Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-01-15
L" OUR GIRLS"

Rev. Howard Henderson, Ii. D., pastor
of st. Pauls Church, San Francisco, who
has but recently located in this State, lect-
ured last evening before good audience in
the Seventh-street NJ. L. Church South, in
response to an invitation extended by many
citizens. The lecturer has perfect ease of de-
livery, fuency of expression, and is possessed
of poetic gifts which clothe many of his SEN
fences in rhythmic beauty. He is at the
same time vigorous speaker, piquant, SEN
tentious and witty, and fills his lecture with
odd and amusing contrasts as sudden as they
are humorous. He is eloquent in marked
degree, but it is marred somewhat by pulpit
mannerisms of vocal delivery. His subject
was "Our Girls, Grave and Gay" He be-
gan his lecture with the assumption that edu-
cation is the basis of all character. He
pointed out the difference between knowl-
edge and education, and passed to consid
Grafton of the essential elements which should
enter into proper education of the young
women Of America. He summed up his
views on this topic by scathiDg denuncia-
ton of the methods pursued in many fash
ionable educational institutes for girls where
the brain is treated, not as an organ to be
developed and the mind as an intelligence to
be cultivated, drawn out and strengthened by
exercise, but as receptacles into which to
pour vast deal of so-called information,
the whole CLOSED over with what is politely
termed accomplishments. He believed in
training the young woman to think, to rea-
son, to be self-reliant, to be strong and to
know her own powers. He made an earnest
plea for household education, for the intro
duction into educational systems of teachers
of al RI apH hafora oil ~
complishments he would place the ability to
descend from the glitter and ease of the draw
ing-room to the kitchen, and to pre-
side in the latter with all the success
aimed at in the former. He declared that in
this age of unbelief and doubt there was one
thing of which he was absolutely certain
one thing in which faith was mistaken, the
total depravity of the human liver. If wives
would retain the love of their husbands, let
them feed them well. What does hungry
man care, lie asked, for tapestried floors
and richly upholstered windows and gorgeous
silver service if his table be devoid of whole
some food? In the honeymoon period he is
Indifferent to biscuits and beefsteak, but
when that delightful time had waned his
affections are wonderfully influenced by the
supply in the larder and the demands of his
stomach. He did not expect girls to turn
out as engineers, to tunnel mountains or
build bridges, because of teaching them
higher mathematics, but for all that their
education should be thorough. If in Agri-
cultural Colleges the boys are to be taught
how to grow good wheat, he would also have
the girls taught how to make it into good
bread. In the seminary of the near future be
believed the professor of the culinary art will
be deemed as essential as the teacher of
music. In a caustic and witty strain he re-
viewed the accomplishments of the mere
piano-playing, dressing, flirting girl of the
period, and in contrast described the true,
helpful, intelligent woman in strain of fer
vid eloquence. He paid his respects at length
to the curled darlings who stand about the
street-corners, twirl rattans and ogle the
pious, simpering, piano-playing miss enervate
creatures, the product of false systems of edu-
cation, obstacles in the worlds progress, who
do their country most service when they die
and add nourishment to the soil. He declares
that hearths are deserted and bar-rooms are
crowded, in large part, by reason of the IN
fitness of the wife of the home for her position
the home where lowering brows, pinched
lips, and frowus and discomfort prevail, the
fruit of an unworthy system of education in
the polishing schools for girls. To educate
daughter, he held, is to educate society itself.
He pursued the subject at length, and con-
cluded with the statement that he did not
wish to be understood as saving that he con-
sitered the girls of this day inferior to those
Of the days of their great grandmothers, or
less capable of true womanhood. The con-
ditions only are changed. They are not
needed now as then at the spinning wheel OF
loom nerves of steel and the fingers of ma
chinery have broadened their sphere. With.
a brilliant peroration in which he claimed
woman would prove to be the equal of man
in intellectual power when afforded opportu-
nifty to manifest it, he concluded his lecture
with the advice to the young men of the day
to go to work, to make themselves homes,
and-marry.