Mountain Home bulletin. (Mountain Home, Idaho) 1888-1889, 1888-09-08

J',nnie's Dainty Appetite-Talking to In.
| vslids - The Jaded Wife Kitchen
Aprons-Romps-A sulky Re!le-The
Teacher-Chsap Living-Notes.
An acquaintance of mine who had removed
| from Newport, r. l., to Cambridge, Mass.
was asked what was the social difference He
| said that he could perceive none except that
| ehere were fewer handsome equpages, and
| that young mothers wheeled their own baby
wagons. This last point of observation quite
restored the balance, for what gorgeousness
OF livery can compare with the proud faces
OF such parents, and what occupants of a
phaeton or u barouche-lnndau can have such
| felicity beams in the face of that rosy
little creature to whom every individual
atom Of the great universe is an inexhaustible
| Doveltyi My friends remark was, fear, a
just one: can recall but two young mothers
among my immediate circle Of acquaintance
| In Newport who habitually took lut their
own babies for an airing, while in Cambridge
can not think of one who does not except
one who mentioned tlGs to me as the greatest
privation of a long illness, and the one loss
| that she never could replace | can remem-
ber one who did'it in New York. and when
her father, clergyman, was congratulated
''ln our family we believe in the natural
affections"
1t would, of course, be very unfair to deny
an ample supply OF natural affections to
those who habitually send out their young
children with "a nurse; there are many pre-
occupations, many Inconvenience, that may
be in the way. The thing of which one may
Justly complain is the tradition prevailing
,mong the well to do circles OF many cities,
east and west north and south, that the
mother is never to take out her child This
seems to me wrong both to parent and
child, as much a wrong as tho habit still
lingering in France of sending young child
to dwell with a nurse, the mother only visit
ing her occasionally; or the habit formerly
prevailing in the English upper classes
which forbade a mothers sucking her own
child-a habit SO fixed that when Georgiana,
Duchess Of Devonshire, broke through it,
the poet Coleridge wrote her resounding
ode, as if she had done some great deed:
Q lady, nursed in pon,p and pleasure,
Who taught you that heroic measure!
In the present case the "heroic- young
mother who wheels her own baby wagon
gains the felicity of the fresh air, to begin
With; she shares the happy little cooings and
.'oiitings of her young charge; she is asso-
cated with its first contact with the world
outside; she will never forget these sweet and
simple associations, and she will always be a
part of them to her child. She has, beyond
this, the inestimable satisfaction of knowing
that her child is cared for: that it is not
wheeled against the broad sunlight till its
eyes water, or pushed backward till its
brain whrls; that it is not left to cry un-
needed while the nurse gossips with her fifth
cousin, or taken furtively into some basA-
nlent kitchen reeking with tobacco or onions,
and not unsuspected of diphtheria.
l read the other day in a womans essay,
which had many good points in it, nvo as
sertIons which seemed to me very wide of
the rs'k. The first was that there is now
hardly such thing in America as fresh,
simple unspoiled child; to which statement
should oppose the objection that there are
at least a dozen of these rare beings in the
one short street where l happen to dwell.
The second point was that we should find a
remedy for this alleged evil in introducing
the English system of keeping children as
much possible in nurseries, and having
them as little as possible in contact with the
family life. Had this statement been turned
just the other way it would have seemed
more reasonable, for surely it is where there
are most nurses and nurseries-in America
at least-that one finds the artificial and self
conscious children, while the simplest and
most genuine are in those households where
servants are few or none This whole philos-
ophy seems to me far less sensible than that
OF little boy Of my acquaintance, who once
made protest against the whole race ~
nurses in these plain terms: Mamma do
wish could be taken care of by somebody
that lives i'll the front part of the house,
.,s.itt
those kindly and child loving races who sup
ply ninetcnths of our nurses-the Celts, the
negroes one sometimes finds among
them individuals of quality SO superior
that they are wholesome and innocent com
panions for any child, and even ignorance
forms no bar to a life long and genuine
friendship. But what risks are run to tenn
per, to health, even to morals, in the effort
to find this paragonl How many poor little
things owe horrible, frightful terrors and
nightmare superstitions and manifold last
ing injury to being intrusted almost un-
watched to persons to whom no one would
mtrust the training of pet animal! One
may see households where a man servant
who should kick a favorite dog, or even
speak angrily to high bred horse, would be
dismissed instantly, and yet where delicate
and sensitive children may be scolded and
twitched about and even chastised by nurses
of no higher training and principle
! know family whose sweet faced nurse
was the admiration and envy of all who
came to the house: it was nevertheless not
intended for ali instant that the power Of
Furnishing should be placed in her hands; nor
was it discovered until weeks after she had
left the family that she had been in the habit
of taking her little charge privately into the
pantry aiid putting mustard on her tongue
by way OF punishment for such sins as can
be committed at 3 years old. The inhumani-
ties of parents, on which brilliant Ameri.
can woman once wrote an essay, may be bad
enough, but it has always seemed to me that
the worst inhumanity, in the long run, was
to leave child to the unmatched control Of
hired attendant. ! say unmatched" }" but,
after all, how can any watching be more |
than superfcialtT. W. Higginson in Har.
per's BaZar.
The Tired Out Housemother.
And when you go home at night and find |
her jaded and worn, think Of some way in |
which to help her, instead of finding fault
with your surroundings and hurting harsh
words ut her, if you do not sometimes break
the third commandment in your zeal to be
emphatic, She is just as tired as you are and
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