Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/539

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EDUCATION FOR DOMESTIC LIFE.
521

jects, were the leaders of the ecclesiastical revolt. Scandinavia is more purely Teutonic than Germany, and Scandinavia is Protestant to the backbone. The Lowland Scotch, who are more purely Teutonic than the English, have given the freest development to the genius of Protestantism." And then the intrepid canon, instead of worrying about theological explanations of the fact, goes on to show that the mean cephalic index (as it is called) of the Protestant Dutch is nearly that of the Swedes and the North Germans; while the Belgians are Catholics because their cephalic index approaches that of the Catholic Parisians. If a Swiss canton is long-headed, it is Protestant; if round-headed, it is Catholic. And Canon Taylor accounts (rightly, as I think) for one apparent British exception by saying shrewdly, "The Welsh and the Cornishmen, who became Protestant by political accident, have transformed Protestantism into an emotional religion, which has inner affinities with the emotional faith of Ireland and Italy."

Unless so distinguished a divine had led the way, I do not know whether I should have ventured myself to follow into this curious by-path of ethnology. But, in future, whenever one is tempted to ask one's self the once famous question, "Why am I a Protestant?" the answer will be obvious: "Because 75 is my cephalic index. If it were 79, I should, no doubt, have become a Dominican brother."

How charming is divine ethnology! I have said enough, I hope, to show that it is not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose, but teeming with odd hints of unsuspected quaintness.—Cornhill Magazine.

EDUCATION FOR DOMESTIC LIFE.

By MARY ROBERTS SMITH, Ph. D.,

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY IN LELAND STANFORD JUNIOR UNIVERSITY.

THE need of some kind of education as a basis for every activity is constantly emphasized to-day; but this emphasis is rarely applied to the need of training for domestic life, for which it is usually supposed that any kind of preparation will do. One million six hundred thousand women in the United States are engaged in domestic service, and eleven million one hundred thousand more are married and presumably have some kind of domestic duties. Several writers have called attention recently to the fact that a woman does not necessarily have an instinct for home-making; that while her instinct for the care of children may be strong, yet she may lack the skill to make a fire properly or to mix the ingredients of wholesome food. Or she may be skilled in handling modern kitchen appliances, but may lack the knowledge of the effect of exercise, regular hours,