The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1875-11-12
Culture for Wives and Mothers.


writes:
The trouble lies just here: labor and
literature are not linked together as
they ought to be in the busy household,
but too often do we find work welded to
worry there. Mothers with silvering
locks and care-erossed brows, bending
over the burden of daily toll and crying
out that you have no time for mental
growth, here is a plan for you which
has been tested and proved beneficial.
Whenever the labor to be performed
through the day, and especially in the
evenings, is merely mechanical and
does not require the minds close atten-
tion-as is usually the case in well-reg-
ulated households after the morning
hours-ask each child in turn to read
you something useful, while you fash
ion their frocks. You will soon not
only be astonfshed to see their eyes light
up with new intelligence, but you will
also find yourself revived. A pre-occu-
pied mind forgets the WEAKNESS of an
overworked body. Moreover, children
whose literary tastes are early devel-
oped by reading to their mothers are far
safer amid the snares of after-life, and
far less likely to treat themselves to the
debasing luxury of reading yellow-cov-
toll and toll to send your children to
school; but in the evening, with one
longing look at the book-shelves and
lpaper-racks, you take up that great
basket of rent garments and silently
proceed to bind up their wounds, while
those same bright-eyed boys and girls
are firing your nerves with their noisy
inventions to fill up the vacancies of
ehild-life.
Give your boy a Roman history and
encourage him to tell you what he finds
in it, and you will soon find him de-
vouring the history of the world with
Roman zeal. l know a little boy of
only nine years, who has been accus-
toned thus to entertain his mother
since he could read at all, and to-day he
knows more literature than many lad
twice his age, and is so much attached
to certain fine old poems that he will
drop everything at any time to read
them to her. Let your daughter, among
other things, read to you recipes for
making couveniences with very little
trouble, which will bring order out of
chaos, or as Shakespeare says, ''Give all
things rein.n You thus educate her
from the start to systematic, orderly
way of doing things. System, accom-
panied by philosophizing- process of
winnowing the chaf of non-essentials
from the wheat of essentialsh-can al
most perform miracles. How is it that
some women have time to do so much
work, and still leisure for reading and
writing? Simply because they plan their
work beforehand with that end in view.
] know a farmers wife with frail eonsti-
tuition who took. care of the milk from
10 cows, in addition to the ordinary rou-
tine of three meals aday, with sweeping
and dusting; filled her house with num-
berless contrivances and cOnveniences
to make home attractive; had time to
visit the sick, and time for reading and
writing. She planned her work by the
week; each day had its own duties, each
meal it's own dishes. l know another
woman who had a special tasAe for mu-
sic, and was so situated as to be obliged
to do her own homework with very lit
tie assistance. Yet she found time to
practice from four to six hours a day,
not to the neglect of any of her own pc
culiar duties, but to the neglect of her
neighbors' affairs. Now, do not want
to have women love labor less, but lit
erature more. l want women to read
more, or more women to read, so that
when one of our sisters gives us good
advice, it may be seed sown in good
ground, which will bring forth fruit in
abundance. When woman's work shall
have become reduced to a science; when
the farmers wife shall avail herself OF
the improved methods of performing
her part of the labor to the extent the
: farmer now does; when sewing ma
chimes shall come to us laden with q
lighter load of tucks, rufhes, and puffsi
when all mothers shall become as care
full to provide food for the minds of theil
families as for their bodies, then shall
J the amount of true happiness be in
creased. ..... ...=TE