All women know, by irritating experience, the countless days and hours we spend in wandering from shop to shop to find things a few cents cheaper or just a shade prettier, - the indescribable small tortures of doubt and anxiety we suffer in long balancing between what is more or less becoming, or better or poorer economy, -the exasperating regrets that rend us when we find (as in five cases out of ten we do find) that we have made a mistake. Now, all this could be saved if we could go to a person for advice, who, from talent, study, and experience, knew better what we wanted than we do ourselves. Some women possess the special instinct for, and insight into, dress that others enjoy as regards cooking. Its combinations and results are as much a matter of course to them as are those of his formulæ to the mathematician. With unerring judgment they select the right stuffs, the right shapes, and the right colors; the effect they see in their mind's eye they reproduce to the eyes of others, and it is delicious and satisfying in proportion as with the boldness of originality they unite the refinement and taste diffused by culture through the educated classes of society. Such women I would make Costume-Artists, for they in truth possess, in this direction, the creative quality of genius. They use their talents now only for themselves, and within very narrow and conventional limits, while the comprehensive glance they are very apt to give one from head to foot is enough to make them dreaded by the whole circle of their acquaintance. But let one utilize this glance; convert it from an involuntary mental comparison between what one is and what one ought to be, into a kindly professional summing up and decision of what one can be, and dress for most of us would become a very different

matter.

The post of the costume-artist would be in the consulting-room, on the first floor of the co-operative clothing-house, whither whoever wanted a dress could go, if she chose, and be advised as to

the fabric she had best select for her purpose, and in what mode it should be made and trimmed. But as every woman might not care, or in every case be able to afford, to pay for the finished artistic touch or "air" in dress, the costume-artist, as such, need have no regular salary, but should ask so much for every consultation. Thus the establishment would avoid the mistake made by fashionable dress-makers who irritate their customers by overcharging them for the " trimmings," instead of having it understood that a consultationfee of from three to fifty dollars, according to the brain-work required in designing a dress, will be charged to begin with. There is no fear but that the costume-artist would make a handsome income, when we consider the need women have of dress to heighten their charms and to palliate their defects, and the little knowledge or instinct that many of them possess for the successful accomplishment of these results.

WHY DRESS IS

NOT A FINE ART, AND HOW IT MAY BECOME SO.

For the whole subject of the asthetics of dress is in a crude, and in some respects positively savage, state among us. What, for instance, does the clerk who urges the stuff upon the buyer, or the dress-maker who cuts and trims it, know about that harmony of texture, color, and form which should subsist between the wearer and her robe? What about the grace of outline which should control its fashion? the effectiveness of inline and crossline which should guide its ornamentation, and manifold other subtile considerations? Nothing; and therefore nothing could better repay the co-operative housekeepers than to offer inducements and facilities to those two or three in every circle who are distinguished for taste and elegance in dress to make a study of the whole matter, with a view to elevating it into one of the finer arts, instead of perpetuating the coarse, often vulgar, apology for beauty and fitness that it is at present.

The imperfect adaptation by women of the means of dress to its true ends is a never-failing subject of complaint and ridicule against us by the other sex ; but it is not surprising that the fashions are so often grotesque, exaggerated, inconvenient, and even physically and morally injurious, when it is known who sets them. Not the ladies of the French Court, not even the "queens of the demi-monde" that the newspapers so love to talk about, design the things that destroy our peace; but French and German men, in the employ of the manufacturers, and for their benefit make water-color drawings of every novelty and extravagance that comes into their heads, and send them, with the new stuffs and trimmings that another set of men have invented, to the Parisian modistes, who, in conjunction with their rich patronesses, the court ladies and courtesans, contrive to modify them into something wearable, but still absurd enough, as a suffering sex can testify. Toilets at once healthful, suitable, and beautiful for women of every age, of every grade of means and position, and on every occasion, will never be attempted nor so much as dreamed of, until cultivated ladies, uniting that special talent for dress which is one of the most belied and abused of the feminine attributes to an accurate knowledge of the structure and requirements of the feminine physique, a fine perception of the ideal possibilities of all its types, and a historical and artistic mastery of all the resources for its adornment, shall make the attiring of their fellow-women their special vocation. One or two such costume-artists in every co-operative sewing-room would in the end effect an entire revolution in the whole idea of fashion; for within certain limits every woman would have a fashion of her own. distressing anomalies as blond hair smoothed and pomatumed as it was twenty years ago, and dark hair curled and frizzed as it is now, with a thousand others equally melancholy, would disappear, and every assemblage of women, instead of presenting a monotony

