Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1877-03-14


patch as one of the devices of the scar
let lady; and there were so many rep.
resentatives of the scarlet lady at the
courts who INDUCED in it that the re-
proach was hardly to be wondered at.
Experiments Of Ignorance.
From the New York Mercury.
Housekeeping business wants, not
only revision, but more thorough teach
ing and more exact training before we
can hope for good results. AS. things
are each young household is the field
for those experiments of ignorance by
which everything goes wrong. Either
| the servants are pampered out of all
energy, and INDUCED till the young
mistress has broken down in them every
sentiment of duty and honorable feeling
of responsibility, or they are treated as
emphatically inferior creatures, snub-
bed and kept at arms length, like ami
mails whose one sole function is to
work, overtaxed and underfed, till the
house gets q bad name and not SER
want of any value can be found to stay.
Then the young mistress goes about
among her friends bewailing the
iniquity of those dreadful maids and
the imposibility of finding decent man.
She does not see that the fault lies with
herself more than with them, and that
had she been less ignorant she would
have made fewer experiments and con-
sequently fewer mistakes. But wo-
man is assumed to be able to keep her
household with judgment and success
without the smallest training for it..
No man is given the command of boat
Or q squad until he had proved himself
the master of at least the technicalities
of his command; but q girl of eighteen
passes from the school room, where she
has been in the position of q subordin-
ate at all times under control, to the
management of q household where she
is supreme and the dispenser Of frowns
or favOrs-the arranger of tasks and
times; and without previous training in
the care of herself expects to come to a
good result In the management of men.
What is true of the mistress is still more
lamentably so of the mother. Babies
are born into the world apparently for
no better reason than to afford subjects
for experiment by inexperienced moth
ers and that SO many survive is more
astounding On the whole than that so
many die under the trial. Some go in
for the hardening system and put their
trust in cold douches and early trough
ing it," and some go in for the cod
ding system, and seem to think their
children are some exotics, which have
to be "kept with cost and care and
warmth" to be induced to shoot" as
if life were the most difficult thing to
preserve, instead of being the easiest
given common sense and the ordering
of knowledge, rather than the wild va
carries of experimentalizing ignorance.
Some starve the poor unfortunate little
creatures for fear of overlooking their
digestiOns; and others cram them with
food at all hours, and Of most every
improper kind. Some think that, AS
you can never begin too early to do
well, nor have too much of a good
thing, learning and lessons should begin
when the cradle ends; and others, on
the plea of letting the brain stl engthen
and develop into q more fitting condi-
till the child is quite full grown boy
or girl, who has been for some years
the object OF ridicule of all its associ-
ates. Some, to encourage catholicity
of feeling, allow their children to asso-
ciate freely with every one within hail,
and repudiate the idea of their getting
any harm; and others, to keep theirs
pure, select and untouched by evil, do
not allow them any ompanionship at
all, for fear of the unknown dangers
lurking in every other mothers child.
So the balance hangs-now on this side
and now on that-and the experiments
set afOOt by ignorance as many as
there are first children born into the
world to be the blocks of brute ma
terial whence are to be Clipped out
now a Madonna and now Magdalen;
here the archangel Michael and there
the Lucifer at his feet. But it would
be considered quite unnecessary, if not
indicate, to make the best manner of
managing children part of the educa-
ton of young women destined by ma
ture to be mothers. Maternal instinct
is supposed to be apprenticeship
enough for the most delicate profession
of all to which humanity can be put.
And, in spite of the mistakes which
one sees everywhere about us, this
theory of maternal instinct wins the
day against that of distinct education
for a special purpose, whereby the ex-
periments of ignorance would be done
away with, and their place filled up by
knowledge.
New York Fashions.
SPRING SILKS.
Importations of spring silks will be
smaller than they have been for years.