San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1890-04-26
WOMAN AND HOME.
WHAT is EXPECTED OF THE Wo-
MAN OF THE PRESENT DAY.

| value OF W omen : feTsOhal IharhIs- "OiuS
That Try Mems souls-How to Sit in the
SaddIe-The Perfect Home-Many Things
of Interest to Fair Readers.
No one will deny that the education of wo-
men has increased and grown enormously
during the last few years. A different stand
ard of perfection has been raised, and, above
all, strange and new requirements have been
added to the old code. Woman is still to re-
tain her charms all that art can do i'll dress,
| grace and refinement, and seduction of man
ner are as keenly appreciated as ever. But,
besides these light and airy graces of the old
school, it is now felt that the more grave and
serious parts of education must not be found
wanting i'll a woman.
She must do more, from literary point of
view, than specifically glance down the
columns of a newspaper; while the suscepti-
bilities of her friends require greater artistic
| excellence than was evinced by her mother
when she took the captains heart by storm
some thirty years ago by singing a few popu
lar airs of the day; and as TO her water
colors, they must be better than her aunts
roses entwined with auriculaS, which were
considered such works of art at that time.
If she is to exercise artistic faculties, it is
only powers of the first order that her ac-
quaintance will greet with favor. The old
world indulgence with which elderly people
of a former generation hailed the very medi-
OGRE attempts of their young friends to
amuse them after dinner by a solo or duet
partly in but often mostly out of tune, that
kindly feeling Of acceptance is as much an
emotion of the past as the pyramids or armOr
of the middle ages are relics of past Clviliza-
tions. In Old days people laid to heart the
old saying, "NOu must not look gift horse
in the mouth, and there was general feel
ing prevalent that what you did not pay for
you had no right to criticiSe.
Beyond all this it is now found indispensa-
BILE that every woman should take a part in
charitable and even in political organizations.
To obtain proficiency in these objects it is
requisite that she should acquire business like
habits, and be able to write and even to
speak, in public, if not brilliantly, at least
with fuency and to the point. Added to
these new tests of education, woman is still
expected to be good linguist. 1t is thought
absolutely necessary that she should be able
to read and to express herself with ease in
several languages.
1t does not excite astonishment that man
public school, and then at one of the univer-
sities nominally learning Latin and Greek,
and at the end of what he is pleased to call
his education be guiltless of being able to
translate a stanza of Horace or a line of
Homer intelHgbIy. On the other hand, it
would be considered extraordinary that a
woman in society, who had Travelled il France,
or who had had the advantage of French
Il, H. i l. L.
press herself in French, with ease, talk if
necessary to a French attaChe at London
dinner party, or write correctly to her mo-
diste in Paris Added to all this the athletic
developments of a wOman's education must
not be forgotten to be mentioned here. The
same critical faculty is brought to bear upon
her ability as a lawn tennis and a cricket
player; and if she does not shoot, at least she
is expected to show the same endurance as a
man, when she walks over miles of heather, or
through fields of turnips
To all these graCeS, accomplishments and
physical exercises are added her old duties of
a wife, mother, hOusekeeper and hostess. A
larger capacity and broader understanding
are demanded on all sides for women. Even
the type of a wOmans woman is changing
a fgurehead of inane incapacty, of very
mediocre mental attanmtntS, veneered by
refinement Of manner, and clothed in French
millinery, is no longer an ideal to women;
while men are no more cOntented to find in
woman merely recipient of their thoughts
and ideas, a worshiper who places them on a
pedestal, and who, by means of her own linn
itations and ignOrances, clothes them in the
giants robe.
Women are daily opening more and more