The examiner., 1886-06-26
A GARDEN OF GIRLS.
Out of the Ashes of Hleanness and
Narrowness at Last Come Relief.

Out of the Ashes of meanness and
Narrowness at Last g ONE R elief.
There is a great deal of talk nowadays.
not only obout women-that would be
nothing new-but about wcmen's work.
Those parents who are the proud posessors
Of daughters rather dread their growing
up ignorant of what particular calling
they may choose to adopt. The girl who
will decide to renounce the perhaps more
inviting and certainly more adventurous
professions which cannot be pursued at
home for the monotonous but no less use
full duty of staying in that home and
helping her mother, thereby very likely
enabling her parents to keep servant less
to the decided tightening of the family
budget-this girl Is not often found, and
is even rather looked upon by her more
enterprising sisters as somewhat spiritless
and commonplace. 1t Is quite on the
cards that ones pretty daughter of eigh-
teen may announce that her vocation is
that of a social reformer, and then her
parents groan, foreseeing q long vista of
short hair, divided skirts, shriekings, dis
outings, phamphlets and papers and
scrapes and miseries without end. Or the
budding maiden will perhaps say that she
feels called upon to clear one of the paths
hitherto SO selishly monopolized by the
opposite sex and insists upon setting up
as a solicitor.
We have even in these last days heard
dread whispers OF a female stock broker
who is to pursue her operations with the
aid of telephone and one of the egotis-
tic sex, until those more enlightened days
shall dawn when petticoats shall be al
lowed to pass the sacred portals of the
Stock Exchange. There is large choice,
but perhaps the two careers of music and
painting are those which we imagine the
least Objectionable for our daughters
From all times women have executed,
more or less badly, on the instruments of
their day, the com positions so rarely signed
by one of themselves, and perhaps not
from period equally remote, but, at all
events, for number Of years sufficient to
render the idea respectable in our eyes,
they have dabbled in art. Our great
grandmothers, in the intervals of their
needlework and exercises on the harpsie-
chord, devoted good deel of pains to the
execution of pencil or sepia landscapes
fine enough to bear examination under q
microscope. They even scared higher
still sometimes, producing curious copies
of their younger brothers and sisters
draw from life, and all remarkable for
the wonderful roundness and chubbiness
of the limbs and an impartial distribution
of large dimples.
What would those great-grandmothers
nay even the grandmothers without
the great-say now to the art education
of one of our modern maidens3 Bemit-
tened hands would be held up in horror
at the idea of solitary goings to and re-
turning from art schools, attending of
lectures on anatomy, and above that,
drawing from the life in earnest, not con-
fined to the fat checks and restless limbs
Of ones own juniors at home. What pur-
gatory it would be for severe female
soul, who had passed her earthly life in
cramping and discouraging some more
youthful and aspiring sister, to be obliged
to witness the gradual emancipation of
her sexl We are cropping still, it is true !;
we still make wild mistakes in our en-
deavors to shake off what was bad and
keep what is good. But we advance,
though slowly, and at some day far dis
tant yet we may see arise out of the
ashes of ignorance. narrowness, mean
ness and exaggeration that long sought
for phgnix-a perfect woman.