a student. He has furnished his house in the Norwegian style, with just such things as look at home with the old log walls and carved entries. We had a long chat with him and his Icelandic wife about the old days and the present condition of the people and the islands. Tradition has it that Sverre, King of Norway, was born at Kirkjubö. Be that as it may, it is sure at least that he was a Faroese by birth and a great leader in the troublous times that ultimately put him upon the throne of Norway. His connection with Kirkjubö will never be forgotten by the people, for the Faroese are proud to have given one king, and such a good one, to the land of their forefathers.

We wandered back after the pleasant few hours spent in this tiny village to our temporary home at Thorshavn, feeling much regret that our visit must end the next day when the Vesta was to carry us off to Iceland. It was with real regret that we waved our adieux to our kind Faroese friends and their beautiful islands, wondering whether the fates would ever lead us back again to quaint Thorshavn and to these little-known people who had received us so pleasantly and made our visit so interesting. Only those to whom the creature comforts are of little importance must pass more than a few hours in the Faroes; but to the lover of the Norseman and his literature a little roughing it seems of no importance, when he can visit the country where Grim Kamban landed with his family in the ninth century and where Sigmundr spent his eventful life and had so many and great experiences. It is fascinating to wander over the islands, Saga in hand, and live again the scenes therein depicted and see what still remains of the old customs. To all those interested in these things I would say: "You will never for one moment regret a week spent in the Faroe Islands, unless it should be for a brief hour or two after the setting of the sun, when silence seems to reign supreme, and a feeling of homesickness, of great loneliness, of utter isolation, creeps over one for a time, making one realize what it is to live so far from contact with the outside world and all it can give of the great and beautiful.”

66

SOLVING THE PROBLEM

"W

BY VIRGINIA CHURCH

HAT'S the good of Hampton, anyway? I can't get a servant," has been a remark not infrequently made by housewives visiting the school and seeing the possibilities in it, according to their ideas, and failing to realize its spiritual significance and ultimate end. Men, accustomed to considering situations as affecting local or national conditions, are wont to regard an institution as large and far-reaching as Hampton as something to be considered relatively and not dismissed without trial. But women, to whom the personal equation is ever present, refuse to look below the surface of their own needs.

The subject of servants, along with the race question and other matters that have been tabulated as problems, is one that does and should occupy the feminine mind. The woman who, having heard of Hampton as a sort of factory where cooks, waitresses, and housemaids are turned out ad infinitum, comes and meets the bright-looking, neatly dressed girls about the grounds, is naturally disappointed when she finds she not only may not take her pick of them, but probably will drive away with the seat by the driver still vacant. She is not to be blamed if, in hasty judgment, she decides that education has made them "too good to work" and complains in irritation that she supposes she'll have to go to an employment bureau in Norfolk, after all. The unruffled head of the visitors' office agrees calmly that she supposes she will.

The blame is not with the judgment but with its haste. Hampton was not founded as an employment bureau, nor for the benefit of the individual. Its work is broader and wider in scope. There are several hundred thousand young Negro women in the Southern States who need, either for their own use or to be employed in the service of others, the instruction given at Hampton. If, then, the knowledge acquired here were to end with the few hundred receiving it individually, the scope would be decidedly limited. The instruction is not for the few but for the many. It is given as a loan to be passed on.

Service for the race is a branch of that larger service for mankind which for nearly two thousand years has been a tenet of the Christian faith. It was preached and lived by Him who first taught the dignity of labor.

The girls of the Negro race who come to Hampton to study cooking and domestic science do, many of them, go from the school into service, both in the North and South, but the end and aim of the schooling is that they shall go back to the state, the county, the town from which they came and teach others of their race the principles of sanitation, hygiene, and domestic science that they have learned in their year or more of study.

Cooking as taught at Hampton is not a matter of boiling eggs, roasting meat, or serving a meal correctly. It goes deeper than that. It begins in the garden. The girls are taught to grow the simple produce which they can raise and teach their neighbors to raise in their own homes, and with which they can store their pantries and set their tables. They are then taught to prepare these fruits or vegetables for the table. When to plant, how to tend, when to pick, and how to prepare are some of the preliminary steps. In the kitchen, the cooking course begins with the simple but necessary instruction in washing floors, caring for the stove, the pantries, and the refrigerators.

Then comes the daily care of the dining-room, setting the table, and serving the meals. They are taught to know the different cuts of meat, to prepare and cook them. Bread-making and all forms of plain, substantial fare come into their course. Then there is a diet kitchen where the girls have to cook food for invalids. Meals are prepared here for the hospital and for a small dining-room in which students convalescent or for some reason unable to eat the regular fare are served.

Everything is distinctly practical. In the academic work of the domestic-science department there is the study of the chemistry of cooking, the underlying principles, taught by experiments, such as the effect of boiling water on yeast, the action of a paucity or an excess of

salt or sugar on yeast, etc. They learn simple methods of canning and preserving, so that the summer plenty may be made to supply the winter's scarcity of food, and what they study in the academic classes they work out in the kitchen, which thus becomes a laboratory.

Work is the order of the day at Hampton, and the days are long and crowded with duties. They begin with the rising bell at 5:20 in the morning. In Virginia Hall, where the eight hundred and fifty students eat, the meals are served by the girls, who are in the diningroom at 5:45. Breakfast is at six. Those who wait on the tables clear them, eat their own meal, and wash and wipe the dishes not cleaned

by the washers, which machines are run by the boys. An hour is now passed in the study hall, after which their own rooms and clothes receive attention until time for chapel and work in the class-rooms. Dinner and supper are served in the same manner. The mornings and most of the afternoons are given to study or recitation. In Virginia Hall in the students' kitchen, there are men cooks to do the heavy work, the girls being merely assistants, but the cooking in the diet kitchen, the teachers' kitchen, and at Holly Tree Inn, is done by girls, who receive their academic instruction in the night school. It takes considerable pluck and reveals stamina of no small degree for a boy or girl to work all day and study all evening, and rejoice in and pay for the privilege of working!

"THEY WORK OUT IN THE KITCHEN."

The work at the Holly Tree Inn, where some thirty-five or forty regular boarders and from two to twenty transitory guests are daily served, is carried on by eight girls under the direction and supervision of a very competent and charming young woman who is a graduate of Wellesley and of Simmons College. Under her the girls learn the preparation of food, the gentle art of cooking, and the art of proper serving. They learn that putting a dish into the oven and taking it out at a stated time is not the whole sum of baking. The heat of the oven must be regulated, the food watched.