The weekly Floridian. [volume] (Tallahassee, Fla.) 1867-19??, 1885-08-20
T. W. Higginson in HArpers Baxaarl
WOMAN THE ONLY HOME.
NAK ER

MAKER.
A single man may have an estate. =
principality; he can own q great hotel
and ell it with guests; but be can not
create home without q woman to help
him, and that, too, q woman whose SER
vice is not for money. When it comes
to home, there is not Q solitary dress
maker in the land, ensconced in her little
room with her geranium, her canary and
her sewing-machine, who can not COM
pletely eclipse him, this being the result,
not Of his sins, but Of his sex.
Undoubtedly each reader will think,
or Try to think, of some exception to all
this some single man who is happy,
some "jolly bachelor" some "cheeriul
widower." No doubt there are those who
can he happy, especially during the first
halt oi life, without the sense of home.
y, with his wealth and his paintings, and
his yachts and his delightful monologue;
}. with his perpetual journeyings; G,
with his six dogs, aud our late Cambridge
professor, with that family of hens which
he tended, like a herdsman, with a long
staff, and which he trained to take food
from stakes stuck in the ground instead
of scratching in the flower beds-al these
may doubtless have found bachelor life
not Inconsistent with happiness; but
where, after all, is the home Neither
yachts, nor pictures, nor steamer ticket,
nor dogs, nor hens, can supply that.
Home" says the provcrb, 6 is where
the heart is" but if so no man seems to
have heart enough to fit out home with
out woman to hel p him. A woman can
do it for herself; here lies her advan-
tage.
1t may be harder for woman to make
money undoubtedly it is harder. She
makes dollar, perhaps, where a man
makes twenty; but when it comes to
purchasing power her dollar goes the
tarthest toward the maintenance Of a
home. SO long as she retains it she is
strong and self-respecting, and even if
she parts with it, so strong is the instinct
OF home that she can sometime recon-
struct it for herself even in a board
ing hous'. II the home is COM
bined with little freedom in
the use of money, it gives more comfort
and more local prestige than lone man
can win by fortune. What would be
the social condition Of any country village
in our Atlantic States without frst-class
maiden lady? She is the daughter of
"Old Squire" somebody, or of :" Parson"
somebody else; she lives in the great
square house with its elms and its white
lilacs and its breezy hall, she has maid
or two who have lived with her so long
that they seem like half sisters she has
in daily use the precious china and the
old chairs that her envious CITY nieces
vainly tried to rival at auction rooms; f;
socahle; she is the confdante of all the
love affairs; she calls upon the new com
ers, if worthy-indeed the new corners, if
worthy, bring letters to her To the
older inhabitants of the town she always
seems young and even elegant she has
a,les Gr9longea , tradition . & Of precedence that
sister they are spoken Of to the end Of
their days as "the Parker girls. All
this is the joint result Of womanhOod and
home or of that womanhood which ere
ates home. 1t is not only potent for it.
self, but it extends its potency over all
other homes. What, compared to this,
is the social position given by wealth to
the lonely old bachelor of the country vii
laSe: though he be millionaire, he Is
simply the old BACH
The truth is that as people grow older
it is the man who becomes dependent, and
the woman the central and essential figure
of the household, since she can do without
him and he cannot do without her. The
proof Of this lies in the fact that we see
all around us self-sacri6cing and contented
households of women, while house that
contains men only is a barrack, not !
home. In youth it is easy to ignore, to
say with Shakespeare in Henry V,
'Tis ever common,
That men merriest when away from home,
but the merriment is shallaw, the laugh
is forced, and years and illness and sorrow
soon bring him back, repentant prodigal,
to his home and to woman, the only home
maker