The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1880-05-27
Abridged from ga Talk With Girls
and Their Mothers"

"But there are girls, too, in the cities
and the towns. Do not they deserve to
be talked with in friendly way, as we'll
as the boys? Haven't you something to
say to them ?"
Thus a chorus of girls, and their
mothers.
confess to you, maidens and matrons,
that the task to which you thus summon
ed me was one that I undertook with
some difidence. When I was talking to
boys was sure of my ground. Something
about boys I do know, for have been
boy but the wisdom of experience
fails me when I try to discuss the prob
lens of life as they present themselves to
girls. That I might have something
worth saying I determined, therefore, to
seek instruction by sending a circular
letter to large number of those who
once were girls, but who now are women
of experience and reputation, asking them
to tell me
81. What are the most common de-
fects in the training of our girls?
"2. What principles of conduct are
most important, and what habits moste
sential, to the devlopement of useful
and noble wamanhood?"
This circular brought me more than
forty letters, and it is upon the truths
contained in these letters that this talk
will be founded. I only undertake to re-
fleet, in an orderly way, some of the ad-
vice of-these wise women. | shall give
YOU their words sometimes, and sometimes
my own.
[ shall find it necessary, now and then,
toaurn in this talk from the girls to their
mothers. Indeed, large share of what
is written in these letters is intended for
mothers rather than for girls, and cannot,
therefore, be so freely used in this place
as I should like to use it; but the girls
are generons enough, I am sure, to be
willing that their mothers, and their
fathers too, should have some share Of the
advice.
In the first place, then, girls make
great mistake in being careless about their
health. 7 do not know that they are
any more careless than boys, but their
habits of life, and especially their hab-
its of dress, are generally more inju.
rious to health than those of boys. The
great majority of ouf girls take much less
vigorous exercise in the open air than is
good for them; those who can walk
three or four miles without exhaustion
are exceptions.
"It seems to me o mistake" says one
of my correspondents, "that boys and
girls should be trained sodiferently, par
ticularly in regard to out.of-door sports.
With strong love for everything in ma
ture, remember as child what torture
it was to be kept always indoors, in some
feminine employment, while my strong
brothers (strong on this very account,
perhaps) could spend all their leisure
time in the open air. was much interes-
ted years ago in reading asketch of Har
riet Hosmer's girlhood. Her father,
having lost all his children by consump-
ton, and finding her delicate, resolved
to bring her up as boy, teaching her
all sorts of athletic sports, and thus max
ing her strong, healthy woman.
The lack of exercise OH the part of girls
sdue, no doubt, in part, to the foolish
styles of dress, in which tits impossible for
them to be out in rough weather, or to
make any considerable muscular eXer-
tion. "The lack of warmth in clothing,
and the foolish adjustment of what is
worp," is said in one of these lette.s to be
one of the chief causes that produce "the
peculiar nervous diseases to which women
are subject"
wish / could make you all understand
how great mistake you make when you
sacrifice health, or the physical comfort
on which health depends, to appearance
or to any other earthly good; when you
neglect to provide, by regular exercise
and wise care, good stock of physical
vigor for the labors and burdens of the
coming years. Without this foundation,
all that you can learn in school, and
all that wealth can buy for you, will
be worthless. "Intellect in an enfee-
bled body" Gays some one whom Iquote
from memory, "is like gold in spent
swimmers pocket,-it only makes him
sink the sooner"
Another great mistake that many of
our girls are making, and that their
mothers are either encouraging or al
lowing them TO make, is that of spending
their time out of school in idleness, or
in frivolous amusements, doing no work
to speak of, and learning nothing about
the practical duties and the serious cares
of life. 1t is not only in the wealthier
families that the girls are growing up
indolent and Impractical in household
work; indeed, think that more atten-
ton is paid to the industrial training
of girls in the wealthiest families than
in the families of mechanics and of people
in moderate circumstances, where the
mothers are compelled to work hard all
the while.
The habits of Incidence and of help
lessness that are thus formed are not the
greatest evils resulting from this bad
practice: the selfshness that it fosters
is the worst thing about it. How devoid
ofconscience, how lacking in all true sense
of tenderness, or even of justice, n girl
must be, who will thus consent to de-
vote all her time out of school to pleas
uring, while her mother is bearing all
the heavy burdens of the household! /! And
the foolish way in which mothers them
selves sometimes talk about this, even
in the presence of their children, is
mischievous in the extreme. go, Hat
tie is SO absorbed in her books, or her
crayons, or her embroidery, that she takes
no interest in household matters, and l
do not like to call upon her." AS if the
daughter belonged to superior order
of beings, and must not soil her hands
or rufle her temper with necessary house
work The mother is the drudge; the
daughter is the fine lady for whom she
tolls. No mother who suffers such state
of things as this can preserve the respect
of her daughter; and the respect OF her
daughter no mother can afford to lose.
The result Of all this is to form in the
minds Of many girls not only a distaste
for labor, but a contempt for it, and a
purpose to avoid it as long as they live
by some means or other.
There is scarcely one of these forty
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