River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1878-03-21
White Hands.

Poets. novelists, and heightened people
generally have always had great deal
to say about wkite hands.
Their heroines are always represented
as having hands milk-white, and lily
white, and all other kinds OF white. And
the hands in question are small and soft
and bear no marks of toll, and are fit
only for sorting silks, and for lovers lips
to kiss-and very aristocratic and high
toned at that.
Taking up late fashion magazine, we
read, among "Toilet Items" as follows.
"No woman, no matter how graceful
and well informed she may be, can be
thoroughly lady if her hands be big,
and brown, and coarse
We do not wish to dispute the authors
opinion, for this is free country; and
if every one has not right to his own
opinion, then we needn't have any more
Fourths of July, nor birthdays of Wash
ington, and people might as well leave
off christening their babies, Thomas JEFF
ferson and Andrew Jackson. But
what, we beg to inquire, is to become of
the thousands of women all over our land
who do their own house-work and make
their husbands pies and buildings with
their own hands!-who fry the doughnuts,
and peel the onions, and wash the pota-
toes, and scrub the pots and kettles, and
attend to things generally! Labor OF
that kind will harden and blacken the
loveliest hands in the world in week
and it is no use to talk about rubber
gloves, and lemon juice, and glvcerine to
a woman who has the work to do for six
in family, and baby to tend into the
bargain.
And so it appears that our best house
keepers, the women who make the homes
Of their families places of neatness, peace
and contentment, cannot be ladies, cannot
be beautiful, because their hands are not
white.
What fate for them We wonder if
the majority of them have realizing
sense of it2 We wonder if the majority of
them>have realizing sense of it, We
wonder if the writer of that article
for it bore a man's name-would be will
ing 10 eat labors bread and milk for din
ner, that his wife might not blacken her
hands peeling potatoes and siicing quin-
ces! We wonder if he would send his
shirts TO the laundry, and clean out the
stoves himself, in order that she might
preserve her hands white, so as to be a
LADY,
We admire white hands ourself, they
are lovely, and much to be desired and
so are pearls and diamonds; but all can
! not have them. Some of the most perfect
| ladies we have ever known were women
who did their own homework; who sewed
| for the family till their fingers were
pricked to pieces; who had toiled for the
good of those they loved until their
| hands were hard and brown as farmers,
and never conside ed that they were los
ing caste by so doing.
! The hands of our mothers and grand
mothers in this republican country are
stained with toll; but we would not wish
/ to hear them stigmatized as lacking in re-
finement and loneliness because of that.
The kindly, loving hands which were SO
soft when our childish heads were rackeel
with pain the gentle hands which knew
SO we'll how to soothe care and trouble
away the hands in whose magic touch
there were strength, aud comfort. and
peace for many weary transgressor -
what mattered it If they We're white or
| brown what mattercd it they were
horny with the performance of kindly
deeds, or velvct-like with the luxury OF
/ idlcnesss
1t is every woman's duty to be beauti-
] full, and if she can have white hands, LET
! her have them, by all means, but LADY
! is i lady, be she found in howell or palace
- 3e her hands white or black; and all
creation knows her when it sees her, and
l aFtn5rnz har arrfart1 III DIV - E1te Thorn
I'M, r. WeekIg.