The handbook of household science Author:Edward Livingston Youmans Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION. When a work is presented, claiming place in a systematic course of school study, two questions at once arise in the mind of the discriminating e... more »ducator: first. what is the nature, rank, and value of the knowledge it imparts? and, second, what will be its general influence upon the mind of the student? In this twofold connexion there are some thoughts to which we solicit the reader's earnest and considerate attention. The present volume has been prepared under a conviction that the knowledge it communicates is first in. the order of importance among things to be considered by rational and civilized people. "Every man's proper mansion-house and home," says Sib Henby Wottou, " is the theatre of his hospitality, the seat of self-fruition, the com- fortablest part of his own life, the noblest of his son's inheritance, a kind of private princedom ; nay, to the possessors thereof an epitome of the whole world." Nothing needs to be added in eulogy of the household home, the place of life's purest pleasures and sweetest experiences, the perpetual rallying point of its hopes and joys. Whatever can render it more pleasant or attractive, or invest it with a new interest, or in any way improve or ennoble it, is at once commended to our sympathy and regard. To consider all the agencies which influence the course and character of household life, is far from the object of the present work. Our concern is chiefly with its more material circumstances and conditions. That we should understand something of the wonderful physical agencies which have control of our earthly being, and which are so incessantly illustrated in the dwelling, and be at least partially acquainted with those fixed natural ordinances upon which our daily welfare, comfort, health, and even life, immediately d...« less