The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1885-02-14
Our Girls.

"Our Girls" by saying that it is fact
whether people want to admit it or
not, that children are not as welcome
as they used to be. Too many parents
haven't the time to care for them.
You can recall families of your ac-
quaintance where the parents haven't
time to raise their children properly.
They look after them during their in
fancy as matter of necessity, clothe
them as a matter of decency, and let
them run whithsoever they will as a
matter of convenience. 1t may be say
ing too much that every one can recall
such cases, but almost every one can
who is ordinarily observant.
In olden times its was parents pride
to raise children in such a way as to
make them a credit to their name and a
valuable acquisition to society. The
father who left behind him an honorble
and industrious son left more to the
world than he who built church or en-
dowed a college. The mother who
trained and educated daughter in all
that pertains to the true woman gave to
society and to civilization far more than
a Rachel, Mrs. Siddons or Patti.
1t is bother for business man to
look after his boys and see that they are
surrounded with proper influences. He
hasn't time to talk to them or listen to
their talk. His business requires all his
time, so he bundles them off to school
somewhere and pays man to look
after them. He finds he has more COM
fort at home without them. Things
are quieter when they are away, for boy
is but another name for noise.
Such men may make money by send
ing their boys away, but too often it
proves as curseful as ill-gotten gain.
They forget that there is as much skill
in handling money as in making it.
The boys, instead of being taught in
the fathers practical school, how to
make and take care of money, only
learned in the theoretical boarding
school how to spend it.
So many men are ambitious to leave
a fortune and name. The latter they
strive to paint high up on the political
fence or some of the dead walls of fame,
and the former flashes in the eyes of the
groundlings from every side.
What better name can they leave
than that borne by a son, and what
better fortune than a thriving business
Girls are different.
Yes, that so, but there is, or at least
there used to be way of bringing them
up so they were profitable to society
and the world at large.
In others days it was the custom for
mothers to teach their daughters the
domestic arts and fit them for the ac-
tive duties of life. There are mothers
living now who considered themselves
untitled to marry until they had master
ed the art of spinning, sewing, cooking
and housekeeping. They would have
been ashamed to have it known among
their acquaintance that they had no
bed quilts of their own quilting, no
blankets of their own spinning and
that they were not competent to make
their own wedding cake and cook the
turkey.
But times have changed.
So they have, and greatly, too.
Whether for the better or not is another
matter, yet none the less important.
That was practical age. Then people
felt it a duty to earn what they got. A
man without an occupation useful to so,
eiety, or woman who couldn take a
hand in household duties as we'll as at
the piano or euchre, were regarded as
"aristocracy," and played very small
part in affairs of the day.
In China and other of the old coun-
tries, they kill girl babies or sell them
as slaves, because they can make nc
good use of them. Who knows but
this country may have to resort to this
sometime-say a few thousand years
hence? Girls say they would sooner die
than live to be old maids, and young
men claim they cannot afford to marry
until they get rich, because wives are
such expensive luxuries.
Well, what are you going to do about
it.
Oh, nothing.