Oxford Democrat

A SENSIBLE GIRLS' COLLEGE.

Girls are admitted to the Iowa 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 how to cook! Every girl in the junior class has learned how to make good bread, weighing and measuring her ingredients, mixing, kneading and baking, 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, 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 mouth, and, in short, get up a first-class meal, combining both substantial and fancy dishes, 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 girls 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 arts. These things can't be done in a parlor 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 sensible young men can be found who will be just idiotic enough to marry these Iowa girls in preference to the nice young ladies, whose knowledge of housekeeping ends at piano pounding and handkerchief flirtation.