The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1875-09-30

Show Gentility vs.. Comfortable Homes.
The remedy for over-care in house.
hold affairs is, in simplifcation, a re-
turn to more natural ways of living.
1t is the artifciality of our lives that
overburdens Observation-Disclosures them
both with care and expense. Comfort
| is almost universally sacrificed in our
strain after empty appearances. In the
good old times all furniture was made
pretty much alike in regard to strength
and style, the difference in expense rest
ing on the kind of wood used, and the
handwork or carving or inlaying en-
ployed in its manufacture. The age of
machinery has brought in gim-cracks
and rocco, and the houses of people of
| moderate means are crowded with
snowy, inferior furniture, expensive in
the fact that it soon furnishes, warps,
cracks, falls apart, and becomes old
fashioned without becoming antique.
The care of keeping this mass of trash
in order is one of the severe taxes on
the housewife. Instead of the old
fashioned cabinet, in which precious
bits of china were stored away from the
dust behind glass doors, we have etagere,
table and mantle-pieces loaded with
gew-gaws that require hours of daily
care to be kept in any thing like decent
order.
The comfort of the old-time sitting
room is sacrificed to great parlor
showroom, extending the full length
of the house, in which there is not a
single article that will bear the strain of
honest daily use, or yield an atom of
comfort to the user.
The burden of the laundry Is in the
burden of tucks and ruffies, and Ham
burg trimmings, with which the sew
ing-machine and cheap loom embroidery
have Overladen our garments. The
sewing which should have
been blessing to the household, has,
l fear, been more of a curse, in adding
to, instead of diminishing, the work Of
women. The burden of this tax can be
better appreciated when it is known that
the laundries frequently charge more for
''doing up'' one of these ruffied, tuck
ed, and embroidered garments than its
original cost. In families of moderate
means, the extra expense of the work
at home amounts to an additional SER
want. No wonder some of our women
cry out for cooperative laundry; any
thing to save them from the extra bur-
den they have imposed on themselves.
But they must carry that burden in some
form until they return to simpler fash
ions, discard superfluous trimmings,
and be satified with plain, neat, and
abundant clothing. Let no one be
amazed when say that among people
OF small means, cleanliness is often
sacrificed to show. Neither time nor
money can be afforded for the laundry
work or proper changes of the highly
garnitured garments that vanity and a
desire to appear fine have invested them
with. The comfort, beauty, and ele-
gance of plenty of clean, sweet linen
are sacrificed to the drabbish, drab-
bling alternative of unclean, tawdry,
third-class finery. The way out of all
these burdens is not in cooperation to
bear it, but to discard it.
The cause of our overburdened condi-
ton is what we should seek to remove.
1t is abnormal in its very beginning, and
can bear nothing but bitter fruit. The
tendency of all our domestic and social
economy is to wretchedness and vicious
ness, not toward comfort or virtue. To
keep up with the display of people of
wealth, or even to follow them afar off.
women, whose purses are limited, are
tempted to resort to doubtful means,
There are women who neglect no petty
thrift, shrink from no meanness, great
or small, in the endeavor to make a
small income afford them the luxuries
OF large one. Comfort and honesty
are both sacrificed. Servants and chill
dren are defrauded of proper food and
home-comfort to add their quota to the
show-fund of the establishment. If we
give up show, and expend our efforts
upon genuine comfort, we shall have
taken long step toward releasing our
selves from the bondage of worse than
Egyptian slavery, to which we have con-
demned ourselves. When the little
knot of good women who are wont to
meet in Union Square come together
again Ito discuss vital social questions,
and to remove the causes of social vices
and irregularities, - let them consider
House and Home Necessities from the
new standpoint of retrenchment, with
view to comfort and true elegance
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