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THE FALL OF THE KITCHEN

Mrs. Peattie Writes of the Mournful Decay of That Household Feature.

The Change in Home Life Has Revolutionized One of the Sweet Visions of the Past.

From time to time one reads elegant but pessimistic articles in the magazines concerning the decay of the drawing rooms. There is a unanimous opinion among the writers of these articles that the "grande dames" are all dead -- like the doges -- that conversation is a lost art and that "society" has perished, and given place to a mere aggregation of well dressed persons who bore each other.

All this may be so, but it has never impressed me so much as the indubitable fact of the decay of the kitchens. There are in our houses, to be sure, certain rooms that we call kitchens. They have there the improved conveniences for [?] in domestic work. They are equipped with coal stove or gas range. They have a zink, with faucets of hot and cold water. They have stationary tubs, drains, ventilators, they are lit by gas or electricity, and they have in them electric bells, speaking tubs, [solled?] clothes shafts, dumb waiters, and patent appliances for adjusting the furnace dampers without moving from the room.

Now and then some of us venture to go into them. We do not have a cordial welcome. The neat Swede looks at us suspiciously, and seems to put herself on the aggressive. We are smiling and more or less apologetic, and we get out as soon as consistent with dignity and the well being of the menu for the day's dinner. These kitchens are usually very clean. The Swede women keep them well scrubbed. They face the insidious cockroach, and the vivacious red ant with indignant courage and drive them from the field. They consume our art journals for paper for the shelves, and wash and iron like angels of the third heaven. We are grateful, and let them off every night of the week and two afternoons out of seven. But the kitchen, all the same, has come to seem like a foreign country, where another language than the one we know is spoken, and where foreign manners obtain.

And we reflect with someting very like sadness that there has been just such a decay of kitches all over the continent. For America once made very mmuch of her kitchens. It is only the other day that the best part of the lives of American women were spent there. I'm not talking now about the lower classes -- whatever or whoever they may be -- but about people such as you and me, people who wouldn't let anyone think for a moment that we weren't as good as anybody else; people too comfortably sure of our respectable American citizenship to think anything about aristocracy one way or the other. You see, the kitchen was the drawing room just a little while ago. The women who were the ladies here in Omaha when the rest of the state was still a desert, used to make the kitchen the very most inviting room in the house. It was the warmest room in winter for [?] thing, having a good store or a fireplace in it. And it had mualla curtains up at the window, and plenty of chairs round about, and a [?] or sofa to lounge on if you weren't feeling well, and a big pine table which you ate off at meal time, and afterward used as a reading table.

The flower stand stood on the south side by the window, and the cat slept underneath, or else back of the stove. And the tea kettle was one of the members of the family, and gave a little snort with it steaming nostril when each of the children came in after school. And the boys put their feet up to the fire to thaw them out, and the girls heated their curling irons in the front of the stove. Everybody gravitated to this room instinctively. For one thing, mother was always there. She would sit by the window and peel phenomenally long peelings off the apples she was getting ready for the pies, or she would be chopping meat with the briskest imaginable sound. os cutting out cakes with a little star-shaped

THE FALL OF THE KITCHEN

Mrs. Peattie Writes of the Mournful Decay of That Household Feature.

The Change in Home Life Has Revolutionized One of the Sweet Visions of the Past.

From time to time one reads elegant but pessimistic articles in the magazines concerning the decay of the drawing rooms. There is a unanimous opinion among the writers of these articles that the "grande dames" are all dead -- like the doges -- that conversation is a lost art and that "society" has perished, and given place to a mere aggregation of well dressed persons who bore each other.

All this may be so, but it has never impressed me so much as the indubitable fact of the decay of the kitchens. There are in our houses, to be sure, certain rooms that we call kitchens. They have there the improved conveniences for [?] in domestic work. They are equipped with coal stove or gas range. They have a zink, with faucets of hot and cold water. They have stationary tubs, drains, ventilators, they are lit by gas or electricity, and they have in them electric bells, speaking tubs, [solled?] clothes shafts, dumb waiters, and patent appliances for adjusting the furnace dampers without moving from the room.

Now and then some of us venture to go into them. We do not have a cordial welcome. The neat Swede looks at us suspiciously, and seems to put herself on the aggressive. We are smiling and more or less apologetic, and we get out as soon as consistent with dignity and the well being of the menu for the day's dinner. These kitchens are usually very clean. The Swede women keep them well scrubbed. They face the insidious cockroach, and the vivacious red ant with indignant courage and drive them from the field. They consume our art journals for paper for the shelves, and wash and iron like angels of the third heaven. We are grateful, and let them off every night of the week and two afternoons out of seven. But the kitchen, all the same, has come to seem like a foreign country, where another language than the one we know is spoken, and where foreign manners obtain.