Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1890-11-27
In WOMAN'S BEHALF.
WOMAN AND TIE HOME.


turo will have their SORROWS, but half
the misery of our generation goes
through lack of pursuit, unftness for
any because of the defective mental
training we have had. ..... There is a
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
lea, 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-
pic 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
provement of the race, are reducing
housekeeping to something approaching
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
w iGbuIO DuO JOlllliH WIN AZ III
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 a 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 UNNECESSARILY raise the plane of
married life?
An age that demands something more
of its male geniuses than that they shall
60 through life with their eyes on the
stars, or on folio, whilo 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 quite 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
4 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-
norant play-things, the outcome of a
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 home whose mistress reaches
out helping hand toward many
schemes of philanthropy guilds fol
working-women, neighborhood guilds
and clubs for the enlightenment o.
woman in her own sphere of life, ye
who finds tho highest work for hanC
and brain in the sweet Enclosure of hel
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, ye
who brings her trained mind to bear up
on small and great questions of house
hold economy, who studies the hygieni,
properties of food and insists that he
children shall have no pudding unit
they have eaten certain amount o
meat, who reads political economy be
cause her daughter is studying it at col
lege, who teaches her children nobl
lessons by means of notices painted up
on the walls by her own hands, AM
whose playful fancy decorates the wash
stand of her little girls with grewsom
dragon whose mission is to remind then
of their morning and evening duty +
their teeth, surely combines the idea
and the practical in her daily life in
manner that would be quite impossible
to woman of less breadth and culture
Much of woman's service is severel
practical, dealing as it does with tn
constantly recurring necessities of tn
hour. The ordering of dinners and sur
pers, the cleaning of silver and the dust
ing of furniture, the making and patel
ing of garments, seem to fill up the repel
toire of many woman's days, but sh
who by her wider outreach and he
higher mental training is able to max
of her home seed bed of aspiratio
rather than a mere haven for rest and
granary for food is working toward tn
truest development of family life. NJ
toward the destruction of the home br