Catharine Esther Beecher

“ The good nurse is an artist. O the pillowy, soothing softness of her touch, the neatness of her simple, unrustling dress, the music of her assured yet gentle voice and tread, the sense of security and rest inspired by her kind and hopeful face, the promptness and attention to every want, the repose that like an atmosphere encircles her, the evidence of heavenly goodness, and love that she diffuses! ”

“ The hardest work of all is to restore a guilty, selfish, hardened spirit to honor, truth, and purity; and this is the divine labor to which the pitying Saviour calls all his true followers; to lift up the fallen, to sustain the weak, to protect the tempted, to bind up the broken-hearted, and especially to rescue the sinful. This is the peculiar privilege of woman in the sacred retreat of a "Christian home." And it is for such self-denying ministries that she is to train all who are under her care and influence, both by her teaching and by her example. ”

“ A man is admonished to provide sustenance and education for his family, but never to lay up money for them; and the history of the children of the rich is a warning that, even in a temporal view, the chances are all against the results of such use of property. We are to spend all to save the world; For this we are to labor and sacrifice ease and wealth, and we are to train children to the same self-sacrificing labors; All that is spent for earthly pleasure ends here. Nothing goes into the future world as a good secured but training our own and other immortal minds. ”

“ Those who go into the country looking for summer board in farm-houses know perfectly well that a table where the butter is always fresh, the tea and coffee of the best kinds and well made, and the meats properly kept, dressed, and served, is the one table of a hundred, the fabulous enchanted island. It seems impossible to get the idea into the minds of many people that what is called common food, carefully prepared, becomes, in virtue of that very care and attention, a delicacy, superseding the necessity of artificially compounded dainties. ”

“ A tourist through England can seldom fail, at the quietest country-inn, of finding himself served with the essentials of English table-comfort—his mutton-chop done to a turn, his steaming little private apparatus for concocting his own tea, his choice pot of marmalade or slice of cold ham, and his delicate rolls and creamy butter, all served with care and neatness. In France, one never asks in vain for delicious cafe-au-lait, good bread and butter, a nice omelet, or some savory little portion of meat with a French name. ”

“ But the good time is coming, when (as now in China and Japan) men must accept the fact that the soil is not a warehouse to be plundered—only a factory to be worked. Then they will save their raw material, instead of wasting it, and, aided by nature's wonderful laws, will weave over and over again the fabric by which we live and prosper. Men will build up as fast as men destroy; old matters will be reproduced in new forms, and, as the decaying forests feed the growing wood, so will all consumed food yield food again. ”

“ America starts with a political organization based oh a declaration of the primitive freedom and equality of all men. Every human being, according to this principle, stands on the same natural level with every other, and has the same chance to rise according to the degree of power or capacity given by the Creator. All our civil institutions are designed to preserve this equality, as far as possible, from generation to generation: there is no entailed property, there are no hereditary titles, no monopolies, no privileged classes—all are to be as free to rise and fall as the waves of the sea. ”

“ How many thousands are victims to a slow suicide and murder, the chief instrument of which is want of ventilation! How few are aware of the fact that every person, every day, vitiates thirty-three hogsheads of the air, and that each inspiration takes one fifth of the oxygen, and returns as much carbonic acid, from every pair of lungs in a room! How few understand that after air has received ten per cent of this fatal gas, if drawn into the lungs, it can no longer take carbonic acid from the capillaries! ”

“ In these days, how common is it to provide rooms with only a flue for a stove! This flue is kept shut in summer, and in winter opened only to admit a close stove, which burns away the vital portion of the air quite as fast as the occupants breathe it away. The sealing up of fire-places and introduction of air-tight stoves may, doubtless, be a saving of fuel; it saves, too, more than that; in thousands and thousands of cases it has saved people from all further human wants, and put an end forever to any needs short of the six feet of narrow earth which are man's only inalienable property. ”

“ The human race in its infancy was placed in a mild and genial clime, where each separate family dwelt in tents, and breathed, both day and night, the pure air of heaven. And when they became scattered abroad to colder climes, the open fire-place secured a full supply of pure air. But civilization has increased economies and conveniences far ahead of the knowledge needed by the common people for their healthful use. Tight sleeping-rooms, and close, air-tight stoves, are now starving and poisoning more than one half of this nation. ”

“ So complicated are the pursuits and so diverse the habits of the various members of a family, that it is almost impossible for every one to avoid interfering with the plans and taste of a housekeeper, in some one point or another. It is, therefore, most wise for a woman to keep the loins of her mind ever girt, to meet such collisions with a cheerful and quiet spirit. ”

“ If this country increases in virtue and intelligence, as it may, there is no end to the wealth which will pour in as the result of our resources of climate, soil, and navigation, and the skill, industry, energy, and enterprise of our countrymen. This wealth, if used as intelligence and virtue dictate, will furnish the means for a superior education to all classes, and every facility for the refinement of taste, intellect, and feeling.
Moreover, in this country, labor is ceasing to be the badge of a lower class; so that already it is disreputable for a man to be "a lazy gentleman." ”

“ Every Christian woman who "walks by faith and not by sight," who looks forward to the results of self-sacrificing labor for the ignorant and sinful as they will enlarge and expand through everlasting ages, may rise to the same elevated sphere of experience and happiness. On the contrary, the more highly cultivated the mind devoted to mere selfish enjoyment, the more are the sources of true happiness closed and the soul left to helpless emptiness and unrest. ”

“ Living a year in France one forgets the taste of nutmeg, clove, and allspice, which abounds in so many dishes in America. The English and Americans deal in spices, the French in flavors—flavors many and flue, imitating often in their delicacy those subtle blendings which nature produces in high-flavored fruits. The recipes of our cookery-books are most of them of English origin, coming down from the times of our phlegmatic ancestors, when the solid, burly, beefy growth of the foggy island required the heat of fiery condiments, and could digest heavy sweets. ”

“ Whenever a family-room is heated by an open fire, it is duly ventilated, as the impure air is constantly passing off through the chimney, while, to supply the vacated space, the pure air presses in through the cracks of doors, windows, and floors. No such supply is gained for rooms warmed by stoves. And yet, from mistaken motives of economy, as well as from ignorance of the resulting evils, multitudes of householders are thus destroying health and shortening life, especially in regard to women and children who spend most of their time within-doors. ”