Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1889-12-19
LIVELY WESTERN BELLIES.
Foolish Maternal Ideas--Not Like Thei
Mothers.

Foolish Maternal Ideas--Not Like Their
Mothers.
The wish so often expressed by mothers
in the West that their daughters should
have a good time" suggests an inquiry
as to what precisely is meant by this fond
aspiration.
A mothers idea of a good time for
her daughter usually signifies the sort of
time she has failed to have herself. If she
has been a Woodworking woman, with
many children to care for, she will desire
that her daughter shall live at ease, and be
blessed, in the way of offspring, with some
thing less than d quiverful. Ii she has
worked too laboriously, she runs to the
other extreme by wishing her child to have
less than enough tC do.
So the mothers of the West, of the heroic
days of pioneering, .unconsciously tell the
story of their own struggles and depriva-
tions in the ambitions which they indulge
for their children.
Along the roads over which her parents
journeyed in white-topped wagons, their
tent by night, their tabernacle, their fortress
in time of danger, the settlers daughter
shall ride in a tailor made habit, or fare
luxuriously in a drawing car. Where the
mothers stead-fast face grew brown with
the glare of the alkali plain, the daughter
shall carelessly glance out from behind the
tapestry blind of a Pullman section"
Where the mothers hand washed and
cooked and mended, and dressed wounds,
and famed the Goals of the camp fire the
daughter will trifle with books and music,
shall be soft and '~'manicured" and daint-
lily gloved.
1t is one of the curious sights in the
shops of a little town of frame houses
chiefly of one story, where the work of the
house is not infrequently done blythe house
mother, not from poverty, but from the
want In a new community of a servant
classic behold about Christmas time the
display of sumptuous toilet articles, imply
ing hours spent upon the care of the fem
mime hands. This may be one of TIE
indications of the sort of good time that
is preparing for the daughters of the town.
There are other and more hopeful sug-
gestions, but none that seriously counter
act the plainly projected revolt on the part
of the mothers against a future of physi-
! cal effort for their girls.
There are girls and girls in the West of
all degrees and styles of prettiness. The
career of the Western young lady in her
native environment is sometimes amazing
to persons of a sober imagination as to
what should constitute a girls good
time" The risks that she takes, no less
than her extraordinary escapes from the
usual consequence, are enough to make
ones time-honored principles reel on the
| Judgment seat of propriety.
In the novels she goes abroad and mar
ries an English Duke; in real life, not
quite so often; but she is an element of
confusion morally in all ones prophecies
with regard to her. She may have talent,
and make an actress or a singer, if she has
any capacity for work; or she may marry
the man she loves and become an exemp-
larry wife. That which in her history APP
peals most deeply to ones imagination is
the contrast between her fortunes and
| those of her mother.