Friday, December 26, 2008

A Thought


I hope everyone had a warm and happy Christmas. It's so nice to get to be at home for two weeks. My Christmas gift was paint!!! My kitchen is finally going to be fresh and white!
I began reading this book I found at Project Gutenberg and there are so many interesting quotes that I thought I would share a few with you this week. This one seemed like a prophecy to a future America.

"There are people … who, confounding together the different characteristics of the sexes, would make of man and woman, beings not only equal, but alike. They would give to both the same functions, impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights. They would mix them in all things,—their business, their occupations, their pleasures. It may readily be conceived, that, by thus attempting to make one sex equal to the other, both are degraded; and, from so preposterous a medley of the works of Nature, nothing could ever result, but weak men and disorderly women." (Emphasis mine)
A Treatise on Domestic Economy

While I am one who is thankful for female doctors, voting, education, and the many other freedoms we now have, there is something to be said for a statement like this.

If you don't know, Project Gutenberg has all sorts of books you can read online for free. A TREATISE ON DOMESTIC ECONOMY, FOR THE USE OF YOUNG LADIES AT HOME, AND AT SCHOOL is a book from 1845 that covers health, rising early, the American home (including floor plans) caring for the sick, etc. I love to read about historical homemaking from the sources instead of a history book that
interprets it all for me.

Here's another homemaking book from the past: Public School Domestic Science

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