The Somerset herald. [volume] (Somerset, Pa.) 1870-1936, 1884-01-30
What Our Young Daughters Read

What Our Young Daughters Read.
1t is verv unusual to find a moth
er who is indifferent to her daugh-
ter's clothes. Even when that
daughter is but a wee toot the petty
details OF costume are scrupulously
looked after, and the maternal mind
allows itself to be plainly disturbed
over incongruousnsss oftint between
the ribbons serving as fillet and
necktie, and by meagerness of gar
niture on trock and apron. Practi-
cal-minded women will even, in
spite of girlish remonstrance insist on
low heels, loose clothes, and warm
wraps, and with wise laws and by
gienic maxims crush the fashiona-
bic yearnings of budding woman
hood fer French heels, a genteel
waist and sleeveless jackets Careful,
intelligent housewives are scrupu
lousy exacting in regard to the
amount of cracked wheat and
oatmeal, beefsteak and potatoes,
milk and brown-bread which the
growing maidens must consume;
and if the fitful appetite so often
seen III school girls fails to respond
to the mothers cooking, the family
doctor is promptly applied to for
tonics and iron. AS matter of
fact, the average affectionate Ameri
can mother looks after the physical
needs and social duties of her daugh-
tiers with more or less of conscience,
common sense, and rightful mater
nal pride. She feeds and clothes
them with considerable expenditure
OF time and thought, sends them to
the best school she can find, has
them taught to play on the piano,
to dance, and perchance to dabble
in decorative art, and when they
have attained the age at which they
are expected to leave school and
"go out, she exerts all her energies
to provide for them good time, and
to help them to settle in life. In a
word, the mothers utmost care is
concentrated on supplying physical
food and clio hing, and what has been
called ornamental gingerbread"
But what can be said about the
endeaver to provide for our
daughters mental nouriShment
and intellectual adornments(?) }
to develop in them taste for
great and noble thoughts, and the Ca
pacity to enjoy companionship with
pure and elevating writers, and as
sociation in ideal worlds filled with
honest men and pure women? to
arouse that instinct for true knowl-
edge which is, indeed, the main pur-
pose of education, certainly OF that
kind of education which is "the
leading of human souls to what is
best, and making what i, BEST out of
them ?"
There is no more amazing phase
of nineteenth-century feminine de-
velopnent than its passionate and
snervating indulgence in nauseous
mental pabulum, and the appalling
extent to which an unlimited supply
of such stuff is furnished to the
young. The same woman who is
conscientiously careful of the school
com mpanionship of her daughter
twelve or fourteen years, is appar-
emily criminally Indifferent to the
character of her associates in the
world of books. She will watch
what boy carries her girls books
home from school, but forgets to
look below the cover ofthe new nov
ell that same daughter has brought
back from the circulating library,
stopping there for it on the way
home.
Now this apathy or ignorance in
regard to what young girls read is
responsible for the destruction of
the finer tone of character of many
of our children developing into wo-
man hood, and explains good deal
of the frivolity, demoralizing coquet-
ry, and unfortunate affairs which
from time to time startle cOmmu-
nifty and bring sorrow and
disgrace on highly respectable fam
lilies.
During the formative period of
life. when both mind and body are
changing from the chrysalis state of
the child into the completeness of
the woman, the future stamina
moral powers ofresistance and phys
ical capacity for endurance, the pur-
er mental tone and healthy bodily
muscles-are dependent upon the
manner in which both body and
mind are exercised, fed and trained,
and to the quality and quantity of
the nutritious particles of matter,
material and intellectual, which 60
to make the substance of the one
and spirit of the other.
Feed your child on pickles and
sweetmeats, allow her to wear paper
soled shoes and an insufficiency OF
flannel, and we all know what the
consequences will be-dyspepsia and
hectic cough. Does itnever occur to
you that the analogy applies to her
msntal sustenance and equipment ?
that if we feed her Uniformed and
emotional nature with high-spiced,
morbid, unreal fiction she will be-
come incapable OF digesting better
literature, and that by the time she
is woman anything else will be re-
jected by the pampered appetite ?
Have you never seen this, you moth
ers ?-Harper's Bazar.
"a.