Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1878-10-25

What most women need next after health
and power of acquisition, and the confidence
which springs from having acquired some
thing, is a tolerable amount Of administrative
capacity. Housekeeping is administration on
a small scale It Hcudes the faculty of get
ting the most for ones money and managing
children and servants. If it were likely to be
n mans vocation to the extent to which it is
likely to be a womans, he would undoubtedly
be prepared for it by some sort of apprentice
ship. He would have to learn in some subor-
dinate capacity the proper mode of buying
and preparing food, and of procuring and
taking care of furniture and clothing, and Of
ruling servants. He would be trained to re-
ceive company by some experience of the art
of entertaining, both in its material and es-
thetic aspect. No one would ever guess,
however, from an inspection of an average
school course, that a girl was to be at the
head of that most complex result of civiliza-
ton, a modern household, with its thousand
duties, responsibilities, and relations. No
one would ever suppose that the very end and
aim of q nations existence, the main use of
its armies and navies, and commerce, and po-
lice, and manufacturers, and Inventions was
the multiplication of well l-ordered parlors with
agreeable and efficient women in them and
yet this is strictly true. All our toiling, and
fighting, and travelling, and producing ends
in this When man sets up a happy home
he feels and the whole community agrees
with him, that the best work Of his life is
done.
It is not only good administration, how
ever, in the ordinary sense of buying and
managing and enforcing discipline, that wo-
men are expected to contribute to it. They are
expected to make it attractive to the outside
world by good manners, and, in fact, are ex-
pected by their cultivation of manners TO re-
strain or counteract the tendency TO brutality
and coarseness among men which seems an
inseparable accompaniment of the regime of
competition. The foundation of good man
ners is undoubtedly tact and quick sympathy,
and these cannot be implanted by any didac-
tic process but great deal eau, neverthe-
less, be done at school to aid in the formation
of manners. For example, there is no such
hindrance to good manners al fussiness and
prctence-that is, an uncomfortable and rest
less desire to produce the impression that you
are something other, if not better, than your
natural self Now, fussiness and protenco,
the absence of ''modest stiffness and humili-
ty," are all over the country the curse of girls
schools. The evil reaches its last limits in
the city high schools a street car full Of
the older girls of one of these institutions,
oyer-dressed, eager for the notice of the pas
sengers talking in loud "hollerin" voices
their own attractiveness, ignorant of what re-
serve means, and anxious that every word
they say should be heard by everybody with
in ten rods, is perhaps disheartening spec
tacle Of the kind as our civilization presents,
because it indicates the absence of all moral
and social training from the most important
seats of education we have. But the root of
the evil as well as the evil itself is to be found
in large number of our girls schools. The
1 1 4. .aE4
engaged to cover ground that cannot be COW
ered to make a show of instruction which
cannot be given, and which has no real adap-
ton to the practical ends of life, which every
girl secretly means to forget as soon as she is
married, naturally creates an air of sham in
which good manners cannot grow, or can on
ly grow in rare natures. No woman's man
ners are good if she is not simple, and she
cannot be simple after passing some of her
best years in trying to impose on people as
the possessor of accomplishments which she
really does not possess
One of the commonest defects of women's
domestic manners is, as regards women in
moderate circumstances sort of false shame
about their mode of life. Not one of them in
hundred has been prepared by training to
meet anything in the shape of an unexpected
visit or intrusion with cheerful courtesy, or
even calm fortitude. On the contrary, the
school influence, in nine cases out of ten, has
helped to give the discovery by stranger
that they do not always dress aud eat as they
seem to do on gala days, the air of calamity
which the strongest natures cannot be expect
ed to resist. The result has been, both in the
United States and in England, almost to ex-
tinguish simple and informal hospitality. An
average woman, among plain people, is
crushed by friend dropping unexpectedly
into meal, and sits at the table in silent and
hustered pain, whereas her education ought
to have prepared her to meet such crises with
smiling front, if not with positive enjoy
ment. Part of the drill of every school ought
to be the reception by wife in an old gown,
to dinner of corned beef aud cabbage, of an
unlooked-for guest, thoughtlessly brought
home by reckless husband.-THe Nation.