiotic enough to marry these lowa girls in preference to the nice young ladies, whose knowledge of housekeeping ends at piano pounding and hankerchief flirtation.