The next generation will doubtless see even greater progress in the arts and sciences than has been made in these latter years of the nineteenth century. Will there be a similar advance in the appliances and methods which regulate our home life? There is certainly an opportunity for it, since, thus far, improvement in the kitchen has not kept pace with that in other departments of our civilization. What will be accomplished in the future depends mainly upon the individual housekeeper, and whether she is ready to claim the aid of modern science in improving existing conditions, or whether she is contented to keep house as her grand-mother did. The mothers of to-day must see to it that their daughters have opportunities to apply the knowledge they gain in school to the everyday duties of home life. There is so little practical application of science in the kitchen that many girls never see any connection between physics and chemistry and the drafts and dampers in a stove or the behavior of yeast or baking powder. This is the office of the schools of cookery and household science - to teach the reason for common processes and to reduce housekeeping to a systematic business. Any young woman receiving training in such a school, supplemented by home practice, will retain the best features of the housekeeping of the past and be ready for the new methods of the future.

The rapid advances in the study of bacteriology are imposing new burdens upon the housekeeper, which she will cheerfully accept when she realizes that the health of her family is dependent upon such details. We are learning that surface or apparent cleanliness is not sufficient ; everything must be chemically clean, free from any foreign substance. To this end the coming housekeeper will select utensils of the best material and the simplest pattern, with no grooves and crevices where dangerous micro-organisms can lurk. Every article of furniture and every decoration will be chosen with regard to the possibility of keeping it cleanly with little waste of labor.

Future generations may be expected to learn, what the housekeepers of to-day have not discovered, that time has a definite value and must be counted in the cost of any process or article of food. It is often wiser to pay a few cents more for a reliable article, than to run the risk of obtaining either an unhealthful food or something that will require time and strength in its preparation.

In the serving of our food at table there is a greater degree of refinement apparent in each generation. The modern tendency is away from the gross abundance of the past and toward simplicity and originality in such service. Little that is uneatable is allowed to appear on the table, and individual portions are very popular, while carving is becoming a lost art save in hotels. Where our great grandmothers aimed to have a bountiful supply in great variety, to excite the appetite, the housekeeper of the future will strive to adapt the food to the individual needs of the different members of her family, that no energy shall be wasted in disposing of undesirable substances. She will endeavor to serve what is prepared in the most attractive manner, since our enjoyment of food depends largely upon its appearance, and its nutritive value is often in direct proport on to its pal-atability.

"What a man eats that he is," is a familiar proverb; or, as the same idea has been expressed by one who has studied the effect of foods, "Our successors may even dare to speculate on the changes that converted a crust of bread, in the brain of Shakespeare, into the conception of the immortal Falstaff."

At present, too often, the only indication of zeal for better foods on the part of housekeepers is shown by a demand for new recipes. In the future more thought will be given to the scientific laws which govern the processes of cookery, and which are not always made clear by the cook-books of to-day. Just as the musical compositions and paintings of the old masters are constantly reproduced, so the recipes of our ancestors are now used with slight changes, and will be for generations, but with continual adaptation to improvements in materials and utensils. The housekeeper of the twentieth century will have learned that it is more satisfactory in the end to have simple food in perfect condition, than to strive after novelties, or disguise imperfect material with elaborate seasonings and high-sounding names. Processes and proportions will to some extent take the place of recipes, but cook-books will not lose their charm. There are many suggestions to be gained from these, even where a recipe cannot be followed strictly.

In the years to come, housekeepers will have learned the power and value of cooperation, and many undertakings which are dreaded to-day will have lost their terror. Through cooperation, the fireplace has given way to the cookstove and the range, which are gradually yielding to the gas and oil stoves, and may ultimately be displaced by electrical appliances. In the same way greater perfection has been attained in our food materials, much of the tedious preparation which our grandmothers were obliged to carry on in their individual homes now being done for the community by the aid of machinery.

All this is eliminating the drudgery from our housekeeping, and in this way that problem of the present century, "the servant-girl question," may ultimately be solved. The hands which cannot be skilled in half a hundred trades, to carry on the manifold duties of general housework, can be trained to one, and in factories may be directed to prepare some one portion of the daily food; while the housemother, with trained mind and deft fingers, and with water, steam, gas, and electricity at her command, may in the home blend the efforts of these outside laborers in the forms most pleasing and valuable to her own home circle.

Anna Barrows.