The Iola register., 1890-11-14
IN WosMfAN's BEHALF.
WOMAN AND THE HOME.

ture will have their sorrows, but half
the misery of our generation goes
through lack of pursuit, unfitness for
any because of the defective mental
training we have had. ....... There is
better time coming-I shall not see it,
but am glad to have seen its dawn
So wrote Mrs. William Smith, more
than twenty years ago, from her own
standpoint of loving, helpful wifehood
and self-supporting, reliant womanhood.
Since these words were penned, so
many college doors have been opened
to woman in both England and Amer
ica, and so many industrial avenues are
being opened out upon their paths that
men, especially those OF the Mr.. Grant
Allen order of mind, fearing that their
untried eyes may be dazzled by the sud-
den flash of light, are crying out in dis
may that this brilliant vista may unfit
women for domestic life with its hum
bier cares and joys.
1t does not seem to have been admit
ted in any court of justice that man is
q better husband, father or citizen be-
cause he is ignorant, yet this theory
with regard to woman seems to lie at
the base of most arguments against her
superior education. One person states
that the cultivated woman has less
heart than the uncultivated, as If heart
were quality to be trained out of peo-
pie as the green color is bleached out of
head lettuce; another claims that she
has lost her taste for domestic pursuits,
while third urges that she is less like
ly to marry. And this, while educated
women all over the land are entering
heart and soul into schemes for the i'm
proyement of the race, are reducing
housekeeping to something approaching
a fine art, while those interested in col
leges for women are deploring the fact
that useful women presidents and pro-
fessors will allow themselves to be
drawn into matrimony to the manifest
detriment of the institutions over which
they preside Rather should we find
cause for rejoicing in this fact, that
higher education is not opposing itself
to nature but joining hands with it in
its nobler demands, proving that it
means not simply preparation for col
lege or school teaching, but training for
life with all it's varied duties and inter-
eSts. Doubtless such education, by rem
dering women self-reliant and self-sup-
porting, prevents their marrying for
home or living, which ignoble motive
has been a more or less potent factor in
promoting marriage; but while thus in
terfering with some marriages, does it
not immeasurably raise the plane of
married life?
An age that demands something more
of it's male geniuses than that they shall
60 through life with their eyes on the
stars, or on a folio while their feet tread
ruthlessly upon the conventionalities of
life, or upon the sensibilities of their
fellow travellers, should grasp the equal
ly pertinent truth that any one-sided ed
ucation of women, whether purely in
tellectual or solely domestic, or exclu-
sively ethical is unsatisfactory and in
complete. Men should be quito as in
tolerant of winsome Doras and Noras
who serve badly cooked dinners to their
households and forge checks. as they
are of feminine philanthropists and
blues who dine upon Africa, with ten
envelopes in the gravy, and sup upon
sonnets to the moon, while neglected
husbands and children browse at large.
The principal reason why men are more
lenient toward the former class than
the latter, is that they are conscious of
being, to certain extent, responsible
for the fact that Dora and Nora are ig-
nj 10 ont of
time-worn masculine theory that pretti-
ness is all, while with regard to the evo-
luton of the female philanthropist and
blue, men have had nothing whatever
to do, never having in their widest
dreams of progress wished them to be.
They know that they have, like David
Copperfield. kissed away the tears of
their doll wives when the accounts
would not come out right and that they
have sneered and quizzed when they
have seen women trying to learn how
the accounts could be made to come out
right
While write, the picture rises before
me of a home whose mistress reaches
out helping hand toward many
schemes of philanthropy, guilds for
working neighborhood guilds,
and clubs for the enlightenment of
woman in her own sphere of life, yet
who finds the highest work for hand
and brain in the sweet inclosure of her
own walls, where character and health
are being built up for future usefulness
and enjoyment A woman who is capa-
BILE of solving abstruse mathematical
problems, or of grasping still more in
volved questions of social reform, yet
who brings her trained mind to bear up
on small and great questions of house,
hold economy, who studies the hygienic
properties of food and insists that her
children shall have no pudding until
they have eaten a certain amount of
meat, who reads political economy be-
cause her daughter is studying it at col
lege. who teaches her children noble
lessons by means of notices painted up
on the walls by her own hands, and
whose playful fancy decorates the wash
stand of her little girls with grewsome
dragon whose mission is to remind them
of their morning and evening duty to
their teeth, surely combines the ideal
and the practical in her daily life in
manner that would be quite impossible
to a woman of less breadth and culture.
Much of woman's service is severely
practical, dealing as it does with the
constantly recurring necessities of the
hour. The ordering of dinners and sup
pers, the cleaning of silver and the dust
ing of furniture, the making and patch
ing of garments, seem to fill up the roper
toire of many woman's days, but she
who by her wider outreach and her
higher mental training is able to make
of her home a seed bed of aspiration