Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1888-05-27
GIRLS TN THE HOME.
MARION HARLAND ON TIE EDUCATION
OF OUR DAUGHTERS.
The Gratitude OF Girls for Parents-scms
Wise Words for Mothers and Daugh-
tors TO Read and Heed
fFor the Dispatch-copyrishtod. isssI

fFor the ispatch--Copyrightod, 1881
doubtless, TO travesty the worthy
ecclesiastic's pronunciamento anent the
strawberry. "God could have made a
sweeter creature than a pure, lovely,
sensible girl, but lie never did ="
But 1t is only in the New World that,
for the usually brief period OF her soiourn
and maiden meditation in the parental
home, she is apotheosized.
"When the girls come home from
school for good Is the date at which
efilorescence begins in the homestead.
when walls and windows and floors and
furniture put on their beautiful gar
ments, and the doors are flung hosplta-
bly, wide for friends and admirers. Pa
pilia enters her kingdom with the feel
ing that it is O special creation for her
and her only, and those who gave her
! life are chieiest among her courtlers.
Life is never 80 fresh and fair to any
other of the Fathers children as to her
at her debut. She seems to herself to
begin then really to lice.
THE PERT YOUNG DEBUTANTE.
Provided-her wings have not been
uniolded before they we're grown.
The proviso is grave and broad, and
merits more than a passing remark. AS
prematurely Iipened fruit, as blossoms
dwarfed in the forcing, as all kinds OF
manufacture turned ont in haste from
crude materisls-so is the girl mot ours
this time, thank Heaven D who at fifteen
assumes the place and prerogatiyes OF
twenty.
How well we know her through
much seeing Knowing, pert, self
satisfied, slow to hear, and quick to
utter her whole mind, she sets cur teeth
on edge after the manner of early sum
mer apples, tough with thin, uncured
Juices. She is generally the eldest or
the only girl in the home. Mothers are
unfortunately prone 10 hasten the ma
turity of such in the desire TO have
O young lady in the honse. Back OF
this superficial and childish desire to set
the pretty toy in place lies the natural
and touching longing to relieve her own
life, impotence to ialsify the pessimistlc
sigh:
"Thero Is in life hut one short Spring,
! And II can ne'er return"
The mother would see herself take root
again and blossom anew in autumn.
This reproduction of our individual girl
hood, with its fsncies, hopes, loves, and
raptures. is one of the sweetest of the
peculiar Joys OF motherhood. 1t is not n
| figure of poetic speech that We are
"courted in our girls" A cool head is
required for the patient waiting until
time brings the consummation 10 us OF
the beautiful dream. and strong hand
must hold back the eager, ignorant child
who would overlap the boundary set by
nature and reason.
LAID on THE SHELF.
Miss Pert keeps grown peoples hours
and looks older each day for the loss of
"beauty sleep" She reads grown peo-
pies books. has her say-and n liberal
Share of tin grown peoples talk, snubs
her mother unsparin9ly, schools her
father, hectors the younger children,
and orders the servants is delighted
when she is mistaken for nineteen,
especially affects the society OF men,
and in nothing else is so successful as III
making herself the most disngreeable
specimen of animated nature thet ever
invited classification from a modern
Goldsmith or Cuyier.
She has her beaux at preternaturally
early age, and is omDivorous Of admlra-
ton. BY the time Our Girl-who has
been sent 10 bed at 9 o'clock and
otherwise treated az growing student
until she is eighteen-is ready to take
her place as a young woman III the So
cietv selected by her mother and entered
under her mothers chaperonage, Miss
| Pert is blaSc, Discontinued. and already
beginning to ego OIL" Critics, who re-
member her as con the course four
years ago." ere sceptical as to her re-
puted age "eligibles' begin to look
away from her to "rosebuds." and Cos
sips hiatt that she is "a long time on
hand" She lost the best things of child
hood she can never taste the morning
freshness Of girlhood. Her hasty foot
has brushed the dew from clover and
daisies she never filed her lap with vio-
lets, and her roses are all fuli-blown.
It is cruel, cruel and so impolitic
when viewed from q utilitarian stand
point that the silliest mother might SEQ
ire unwisdom Of ruining her child's
prospects in life by crowding her,
unfinished, into the show-window.
CARE AND ANXIETY.
Said the mother of grown girls to me,
twenty-odd years ago:
Take all the comforts you can get in
your daughters while they are babies.
When they are grown to womanhood
they will be nothing but care and anxi-
ETY."
1 did not credit the statement then; |
utterly repudiate it now But it is easy
to see why she and others should hold
the opinion. Our Girl is msde queen
when sue should be only princess and
subject Her dominion is violence
done to natural laws Her mother may
be inferior to her in intellect and educa-
ton. The disparity may be so far on the
wrong side that the daughter bushes
to present her parent to her choice
friends The case is by no means I'M
common. We rise fast in America, each
generation recording a higher water
mark than the preceding, and old-fash-
toned people soon get out OF their depth.
The busy householder has not time to