Prescott journal. [volume] (Prescott, Wis.) 1861-1871, 1864-12-24
The Managing Woman.

The managing woman is a first-rate house
keeper She has not abandoned those old
traditions of womanhood which makes the
fit and beautiful " dispensing of bread of
equal value with the earning thereof; nor
does she hold with any modern theory of de-
graduation in household work, or shame in
poverty and the need of continuance. On
the contrary, idleness and extravaganza are
the worst shames to her; and woman who
repudiates her natural vocation of home
adornment, is no woman worthy of the name.
Il is when she is of the oorgenteel class
that her special talents come into fullest play.
The best manner in which to organize her
household, the wisest apportionment of her in
come, the most ingenious way of sewing up
tattered edges, and hiding unseemly patches,
the putting bright face on all her difficult
ties, and having the credit of "being SO nice"
when she has to contrive and think over
every possible means Of making both ends
meet-these are the delights of true man.
ager-her trophies and her triumphs. How
proud she is of her faculty of making the
best of everything How clever is her mode
of ceiling the cloud, and showing the rose
colored edges and the silver Innings to her
numerous friends.
The instant you enter a house, whether
| rich or poor, you know whether it belongs
to a clever manager or not. 1t is not in the
kind or amount of property or furniture, it is
not in its newness, its grace or its intrinsic
value. but it is in its disposition, in the art
with which everything is made to look its
best, and in the case of our poor genteel,"
the clever hiding of deficiencies. What man
aging woman allows the world to see her rents
and tatters {? So long as ingenious patching,
and still more ingenious shifting and turning
can conceal what cannot be denied, the man
aging woman lets none, not even the initiated
understand the ragged groundwork under
meath. She moves the furniture so as to
hide the shabby places, she binds her own
worn out books with simple chintz coverings,
clean and gay she darns her muslin until it
becomes new fabric, of the nature of cross
barred eobweb, and turns her linen outside
in, and inside out, till every inch is equally
worn, and the whole comes TO be the ragged
fulfllment of its destiny She manages so as
to be never wholly without funds, or short of
holiday provisions, so is never taken at dis
advantage, and lets nothing pass into the dust
heap until she has extracted all the life and
marrow out of it. She it is who keeps the
house on those fabulous sums which drive the
more lavish housewives to despair, and
cause frenzy of admiration in their less for
tunate possessors, yet who always has well
filed larder, and produces better supply at
moments notice, than many others who
double her weekly allowance. She it is with
one maid-of-all-work, gets more done, and is
surrounded with daintier niceties of refine
ment and cleanliness, than are sometimes to
be found with plush and powder; who, with
her hands full to Overlooking, never lets fall
the smallest remnant Of duty, and even con-
triyes to hold TO the skirts Of some pleasures
as we'll; who finds time for everything she has
to do, and proper place for everything she
has TO keep; who is never hurried and is never
tagging; never beforehand and never behind
but punctual, timely and exact-neither
wastes her minutes in needless waiting, nor
rushes after them when lost, in the frantic
looseness of life common to the chasers of
time. The managing woman who is not
punctual is the glow-worm without its light,
the bird without plumage, an anomaly out of
course and time.