The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1884-09-26
Crazy Work and Sane Work.

We were asked lately to join in raf-
f1e for a crazy quilt made up of nine
thousand scraps of silk and satin set
together with much ingenuity of design
and niceneSs of stitching. To the
maker and her friends it appeared a
monumental labor of taste, industry
and artistic talent. To us it stood for
a misdirected energy and perseverance,
too common among woman. If it cost
but ten minutes to add one scrap to an
other-an allowance far too small-the
quilt represented an outlay OF fifteen
hundred hours, one hundred and twen-
ty-fiye working days of twelve solid
hours each, or one hour day for more
than four years.
What might not this industrious
young woman have accomplished in
that time? If she really cared for dec
orative art, fifteen hundred hours OF
close study and practice would have
developed an admirable and remunerat-
i've skill in embroidery or painting.
They would have sufficed for the acqui-
sition of modern language, a sound
knowledge of history, poetry, litera-
ture, art, music. They might have been
exchanged for the important science of
housekeeping and kitchen chemistry.
Devoted to educational work, their
helpful influence could not be reckoned.
The craze for decorative art has
wrought certain definite mischiefs with
much good. One harm is that busy
idleness has been made to seem improv-
ing Cross-stitch dogs with bead eyes
on rugs, and parrots in high relief on
lamp mats, are now distinctly recog-
nized and Stunned as survivors of a
''chromo civilization -wasters of time
and sIayers of taste. But the makers
of Kensington-stitch table-cloth borders,
Holbein towel ends, decorative
waste baskets, pen-wipers, tiat-iron
work. seem to have eaten of the insane
root that cakes the reason prisoner.
Their countless stitches and ugly in
genuity appear to them the fit express
sion of aesthetic instincts, and they give
thanks that they live in the cultivated
age which ornaments its whisk- broom
holders. Raphael and Leonardo would
never have thought of that.
1t is the chief misfortune and limita-
ton of women that their aims are petty
When these are conscientiously petty,
as in the misguided struggle for decora-
ton, it is naturally difficult to substi-
teaching of all time having been that
women should be satisfied with patch
work, mental, moral and manual, it is
perhaps unreasonable to expect them to
repudiate it. But most women have
ambitions, if not aspirations. And
most women need to be reminded that
the time they daily industriously w&sae
would do for them what it does for men
conquer new worlds.
Last winter great historian died.
His last book, The Conquest OF En-
gland, was published after his death.
For years he had been struggling for
had planned to do. He seized every
opportunity of momentary strength, of
relaxation from pain, to write. His
preceding volume, The Making of En-
| gland, had been written in the shadow
of death. His wife says, in her tender
preface, that it was the opinion of his
physicians that life was prolonged from
day to day, throughout that time,
''only by the astonishing force of his
own will, by the constancy OF a resolve
that had wholly set aside all personal
aims" 1t was only when the pen fell
from his exhausted hand. that he said:
81 am weary; l can do no more"
''With such sustained zeal, such eager
| consciousness, was his work done,
that much of it was wholly rewritten
five times" The books themselves are
of profound interest, admirable in mat
ter and in manner. But no tale in them
is more heroic than the patient, per-
sistent toll that achieved them, in
spite of suffering, weakness and natural
sorrow.
They who see that civilization waits
for the advancement of women entreat
them to prefer Che intellectual life. But
this does not imply constant compan-
ionship with books. 1t was wise and
good saying that ''the essence of intel
lectual living lies not so much in extent
of knowledge or in perfection of ex-
| preston as III the constant preference
of higher thoughts over lower" The
patient student and historian John
Richard Green may stand for one class,
the patient contriver and piecer of the
''crazy quilt for the other. 1t is not
high qualities that women lack; it is
high directions. -HGrper's BGzar.