Such

at once bizarre and wearisome, would afford the variety and beauty that now is only attempted at a fancy ball.

THE CO-OPERATIVE KITCHEN. Beneficent and important as co-operative sewing-rooms would be to all of us, however, to my view, they are secondary in dignity and usefulness to the CoOPERATIVE KITCHEN, since good, abundant, and varied food, accurately cooked and freshly served, lies at the very foundation of family health and happiness, and doubtless has an incalculable influence both on physical perfection and intellectual activity. Probably the easiest way for the co-operative housekeepers to organize their kitchen would be to send for Professor Blot, and place themselves under his direction. Failing in this, the committee on the cooperative kitchen must have recourse to hotels, restaurants, bakeries, and provision stores, and from these will, no doubt, be able to judge what kind and how large a building will be needed, whether the kitchen can be combined with the laundry, and what its stoves, ranges, ovens, boilers, general arrangement, and accompanying cellars and storerooms must be. These large establishments will also enable the committee to report on the number of divisions, officers, assistants, servants, carts, and horses that would be necessary. For the method of conveying the meals hot and on time to the different families of the association they will probably have to go to France or Italy, where cook-shops have long been an institution, though whether it would be quite fair to take from a hundred Yankee wits the delicious chance of inventing a Universal Heat-generating Air-tight Family Dinner-Box I do not know. How many of the co-operative housekeepers would choose to be connected with the kitchen of course themselves alone could decide. Obviously it must have a superintendent, a treasurer, a book-keeper; a caterer to contract with butchers, gardeners, farmers, and wholesale dealers; a stewardess to keep the storerooms and cellars and give out the supplies;

and an artist-cook or chiefess with her assistants, a confectioner, a pastry-cook, and a baker, to preside over their preparation. As all of these would be positions of peculiar trust and responsibility, demanding superior judgment, ability, and information, as the salaries connected with them would be large, and the persons filling them necessarily of great weight and consideration in the community, I cannot imagine any woman, except from indolence, ill health, or a preference for some other employment, unwilling to accept of either of these offices. Regarding cookery, I believe that, like dress, it will never be what it can and ought to become, until women of social and intellectual culture make it the business of their lives, and, with thoughts unfettered by other household cares, devote themselves, like lesser providences, to its benign necromancy. Being one of the great original functions of woman, like clothesmaking and infant-rearing, there is no doubt that she has a special gift or instinct for it; while the superior keenness of her senses and fastidiousness of her taste must fit her peculiarly for all its finer and more complicated triumphs. All the Paris letters lately have mentioned Sophie, cook of the late Dr. Véron of Paris, - only a woman, and probably an uneducated woman at that. Nevertheless, she is said to be "the most consummate culinary artist of the day; looking down with unspeakable contempt on Baron Brisse, and even on Rossini and Alexander Dumas. Ministers, bankers, artists, men of letters, paid obsequious court to this divinity of the kitchen, who ruled despotically over her master's household and diningroom, and who had made it a law that no more than fourteen guests should ever sit together at the doctor's table."* If such is her success, what an artist was lost to the world in the New England housekeeper I attempted to describe. Delicate to etherealness, accurate to mathematical severity, she might have wrought marvels indeed, had she been initiated into the mysteries of the

