The Opelousas patriot. [volume] (Opelousas, Parish of St. Landry, La.) 1855-1863, 1855-09-22
Philosophy and ch,ldren's Dresses.

In the different squares of our city, it is really dis
tressing sometimes of an afternoon to witness the
effect produced by nurses vying with each other in
decorating their poor little infant charges SO as to
make them look genteel. Go to a fashionable water
ing place, and the case is worse parents and sisters
also feel their credit at stake, in producing the best
dressed little responsibilities. In the country, prop
erly SO called, how different. There children are al
lowed to kick off shoes and stockings, if they please,
in hot weather, and to run about atiand where they
please. The effect is that they grow up robust and
strong, with healthy minds in most healthy bodies.
The effect Of these city fashions, carried to the ex-
trenies they are, upon health, is not easily to be esti-
mated. A child dressed up in fine clothes cannot
take proper, hearty exercise. Its movements are all
watched and constrained by the nurses. 1t never
stirs without the fear of being scolded by some one
for disarranging its curls or soiling its clean dress.
How miserable all this restraint upon its freedom.
Those ringlets SO carefully arranged, what a source
Of misery and often sickness. Long hair will absorb
as much of . child's strength in a season as would
give it an inch of growth. Now it tickles the neck,
now it increases the warmth, and now it is wet and
gives the child q perpetual cold and sore throat.
This fine dressing must be a source Of countless irita-
tions. The nurse acquires the habit Of perpetually
swapping, interfering and checking all the free mo-
tions Of childhood, and the little one learns to believe
that to sit still and take these lectures meekly, is the
very essence of being a good child. Its spirit is
broken in, and it becomes a docile suppliant, instead
of a free, bold, and vigorous child. No wonder its
cheek is pale, and the doctor is constantly needed, or
that 1t grows up nervous, irritable and peevish.
The direct cost Of all this is no trife. It may
crafty o parents taste for the moment, crafty that
kind Of affection which loves to bestow costly tokens
of regard, however useless or injurious, but where is
the prudent mother who would not better show her
kindness by creating q little fund, and saving all
these supertluous expenses for its use at a future day.
The extra cost for this curling, making and washing
the fine dresses Of two such little ones, is not less
than equal to the time of a maid servant, or 1925 be-
yond what is requisite for their best health and
greatest interest. There are telegraph stock in the
city where every $3.50 saved would increase in eight
years to 1925. The habits of infancy form the
tastes of youth, and the passion for tinery is easily
cherished. But what mar Of moderate means can
afford to marry one of these young lilies of the valley,
who toll not, neither do they spin, while arrayed
more gorgeously than Solomon in all his glory?
Life itself is often put in jeopardy by all this. A
o"eAI AAAo uASss "a gwen many u Cullu tue Group ; a
low, bare neck has enlarged the tonsils, and con-
tncted the chest of many a pretty little one. We
ourselves have very lively recollections Of chilled and
aching feet, chilblains and innumerable other evils,
through the thin, pretty, but light shoes into which
the feet of our childhood were crammed, even in
winter, on q Sunday, that we might appear respect
able at church!
A child just beginning to walk, climbs up to the
top,of q pair of stairs, step by step alone. Its feet
get entangled in its dress, it pitches ~headIong down
to the bottom, and its brain is injured for life or it
dies, and the father finds the hopes and tolls of a life
What has caused it? Some feeble lace
inserting at the bottom of its dress, through which
its little foot has naturally caught, torn the lace and
tripped it up. Would that father but take q penknife
and cut away the whole of that dangerous fnery, it
would be no small kindness to the child, nurses to
the contrary Notwithstanding. [Phila. Ledger,