There is no conservatism like the conservatism of ignorance, yet in
this case want of knowledge there certainly was not. Norah had lived
for two years before her marriage with a family the mistress of which
had taught her patiently and indefatigably till she became able to set
a fairly-cooked meal upon the table, but the knowledge acquired then
seemed to have been laid aside as having no connection with her own
life. I have seen the same thing--though, happily, only in exceptional
cases--among educated Indians, girls who had spent years in the schools
at Faribault or under the direct training of missionaries reverting on
marriage to old wigwam habits, and content to eat the parched corn and
boiled dog of their early experience. The same law holds in full force
among many of the Irish, who, no matter how well trained or how
exacting in their demand for varied food while servants, quickly lose
the desire, and allow only a certain fixed order from which it is
wellnigh impossible to move them.
In this case, tolerably well-to-do at first, hard times had brought
them to this swarming tenement-house, from the various rooms of which,
as I passed down the stairs, came the same odor of burning fat and the
rank steam of long-boiled coffee or tea.
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