Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-06-16
WOMEN WHO STUDY
And Have No Time to Sympathize
With Sorrowful Friends.
HOW SOME MISSIONS ARE RUN.
Starving Families Must Wait Until the Off
cials Have Lunched.
SOME POINTS ON HEALTH AND COMFORT
WRITTEN FOR THE p1spAr6H.l

Some one the other day was lamenting the
decline of anything like friendly intimacy.
I'VE have no more correspondence like that
which furnished the choicest memoirs and
finest thought of the last century and this.
People can't waste time and esprit on m ere
personal friends, they must save bright
idea and work it into an article for club
reading, or to use in conversation at din
ner party with distinguished stranger or
to crush possible rival. When 1 go to see
a friend, wanting quiet hour or two Of
sympathetic talk, find her parlors are en-
gagged in Is minutes for a committee meet
ing of the shop girls patronesses or the
Educational Improvers' Association, and OF
course single person with heartache has
no chance before such collective interests of
such Importance. write to another, long
ing to hear some pleasant thing about her
life, and she regales me with what this so
ciety and that club did and said at their
last meeting and rehashes the details Of petty
feminine politics."
One thinks sadly of Horace Walpole's
saying that the only use of nine-tenths OF
the world is to make one wish himself with
the other tenth. In their insatia BILE ambi-
tion to prove themselves the superior half
of the human race, women are playing with
the sweetest interests Of human life. Even
the culture of The time interferes with the
real pleasures of society, but this is the
penalty for neglect of early opportunities
and the time holds more for middle aged
women than it has done for a century, for
xuoQ no Ua he
ance of health and influence if they have
the courage to hold their own.
A lady of the highest position said lately
that never in her knowledge was there any
thing like the number of women classes Tor
study in language, in bellies lettres, in music
and art She said she could hardly make
call without trenching on some appoint
ment, with master or some ladies' class go
ing on an excursion, photographing or
sketching or studying some new impOrta-
ton of archaeological interest. And it was
not the young ladies who were doing this,
but their mothers, women over 80 with
gray hair.
SUMMER STUDY.
The zeal for study among those who feel
that they have not their whole lives before
them, does not allow of leaving the subject
during summer rest. The summer schools
where, and the schools of natural science
are evidences of the growing taste for study
among older people. The most fashionable
school of languages in New York and Bos-
ton, takes rooms at some quiet, pleasant
country hotel for its pupils, who have the
advantage OF conversation, and the practice
which could only be found otherwise by
living in foreign family. Music teachers
of repute are glad to take their best pupils
with them to country homes, where they
give the early hours tc roaming and the
noons to practice of a most devoted sort.
The delicate daughter of artistic tastes in
one family know of goes off to the Cats
kills with a ci-devant newspaper woman,
clever, educated and practical, who takes
care Of the girls health, orders her baths,
diet and exercise strictly, reads and studies
with her, puts her to sleep by magnetic
treatment, and is in every way her friend,
companion and guide. For this she re-
ceives her expenses for the summer and is
in every wav treated as one who confers the
favor. The same woman had just before
gone to Mr.. Ballard Smith, of the New
York World, with view to securing good
position on the city press, when his reply to
her substantially was that he should advise
her to walk off the dock first If she had to
depend on her pen for living. What we
are to do when all the women are educated
to earn their own living and to want that
living good one, is a quandary. But SO
many mothers are desirous to delegate the
care of their daughters to some one else that
this mode of being companion to young
lady may offer advantages 10 both sides.
LADIES MISSIONS
and church boards have been holding their
IL
pensive dress and well pnrased graduation.
Apropos of nothing at all in this connection,
what is the name Of the pastor who, called
to confer with his brethren about bringing
outsiders into the churches, responded that
he wanted to see his church members hope
fully converted from their practical heathen-
ism before he brought any more into their
company and influence. For his part he
had rather undertake to reform Magdelen
from. the lowest ward than to bring one
well-placed woman to sincerity of life and
good feeling. Apropos OF this again is the
story OF a city missionary who went to an
officer OF one OF the charitable boards with
the report of family OF four children and a
sick mother, without morsel of food or
money. 81 can't help it, said the official;
81 can't do anything about it, for am
going out to lunch"
"But what shall do?" asked the mission
ary. HThose people must have something
to eat. / can't leave them to starve."
81 can't help it. repeated the lady officer,
with salary Of over s., 500 year for attend
ing TO such cases. "If you had come in Is
minutes ago could haYe seen to them, but
can't do anything about it now; I'm going
out to lunch"
1t really never occurred to the woman
that she could possibly put off her own
lunch Is minutes Longer that these five
persons might not go starving another day.
The city missionary said no more, but bor-
rowed basket and went around herself to
bakers and grocers asking aid, and carried
supplies to the hungry children. Her lunch
con may have been delayed, but it must |
have been relished with the thought of
other hearts lightened.
There must be room for improvement in |
women's charities and sympathies, or such |
story never could have been told as that of |
the missionary mother from Syria, going |
with her four children, one baby, to visit |
her relatives beyond Chicago. Supposed 10 |
be in charge of the Mission Board, they |
were suffered to start West from New York |
without any provision for lunch for the |
little brood, who were forced to 60 "a hours
without food, the train making no stop long |
enough for the mother to provide Tor them |
out of her scanty means. 1t is easy for such |
a thing to happen to one who Spiritually a |
stranger in her own land. These stories do |
not appear in the reports of women's meet
ings, but they ought to, and are told on the |
authority Of women in charge OF church |
charities who see these things done and left |
undone, by influential women whom they |
are powerless to resist.
THE BLEEcKER STREET MISSION.