Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1890-12-18

but he don't come, and but few Of
the men are fifteen to marry, and not
ftten3t TO get dtten, and those who
are, are getting scarcer and scarcer
as9thes years rollon, and SO the girls
prefer to- toilsrather than be pension
ere upon tho bounty Of their kin:
folks. i.
Wei, IT doea look like the old man
lis right, and the women arc right,
too. He Is looking backward at
the good old times, and they are
contending with the hard facts of
the present. Half q century ago
who would have thought Of seeing d
nice yorng girl ms store Or count
ing room, or q printing office, & i g
theater, or singing In church for
payP 1t would not have been tole-
rated. They were allowed to teach.
the village school or keep milliner's
shop, andithat was aboutall. House
Work--domestic Work--was their
employment until they got married,
and then they had plenty to do
afterwards. Mrs. Arp did, Iknow.
Her good mother taught her to sew
and to knit and to make cake and
play upon the piano and ride horse
back, and she can now work a neater
buttonhole than, any child she has
got, and the little dresses she made
and hemmed, and hemstitched and
pleated, were marvels of beauty.
From sixteen to sforty-five no woman
ever made more little garments, or
knit more stockings " was more
diligent in household business. And
yet she has not suffered, nor felt
oppression, nor lamented her lot.
The maternal pressure was constantly
upon her, and she had no time to
lament--no time, for dreams and
reveries of utopian desires. When.
she was weary with work she rested
by raading--reading books that were
fit to be read, and she never forgets
them. She is the standard of the
household upon all literature, from
Milton to Mother Goose. That's the
kind Of a woman she is, and she never
went to college. n%
Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox begins
her letter on the old mans side .,
the question, and says: ellis letter
contains a greater moral lesson for
the young generation than is preached
in a thousand pulpits in a thousand
Snndays.p She blar,es the mothers
and teachers for encouraging the
girls to SNOWY accomplishments and
public displays. She blames the
young men for paying more atten-
ton to snowy and entertaining girls
than practical and industrious ones.
The young men want their sweet
hearts to be snowy and their wives
domestic, and. as the average girl
cannot be both SHE does not marry,
or if she does a separation or a
divorce soon follows.
Our own sensible Mrs. Bryan says
the old man is both right and wrong.
She defends the health and muscle of
the women of to-day, and says they
understand the laws of health better
than did $heir mothers or grand
mothers. That their rooms are bet
ter ventilated, and they have quit
laoing their waists and cramping
their limbs and wearing French heel
slippers. 1t was not uncommon in
the old gentleman's time for ladies
to faint in the ballroom and have
their stays cut in a hurry to give
them breath. But Mrs. Bryan does
lament the decay Of what she calls
the maternal instinct among the edu-
Gated classes. she says that but
few children arc born to them, and
the number is constantly growing
less. The time was when it was a
reflection upon a woman if she did
not bear children, but not now. The
society woman of to-day does not
want them. They are trouble and
are in the way of her selfshnesss, for
motherhood means self-saorifce. Mrs.
Bryan hints that possibly this is
intended to solve the problem of
over-prodnctiea end excessive popu-
%lation in the future, and that may be
if there are fewer children born,
they would be better ones. The
mouse in the fable tainted the lioness
with having 80 few offsprings and
tho lioness retorted "But they are
lions"
Well, I don't believe in that. I
don't believe in anything that is not
according to nature. / never saw a
] rioht healthy mature Enman who