Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1883-07-19
THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN.

Isl ,998 bushels, and the decrease in oats
1885, 1894 bushels.
THE EDUCATION OF WOMEN.
Before we can decide what education our
DAUGHTERS need we must know what their
lives are likely to be, and what demands
life is likely to make upon them. Luckily
we know in the main, and the contingent
cies are such that we may provide against
them. So large proportion OF our girls
will become wives and mothers that our on
| ly safety lies in giving all OF them proper
preparation for the life of wives and moth
erS.
For such life they will need, first of all,
good physical health. So certain and so
| imperative is this need, and so surely must
neglect of it result in wretchedness, that
!! inattentiOn to this matter may fairly be
called criminal. Yet in no other partic-
ular, perhaps, is the education of girls more
generally neg glectcd or more frequently mis-
directed There is not only too little syste-
matte effort made to educate girls bodies
into supple robustness, and to give stamina
and buOyancy to their constitutions, bat
there is, too commonly, positive education
in ill health given to them. Very much
that is most carefully done for girls IS direct,
ly productive of i'll health, weakness, and
want of stamina. The care given to the
complexion, for example, by which too
many mothers mean only the Whiteness OF
the skin, commonly consists Of restraints
which break down the nervous system, inn
pair vitality, and invite invalidism. This
is not lecture on hygeine, and it is no part
of our purpose to suggest the proper hyglen-
ic governance of girls lives. We only seek
to emphasize the Importance of properphys-
ical training as necessary part OF the edu-
cation of girls. .f ..., ,...,
AS wives and mothers our girls ought to
be, in Addison's phrase, "the cement OF So
ciety." Without their purity and grace, and
crumble to pieces. 1t will be their task to
keep the world sweet and wholesome; to
create, regulate, and maintain social inter-
course of a graceful, profitable kind to make
life worth living. It will be theirs to make
happy homes with the material means which
men furnish to turn mere dwelling houses
into centers of attractive domestic life.
Upon them chiefly will fall the duty of orna-
menting life, cultivating the worlds taste,
keeping it's moral nature alive, and insplr-
ing the men of their generation with high
and worthy conceptions of purity and duty
1t will be theirs to entertain the world, too,
and to amuse it in profitable ways !, to min
lister in all womanliness to its moral, physi-
cal, and intellectual health and comfort.
Women can only create that sweet and
wholesome atmosphere in which domestic
life springs into existence and grows. Above
all and beyond all of Importance, these girls
whom we are educating must bear and rear
the next generation of men and women, and
upon their fitness to discharge this task well
the character of the future men and women
of America depends.
Our civilization is founded absolutely and
wholly upon the family, and the wife and
mother determines the character and life OF
the family. Is it not worth our while,
therefore-nay, is it not our highest and
most imperative duty to take care that our
girls upon whose shoulders such tasks as
these are presently 10 fall, should be fitted
by every means in our power for the due
and happy discharge of functions SO impOr-
tant ? 1sit not criminal folly for us to treat
their education as nothing more than prep
aration for the frivolous life of the ballroom?
And is it any whit WiserfOr us topush them
into wearing competition with men in uni
versity work, to the neglect of aught that
belongs by right Of life's need to their own
proper education?
AS preparation OF such duties as we
have outlined above, girls need both moral
and intellectual culture Of a kind which
neither any fashionable girls school nor any
oA r
vide. They need, above all, the training
of home life and home inhuences-this far
more than scholastic discipline, far more
than what we term accomplishments.
We do not complain that either the fash
ionable schools or the universities teach girls
more than is good for them in either of these
directions, but that they neglect to teach
much that is of greater necessity as a prep
aration for life than anything that they do
teach.
The woman who is to be happy and use
full as the maker and mistress of home
must know the art of home making and
home ruling. Yet how very small place is
given to the teaching of these arts in our
Schemes of education for girls We should
call that man fool who hoped to see his
son successful as merchantOr banker but
neglected to have him instructed in the prln-
ciples of arithmetic and bookkeeping. But
thousands of girls are married every year
who do not know how to make a LOAF OF
bread, or to set table, or to iron napkin,
or to make bed properly. Is it expected
that servants shall do these things? so the
young man who is to be made into banker
or merchant will have his book-keepers to
write out his accounts and make his arlth-
metical calculations for him, but must un-
derstand these processes for himself, or he
over, in the wOman's case, there may not
always be servants or the means with which
to command their services, and their incom-
petence at best needs the supervision OF
mistress skilled in all the arts. This seems
a hOmely matter, doubtless, to those persons
who see the complete salvation of women In
university education, but it is matter
which touches the happiness women them
selves, and closely concerns the Well-bein!g
ola world whose whole life centres IN and IS
founded upon the home. 1t is not too much
to say that no girl ought ever come to ma
turity without ever having acquired both
skill and taste in every art of the household,
or that no woman deficient in this partlcu-
lar can marry without serious risk to her
own happiness and to that Of the persons
about her. 1t does nobody harm for the
mistress of household to know how to cal
culate an eclipse, but it is disastrous for her
to be herself eclipsed by her Bridget.-Geo.
Ctyy E!ggleston.
THE OHIO CAMPAIGN.-Judge Foraker,
the Republican candidate for Governor of
Ohio, formally opened the campaign in Gin
cinnati Saturday night with an address be-
fore the Lincoln Club. He took strong
ground in favor of high protective tariff,
and criticised the Democratic platform,
which he declared "wanted tariff for rev.
enue and also fora little protection" Speak
ing of the liquor question:, Judge Foraker
said he believed the Scott law would stand,
because the principle was just and enternal::
Republicans were committed to 1t, and
would 60 through with the work without
either explanation or apology. Liquor was
responsible for three -fourths Of taxation, a
heavy burden, and must be made to con-
tribute to the treasury. Even this require,