I do not know whether this state of affairs still obtains among the younger set, but it has been my experience, based on the various women of my age with whom I’ve set up housekeeping over the years, that the elements of domestic science a girl learns at her mother’s knee assume thereafter the immutability of the laws of physics. One folds the laundry just so, one washes dishes just so, and only an unlettered and uncouth barbarian would prepare an entree that way. This certainty—that there is an absolutely correct approach to a given household procedure, that the speaker just happens to have been raised by an individual who was privy in every instance to this codified and sacred method, and that deviations from this standard, while only to be expected (and corrected—Повторение - мать учения) in a man, betray a faulty upbringing when observed in another woman—has seemed to be held by women who otherwise varied considerably in points of background and temperament. I bring this up by way of a disinterested sociological observation, and not because I’ve had occasion to observe it during the last twelve hours.

cordially,