San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1889-05-06
WOMAN AND HOME.
INFORMATION USEFUL TO WOMEN
AND HELPFUL ONES AT HOME.

What Women Have Achieved In Some
FieIds-something About Custom and
Dress-How to Decorate the Dinner
Tabie-Items and Humorosities.
Il is a trite saying that no girls education
ought to be considered complete without a
good knowledge of general business, but yet
women who would be puzzled to do so simple
thing as to make out bill or a receipt cor
rectly are to be found in every school dis
trict Perhaps they get through life without
any serious trouble, and perhaps they do not
Such one thrown on her own resources Il, at
a serious disadvantage. 1t would be bad
enough If everybody was honest, but all peo-
pie are not honest
No woman, especially If she have children
or others who would be dependent on her in
the event of one or two deaths, ought to rest
satisfied with her attainments until she has
mastered the art of buying things nect.ed for
general household expenses, knows whe: her
property is invested and how to take care Of
it if necessary, and, above all. knows the
value of dollar to her, and how many of
them she can spend and yet keep well within
her income. A large part OF the extrava'
gance charged to the women of the family
when the husband or father goes into bank
ruptcy would never have had an existence
had the wives and daughters been properly
informed as to the financial standing of the
family firm.
A woman, as well as a man, ought to know
the more important principles of common
law She needs to be equally careful what
she signs, especially in the case of papers Of
fered by unknown vendors of patent medi-
cine, sewing machines, parlor organs or other
wares. These travelling dealers may be all
right and the paper they offer may be simply
an acknowledgment that a sewing machine
or other article is left fer trial, or it may be
an agreement to take it at a certain price
The safest way wncn dealing with a stranger
III such cases is not TO sign anything, GER
tainly never to sign without careful reading.
Any objection to such reading, sudden haste,
or apparent nervousness on the part of the
offerer of such wares may generally be taken
as warning of something wrong.
Blessed is the household that can count
among its inmates grandfather or a grand
mother, some one who has lived long enough
to value things in their true proportion, to
whom worldly wealth and honors is of less
value than love and friendship and home en-
joyments. Who so well as grandmother can
sympathize with Johnnies struggles with his
arithmetic lesson or with Kate's homesickness
on a visit which she planned herself? She
may have forgotten the complications of
compound proportion or of cube root, but she
has such faith in Johnnie and such pride in
his achievements that he can't disappoint her
and must come out conqueror. She may have
advised against Katie's visit, but she forgets
all this and remembers only how she felt on
similar occasion sixty years ago or so.
Who like grandfather can advise father in
his business affairs or Tommy in his garden
ing experiments with equal readiness as one
who has passed through similar experiences,
or who can so bring each to understand the
others trials and perplexities3 People who
are busy from morning till night sometimes
get so absorbed in their own tasks as to lose
sympathy with the different work and worry
of others, and so almost unconsciously father
may drift away from son or mother from
daughter. The presence of one equally de-
voted to all and with leisure to enter into tho
feelings of each may be wonderful harmon
iZer of differences. Those who neglect the
old people or try to shut them out of their
ives may lose more than the ones they thus
wrong, Lewiston Journal