Connecticut western news., 1877-03-02
MO-. 34.
Daughters as Lady Helps.


 to be found in which ladies can, with advantage to themselves and their en- ployees, undertake the duties hitherto performed by servants. There Is no doubt that many well-born and we'll educated gentle-wOmen would rather cook all day long than to teach vil- lage school, and would infinitely prefer dusting piano to listening to child playing scales upon it. But, after, all, the system of lady helps is retrogres- sive movement, and therefore can only have partial and temporary success. Refined women who are obliged to earn their livelihood will by degrees see that they ought to try to find employ ment in some sphere where their cul- ture and accomplishments would be of value, instead of being unproductive. It is because they are not as yet suffi- ciently educated that they are obliged to raise the cry of having no work to do, and in despair of finding congenial occupation, take to manual labor of a not very remunerative kind. But it seems a pity to go searching for new openings ill a backward direction. It is labor lost, and induces a wasteful ex- penditure of enthusiasm on the part of enthusiasm on the part of social re- formers. There is still plenty of raw material to supply more than all the servants wanted for use, provided rich people would not keep so many merely for show. The raw material might be turned into good servants if we had any organization by which girls could be apprenticed and taught their trade. There is really no sufficient reason why young ladies of the rising generation should take to sweeping rooms and cleaning grates in strange houses, or even passing sleepless nights with teething babies not their own. Domes- tic service can never solve the question of "women's work" although it may for the present stop gap and furnish a subject for conversation. On the other hand, there can be no question that many of our social difficulties would be almost entirely mastered if young ladies would consent to become lady helps in their own homes. Nothing can be more intolerable than the mis- in countless households where there are plenty of grown-up daughters, who have really little to do but grumble at the dreariness of their lives, and fret themselves into permanent ill-health. Perhaps they take sufficient interest in the housekeeping to wonder contemptu- ously how their mother can be troubled with such inefficient servants, "crea. lures" who cannot even make palatable coffee or keep the silver bright. They have no patience with the shortcomings of the overworked house-maid, from whom they expect as much personal at tendance as if she had only a lady's maids duties to perform. They cannot think why the gardener does not show more taste in his arrangement of the flower beds, and why he does not cut off the withered roses. Half the young women one meets in the country sink AuOO eI oOcbOS oA HUH ness and want of interest in their sur roundings. From mere thoughtless- ness and ignorance they grow up ex- acting and unreasonable. From want of active exercise they become the ready prey of hysteria, dyspepsia, and spine complaints. They marry any one who will have them, simply because they are so bored that any change is welcome. They make bad wives, because they have never learned the rudiments ot domestic economy. When the unfortu- nate mother of such daughter allows herself to be persuaded to add lady help to the establishment, the height Of absurdity is reached. Four or five plain commonplace stupid girls may lounge about the house-he with piece of soiled fancy-work, another playing snatches of dance music, a third read ing French novels on the sofa, while perhaps a pretty graceful lady lays the fire, dusts the room, and endeavors probably in vain, to bring order into the uncomfortable and chaotic estab- lishment.-Saturddy RevieoO.