A Domestic Problem : Work and Culture in the Household eBook

Friends, to say nothing of higher motives, would it not be good policy to educate wisely every girl in the country?  Are not mothers, as child-trainers, in absolute need of true culture?  In cases where families depend on the labor of their girls, perhaps the State would make a saving even by compensating these families for the loss of such labor.  Perhaps it would be cheaper, even in a pecuniary sense, for the State to do this, than to support reformatory establishments, prisons, almshouses, and insane-asylums, with their necessary retinues of officials.  Institutions in which these girls were educated might be made self-supporting, and the course of instruction might include different kinds of handicraft.

It was poor economy for the State to let that pauper “grow up as best she could.”  It would probably have been money in the State’s pocket had it surrounded “Margaret” in her early childhood with the choicest productions of art, engaged competent teachers to instruct her in the solid branches, in the accomplishments, in hygiene, in the principles and practice of integrity, and then have given her particular instruction in all matters connected with the training of children.  And had she developed a remarkable taste for painting, for modelling, or for music, the State could better have afforded even sending her to Italy, than to have taken care of those “two hundred criminals,” besides “a large number” of “idiots, imbeciles, drunkards, lunatics, and paupers.”

CHAPTER IV.

THE OTHER PART OF “WOMAN’S MISSION.”—­RUFFLES VERSUS READING.—­THE CULTIVATION OF THE FINGERS.

Let us leave for a while this matter of child-training, and consider the other part of woman’s mission,—­namely, “making home happy.”  It would seem that even for this the wife should be at least the equal of her husband in culture, in order that the two may be in sympathy.  When a loving couple marry, they unite their interests, and it is in this union of interests that they find happiness.  We often hear from a wife or a husband remarks like these:  “I only half enjoyed it, because he (or she) wasn’t there;” “It will be no pleasure to me unless he (or she) is there too;” “The company were charming, but still I felt lonesome there without him (or her).”  The phrase “half enjoy” gives the idea; for a sympathetic couple are to such a degree one that a pleasure which comes to either singly can only be half enjoyed, and even this half-joy is lessened by the consciousness of what the other is losing.  In a rather sarcastic article, taken from an English magazine, occur a few sentences which illustrate this point very well.  The writer is describing a honeymoon:—­