A Rustic Interior
At once we realise how violent a revolution has taken place during the past quarter of a century. I remember that just after the last war I lived in a small Georgian cottage in a village. We had no electricity, no bath- room, no hot-water system. Every day the lamps had to be cleaned, filled and trimmed ; candlesticks of brass were re-polished and charged. A wasteful kitchen range had to be lighted every morning and every available pot filled with water and heated slowly, so slowly ! Washing up after meals was a grim battle against grease. Such conditions in /a busy professional household served to explain why the Elizabethans and the Georgians were not up to present-day standards of cleanliness. The adverse odds were too heavy. And in those days the housewife had also to make her own soap, do her own weaving, and perform all the rest oil the exercises in crafts and domestic arts which today are supplied for her,
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Look at the kitchen in most farms today, and you will find a slow-I combustion insulated stove, stainless steel sinks, a refrigerator, a washing' machine, and an electric coffee-grinder. In the sitting-room may be a tele- vision set and an electric sewing-machine. And there is, of course, the telephone. Maybe you will find beside the bed of the farmer's wife a: small radio and an automatic gadget for making morning tea. I describe these items, knowing that many enraged farmers' wives will raise ironies' cries of protest at my catalogue. My answer is that it is only a matteej of time, and a short time, in spite of the external menace.
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