Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1889-02-10
CLUBS FOR WOMEN.
Marion Harland Tells Why She
Thinks They Are Right.
Enough in the Sphere OF Wife and
Mother to Satisfy any Wo-
mans Aspirations.
When Clubs for Women are Beneueial-What
They Should Be and Consist Of
Bow 10 Be Conducted.
copyrighted 1852

Inc SpecDlc cH6Cl OF bNO-bHlFus VI tine
edacation acquired from school books
and tuition is to form the texture of the
mind
That sentence is sufficiently important
to stand a paragraph. The profess
sionaI scholar whose erudition is the pride
Of his generation viii tell you that in col
lege he learned nothing of positive value
except how TO study. The soil was bTok en-
mp cleared of noxious growth and bar
Jumps and made arabic. What may
be technically classified as "paying
crops were put in by himself at a later
date.
Were not this rule almost universal in
application, higher education would,
for a yasr majority of women, be time,
labor, and money thrown away. The
= girl-graduate who does not propose 10
become teacher, author, editor, or to be
anything but the petted resident of her
father 3 house for the remainder Of her
celibat life, finds herself with enough
crude intellectual material on hand TO
plunge an economic manufacturer into
despair. If she has no speciality, such as
music, or drawing, or botany TO engage
her energies, and is yet of strain TOO
noble to be content with the empty
round of frivolous amusements that
make the society girls heaven,
she is a pitiable specimen of unremuner
alive investments. The emptiness Of her
life; the vague YeaTning for she knows
not what-the self-disSatisfaction which
is measurably the result of the
abrupt remission of school tasks
and routine, is mistaken by her
for a longing for kinship of soul
and responsive affection. More women
IN her class fall IN love, like Molly
BaWn s sutton because they have moth
ing else to do - and marry for no bette
Teason-bhan we are willing, for the honor
of the sex to admit. To a dispassionate
spectator, it would seem that all the
machinery of domestic and social life is
lxrvsfE 1sa1i0 Of Dvn-
ing women into matrimony.
When once these agencies have accom-
plisned their end they leave Our Girl to
work out her own satisfaction Cor the re-
verse; as best she may.
Before going further, 1 would guard
one point jealousy. Rightly filed, there
is enough in the sphere in wife, house,
keeper, and mother, to satisfy any
woman, whatever may be her aspirations.
OF al forms of whining sentimentailY,
have least patience with the cry for
higher mission than that of home making
and collaborating. As the sum
OF over thirty years. observation of this
form of intellectual unrest, and
the perusal of hundreds of letters from
the malcontents, L assert, without fear
of contradiction, that the unfOrtunates
q ma mar the lament are, in the proper
900 900 Uu-'s -seido0-.-- indeQne, those who are
Pll in about ten days. Fort aPwest seat III the
and there was pi19 ,I funny thing to
o's's o Issver,n Of (: T,>ne qneendom OF
M To~a the bpenof nc oatant eleva-
I'M ~ IN up nsadie 10 the gravel It
cessd note derrick from which
of are never taken DOWN.
M Pl% 3 apt, but the elevator
seFsul 70 ma and the toughest ropes
MH o. - less, then part. To the
81 ie s"iIl=ps her brain awake and
hea .a e, a Cthe spiritual perception to
eE5 &C i'uSeri ,kouee ; never ignOble when done
al IL. h,sss =
airy, anense work ND to herself. instead
500 oVerhn9eksE 10 the drudge's level-her
4 "a II ws' that itdvine. Such women do, now
10 they hSsive TO be grandmothers, with
sf7ssSfes intellectual supplies than those
srlfner@0ssss.-- from within; spend long, use
yer IRON = t-1Jhat are all outgO and little m
Ee map ~ = Usually they die early, and step
of un2napoirs enter into their labors
rse hra. Sould needs food. Intellectual muscle,
the AeliCvaSed TO exercise, becomes faced. The
-- was enuine book-lover viii read, if she must
d is q, b steal time from sleep TO do it and what
! = Eco she gains from the printed page can be
IJncemeps well digested over needle, and ironing
man. ,ses9pa, ana kneadIn@-tray rs anywhere
A.. else. SrIl, books are but silent comfort
at the best, and thought duls for
want OF friction against other minds.
Language gets rusty in the joints, it
\were, through lack of practice in ''the
Nest lines.
\She who establishes a woman's read
ing club in an agricultural district does
mCre 70 check the deadly progress of
farmers wives TO the insane asylum than
an the doctors and medical journals in
the land. The book selected for social
reading and discussion may be nothing
more dignliied than popular novel of
healthy tone-such, for example, as
John Halifax . or "A Noble Life -
or any other work from the pen that, in
Dinah Muloek-Craill' S hand was strength
out of which came sweetness and balm for
her age and sex, or our own Wmtney's
The GaywOTthys' - or Hitherto. - 1t
will lift the toing creatures thoughts
out of the straight deep rut worn by !
plodding feet, glorify the level |
stretches, white with dust, - of the
common days which-heaven help |
theml-are every DAYS with this class.
The changed current of thought and in |
terest VIII blow over the cookstOve and |
dishpan and washtub like cool airs from /
heights she has time to climb. /
1t gives her something to talk Of, /
too-boon of bOons in a circle where /
gossip is the pabuIum of teapartv |
conversation and rare evenings ont - |
- where the mems talk is of oxen and /
the women of butter making in holy
sabbath twilights, with the harvest :
moon looking down upon them over the I
tree-tops.
Rising in the scale of these benefeent |
institutions we come 10 the . literary
club, where thoughts evoked by what /
IS read take the form of intelligent ut
terance, and the play OF cultivated
minds, the one upon the other, is like the
ring of silver wings rather than the clash
of steel. The prejudice agai ust such gallant
pioneers as Soross'' ard THE New
England Club, - mUttered itself into ad-
miring silence such little while ago that
we still strain our ears appreheusiyeIy for
me reeufrent echo. All over our country
educated thoughtful women are modeStly
asserting their right TO meet together at
stated times 10 learn now TO think and
how 10 express in facile phrase what they