* Paris Correspondent of The Nation, October 24.

modern cuisine. things, let the co-operative housekeepers appoint one of their number, at a liberal salary, to the office of cook-inchief. If possible, let them afford her every advantage of gastronomical education, such as go through the great French chefs, who learn sauces from one master, entrées from another, confection from a third, and so on. If the co-operative kitchen should ever become universal, we shall probably see American ladies by dozens going out to Paris to study under just such artists as the great Sophie above mentioned, and then returning home to benefit the whole country with their accomplishments. It is a well-known fact that no nation in the world has such a variety and abundance of the best food that Nature gives as we ourselves. She teems with such bounty to her adopted children that it has often seemed to me a misnomer to call our country" Fatherland," -Mother-land she is for the whole earth, with her broad lap of plenty sloping from the Rocky Mountains down to the very Atlantic shore, as if inviting the hungry nations to come over to it and be fed. What feasts fit for the immortals might grace every table, if we only knew how to turn our treasures to the best advantage, — and to think that millions of us live on sait pork, sour or saleratus bread, and horrible heavy pies!*

Therefore, above all

WHAT ACTION SHOULD FOLLOW THE REPORTS OF THE ORGANIZING ComMITTEE.

When the co-operative housekeepers have heard the reports of their various committees, have adopted their constitution and decided upon their working plans, they should call the Council of their husbands, and submit the whole to them for approval or final amendment. These gentlemen must also decide whether they will advance the funds wherewith to start the enterprise, or whether, like the Rochdale Pioneers, their wives shall save up small sums

*This is the ordinary farmers' diet even in New England!

The last step of all will be, immediately after the ratification of the constitution by the higher powers, to proceed to the elections under it of the executive committee, the board of directresses, and the officers and agents of the different departments. All the persons elected, who do not perfectly understand the duties to which they are assigned, will have to qualify themselves for them as thoroughly as possible; and it would be better to spend two years in fitting every officer perfectly to her post, than to attempt so great a revolution with any chance of failure.

THE AUTHOR INTRENCHES HERSELF. Here, now, dear friends and fellowsufferers in housewifery, ends my plan for your and my relief. Excepting one, I will freely admit any criticism you may pass upon it. It is vague, sketchy, unpractical, extravagant, any adjective you choose. But what can you expect of a single mind? Like the German in the story, I might as well attempt to evolve a camel out of my inner consciousness as to construct even a tolerable plan of anything so complicated as housekeeping for a whole community must be. Every single clause of the constitution, every detail of every department, would have to be discussed in committee, submitted to the Convention, carried before the Council, perhaps sent back again, and, after all, could not be said to be fairly decided until it had been put into practice and tested by experience. But, in making out my plan, I have consulted

nobody, and, in truth, I submit it only to provoke your minds to action. One only charge against the conception I will not suffer, — that it is impossible. I will not consent that this first-born bantling of my brain be murdered before it has had a chance to live. Two things only can make co-operative housekeeping impossible:

Ist. That women cannot work together.

2d. That men will not let them, or, at least, will not encourage them to do

SO.

As

The first does not trouble me. Let the world slander as it will, I know that the frivolous, the violent, the obstinate, the mean, the malicious, constitute but a small minority of the sex. The great mass of women have both Christianity and common sense, and these are the only two influences needed to make any human corporation work smoothly and successfully. for the second, that men will not promote it, here, indeed, is room for fears. Had men ever done anything directly for the happiness and development of women, one might hope that they would set forward this. But they will probably distrust or laugh at it, and women, accustomed to take them for God and Bible both, will accept the sneer or the doubt with unquestioning faith, will not so much as attempt to reflect, to reason, and to arrive at an independent judgment even about what is so intensely their own concern as this of housewifery. Well, be it so. Perhaps my baby must die; but none the less for this shall I in two or three more numbers of the Atlantic go on to tell the world what might have been the consequences could she have become there a Living Power.