The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1890-12-04
ANDERSON s. c., THURSDAY MORNING. DECEMBER 4 1890
BILL ARP'S CHAT.
ELL Arp asks What Is to Become of the
Girls.
atlanta Consultation.

|
ELL Arp asks What is to Become of the
Girls.
atlanta Constitution.
Oh, my country. 1t makes me sad and
tired to get so many letters asking for
help and advice. Help that I cannot
render-advice that I cannot give. The
letters are always welcome, for it is good
for man to know of human trouble and
to lend his sympathy. 1t is better to 60
TO the house of mourning than the house
of feasting, but still these letters make
me feel helpless. They make me to wish
that was rich and wise so that I could
respond to every call of misery. wish
thatsome great millionaire would die and
leave his money to me-to me in trust for
misery. Sometimes when | look around
upon my cheerful home it alarms me for
fear l have not had my share of trouble,
and it will come yet before die, and fall
upon my children. They are not strong
yet and trouble would 60 hard with them.
The child never gets strong while the pa.
rents live. If the old folks have nothing
else to give they can give comfort and
sympathy aud advice, and when they die
prop is gone.
But the girls-the girl-whet is to be-
come of the girls? That is the question
that is uppermost in the minds of thous-
ands of parents. 1t did not use to be so
half century ago. and what is the matter
now Of course the old time parents felt
anxiety about their daughters, especially
about seeing them happily married and
settled down, but as a general rule they
did marry and The young couple went to
work prudently and sensibly and began
to raise children and chickens, and with
little help were comfortable and pros
porous There was no great hurrah about
how or here the girls should be educated.
The old field school was good enough if
the teacher was good one. Richard
Malcolm Johnston taught one of them for
twenty years, and college didn't turn
ou. any better scholars than he did. My
numerous and lovely wife went to just
such an one until she was sixteen, and /
didn't want her to get any smarter, and
so ne mated, and she knows as much
about books and everything else as her
college bred daughters. There is not
school boy that can speak Marco Bozzaris
like she can.
But what is the matter with the girls
The New York World is chock full of
letters about them-whole pages OF letters
that tell how they should be educated and
what they should do for a living. it
seems that an old gentleman wrote the
first letter and bitterly denounced the
prevailing methods and the modern col
leges, and he accused woman of invading
the sphere of man and doing unwomanly
things, and said she had better stay at
home. and raise the children and letscience
and art and politics and temperance
alone. His letter was pungent and sar-
c8stic and has aroused the fair sex, and
now we are having it hot and spouted on
both sides. Such notable women as Ella
Wheeler Wilcox and Marion Harlaud and
Mrs. Austin and Mary E. Bryan and Mrs.
Henry Ward Beecher have entered the
field aud given their opinions in vigo-
rous and spicy way. A score or two of
other writers, male and female, have re-
sponded, aud the cry is still they come
and nothing is settled. 1t is hard to tell
who is ahead, for some of the women are
on the old gentleman's side, and some are
half and half, and some say he is luna>
tic and ought to be arrested. The old
gentleman has no patience with the
short. haired, pushing, brainy women, but
wants woman to be lovable and ret iring
rather than cold, defiant and self.sup-
porting. He wants them to stay at home
and make it comfortable and inviting,
and expresses his disgust at the whole
tribe who are everlastingly writing nov.
els and dreamy analytical stories. Wo.
man, he says, was created to be mother
and to nurse children, and that is her
highest and best vocation.
Some of the women 60 for him like
yellow jackets come out of hole in the
ground, and they sting him fearfully. l
thinksthat he has taken to the bushes to
get rid of them, for he has not yet put in
rejoiuder. They say that thousands of
their sex are not yet supported by the
men, and they are compelled to 60 out in
the busy world and support themselves
They would willingly marry if the right
sort of man was to come along and ask
them, but he don't come, and but few of
the men are ftten to marry, and not 6tten
to get 6tten, and those who are, are get
ting scarcer and scarcer as the years roll
on, and SO the girls prefer to toll rather
than be pensioners upon the bounty Of
their kinsfolks.
Well, it does look like the old man is
right, and the women are right, too. He
is looking backward at the good old
times, and they are contending with the
hard facts of the present. Halt century
ago who would have thought of seeing a
nice young girl in store or counting
room, or printing Office, or a theater, or
singing in a church for pay. 1t would
not have been tolerated. They we're al
lowed to teach the village school or keep
a milliner's shop, and that was about all.
sework-domestic work-was their
employment until they got married, and
they had plenty to do afterwards. Mrs.
Arp did, I know. Her good mother
taught her to sew and to knit and make
cake and play upon the piano and ride
horseback, and she can now work neat
er buttonhoIe than any child she has got,
and the little dresses she made and hem
med, and hemstitched and plated, were
marVels of beauty. From sixteen to for
ty FIVE no woman ever made more little
garments or knit more stockings or was
more diligent in household business And
yet she has not suffered, nor felt oppress
ed, nor lamented her lot The maternal
pressure was constantly upon her, and
she had no time to lament-no time for
dreams and reveries or utopian desires.
When she was weary with work she rest
ed by readirg-reading books that were
Gt to be read, and she never forgeis them.
She is the standard Of the household
upon all literature, from Milton t.
Mother Goose. That's the kind of g NO
man she is, and never went to college.
Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox begins her
letter on the old mans sils of the qnes
lion, and she blames the mothers and
teachers for encouraging the girls to
4, nj h N, ptS up6 y,1hlip dis--